Patterico's Pontifications

4/14/2023

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:03 am



[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Oh:

In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia…What made it noteworthy were the people on the other side of the deal: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his relatives…The Crow company bought the properties for $133,363 from three co-owners — Thomas, his mother and the family of Thomas’ late brother…He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was living. Soon after the sale was completed, contractors began work on tens of thousands of dollars of improvements…A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties…The disclosure form Thomas filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. That space is blank.

Harlan Crow explained why he made the purchase:

“My intention is to one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation’s second black Supreme Court Justice,” he said. “I approached the Thomas family about my desire to maintain this historic site so future generations could learn about the inspiring life of one of our greatest Americans.”

Second news item

It’s inconceivable to me that shutting down an entire library would be considered a positive outcome:

A small-town Texas library system threatened with extinction was spared Thursday after the Llano County commissioners said they would abide by a federal judge’s order to restore the books they banned rather than shut the system down.

Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who is the head of the county commission, made the announcement after county leaders heard from more than a dozen residents at an emergency meeting.

“The library will remain open while we try this in the courts, rather than through the news media,” said Cunningham, who said the county has already spent more than $100,000 on legal costs and vowed to appeal the federal judge’s decision.

Disappointment in the ruling:

A disappointed Eva Carter disagreed. She said she was on the side of those who wanted to close the libraries and predicted the federal judge’s ruling would be overturned on appeal. “We need to fight it in the court system and get this salacious material removed,” Carter, 82, said. “We have God on our side, and we expect he will get the glory when this is said and done.”

Third news item

Classified intel leaker arrested:

A Massachusetts Air National Guard member was arrested Thursday in connection with the disclosure of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other top national security issues, an alarming breach that has raised fresh questions about America’s ability to safeguard its most sensitive secrets.

The guardsman, an IT specialist identified as 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, was taken into custody without incident after FBI officers converged on his Massachusetts home. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he is to be charged with removing or transmitting classified national defense information, a crime under the Espionage Act.

Garland did not reveal a possible motive, but accounts of those in the online private chat group where the documents were disclosed have depicted Teixeira as motivated more by bravado than ideology.

How the reported low-ranking individual with TS/SCI clearance was able to access such sensitive material:

Teixeira was a “cyber transport systems specialist,” essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs. In that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance because he would have also been tasked with responsibility for ensuring protection for the networks, a defense official told The Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Background on the documents:

The leak is believed to have started on a site called Discord, a social media platform popular with people playing online games and where Teixeira is believed to have posted for years about guns, games and his favorite memes — and, according to some chatting with him, closely guarded U.S. secrets.

This from a sitting member of Congress is more than a bit troubling. It’s not “serious,” Marge, it’s a felony and if convicted, Teixeira could face up to 15 years in prison. Considering the jeopardy in which he may have put Americans doing sensitive work on behalf of our country, the threat to our national security, and the damage to relationships with our allies, you should be ashamed of your encouragement to “many” other would-be “heroes” that you seem to know about:

Liz Cheney has it right:

Former Rep. Liz Cheney said Thursday that GOP firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene should not have a security clearance after Greene defended the Air National Guardsman suspected of leaking a trove of classified documents.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene makes clear yet again that she cannot be trusted with America’s national security information and should not have a security clearance of any kind.”

Unfortunately, yet unsurprisingly, Tucker Carlson is also joining Marge in defending the leaker, and even “heroizing” him. More, unfortunately, Russia is using it to its advantage:

Fourth news item

What happened:

Footage of the February 28 incident, captured in a broadcast by the Tibet arm of the United States government-backed Voice of America, showed the Dalai Lama interacting with about 100 student graduates of India’s M3M Foundation at his temple in McLeod Ganj, which is in Dharamshala in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.

After the young boy asked the Dalai Lama for a hug, the child was invited to greet the religious leader, who asked for a kiss on the cheek, gave the boy a kiss on the lips, and said: “And suck my tongue.” The boy appeared to stick out his tongue, but the pair separated after touching foreheads and shared a laugh to applause from the crowd.

Note: The Dalai Lama’s team’s clip was *after* the offensive part took place, indicating they knew that they were aware of the problem.

Reminder: Every religious leader who has ever walked the earth has had feet of clay. They are not magical beings, they do not walk on water, and they are not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. They are deeply flawed mortals, just like the rest of us. But clearly, deviants walk among them as well.

I was reading about the Tibetan custom of greeting people by sticking out their tongues:

Sticking out one’s tongue is a sign of respect or agreement and was often used as a greeting in traditional Tibetan culture. According to Tibetan folklore, a cruel ninth-century Tibetan king had a black tongue, so people stick out their tongues to show that they are not like him (and aren’t his reincarnation)

Despite protests of misconstruing what took place because sticking out the tongue is just a traditional greeting, and warnings that it’s CCP propagandists using the video to discredit the Dalai Lama, I haven’t seen anything that even remotely suggests that sucking another’s tongue is part of the traditional Tibetan greeting. Moreover, if having a child suck an adult’s tongue was just part of the Tibetan greeting, why would the Dalai Lama feel compelled to apologize, rather than use it as a teachable moment to enlighten us all? We know better.

Fifth news item

Is Navalny being slowly poisoned? It wouldn’t be surprising:

Alexey Navalny’s attorney Vadim Kobzev reports that paramedics had been summoned to Navalny’s cell late on the night of April 7–8, due to acute symptoms that the prison personnel refuses to explain.

Kobzev says he wouldn’t rule out that Navalny is being poisoned again, this time in small dozes calculated to make him decline “gradually but steadily”:

In response to the question “What’s making me sick?” the prison doctor tells him, “It’s spring, everyone has acute symptoms.” Judging by the bizarre and outrageous situation around Navalny’s health, with sudden attacks he never used to have, we cannot rule out that they’re poisoning him slowly, to make him deteriorate gradually but steadily. This might have sounded like a paranoid idea if this was a different person, but not with regard to Navalny after Novichok. We’re going to press for toxicity testing and a radiological study.

A swift and sudden death, like falling out of a window, would be too obvious and risks making a martyr of Navalny. But a slow poisoning while struggling to survive extraordinarily challenging circumstances poses far less risk of that happening.

Sixth news item

What’s he afraid of?:

Former President Donald Trump has asked a federal appeals court to take immediate action to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying in the Justice Department’s probe into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump filed an appeal earlier this week in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, and on Friday he asked the court to take immediate action.

Seventh news item

Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson, who was discovered to have referred to the former president as a “demonic force” and a “destroyer” but will do anything to pump the ratings:

President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find—there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a great relationship. You know, when he first came to Mar-a-Lago . . . it was so organized by them and by us, but by them, pom, pom, pom. Everything’s like business. No games, you know. They don’t say, “Gee, how did the Yankees do last night? Oh, that was wonderful.” They don’t care. They don’t care about anything. I said, “You ever go to a Broadway play? I’ll take you to one. Do you ever have plays—like, do you ever go?” . . . No, I don’t know. He’s all . . . This is business. These aren’t game players, right? I like it, you know, in a way, I like it. You have no life. But that’s what he likes.

As for Russia, Trump expounded at length on his views that American support for Ukraine would fail; openly suggested, without evidence, that the United States itself blew up the Nord Stream pipelines; and pointed out that “there are people that say Ukraine cannot win”…

Russia loves them some useful idiots:

Eighth news item

A bad hire indeed:

It was a little more than a year ago that President Biden was being saluted for “making history” by hiring Sam Brinton to be the deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition in the Office of nuclear energy for the Department of Energy.

The former DOE official has now pleaded no contest to stealing luggage from the Las Vegas airport and been ordered to pay $3,670.74 in restitution for the stolen luggage and clothes and given a 180-day suspended jail sentence.

It would be nice if someone, anyone associated with the U.S. Department of Energy could just concede, “This was not a good hire. We screwed up, and we will scrutinize applicants for positions like this more closely in the future.” The Biden administration has not said anything about Brinton, insisting that Brinton was not an administration appointee.

Brinton announced the hiring on Twitter in January 2022. Brinton was working in the office by late June, and on June 29 added, “to clarify, I am not a Biden appointee (despite what was reported) and instead serve as a career employee in the Senior Executive Service – I intend to be serving my country in this role through many many presidencies.” Members of the senior executive service “serve in the key positions just below the top presidential appointees,” according to the Office of Personnel Management.

On July 6, about a week after announcing the start in the new position, Brinton was recorded on video stealing a woman’s luggage from a carousel at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid International Airport, “wearing a white t-shirt with a rainbow atomic nuclear symbol on the front.” Then in October, Brinton was charged in Hennepin County, Minn., with felony theft for stealing a woman’s luggage from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.

MISCELLANEOUS

New Trump political ad and I can’t even:

P.S. Bellingcat, whose Chriso Grozev worked with Alexie Navalny to identify those responsible for poisoning the activist (documented in the Acadamy Award winning film, “Navalny”), was also instrumental (via Aric Toler, a staff writer at Bellingcat) in identifying the alleged source of the leaked documents this week.

Have a great weekend!

–Dana

431 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (1225fc)

  2. Wait. DJT’s people are concerned with where RD’s fingers have been?

    REALLY?

    What is wrong with us?

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  3. https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/ex-obama-staffer-joe-biden-conducted-malfeasance-in-office-to-enrich-his-family/

    Biden/Obama official states under oath that Biden used public monies to enrich himself in Ukraine.

    Silence.

    NJRob (426623)

  4. Final item —

    If someone hadn’t mentioned Trump, I would have assumed this was a Democrat’s ad.

    Appalled (439547)

  5. If there are books at the library that you don’t want your kid to check out, be the person who takes them to the library and don’t let them check those books out.

    If Teixeira was leaking classified material, he should be jailed. He’s not a hero.

    Yes, there are people who say that Ukraine can’t win. Mostly they are Russian. And Tucker Carlson.

    Nic (896fdf)

  6. @2

    Wait. DJT’s people are concerned with where RD’s fingers have been?

    REALLY?

    What is wrong with us?

    Simon Jester (c8876d) — 4/14/2023 @ 11:09 am

    Mr. Jester… my man.

    Never interrupt your opponent making a big mistake.

    I’m in blood-red Missouri, and ads like this is turning off former Trump voters faster than anything I’ve seen.

    whembly (d116f3)

  7. @6, that’s good news!

    Time123 (f63df3)

  8. This headline is hilarious, and also appears to be completely accurate.

    Nazi-Admiring Jan. 6 rioter sentenced to 3 years in separate weapons case.

    Time123 (f63df3)

  9. President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find—there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing.

    Never, EVER, underestimate your adversary– like this imbecile has:

    “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man… I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us…” – Idiot Joe Biden, May, 2019

    Xi is brilliant, creating an Eurasian Alliance and while peeling off so called U.S. friends and making American foreign policy reactive, not proactive. The balloon says it all.

    Though in Hollywood, Michael Ovitz comes to mind as an equally evil menace.

    DCSCA (65f130)

  10. NJRob @3.

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/ex-obama-staffer-joe-biden-conducted-malfeasance-in-office-to-enrich-his-family/

    Biden/Obama official states under oath that Biden used public monies to enrich himself in Ukraine.

    Silence.

    It’s nothing.

    First of all, Biden allocated nothing. Second, promotion of fracking in Ukraine would only incidentally maybe benefit Burisma, and what Burisma really needed was a way for Mykola Zlochevsky to maintain control of it, and not have it taken away from him and not get prosecuted because he was not supposed to have used his earlier Ukrainian government position to benefit himself. He was officially not in control of the company, I understand. Third, Jake Sullivan is not taking credit for the aid, and even less so for directing it to a specific company.

    Last, but not least, Jake Sullivan was close to Hillary Clinton, not Joe Biden and looked to Hillary Clinton as the head of the next administration.

    Jake Sullivan worked for Vice President Joe Biden for a short period of time between when Hillary Clinton resigned as Secretary of State and going to work for her campaign. He was National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States from February 26, 2013 to August 1, 2014. He did not have a longstanding connection to Joe Biden. April 21, 2014 is in the middle of that time period.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Sullivan

    You can come out with theories as to why Jake Sullivan (or somebody else, assuming that somebody actually went out of his way to help Burisma) would want to help Joe Biden’s family members.

    Maybe, you could say, to be better able to convince Joe Biden not to run for president, although that was more after Beau Biden died on May 30, 2015. First they argued he had more time to decide and then that it was too late. But saying that Jake Sullivan knew anything or cared is too thin a thread to hang anything on. And the connection to Burisma is too tangential.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  11. Re: Second News Item: It’s Not Just in Texas:

    Missouri House Republicans vote to defund libraries
    ………
    Missouri House budget committee leader Rep. Cody Smith (R-Carthage) proposed cutting library aid due to a recent lawsuit filed against the state last February.

    The lawsuit — filed by the ACLU of Missouri on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association — seeks to declare Senate Bill 775 unconstitutional, a bill that has resulted in over 300 books getting banned from school libraries, many of which include LGBTQ characters or racial justice themes.

    The state legislature passed SB 775 last August in an effort to expand rights for victims of sexual assault. But state Sen. Rick Brattin (R-Harrisonvile) added an amendment banning educators from “providing sexually explicit material” to students, punishable by up to a $2,000 fine or a year in jail.

    Smith argued that the state should not “subsidize” the lawsuit with government aid. But the Missouri Library Association, a nonprofit representing Missouri’s librarians, put out a statement stating they are not providing any funding for this lawsuit, as the ACLU is aiding them pro bono.

    “Library funding is guaranteed in the MO constitution,” the group wrote on Twitter. …….

    Update:

    The chief Senate budget writer said he plans to restore state funding for Missouri’s public libraries that was stripped out of the House version of the state’s spending plan.

    Sen. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that the panel will place $4.5 million back in the budget, which covers spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

    “There is no way that money is not going back into the budget,” Hough told the Post-Dispatch.

    The restoration could mark the second reversal of a House budget priority that has stirred controversy under the Capitol dome. Hough and Senate President Caleb Rowden earlier said they oppose Republican language in the House blueprint that would prohibit the state from spending tax dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

    Rowden said the diversity and inclusion provisions were “overly broad and would result in billions of dollars in cuts to hospitals, health care facilities, colleges and universities, and the Missouri House of Representatives itself.”
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  12. Biden/Obama official states under oath that Biden used public monies to enrich himself in Ukraine.

    Are statements to Fox News made under oath? If so, there are a lot of others who are in trouble. The steno hasn’t testified to Congress or grand jury, and we only have his word that he reported it to FBI.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  13. Rip,

    If it was against Trump you’d be blasting it from the headlines repeatedly and the Times, WaPo, CNN, etc would all have it on the front page of their sites with chyrons blazing.

    NJRob (426623)

  14. NJRob, you don’t seem to have addressed Rips point….

    Time123 (a56091)

  15. NJRob, you don’t seem to have addressed Rips point….

    Time123 (a56091) — 4/14/2023 @ 1:45 pm

    Par for the course.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  16. NJRob (426623) — 4/14/2023 @ 1:42 pm

    It’s just an unfounded rumor. Once the steno testifies in public (no hiding behind a grand jury) during the impeachment hearings, I would be glad to blast it anywhere you like.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  17. Clarence Thomas is extremely smart. Far smarter then I am. I strongly suspect that he has carefully not broken any laws and complies with all pertinent disclose requirements to the letter of the law. But he’s been taking a lot of money and items of value

    This is corrupt. It would be corrupt if we were talking about Kagen and Soros. But many of the people current outraged would be fine, and may of the people unbothered would be outraged.

    As it stands, Justice Thomas looks corrupt, but likely complying with the law.

    Like it was corrupt but legal for China to give Ivanka a bunch of valuable TM.
    Like it was corrupt but legal for foreign governments to donate to the Clinton foundation while Hillary was SOS.
    Like it was corrupt but legal for the Clinton Foundation to high Chelsea at an inflated salary.
    Like it was corrupt but legal for Bursima to higher Hunter Biden.

    Our leaders have become experts at being corrupt but legal. They’ve also become experts at being so partisan and tribal no one on their side cares. Not just to the point that no one cares enough to take action that would reduce political power, that’s a tall bar. As a culture we’ve become so tribal we can’t even admit it because doing so would imply our enemies have a valid point and as a culture we hate them too much to do that.

    I wish I had a solution. But i don’t. I can just see the problem.

    Time123 (f63df3)

  18. As it stands, Justice Thomas looks corrupt, but likely complying with the law.

    I don’t begrudge anybody for holding this position, but I guess I am getting old and crotchety because a huge part of me is of the opinion that if I don’t have to declare things to the government, I’m damn well not going to. Of course I am not a government employee, and perhaps if I were I would feel a stronger obligation for transparency, but right now I want the government — at all levels — to know absolutely as little about me as they possibly can.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  19. Faux noise had on another limo on to talk about the leaker. The usual”traitor” not concerned citizen BS. Are the american people better off not knowing about what the government is doing in their name like giving prostitutes LSD to see the effect as it did in the 1950’s ? Most of the government misdeeds are not found out about till many years later. So are assange, winner, manning, snowden and many others traitors or the the government officials who hid their misdeed the real traitors? Funny to be on the same side as MTG ;but as the limo said both the right and the left don’t trust the government and for good reason. Do you want to know when your government messes up and lies to you or be allowed to hide its embarrassments. I do.

    asset (3ed00d)

  20. If the economy doesn’t grow more than projected and current law does not change, Social Security benefits could be cut by 22% in a little more than ten years. That’s not going too happen.

    Peole who propose avoiding that propose cutting benefits of some people not currently receiving any – less cost of living increases (assuming they know exactly what is going to happen with wages and prices) changing the normal retirement age etc. Other people prefer waiting for a crisis. That’s also true with debt ceiling.

    And its Medicare and Medicaid that have the real problems.

    The DeSantis ad aims to create a memorable image that doesn’t make too much sense

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  21. @17 As the politicians say I can’t be a criminal if I make sure my crime isn’t against the law and I make the laws!

    asset (3ed00d)

  22. There is a stronger case against Clarence Thomas than what Legsl Insurrection has against Joe Biden

    It probably was not required to be disclosed since Clarence Thomas wasn’t the sole or majority owner. It was probably legal, and Propublica has tried to make it sound illegal (they certainly did with the disclosures of trips) by including a few false statements or mitting some and has timed this to make a drip drip.

    Maybe the purchase of his family’s property saved him (or hs nephews and nieces) money in taking care of his mother. They note also his mother probably pays no rent (it would have been sold on the condition of a life tenancy)

    Harlan Crow wants to create amuseum in honor of Clarence Thoomas and that probably endears him to Clarence Thomas also.

    But he has no cases, although his idea might be that all this might help stop Thomas from drifting left like Blackmun or others..

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  23. asset (3ed00d) — 4/14/2023 @ 2:29 pm

    As the politicians say I can’t be a criminal if I make sure my crime isn’t against the law and I make the laws!

    Not always. President Clinton had the chutzpah to signa bill making it legal to ask a person being sued for by sexual harassment about other sexual relations. A bill he himself signed made it legal to ask him about Monica Lewinsky!

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  24. The New York Times was at Jack Teixeira’s house before they came to arrest him.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  25. JVW,

    My understanding is that Justice Thomas was required by law to disclose the details of sales over $1000, and he failed to do so. It looks like this might be more than just poor optics.

    Dana (1225fc)

  26. The DeSantis ad aims to create a memorable image that doesn’t make too much sense

    It aims to draw DeSantis’s attention. But DeSantis is too smart to fall for that. He will let Trump yap on the other side of the fence while he heats up his grill.

    nk (bb1548)

  27. JVW, I agree with you. But a SCJ getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts seems to justify an exception to that very good general rule.

    Time123 (3be131)

  28. Dana, even if he’s complying with the law I I think accepting the gifts and not disclosing them is a corrupt.

    Time123 (3be131)

  29. @18

    As it stands, Justice Thomas looks corrupt, but likely complying with the law.

    I don’t begrudge anybody for holding this position, but I guess I am getting old and crotchety because a huge part of me is of the opinion that if I don’t have to declare things to the government, I’m damn well not going to. Of course I am not a government employee, and perhaps if I were I would feel a stronger obligation for transparency, but right now I want the government — at all levels — to know absolutely as little about me as they possibly can.

    JVW (1ad43e) — 4/14/2023 @ 2:16 pm

    I begrudge tho.

    Having a wealthy friend, showering you with gifts like that isn’t illegal.

    Furthermore, no one has shown me the actual corruption that is being round-a-bout alleged. Nor has there been ANY court cases that Thomas had to participate in that affect his rich friend.

    Just another faux-controversy to bring down a successful conservative black man.

    whembly (d116f3)

  30. “Having a wealthy friend, showering you with gifts like that isn’t illegal.”

    It’s the failure to report that’s (potentially) illegal. I know this point has been made several times before.

    Speaking of the supreme court:

    U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily blocked lower court rulings that imposed tighter restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/supreme-court-temporarily-blocks-abortion-pill-restrictions.html

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  31. Whembly, being paid 6 figures by a Ukrainian oligarch for a no-show job isn’t illegal. It’s not illegal even when your dad is the VPOTUS. But it’s corrupt and worth criticizing even when all the evidence is that Biden’s actions were aligned with US interests and there’s no evidence Biden lifted a finger to make it happen, or in response to it.

    Foreign officials donating to your charity while you’re SOS isn’t illegal.

    But both of those things are corrupt.

    Thomas took lavish vacations and got a lot of money for a land deal by this guy. His wife’s charity got a lot of money from this guy. It looks corrupt, especially if he didn’t disclose it.

    Time123 (f63df3)

  32. Of course I am not a government employee, and perhaps if I were I would feel a stronger obligation for transparency

    It’s not a matter of perceived obligation by a government employee. It’s our right as citizens to know our employees aren’t on the take. As long as no one puts a gun to anyone’s head that makes them take a government job, I’m fine with mandatory disclosures as a condition of accepting high public office, even if those disclosures would be onerous for you or me. It’s just one of the reasons you don’t see me running for office. That and the fact that nobody wants me to.

    Also, the failure to disclose, legal or not, isn’t the corruption. Disclosure is just the legal vehicle for oversight of our employees. The corruption is the payment and receipt of the private largess, and its purchase, or at least perception thereof, of government influence. The appearance of impropriety is something we’re entitled to demand of our political leaders, even if that demand is observed mostly in the breach.

    As Time mentioned, that legally permissible breach is what allowed the Clintons to be legally compliant while manifestly corrupt. They got rich off government employment while dotting and crossing all the required “i”s and “t”s. Now, if these reports are accurate, Thomas is guilty of the same legally permissible corruption. That’s on us for not demanding that our representatives close the loopholes.

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  33. Doh! *The appearance of propriety.*

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  34. We don’t know that Thomas got any money to declare on the sale of his mother’s house. Why should he? Get any? It was his mother’s house.

    His signature on the deed means nothing by itself. He could have been, and very likely was, signing away a remainder, heirship, or implied interest which could be a cloud on title (for example if he had ever co-signed a mortgage loan for his mother).

    Show me the closing statement with the disbursements. Better yet, show me a cashed check made out to him.

    nk (bb1548)

  35. It’s not a matter of perceived obligation by a government employee. It’s our right as citizens to know our employees aren’t on the take.

    Where does that logic end, lurker? It’s our right as patients to know that our doctors aren’t on the take. It’s our rights as customers to know that our insurance agents aren’t on the take. It’s our right as students to know that our professors aren’t on the take. It’s our right as diners to know that our chefs and servers aren’t on the take, and on and on. Pretty soon, you’ve got a nice little government regulatory apparatus and lots of required personal disclosures, the sort of which would make a Ralph Nader or an Elizabeth Warren absolutely jump for joy. Count me out. If there is an argument to be made that Supreme Court justices, or federal judges in general, or any judges for that matter need to disclose with whom they vacation and show exactly who pays for what, then let’s have Congress enshrine that into law. Same goes for every single other possible financial disclosure for government employees. Otherwise, it’s none of our business.

    JVW (1ad43e)

  36. Don’t you need to have a good reputation to begin with in order for it to be harmed?

    Former President Donald Trump has sued Michael Cohen for $500 million, threatening his ex-fixer and star witness against him in his criminal case with economic annihilation.

    In a 32-page federal court complaint, Trump claims that Cohen “breached the contractual terms of the confidentiality agreement he signed as a condition of employment,” revealed the former president’s “confidences,” and spread “falsehoods” about him “with malicious intent and to wholly self-serving ends.” This campaign, Trump claims, caused him “vast reputational harm.”

    Trump also claims that Cohen “unlawfully converted” his “business property when he fraudulently misrepresented a business expenditure, and stated that he was owed an extra $74,000 over the true amount of the expenditure.”

    The lawsuit doesn’t specify the expenditure further.
    ……….
    Trump claims that he’s asked Cohen to “cease and desist such unacceptable actions,” but Cohen “appears to have become emboldened and repeatedly continues to make wrongful and false statements about Plaintiff through various platforms.”
    ………
    Trump’s lawsuit asserts five causes of action, accusing Cohen of breaching his fiduciary duties, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment and conversion.
    ………

    All of the causes of action that Trump accuses Cohen could apply to himself. LOL!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  37. Biden/Obama official states under oath that Biden used public monies to enrich himself in Ukraine.
    Silence.

    Maybe because it’s an allegation without evidence, like so many other allegations from Trumpalistas.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  38. “If there is an argument to be made that Supreme Court justices, or federal judges in general, or any judges for that matter need to disclose with whom they vacation and show exactly who pays for what, then let’s have Congress enshrine that into law. ”

    Here you go: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5a/compiledact-95-521/title-I

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  39. Catching a break:

    (Patrick McCaughey III,) who crushed D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges with a police shield on Jan. 6 was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in federal prison on Friday.
    ………
    Federal prosecutors sought a sentence of more than 15 years — 188 months — in federal prison, which would have broken the record for the longest sentence in a Jan. 6 case: the 10-year sentence given to former New York City Police Department officer Thomas Webster.
    ………
    McCaughey’s legal team said that his actions were “motivated by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election” and that he “knew next to nothing about the 2020 election and listened to sources of information that were clearly false.”

    Prosecutors argued that a lengthy sentence was justified by McCaughey’s violent actions on Jan. 6. They noted that McCaughey urged police to “go home” before scaling the scaffolding that had been set up for Joe Biden’s inauguration. He then took a selfie photo that he sent to friends back home in Connecticut, before joining the mob in the tunnel and using the stolen police shield against Hodges.
    ……..
    In a letter to the court, McCaughey’s sister wrote that her brother has been radicalized because of their father, who only played two TV channels in their home: “Fox News and Turner Classic Movies.” Things “would get ugly” if you disagreed with the elder McCaughey, she wrote, writing that her father attempted “to convert everyone around him to the glory that was Donald Trump to him.” …….
    ……….

    Excuses, excuses.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  40. If there is a better, more complete correction of past errors by a journalist, I don’t know what is, and it’s worth watching the full 18 minutes, here.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  41. Poll: Donald Trump leads Ron DeSantis by 21 in Georgia

    In a survey just released by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs Research Center, Donald Trump has majority support against Ron DeSantis and the rest of the field.

    The survey found 51% of the 983 likely Republican Primary voters in Georgia back the former President, with DeSantis far behind, mustering just 30% support. Nikki Haley‘s 4% is good for a very distant third place.
    ………
    DeSantis does lead Trump among a few cohorts. Voters under 30 years old prefer the Governor, 42% to 20%. And DeSantis has a marginal lead with college-educated respondents, 36% to 35%. Moderate voters likewise prefer DeSantis, 30% to 24%, over Trump. And though it’s cold comfort at this point, the Governor is the top “second choice,” with 37% of respondents ranking him as a runner-up.
    ………

    Top lines. Darling Nikki is in fourth place, trailing Undecided (7.4%), followed by Mike Pence and Liz Cheney (2.3%), Tim Scott (1.3), Mike Pompeo (.6), Chris Christie, Kristi Noem, and Asa Hutchinson (.4), and Glenn Youngkin (.1).

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  42. Poll: Donald Trump up 30 over Ron DeSantis in Iowa

    A new Iowa caucus poll shows Donald Trump with the most significant lead yet over Ron DeSantis.

    In the Victory Insights poll of 400 likely Iowa caucus participants, the former President has the most substantial advantage of any Hawkeye State survey.

    “On a six-way ballot where voters were asked to indicate who they’re most likely to support, Trump (54%) holds a 30-point lead over DeSantis (24%), his closest challenger. Nikki Haley comes in third with 14% of the vote, while the remaining three candidates each garner less than 4% of the vote,” reads the polling memo.
    ………
    Some good news: DeSantis would be the odds-on favorite if Trump did not exist in the field: “When Trump is removed from the ballot, DeSantis becomes the clear front-runner, leading Haley, 59% to 24%.”
    ………
    In a survey conducted by Cygnal for Iowans for Tax Relief, the former President leads DeSantis, 37% to 30%. An additional 19% of respondents are undecided, with other candidates struggling for support.

    This is a better poll for DeSantis than the other post-indictment poll of the Iowa race, a J.L. Partners survey in which the former President commands 41% support, 15 points ahead of the Florida Governor.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  43. Jonah on Teixeira and his defenders, the latter of whom (see Marge and Tucker) are worse than the former.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  44. This is good news, that Pompeo isn’t throwing his hat in. We don’t need a crowded field with each having low single-digit support.
    Take the hint, Pence.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  45. Trump Civil Litigation Watch:

    ………
    In an opinion issued on Thursday, the District of Columbia’s highest court declined to answer the core question of whether Trump was acting within the scope of his official duties when he made the allegedly defamatory remarks about Carroll. Chief Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby wrote that the issue was too “fact-intensive” for the judges to decide at this stage.

    But the court did make clear that for a government employee to claim legal protection against litigation, their conduct had to be motivated at least in part by serving their employer — in Trump’s case, the US government and the American people — and that purpose had to be more than an “insignificant interest.”
    ……….
    The DC judges also declined to adopt a sweeping rule that elected officials always act within the scope of their employment when they talk to the press — another finding expected to work against Trump as the case heads back to New York’s federal courts.
    ……….
    It comes less than two weeks before Carroll and Trump go to trial on April 25 in a second case, which she filed against him last year, that doesn’t hinge on his protections as a government employee. In that suit, filed in November, Carroll accuses Trump of sexual battery under a new New York law that temporarily lifts the statute of limitations on abuse that allegedly took place decades ago.
    ……….

    Sad!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  46. Via Michael Weiss:

    This is hilarious. A pro-Russian podcaster who’s hosted every online vatnik from convicted pedophile Scott Ritter to Jackson Hinkle and pretends to be a poor woman from Luhansk (there’s even an accent!) is just some hipster lady from Oak Harbor, Washington. 🤣

    The thread from the guy who exposed “Donbass Devushka” is hilarious.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  47. I don’t see a lot of uptake on the ProPublica claims at the MSM. This is surprising as they’ve been trying to “get” Clarence Thomas since before his confirmation hearing. They imply impropriety, but perhaps it isn’t.

    Consider that the man did not grow up in a sophisticated, investing-class household. He was literally poorer than dirt — sharecroppers seemed affluent in comparison. I don’t fault him for getting what he can, so long as it does not affect his rulings on the court. If his buddy had been Tom Steyer and he started drifting Left, that would be corruption.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  48. “Marjorie Taylor Greene makes clear yet again that she cannot be trusted with America’s national security information and should not have a security clearance of any kind.”

    Yeah. I said that yesterday.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  49. Earlier, at another site, I joked that Justice Thomas has just been getting reparations — and without the taxpayers even being involved.

    Yes, I was joking (mostly). But I was making a point, which those who favor reparations refuse to think about.

    Speaking of gifts, and not reporting, there’s this story.

    Did Donald the Loser violate the emoluments clause? I’m not a lawyer, much less a constitutional lawyer, so I won’t venture an opinion. But he certainly violated the spirit of the clause.

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  50. “Marjorie Taylor Greene makes clear yet again that she cannot be trusted with America’s national security information and should not have a security clearance of any kind.”

    so far, MTG hasn’t used her clearance to harm the US at the cost of many thousands of American lives

    Liz can’t say the same

    JF (ce5710)

  51. Considering the jeopardy in which he may have put Americans doing sensitive work on behalf of our country, the threat to our national security, and the damage to relationships with our allies, you should be ashamed of your encouragement to “many” other would-be “heroes” that you seem to know about

    Teixeira deserves the same punishment as Mr/Ms Manning, who last I heard was offered a Harvard fellowship

    I don’t think it was MTG who commuted his/her sentence

    JF (ce5710)

  52. “Teixeira deserves the same punishment as Mr/Ms Manning, who last I heard was offered a Harvard fellowship”

    She did 5 years in prison first. Gonna leave that out?

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  53. OK Davethulhu, I have you down for 5 years and a Harvard fellowship for Mr. Teixeira

    I think he’ll take that

    Let’s see if the prosecutors agree with you

    JF (ce5710)

  54. Where does that logic end, lurker? It’s our right as patients to know that our doctors aren’t on the take. It’s our rights as customers to know that our insurance agents aren’t on the take. It’s our right as students to know that our professors aren’t on the take. It’s our right as diners to know that our chefs and servers aren’t on the take, and on and on.

    Where does it end? It ends where it begins, with high government officials. I don’t care if my doctor, my insurance agent or my waiter gets sweetheart deals or extravagant gifts from Harlan Crow, George Soros, or Xi Jinping. And if I did, I’d find myself a new doctor, agent or waiter. I do care if someone may be buying influence from my President, Senator, or SCOTUS Justice. Those people tax me, take my property, lock me up, send my children to war, limit or eliminate my Constitutional rights or create new ones out of whole cloth. And I’m stuck with them for four years, six years, or life, respectively.

    Do you really not think we’d have a legitimate interest in knowing if George Soros bought, renovated and allowed a SCOTUS Justice’s mom to continue living in the mom’s home? If Soros had paid for the Justice’s lavish annual vacations? I know I’d care. I know I’d want to know about it. And I believe it’s perfectly legitimate to make disclosing such events a condition of seeking those publicly selected and compensated jobs, which again, no one requires them to do.

    lurker (cd7cd4)

  55. It says Trump and family relinquished the gifts but did not declare them. If they relinquished the gifts, why declare them? The act of relinquishment contains both and says, “I have this golf club A (declaration) and cannot accept this golf club (declaration), so I must hand it over to you” that is two declarations and a relinquishment
    Relinquished means given up, which is the diplomatic way of politely accepting a gift and then passing it on. The acceptance of the gift was “thank you, thank you” and then a hand over. What do you want a President to do in such circumstances? Insult the Japanese PM and tossing the gift directly into the bin? or maybe accepting it, using it, and then putting it into the relinquished bin a couple days later? I think it would be entirely fine even if Trump used the golf club gift for a while, took a PR photo with it out on the course, said thank you and then turned it over a day to months later.

    I think Jim’s scenario violates the spirit of diplomacy

    steveg (2d85d7)

  56. I live in coastal CA. A real estate transaction of $100,000 is pocket change. Not to mention, the purported explanation sounds just fine to me.

    steveg (2d85d7)

  57. Chelsea Manning got 5 years and the taxpayer paid for hormone therapy even though he committed a serious crime before becoming a she

    steveg (2d85d7)

  58. Baseball Crank asks whether Texas is being invaded by Mexico, and it’s a good discussion.

    The Mexican drug cartels have, by this stage, reached a level of quasi-sovereign control over more than a third of Mexico’s territory. That raises the legitimate question of whether their operations across the border into the United States can legitimately be considered an invasion. This is not merely a matter of political rhetoric, but constitutional law. The Compact Clause, Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution, states: “No State shall, without the consent of Congress . . . engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.” Joshua Treviño of the Texas Public Policy Foundation argues in a research paper that the historical meaning of “invaded” may be satisfied by current cartel activity, triggering the constitutional power of Texas to act in its own defense — up to and including acts that might be construed as waging war. But that standard is not lightly met:

    The meaning of invasion under the U.S. Constitution involves two core concepts: entry and enmity. That is, an invasion must involve both physical ingress into a state (entry) and the intent by the invader to act as an enemy to that state (enmity). Notably, entrants need not occupy territory or attack with or against military forces to meet the threshold of enmity. While invasion is most often and aptly used to describe the hostile military action of one nation against another and thereby typically excludes the actions of rogue individuals and roving gangs, it can also describe, and has been authoritatively used in American history to describe, the actions of non-state actors like “pirates and barbarians” (Hamilton et al., 1788/2014). The crucial qualification is not the size or equipment or even sovereignty of the invading force but its willingness and capacity to commit hostile acts against the state or its people. It is worth pointing out that entering the territory of a state for the sake of engaging in unlawful trade, committing acts of violence against rival gangs, or engaging in criminal activity on a scale that falls within the bounds of what the trespassed state’s police powers can ordinarily handle, are not acts that fall within the scope of enmity as constitutionally defined. Mere unlawful entry, in other words, does not qualify as enmity. And only entry plus enmity, as we have said, constitutes invasion. . . .

    Recent and disturbing instances of cartel members showing violent contempt for U.S. sovereignty along the U.S.–Mexico border certainly strengthen the case for that analogy, as do rising fentanyl deaths. . . . But we must underline that just as the unlawful entry of pirates into a jurisdiction was by itself insufficient to constitute an invasion during the Founding era, so too the unlawful entry of criminal groups into a jurisdiction is by itself insufficient to constitute an invasion at present.

    Bolding mine. If Treviño’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was a co-founder of RedState, and I used to blog at his Tacitus site back in the early days.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  59. https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/revealed-shadow-billionaire-funding-sexual-assault-suit-against-trump-is-linkedins-founder-jrupp/

    Radical leftists abusing our court system for political advantage. Just like they did in Alaska.

    Moved to current thread

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  60. https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1646842598382874624

    All of those who are reflexively against MTG, care to respond to this?

    That’s why I introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act that makes it a felony to perform gender affirming care on children under the age of 18.

    Do you support mutilating and sterilizing children? It’s sad that we need a law like this to protect children from clear child abuse.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  61. All of those who are reflexively against MTG

    I wasn’t reflexively against MTG when she first popped up on the national radar. I didn’t know anything about her. But in very short order she showed her true colors, as is typical with public figures. It has been her own words and actions that have informed my opinion of her. This is true for you as well, I’m sure. The difference, of course, is that because of your own political alignment with her, you saw/see her actions as good. Reflexively so. There are obvious reasons why MAGA loves her, and those reasons more often than not fly in the face of what I value and hold true. Not the least of which is that she has consistently claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. It’s become the cornerstone upon which all other views are built. And now, in the third news item, she is defending an individual who committed felonious acts for his own amusement and vanity and put Americans at risk, has negatively impacted our relationship with our longstanding allies, and caused damage, to one degree or another, to our own national security. That is un-American, and nothing to be admired – especially from an elected official. So yeah, I am now reflexively against MTG because she is too often reflexively un-American. See: white nationalism, Christian nationalism, racism, supporting and defending actors who violate the Espionage Act and endanger Americans and national security, denying the outcome of legitimate elections, associating with white supremacists, pushing conspiracy theories, wanting a national divorce, etc., etc.

    Dana (1225fc)

  62. It’s a curious thing that the young leaker doesn’t appear to have been working on behalf of any foreign actors (as far as we know). Rather it seems that he wanted/needed to be seen as a big man by a small fringe group and used what he had at his disposal to accomplish that. There also doesn’t appear to have been any financial gain from his actions (as far as we know). Vanity and immaturity.

    Dana (1225fc)

  63. Dana,

    You slander me yet again with your words. I have not spoken in support of MTG, but I have not tarred her as well. She votes the way I support and speaks out against the left.

    She also sponsors bills that protect our children. I notice you wrote a long message, but neglected to respond to the actual question.

    I do tire of you taking the words of the left and coopting them as your own :

    See: white nationalism, Christian nationalism, racism, supporting and defending actors who violate the Espionage Act and endanger Americans and national security, denying the outcome of legitimate elections, associating with white supremacists, pushing conspiracy theories, wanting a national divorce, etc., etc.

    NJRob (397937)

  64. How/where did I slander you yet again? You just said you support her views and that she speaks out against the left (which you do as well).

    Dana (1225fc)

  65. This is good news, that Pompeo isn’t throwing his hat in. We don’t need a crowded field with each having low single-digit support.

    Take the hint, Pence.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 4/14/2023 @ 5:05 pm

    And Darling Nikki, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Asa Hutchinson. They have no chance at all.

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  66. The real question about this coming GOP campaign is “who will be operating the debates?” In the past, the so-called GOP debates has been a bunch of liberal Democrats asking GOP contenders liberal Democrat questions that have NOTHING to do with Republican agendas or divisions, unless to drive a wedge.

    Frankly, the GOP should require all debates to be run by Fox News unless and until the other media agree to some groundrules about moderator selection.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  67. @65: Do you have this on F7 or something? Or do you forget you’ve said it before?

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  68. Morning Consult 2024 Republican Presidential Primary Tracker: Trump Posts Biggest Lead Yet Over DeSantis

    Donald Trump is backed by 56% of potential Republican primary voters, compared with 23% who back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s expected to launch his own primary bid in the coming months. That 33-percentage-point lead over the past several days marks Trump’s largest since Morning Consult’s tracking of the hypothetical matchup began in December.

    ………….. (N)early two-thirds of Republican voters (63%) support pro-Trump efforts by House Republicans to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s grand jury investigation, which led to his indictment.

    Nearly 7 in 10 potential Republican primary voters (68%) didn’t hear much about former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s announcement that he would seek the GOP’s 2024 nomination last week. Just 1% of potential GOP primary voters said they would vote for him if the 2024 GOP nominating contest in their state were held today, and just about a third of them have formed opinions about him — ranking his awareness alongside that of entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
    ……………..
    Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is backed by 4% of the party’s electorate, while Ramaswamy and Hutchinson each post 1% backing, showing meager support for Trump’s declared challengers for the GOP’s nomination.
    ……………
    Haley is the second choice of 4% of Trump supporters and 17% of DeSantis supporters. ………
    ………….
    A hypothetical head-to-head matchup shows Biden with a 1-point lead over Trump and a 2-point lead over DeSantis. ………..

    Trump is popular with 78% of the party’s potential electorate, in line with his standing throughout much of 2023. He’s faced no uptick in negative opinions as the Manhattan legal drama has unfolded.
    …………
    About half of GOP voters (44%) view Haley favorably, while 18% say the same of Ramaswamy and Hutchinson.
    …………..
    Few voters are paying attention to Trump’s current challengers for the Republican nomination, with 65% saying they’d not recently heard anything about Haley and nearly 4 in 5 saying the same of Ramaswamy and Hutchinson.
    …………….

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  69. @65: Do you have this on F7 or something? Or do you forget you’ve said it before?

    Kevin M (1ea396) — 4/15/2023 @ 8:21 am

    I was responding directly to Paul Montagu’s advice for regarding (extremely) low polling candidates-along Pompeo and Pence, they have no place in primary campaign except to re-nominate Trump. Haley, Scott, are extremely low polling candidates. DeSantis hasn’t declared yet and already is polling double digits.

    I haven’t forgotten I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep pointing it out. Let me know when one of them breaks 10% against Trump and DeSantis. It ain’t gonna be any time soon.

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  70. Here’s Another Candidate Who Won’t Poll Above 1%:

    Larry Elder is “likely” going to announce his 2024 presidential bid later this month, the conservative talk radio host and former Republican California gubernatorial candidate told the Washington Examiner.

    “Deeply planning,” he said. “Will likely make it official near the end of this month. Last week of April.” He added that the announcement would be made on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show.
    ……………
    “Larry Elder is welcome to battle for second place with Asa Hutchinson, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Ron DeSantis,” a senior Trump camp operative told the Washington Examiner. “He has as good a shot as everyone else not named Trump. Trump is over 50% in the RCP average.”

    The RealClearPolitics 2024 Republican presidential nomination polling average shows Trump with 51.4%, DeSantis at 24.7%, Pence at 4.9%, and Haley garnering 3.9%. Meanwhile, Ramaswamy is polling at 0.9% and Scott at 0.8%.
    ………….
    “It’s unfortunate that so many people now think running for president is part of a business or publicity plan,” said the consultant. “He’s only doing this for the attention and for something to do.”
    ……………..

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  71. Yes. As I support anyone who speaks out against the left. Their views are harmful to our nation. Teaching children to deny biological reality is destructive. How is that even in dispute?

    You tar me when you tie my view and others like me in with the fringe supremacists who have zero influence in society. And you do it to shut down conversations.

    No one cares what they think. They aren’t feted upon on the right, unlike the supremacists are on the left such as Sharpton or Kendi.

    NJRob (397937)

  72. Dana, I agree with your comment in 61 and its very well written. “Felonious acts for his own amusement and vanity” is a really compelling and clever turn of phrase.

    NJRob, I don’t hold MTG in contempt from reflex but from her many contemptible acts and statements. Her bill was performative, had no chance of becoming law, and was intended for fundraising. The contents may be good. But it was doomed by her incompetence as a legislator.

    Time123 (6eaa58)

  73. MTG is not a fringe figure.

    Time123 (6eaa58)

  74. Time,

    If the policy is good why don’t one of your politicians sign on to the bill? Where’s Romneys version for example?

    NJRob (397937)

  75. No one said she is a fringe figure Time. Try again.

    NJRob (397937)

  76. This is a crazy story.

    Guy drives car into a group of protesters then shoots one 5 times.
    Is convicted of murder even though the deceased was armed as witnesses said the deceased didn’t raise or point his weapon at the killer.
    Both deceased and his killer were military vets.
    Governor of Texas vows to pardon the killer.
    Copious evidence comes out that killer was racist, had made numerous statements about wanting to kill protesters and was a pervert trying to hook up with teens. He doesn’t seem to have been a pedophile, but given his age it’s still gross.

    MAGA really needs a better class of folk hero.

    Time123 (6eaa58)

  77. Rob, given the context and flow of conversation i assume you were including her as one of the ‘fringe supremacists” in you comment at 72. Since that doesn’t seem to be the case I’m not sure what your point was.

    You tar me when you tie my view and others like me in with the fringe supremacists who have zero influence in society. And you do it to shut down conversations.

    Time123 (f63df3)

  78. You tar me when you tie my view and others like me in with the fringe supremacists who have zero influence in society. And you do it to shut down conversations.

    You’ll have to define “fringe supremacist,” a term that I’ve never used.

    P.S. I am currently engaging in conversation with you.

    Dana (1225fc)

  79. DeSantis hasn’t declared yet and already is polling double digits.

    But he’s been running since 2021.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  80. Time,

    Your spin on that case is repulsive. The driver didn’t drive his car into anyone. A group of left wing terrorists attacked his car and started banging on it and intimidating him.

    The guy shot had an AK-47 and mentioned previously about wanting to use it. The left wing site was happy to mention the shooter’s previous comments, yet neglected this piece of pertinent info.

    The so-called witnesses were the terrorists banging on his car.

    The leftist prosecutor chose to go after the guy even when the cops said their was no case.

    All that said, the jury might have deliberated honestly. Mr Branca does a fantastic job summarizing the situation and the case unlike you or your biased link.

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/04/daniel-perrys-murder-conviction-was-legally-sound/

    NJRob (397937)

  81. Regarding MTG, AOC, Biden, Trump and everyone else: The statements and position that are attributed to them come through the media’s Left-Is-Good filter. Some statements are not reported, others are spun. Positions are stated within the media’s preferred framework (e.g. “gender-affirming care”, not “state-sponsored genital mutilation”).

    So, I don’t jump to conclusions until the shark does. Those 4 above have managed to meet that bar, but I’m not so sure about some others.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  82. Fringe supremacist means not invited on tv or to venues for endorsements. Not feted upon by tge political class for their support.

    They don’t have a voting block.

    NJRob (397937)

  83. Dana,

    Do you support her bill stopping the modification of children and their mutiliation and sterilization?

    NJRob (397937)

  84. Just a reminder that the left believe’s MLK’s colorblind society and judging people by the content of their character is racist.

    NJRob (397937)

  85. “The driver didn’t drive his car into anyone. A group of left wing terrorists attacked his car and started banging on it and intimidating him.”

    From your own article:

    The prosecution presented the jury with social media messages of Perry’s from which they might reasonably infer that Perry was looking for an opportunity to use deadly force against protestors. One Facebook message stated “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work.” In a Facebook comment about a video showing protestors being shot in San Antonio earlier that year, Perry wrote that he was “glad someone finally did something.”

    Is it possible that these and other similar social media comments were simply expressions of bravado? Certainly no one who believed that they might really have a substantive need to kill people on their way to work that day would simply proceed to work in the normal manner. So perhaps this was merely bravado. The jury, however, is free to instead agree with the State’s preferred inference that they illustrate the state of mind of a man looking for a deadly force confrontation.

    And when you go to the fight, folks, rather than the fight coming to you, it rarely looks like self-defense to anybody.

    The defense sought to counter this inference by arguing that Perry find himself enmeshed in that night’s fatal Black Lives Matter protest entirely innocently, having no idea that the protest was even taking place. According to the defense, Perry simply made a right-hand turn, and boom, found himself surrounded by angry protestors slapping and kicking his vehicle.

    The prosecution, however, was able to show that Perry’s interest in these protests was substantial, suggesting that the notion that Perry would not be aware the protest was taking place was simply not credible. Further, there was evidence at trial that as an Army sergeant stationed 70 miles away at Fort Hood, he was explicitly prohibited by his command from going to Austin, presumably because of the risk of confrontation with protestors.

    Also definitely need to give the author of the article credit for this:

    Given what was admitted into evidence from Perry’s social media, one must also wonder whether there was even more inflammatory social media content that had been excluded from evidence by the judge on the grounds of being excessively prejudicial, but which would have been admissible as character evidence had Perry taken the stand. If so, that would explain why the defense declined to have him testify.

    He was 100% correct here.

    Do you think he should be pardoned, NJRob?

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  86. The RealClearPolitics 2024 Republican presidential nomination polling average shows ……..Pence at 4.9%, and Haley garnering 3.9%. ……..

    Pretty humiliating for Darling Nikki to be trailing a Republican non-entity like Pence by a full percentage point.

    Sad!

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  87. NRob,

    You accused me of “slandering” you and I still don’t see where I did that. I take an accusation like that seriously, and would like you to show me where I committed said offense. Please be specific.

    Dana (1225fc)

  88. Rob great link. It does a really good job supporting my summary of events and provides additional explanation of the evidence of Perry’s guilt. I really like that it includes a video that shows that people weren’t beating on Perry’s car prior to him murdering foster and also points out that such a sequence of events doesn’t make sense in light of Perry’s actions.

    There’s no reason for perry to pardon this scumbag and I predict that the Texas board of pardons will quietly not recommend hie do so.

    Time123 (f63df3)

  89. Dana – Intelligence experts have long said that most who share secrets they shouldn’t are usually motivated by money, ideology, compromise, or ego, MICE, for short.

    From what we know now, Jack Teixeira appears to have been motivated by ego. (I think the same is true of Snowden, who had failed at so many things, before he decided to share secrets he shouldn’t have.)

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  90. Dana,

    It’s tying in my remarks with MAGA and ending the subject with your litany of progressive namecalling.

    I quoted the exact paragraph.

    NJRob (397937)

  91. Time,

    Now if you had just done the research instead of spitting back the left wing link think how things could’ve gone…

    NJRob (397937)

  92. Thulu,

    His social media wasn’t pertinent to the case and it was years prior to the incident. It woyld’ve been relevant had he testified.

    I have no opinion on a pardon.

    Do you still support antifa and their black bloc?

    NJRob (397937)

  93. I don’t see a lot of uptake on the ProPublica claims at the MSM.

    It’s there if you look for it.

    I don’t begrudge Justice Thomas for taking advantage of being part of the elite. There have always two sets of rules: one for elite government officials, politicians, corporate leaders, celebrities, etc. and the rest of us. The elites cultivate relationships with other elites, and the different rules include believing the rules that apply to the rest of us don’t apply to them.

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  94. @ whembly,

    Having a wealthy friend, showering you with gifts like that isn’t illegal.

    Furthermore, no one has shown me the actual corruption that is being round-a-bout alleged. Nor has there been ANY court cases that Thomas had to participate in that affect his rich friend.

    Just another faux-controversy to bring down a successful conservative black man.

    What is in question isn’t whether it’s a violation that a wealthy friend showered a SCJ with gifts, or whether any court cases that Thomas has participated in have affected Crow. What is in question, as I read it, is whether he violated reporting requirements concerning the sale of the homes. According to the report: A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties…The disclosure form Thomas filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. Additionally: Federal officials, including Supreme Court justices, are required to disclose the details of most real estate transactions with a value of over $1,000. Thomas would not be required to report the purchase if the property were his or his spouse’s primary personal residence, but this stipulation does not apply to this purchase, which Thomas did not report.

    By labeling this “just another faux-controversy to bring down a successful conservative black man,” you are politicizing what does not appear to be a political attack but rather a simple violation of requirements for SJC and federal officials. If there is a reporting requirement that Thomas violated, it would be just that, and not a political hit job, not a smear, not a left-right matter, and not an attempt to bring down a conservative Black man. There is a danger in assuming that any controversy (against one’s team) is just political theater or an attempt to take them down because what if the violation is proven?

    (Note: I don’t doubt that ProPublica has been digging into Thomas for some time. He’s long been target-ripe. Are they digging into Kagan or Sotomayor in the same way? Probably not. Or perhaps there hasn’t been anything on the radar that compels a further look. I don’t know. Regardless of the motivation, it appears that they’ve they’ve uncovered a reporting violation by Thomas, then that becomes its own issue.)

    Dana (1225fc)

  95. I do tire of you taking the words of the left and coopting them as your own :

    See: white nationalism, Christian nationalism, racism, supporting and defending actors who violate the Espionage Act and endanger Americans and national security, denying the outcome of legitimate elections, associating with white supremacists, pushing conspiracy theories, wanting a national divorce, etc., etc.

    I’m not going to do your work for you, NJRob, but these are verifiable. You may claim they are the words of the left, and accuse me of co-opting them as my own, but I see them as her own claims. You are invested in making everything left or right instead of actually searching out whether they are simply true or not.

    You’ve now accused me of co-opting and slander.

    Dana (1225fc)

  96. Rob, your link doesn’t disagree with the one I posted on any of the facts. It just analyzes the situation from more of a legal lens while the one I posted was more about his prior statements.

    You disagree with me. But your link doesn’t.

    Time123 (731c34)

  97. His social media wasn’t pertinent to the case and it was years prior to the incident.

    Untrue.

    In a Facebook message from May 2020, just weeks before the shooting, Perry told a friend he “might have to kill a few people” who were rioting outside his apartment.

    The documents also contain a May 2020 text sent by Perry that said, “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.” ……..

    Also:

    PERRY: I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex

    FRIEND: Can you legally do so?

    PERRY: If they attack me or try to pull me out my car than yes. If I just do it because I am driving then no.

    Conversation on May 31, 2020. Garrett Foster was killed in July 2020.

    In other posts he admits to being a racist. Not a good look for the governor (or Texas Republicans).

    Rip Murdock (d169ff)

  98. Two protesters storm stage during DeSantis’ speech in New Hampshire, hold up ‘Jews against DeSantis’ signs

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/14/protesters-storm-stage-during-desantis-speech-in-new-hampshire/

    DCSCA (343e60)

  99. DeSantis hasn’t declared yet and already is polling double digits.

    30+ points BEHIND Trump.

    DCSCA (343e60)

  100. “Do you still support antifa and their black bloc?”

    Only when they’re punching Nazis.

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  101. Rip,

    If you read my link, you’d see it wasn’t because he didn’t testify.

    So please don’t make incorrect remarks.

    NJRob (56aedd)

  102. Dana,

    That is their language. I don’t see you applying those labels ever to the left even though their langage is directly racist towards all races and segregationist.

    Why?

    NJRob (56aedd)

  103. Dave,

    According to them, everyone they disagree with is a Nazi. Do you agree?

    NJRob (56aedd)

  104. 99, they were off by exactly a week

    urbanleftbehind (aedbaa)

  105. To paraphrase Reagan, if a politician like Marge disagrees with me 80% of the time, she’s not my ally.

    Paul Montagu (e8c2dd)

  106. Cool story that we only learned about after he died: Actor Chaim Topol lived a double life as a spy.

    Paul Montagu (e8c2dd)

  107. Dana, my barometer for sickening political ads is whether it’s worse than the one showing Paul Ryan shoving granny in her wheelchair over a cliff. By comparison, I found the pudding ad to be slightly better than that, or not worse.
    The real issue is that it was green-lighted by former Democrat Trump, not by current Democrats.

    Paul Montagu (e8c2dd)

  108. I understand is verboten to discuss the FBI and USSS as co-opted by the Democrats, but just floating out there that the FBI already knows everything the whistleblower on Joe and Hunter put out. They do not care beyond when it comes to protection, they extend that word and role of protection into protecting Biden’s from being caught in a scandal. For example the USSS whose volunteer program went and retrieved a gun they knew drug addicted Hunter was not legally able to possess because Hunter had lied on his gun purchase paperwork. The USSS also had to know that Hunter was diddling around with a young niece and looked the other way, so no, the FBI and USSS are not going to speak up on financial impropriety.
    Whataboutisms are also verboten but am of the opinion the if this was DJT jr. no stone would be left unturned

    steveg (59f0ed)

  109. Rip,

    If you read my link, you’d see it wasn’t because he didn’t testify.

    So please don’t make incorrect remarks.

    NJRob (56aedd) — 4/15/2023 @ 12:14 pm

    I was responding to your characterization that Perry’s social media posts were “years prior to the incident,” which is demonstrably untrue.

    While the posts weren’t used at trial, they will be used at his sentencing:

    The (76-page document of social media posts) was not used during his trial, but they point to evidence the State intends to introduce during the punishment phase. A judge, not a jury, will decide Perry’s sentence, which was a decision the defense made. A date has not yet been set for that step in the legal process.

    “Yesterday, the Criminal District Judge presiding over this case ordered the material released in anticipation of the upcoming sentencing hearing for the Defendant in this case. Such orders are common in any criminal trial because the rules of evidence that apply when determining the appropriate sentence for a defendant are different from the rules that apply when a jury is determining a defendant’s innocence or guilt. The District Attorney’s Office looks forward to making a full presentation of the record in this case to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.”

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  110. Link to quote in post 112.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  111. If the guy pointed a gun at Perry’s head in a threatening manner, he got what he should’ve expected.

    Colonel Haiku (f29103)

  112. Weird how a gaffe prone, venal Biden has not been Vindmanned or had call transcripts leaked to the media that have made the front page above the fold. No one seems to have leaked the info needed to file a precise FOIA request. Maybe Biden is indeed a paragon of virtue, all that is true and good and at his worst is simply a doddering old fool (under an almost complete media blackout about his condition) a doddering old fool who is most aware of the upcoming date of his weekly scoop of ice cream and the media limits questions to what flavor.

    One of the interesting things about the WH press briefings is how the WH PR team answers or does not answer questions. It is clear when they are uncomfortable with certain lines of questioning, but the press largely ignores that there is a story under that misdirection or outright lie. Seasoned journalist, bright lawyers who have spent decades sniffing out lies suddenly have no further questions and seem to willfully suspend disbelief; going beyond that and scolding the reporter who dared make the WH mouthpiece uncomfortable even though the reverse was true when George W. Bush was President. They even coined a phrase that belongs on all their gravestones “Fake but Accurate”

    steveg (59f0ed)

  113. Biden gone by year’s end. You read it here…

    Colonel Haiku (f29103)

  114. “According to them, everyone they disagree with is a Nazi. Do you agree?”

    You have Antifa on the brain. Do you think that Garret Foster, the man Perry shot, was Antifa?

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  115. In 2021, as the US recovered from the COVID recession the value of US manufacturing reached an all-time high of approximately $2.5 trillion.

    Continuous productivity gains has meant that we are doing that with fewer workers — and, if we want to be richer, that decline is nearly inevitable.

    About a century ago, farmers made up about half the work force. Now, we produce far more food, with fewer workers. As someone who grew upon a farm, I can tell you that the loss of farmers was hard on many. But it has made possible an enormous gain in wealth as farmers, and their sons and daughters found other kinds of work.

    (Could our manufacturing policies have been better, and saved some of the jobs that were lost? Absolutely. Even Obama seemed to recognize that when he told the ChiComs to stop stealing our intellectual property. Spoiler: They haven’t.)

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  116. Rip Murdock (b6f09f) — 4/15/2023 @ 12:54 pm

    Unsealed court filing detailing Daniel Perry’s social media posts.

    Rip Murdock (490109)

  117. “If the guy pointed a gun at Perry’s head in a threatening manner, he got what he should’ve expected.”

    No he didn’t

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  118. Biden gone by year’s end. You read it here…

    From the same source that claimed Martin Sheen had died……..

    Rip Murdock (892d5c)

  119. “I believe he was going to aim it at me … I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me”

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  120. I’ll put the Biden prediction up against any of your 26,069 copy pastas, rip!

    Colonel Haiku (f29103)

  121. Rip Murdock (892d5c) — 4/15/2023 @ 1:22 pm

    It’s possible. But I think if that happens the Democrats will have a free for all primary, with Kamala Harris losing. They could also end up with an open convention and/or draft someone who didn’t run in primaries (Newsom?).

    Rip Murdock (892d5c)

  122. Law enforcement saw no crime committed by Perry, Cthulhu. That the Soros-funded DA would choose to prosecute is not surprising.

    Colonel Haiku (f29103)

  123. 124… I dunno… but what does AP tell ya, rip?

    Colonel Haiku (f29103)

  124. @125, jury didn’t see self defense. Read Rob’s link. It explains the guilty verdict very well.

    Time123 (84b82a)

  125. Colonel Haiku (f29103) — 4/15/2023 @ 1:27 pm

    What made you think Martin Sheen had died?

    At least what I post have numbers to back them up, and/or come from named sources, as opposed to a tweeter hiding behind a screen name.

    Rip Murdock (490109)

  126. 124… I dunno… but what does AP tell ya, rip?

    Colonel Haiku (f29103) — 4/15/2023 @ 1:31 pm

    Since AP reports on what happened, and doesn’t report on something that is highly speculative, I have no idea.

    Rip Murdock (892d5c)

  127. “Law enforcement saw no crime committed by Perry, Cthulhu. That the Soros-funded DA would choose to prosecute is not surprising.”

    The jury did, and they’re the ones who count.

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  128. Law enforcement saw no crime committed by Perry, Cthulhu. That the Soros-funded DA would choose to prosecute is not surprising.

    Colonel Haiku (f29103) — 4/15/2023 @ 1:30 p

    Law enforcement, whether local cops or the FBI, don’t get to decide whether a crime should be prosecuted. If someone is arrested, then it’s either the local DA or the DOJ who decides if there is a case.

    Rip Murdock (892d5c)

  129. Hmmm

    The people in the online spaces where Jack Teixeira spent his time and allegedly leaked highly classified documents posted violent slurs against Black, gay and trans people, Jews, Ukrainians and pretty much everyone else.

    Everyone, except the Russians.

    Teixeira did describe Putin’s War Against Ukraine as Bears v. Pigs, the former being Not An Insult of the Russians and the latter being Not A Compliment of the Ukrainians.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  130. The very same person says:

    “You slander me yet again with your words. I have not spoken in support of MTG…”

    Then says:

    “She votes the way I support and speaks out against the left [and] also sponsors bills that protect our children.”

    Which sounds like support, but let’s ask him and find out. So Dana does:

    “How/where did I slander you yet again? You just said you support her views and that she speaks out against the left (which you do as well).”

    Sure enough:

    “Yes. As I support anyone who speaks out against the left. Their views are harmful to our nation.”

    I think it is fair to summarize NJRob’s position here as: “Dana has slandered me by saying I support Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom I support.”

    My ruling: it is not slander to attribute to a person an opinion which they themselves have expressed.

    If being seen as a victim is important to you, NJRob, then 1) why? and 2) you’re going to have to make a more coherent case than this.

    I’d prefer that my valued co-bloggers not be accused of “slander” without ironclad evidence, which I suspect you cannot amass.

    Patterico (f1aff5)

  131. “ Has your stock portfolio improved?

    Are interest rates down so you can better afford a home?

    How about inflation? Do your groceries cost less?

    Do you pay less for gas at the pumps or for electricity/gas to heat your home?

    Are we spending less money to engage in proxy wars?

    Is the military better prepared to face potential threats?

    Is speech more open and less censored?

    Are schools and universities doing a better job of educating children?

    Can you name a single thing that has improved under the current administration?

    Please, enlighten me.”

    Colonel Haiku (dcf9ad)

  132. #136 Here’s a bunch.

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  133. Patterico,

    I mentioned and quoted the section I took issue to. It had nothing to do with my remarks nor with Republicans, MAGA or otherwise, but is a direct talking point of the left. To be tied into the same grouping with the supremacists which had zero bearing on our conversation was my issue.

    They have no relevancy on the Republican party unlike the supremacists on the left who are welcomed and rewarded with positions and influence.

    Nick Fuentes is not a kingmaker. He is a joke.

    NJRob (56aedd)

  134. I still don’t see anyone other than Time that was even willing to answer my question amount abusing children and MTG’s bill banning the practice.

    NJRob (56aedd)

  135. I support my policies being advanced. I can separate the policy from the person.

    NJRob (56aedd)

  136. The Biden administration is doing a terrible job. Even if your policy preferences align with theirs they’re hard to defend. If (like me)you don’t support many of their goals they look like a complete mess

    Time123 (a9de35)

  137. Please release post 141, it’s an obituary for cinematographer Bill Butler. Can’t imagine why it’s in moderation.

    Rip Murdock (892d5c)

  138. Can someone point me to the place in the article on Thomas that shows that Thomas personally benefited $1,000 or more from the sale of property? The article left me with questions.
    Did they check to make sure Justice Thomas didn’t have his family keep all the money from the sales?
    Did they look at the the final closing statement?
    How was the joint ownership structured? 1/3 each or?
    Did Crow purchase property at the neighborhood average or over?
    If I co-owned property with my 94 year old mother and the family of my dead brother, I’d let them keep 1/2 each of all the proceeds of the sales $61,500 each and my signature would be on it. However, I’d have already produced documents that prove it and would tell Pro Publica to shove it up their ass… but Thomas has not done so….. and that leads to other questions

    steveg (59f0ed)

  139. Fuentes views are shared by MTG and very welcome in mainstream republican thought, provided you keep the outright slurs to a minimum.

    Time123 (731c34)

  140. RIP Dame Mary Quant (93). Fashion designer of the miniskirt and other clothes that epitomized the swinging ‘60s in London.

    Rip Murdock (490109)

  141. Lies Time.

    NJRob (56aedd)

  142. Vivek Ramaswamy Torches DeSantis and Darling Nikki:

    ………..
    “I think we need courage in the White House,” Ramaswamy said. “We live in a moment of fear in America. We can’t put a commander in chief in charge who is themselves fearful. I think that describes Ron DeSantis. I think it describes Nikki Haley. I think it describes, really, most career politicians. They go to their donor class where their milk is, well it’s really their mother’s milk, and ask them for permission to say the things that they need to say.”
    …………
    “Ron DeSantis talks a big game after he’s vetted it through his political consultants, but he’s not an original thinker. He’s not somebody who’s capable of thinking for himself, Ramaswamy said. “It’s part of the reason why his entire campaign strategy involves taking (Ramaswamy‘a book Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam) and effectively running it through his teleprompter. That’s Ron DeSantis on a given day. We can give you kind of countless examples. Literally, it’s a three-to-six-week delay by the time I say something – he’ll make Joe Biden’s plagiarism look like child’s play.”
    …………
    “……….(W)e can’t have a follower in the White House. We need a leader. And I think a leader acts and speaks based on his own convictions. And his silence, and then dancing around it with a very scripted statement after the politicized persecution of a former president of the United States, even if he’s your political rival, that was shameful.”
    ………..
    He then coined the nickname “Small Stick Ron DeSantis” while invoking a famous quote from 26th President Teddy Roosevelt.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (490109)

  143. ^ Real nice, now the goombas can pull the limbs that the cartel dudes leave on the trunk.

    urbanleftbehind (bfb1b2)

  144. Has your stock portfolio improved?

    My defense and energy stocks are doing just fine.

    Are interest rates down so you can better afford a home?

    Already own, not looking

    How about inflation? Do your groceries cost less?

    I don’t really track prices, I can absorb the price increases.

    Do you pay less for gas at the pumps or for electricity/gas to heat your home?

    I have two Teslas and and my home is solar powered, so I don’t pay at all.

    Rip Murdock (490109)

  145. The jury did, and they’re the ones who count.

    A good DA can convict a ham sandwich.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  146. Rip Murdock (490109) — 4/15/2023 @ 3:45 pm

    Shorter: “I’m all right, Jack!”

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  147. @141 The alternative was trump. (I voted green party) Democrats held their nose and voted for biden even many who would not hold their nose and vote for clinton. Unbelievably some establishment democrats liked him! On a lighter note Over at DU they have become super patriotic law and order national security hawks attacking the leaker as a traitor! While the right has taken jane fonda’s place on the anti-aircraft gun as anti-war peace freaks defending the leaker as a patriot! I remember when democrats praised the leaker of the pentagon papers and republicans called it treason! Normally democrats defend leakers from then all the way to adam schiff and republicans call them traitors. I Give MTG/tucker carlson the jane fonda anti-war peace freak award!

    asset (f94397)

  148. @150 Did you complain that a good grand jury prosecutor could convict a ham sandwich if it was a person you didn’t like or disagreed with? ( I tried too ;but didn’t always succeed:) The grand jury system needs to be altered or abolished as justice is seldom served by the way it is run.

    asset (f94397)

  149. The grand jury system needs to be altered or abolished as justice is seldom served by the way it is run.

    It’s one of those “terrible, but better than all the other systems” things. All a grand jury does is attempt to filter out weak cases, but a prosecutor can make a weak case seem strong.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  150. “I think it is fair to summarize NJRob’s position here as: “Dana has slandered me by saying I support Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom I support.””

    I think I just pee’d in my pants. Yes, there it is.

    AJ_Liberty (8114a6)

  151. The grand jury system needs to be altered or abolished as justice is seldom served by the way it is run.

    The grand jury in America is older than the United States:

    The history of the grand jury is rooted in the common and civil law, extending back to Athens, pre-Norman England, and the Assize of Clarendon promulgated by Henry II. The right seems to have been first mentioned in the colonies in the Charter of Liberties and Privileges of 1683, which was passed by the first assembly permitted to be elected in the colony of New York.

    Included from the first in Madison’s introduced draft of the Bill of Rights, the provision elicited no recorded debate and no opposition. “The grand jury is an English institution, brought to this country by the early colonists and incorporated in the Constitution by the Founders. There is every reason to believe that our constitutional grand jury was intended to operate substantially like its English progenitor. The basic purpose of the English grand jury was to provide a fair method for instituting criminal proceedings………

    The grand jury is a constitutional requirement, it’s the first sentence of the Fifth Amendment:

    No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury ……..

    Source

    Paragraph breaks added. Footnotes omitted.

    It’s not going anywhere.

    Rip Murdock (892d5c)

  152. Why would Marge agree to speak at Fuentes’ white nationalist event if she disagreed with his views?

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  153. AJ that is easy. I support the 1-20% I get that I agree with vs. the 100% I’d disagree with from the opponent. That was the calculation that I went with Trump vs Hillary Clinton. I don’t want to hear about rule of law because Hillary was crystal clear that as a Democrat and a Clinton, the rule of law was going to be what she said it was.
    I have no control at all over MTG, but am happy when she stumbles into something helpful. I had a vote Trump vs. Hillary, which to be fair, was Dud#1 vs Dud #2. I came to the conclusion that Hillary was a #2 and would never deliver anything useful to my agenda, but would deliver plenty that was contradictory. That did not mean Trump was not a #2, he just had to be marginally better than Hillary on policy. Trumps judicial choices alone pushed him out over the #2 #2 which vindicated my choice in my eyes because anyone can figure out the type Hillary would have picked. Plus its great to think that the #2 #2 still drinks herself to sleep every night carrying the burden of losing to a Trump size #2. If I were her, I’d blame the Russians too, a lie to myself that would decrease the mental and emotional burden

    steveg (59f0ed)

  154. Why would Marge agree to speak at Fuentes’ white nationalist event if she disagreed with his views?

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 4/15/2023 @ 5:43 pm

    The same reason Trump would have dinner with Ye and Fuentes. It’s a (pretty obvious) signal to their constituency that MTG and Trump want their support.

    I don’t believe either of them when they say they were unaware or didn’t know what Nick Fuentes or Ye represents.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  155. The Military/Industrial/Congressional Complex

    …………..
    The Air Force has said for years that the A-10 jets, nicknamed Warthogs for their bulky silhouette and toughness in a fight, have passed their prime and will be vulnerable in the wars of the future. The production line where they were made fell silent in the mid-1980s, and the average A-10 here is four decades old. Its job can be done by newer, more advanced planes, the Air Force says.
    ………….
    Congress has other ideas. Bowing to members whose constituencies are dependent on the jet for jobs and the flow of federal tax dollars, it has instead insisted nearly all the planes keep flying at a cost of more than $4 billion over the past 10 years.
    ………….
    Lawmakers also barred the Air Force from retiring its C-40 VIP passenger planes, which are 18 years old on average and have undergone significant upgrades, and limited the service’s authority to shrink its fleet of aging E-3 AWACS radar planes until it can replace them with more advanced E-7 Wedgetails.
    …………
    It allowed the Navy to retire only four Littoral Combat Ships—a class of vessel plagued by technical failures but supporting thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in contracts in the districts where the ships are based. It also blocked the Navy from retiring any EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes until 2027.
    …………
    The Pentagon says it would rather dedicate the staff and resources consumed by the A-10s to other planes, most notably the F-35. The new jet uses stealth technology to evade detection and penetrate contested airspace, and can fly almost three times as fast as the A-10. The Air Force says it can take on the air support of ground troops that the A-10 Warthog specializes in, as well as fight other planes, track enemy forces, conduct electronic warfare and more.
    …………..
    As far back as 2012, though, the Air Force again saw the end of the Warthog’s usefulness looming on the horizon. The war in Iraq had ended and Afghanistan was beginning to wind down, and the U.S. was shifting its planning to a potential confrontation with China.

    War planners feared Beijing’s surface-to-air missiles and jet fighters could smash the lumbering A-10s, reviving the same concerns that prompted the Air Force to consider scrapping the plane in the 1980s.
    …………..
    “The A-10 Warthog is a venerable platform, and this was a tough decision,” (Then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel) told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2014. “But it is a 40-year-old single-purpose airplane originally designed to kill enemy tanks on a Cold War battlefield. It cannot survive or operate effectively where there are more advanced aircraft or air defenses.”
    ……………
    The debate continued for years with the same result: The Air Force would propose to mothball some of its A-10s, and Congress would bar it from doing so.
    …………
    Some defense analysts and former U.S. officials have urged the Biden administration to send A-10s to Kyiv, but others say the planes wouldn’t last against Russian air defenses, and the Ukrainians would need extensive training and support to fly them.
    ……………

    Free link.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  156. I’m confident the Ukrainian pilots are well aware of the risks of flying an A10 in contested airspace. If they still want to give it a try, let them do it. Maybe they will fail, or maybe they will pioneer some new way of making them work in a modern contested environment

    steveg (59f0ed)

  157. @156 Then alter it by having a defense lawyer ask questions that jurors might not know to ask.

    asset (4b2ee5)

  158. Some defense analysts and former U.S. officials have urged the Biden administration to send A-10s to Kyiv, but others say the planes wouldn’t last against Russian air defenses, and the Ukrainians would need extensive training and support to fly them.

    I’m sure some civilian volunteers could be found here in the USA. It’s what we did in the past.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  159. Then alter it by having a defense lawyer ask questions that jurors might not know to ask.

    No, because that lets the fox inside the coop. Instead, require that any exculpatory information be presented, on pain of misconduct.

    Kevin M (1ea396)

  160. 165 wrong not the defendants lawyer ;but a court appointed defense lawyer for each case who would be asking questions the jurors may not know to ask.

    asset (4b2ee5)

  161. @158: “AJ that is easy. I support the 1-20% I get that I agree with vs. the 100% I’d disagree with from the opponent.”

    steveg, I’m not sure at all what this is in response to. I think I’ve only made comment @155, about peeing because patterico made a funny.

    But I’d like to comment on choosing between two #2’s, which has been the case in 2016 and 2020. For me, the threshold question is whether the person is minimally qualified to be the head of the Executive Branch, which is an awesome responsibility. In the Senate, you are 1 of 100; the House, 1 of 435; the Supreme Court, 1 of 9. Only with the Presidency is there no dilution.

    I don’t think Mr. Trump ever was qualified, so I disagree with a whole bunch of Republicans. Now you can argue that he ran a large corporation and executed a national campaign…and took positions (or sorts)…..and that you are not just voting for one individual, but a whole collection of individuals who will direct agencies, execute policy, and provide guidance to the President — you are voting for Republican governance.

    I do get that, but just think that most of Trump’s pre-Presidency experience was largely irrelevant to the job and that thoughtful advisors can be bypassed or discarded by a President operating on his own agenda. I do understand 2016 was different than 2020 (and even more so than 2024). In 2016, you just didn’t really know how Trump would govern and there were enough competent people around him that it was reasonable to believe that “Republican governance” could compensate for clear deficiencies and constrain any irresponsible impulses. I get it, and in some ways, we saw that play out with Kelly, Tillerson, Mattis, Pompeo, Pence, et al checking some of Trump’s less rational ponderings.

    But we have to review the totality of the “outsider” Presidency. We did get conservative justices and the repeal of Roe, which included sticking with Kavanaugh and having the audacity to nominate Coney Barrett. We got a better business regulatory environment and a re-balancing of energy policy. But how much was Trump, how much was Pence at al, and was Trump a net positve or negative in executing “Republican governance”?

    I fear going down a policy checklist misses what Trump’s teammates were saying about Trump and his lack of attention to detail, lack of knowledge, lack of discipline, and his weird fascination with things. It’s disturbing how many past cabinet members and advisors would not support him for President again. January 6th should be a bright blinking light that there’s something not right with Mr. Trump, as he sat and watched his supporters lay siege to the Capitol….and did nothing, while maintaining a meme that his own attorney general rejected as complete BS.

    So in my eyes, we now have 50% of polled Republicans saying that they are OK with supporting a candidate who has something wrong with him, that wants to try and pull us out of NATO, S. Korea, and Africa and maintains a weird submission to Russian interests. When a crisis erupts, do we really want someone somewhat unbalanced with his finger near the button or speaking for the country? Sure, maybe we can aford it with smooth sailing, but the world is anything but smooth. It ought to frighten the hell out of you to have someone confused about reality who might need to deal with Russia’s next provocative move or China pressing toward invading Taiwan…or the next pandemic…or energy crisis.

    That’s why we can’t be ok with an election between two #2’s. We have to pull in a 3rd candidate that is NOT a #2. That’s what responsible people do. We should never settle for deluded or incompetent….and voting for the less deluded or slightly less incompetent perpetuates the problem. We need to fight for our democracy and not just throw up our hands and accept mumblers or sociopaths.

    AJ_Liberty (8114a6)

  162. Hey AJ,

    do you support MTG’s bill and goal to ban sex change surgeries, castration and sterilization of children?

    Yes or no?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  163. ΧΡΗΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ!

    Christ has Risen from among the Dead,
    Trampling Death with Death,
    And to those Entombed,
    He has Granted Life.
    — Resurrection Hymn, Irene Pappas & Vangelis

    nk (705d49)

  164. @168, if her bill was just limited to surgeries, I might say yes. Otherwise, I tend to be with Asa Hutchinson (R) who vetoed a similar overly broad Arkansas bill

    https://apnews.com/article/arkansas-legislature-us-news-legislation-asa-hutchinson-83d07a502678f9745bb00f91aa4865f6

    As a conservative, I also honestly question the appropriateness and constitutional authority for the U.S. Congress to ban a broad range of treatement therapies that most medical associations have approved/endorsed. Again, I understand where we are at with the commerce clause authorizing such intrusions, I just tend to not accept that this is a good development.

    AJ_Liberty (8114a6)

  165. So that’s a no.

    NJRob (aeef63)

  166. I mentioned upthread about the “Donbass Devuskka”, and it turns out she was active duty US Navy until last November. While active duty, she was a pro-Russian propagandist who contributed to Russian media. Post-Navy, she released doctored Teixeira documents on her Telegram channel. More here.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  167. AJ,

    From your link:

    The Republican governor rejected legislation that would have prohibited doctors from providing gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.

    All of these “treatments” cause lifelong changes. The entire panoply mocks the idea of “age of consent.” These are children, and the treatment they need is psychological, not medical. Except in a situation where a birth defect has cause physical gender ambiguity, there is no call for surgery.

    Puberty blockers and hormone therapy are not universally accepted, however. Links below from Wikipedia, to avoid political sites.

    Puberty blockers, which are used here to delay puberty until much later in adolescence, often to adulthood. But this use is not FDA approved.

    Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. Although puberty blockers are known to be safe and physically reversible treatment if stopped in the short term, it is also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of factors like bone mineral density, brain development and fertility in transgender patients…

    Additionally, genital tissue in transgender women may not be optimal for potential vaginoplasty later in life due to underdevelopment of the penis…

    It is not unreasonable for state laws to prevent use of unapproved drugs on children.

    Hormone Therapy as gender-affirming care is more widely accepted. But safety is again an issue

    Hormone therapy for transgender individuals has been shown in medical literature to be generally safe, when supervised by a qualified medical professional. There are potential risks with hormone treatment that will be monitored through screenings and lab tests such as blood count (hemoglobin), kidney and liver function, blood sugar, potassium, and cholesterol. Taking more medication than directed may lead to health problems such as increased risk of cancer, heart attack from thickening of the blood, blood clots, and elevated cholesterol …

    Transgender hormone therapy may limit fertility potential in those cases where the child changes their mind.

    See also tables of risk factors at the link above which include things like early-onset Type II diabetes.

    Again, state laws preventing the gaming of children’s endocrine systems in dangerous and sometimes irreversible ways are hardly beyond the pale. One does not have to be a political wingnut warrior to find these practices disturbing.

    Calling this “gender-affirming care” is like calling abortion “medical care.”

    (I lament the lack of a preview in advance)

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  168. Stupid German government. What are they thinking?

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  169. We are just now learning about the incredible complexity and interlinking of the body’s control systems. But of this control is done by hormones that serve multiple purposes (and indeed, most of the body’s systems serve multiple purposes).

    Subverting entire control systems, such as shoving high doses of estrogen into a male body that is otherwise unprepared, may have some desired effects, but those effects are complex and generally poorly understood. This is a 50 year old therapy for menopausal women, and used here in a brute-force manner.

    It is really irresponsible, at Tuskegee levels, to practice this brute-force therapy on pubescent children. NATURAL hormones are disturbing enough at that age, adding this kludge of a hack on top is crazy. It should be banned.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  170. * But of [T]his control

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  171. @175, why do you think the AMA and APA may disagree with you? Do you feel you have a deep understanding of the topic and are trying to read more to understand the other side? There is evil in the world and there are well-educated people who can be wrong….but why should you be the last say on how someone’s kid gets treated for a complex condition? How confident are you that your opinion should purvail in all situations? Would you feel bad if someone commits suicide because their treatment is terminated?

    AJ_Liberty (8114a6)

  172. AJ,

    Politics. Just like Asa’s cowardly actions that were thankfully overridden.

    This is devastating child abuse no different than the genital mutilation done in muslim countries.

    The same medical field used to claim eugenics was a valid field and some races were mongrels.

    No thanks.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  173. @177: The FDA does not approve long-term use of puberty-blockers in anyone, let alone children. Why do you suppose that a few providers suggest this off-label use?

    As for the (corrupt and political) AMA, I doubt they themselves will face the inevitable liability suits. Then again, maybe, considering the various bankrupt Catholic dioceses. I wonder how many of its Board actually risk these suits themselves.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  174. But, AJ, I am not opining MY understanding. I am quoting from Wikipedia, which if not totally objective has never been accused of being a Trumpist site.

    These treatments are reckless and the state has every right to regulate them, or to block them entirely. The arguments in favor of them are largely not medical ones.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  175. Michael Shellenberger showed, to my satisfaction, that anti-nuclear causes in the US have sometimes been financed by men with investments in fossil fuels. I have read that the Russians financed “Green” movements in eastern Europe, presumably for similar reasons.

    I wonder if something similar could be happening in Germany.

    Chancellor Merkel’s switch on nuclear power puzzles me in one way. Her advanced degree is in quantum chemistry, which makes her next door to being a nuclear physicist, and qualifies her to understand the technical issues.

    And doesn’t puzzle me in another. I think she was tempted by all those Green votes.

    (I don’t believe she has given a real interview since her resignation.)

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  176. Did you know that the inventor of the prefrontal lobotomy won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1949? That gave the operation credibility and by 1951 20,000 lobotomys had been performed in the United States. A few years later the procedure was largely abandoned due to the poor results. It “cured” schizophrenia by inflicting severe and irreversible brain damage.

    The 20th century was rife with medical fads. Heroin as a cough suppressant. Delivering babies with forceps. Antibiotics for the what-ails-you. Sterilization of promiscuous women. “Diet pills.” The list is endless. All of these had professional acceptance for a while. Mostly attributable to what patients demanded and/or social constraints on care.

    What matters is the science. Why has the FDA not approved these uses? Probably waiting a political change at the top.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  177. Chancellor Merkel’s switch on nuclear power puzzles me in one way. Her advanced degree is in quantum chemistry, which makes her next door to being a nuclear physicist, and qualifies her to understand the technical issues.

    I quibble about that last part, as the technical issues are largely engineering, not chemistry or physics. In many respects there is not a huge cross-section either.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  178. The SNL Weekend Update was pretty good, especially the line about Biden being so Irish that he can slur his words without any alcohol.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  179. Amazon’s Alexa system was non-functional for hours this morning. Echo devices would “wake” but immediately go back to sleep without responding to voice commands. Fixed now, but a lot of people had to learn how where their light switches were again. The horrors.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  180. Biden being so Irish that he can slur his words without any alcohol.

    Old AA joke:

    Newly-sober person wears T-shirt that says “Instant Assh0le. Just add alcohol”

    Oldtimer sees it and asks: “What makes you think you need alcohol?”

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  181. Does this mean that Trump is Irish? He can act like a barroom drunk without any booze at all.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  182. I’m confident the Ukrainian pilots are well aware of the risks of flying an A10 in contested airspace. If they still want to give it a try, let them do it. Maybe they will fail, or maybe they will pioneer some new way of making them work in a modern contested environment

    steveg (59f0ed) — 4/15/2023 @ 8:49 pm

    Given it would take about a year of training Ukrainian pilots to fly, it’s a pretty pointless exercise.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  183. Glenn Youngkin is Out:

    ………..
    Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican whose surprising election in a blue-trending state set off instant talk of a presidential run, has tapped the brakes on 2024, telling advisers and donors that his sole focus is on Virginia’s legislative elections in the fall.
    ………..
    Backing away for now is also a bow to political reality. Mr. Youngkin has a shortage of clean conservative victories in the divided Virginia legislature, compared with, say, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who stole much of Mr. Youngkin’s thunder on “parents’ rights” issues in education.

    An effort by Mr. Youngkin last year to raise his profile by campaigning for Republicans around the country fizzled when most proved too extreme for voters and lost their races.
    ………….

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  184. From the AMA https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-states-stop-interfering-health-care-transgender-children

    “In addition, evidence has demonstrated that forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic consequences. Transgender individuals are up to three times more likely than the general population to report or be diagnosed with mental health disorders, with as many as 41.5 percent reporting at least one diagnosis of a mental health or substance use disorder.1 The increased prevalence of these mental health conditions is widely thought to be a consequence of minority stress, the chronic stress from coping with societal stigma, and discrimination because of one’s gender identity and expression. Because of this stress, transgender minors also face a significantly heightened risk of suicide.

    Transgender children, like all children, have the best chance to thrive when they are supported and can obtain the health care they need. Studies suggest that improved body satisfaction and self-esteem following the receipt of gender-affirming care is protective against poorer mental health and supports healthy relationships with parents and peers.2 Studies also demonstrate dramatic reductions in suicide attempts, as well as decreased rates of depression and anxiety.3 Other studies show that a majority of patients report improved mental health and function after receipt of gender-affirming care. Medically supervised care can also reduce rates of harmful self-prescribed hormones, use of construction-grade silicone injections, and other interventions that have potential to cause adverse events.4”

    Now I don’t know what to do with all of that. My initial reaction is like many of your’s, this sounds tragic on many levels and that “therapy” should be conservative until the individual is old enough to maturely accept the consequences. But I also have to acknowledge not knowing anyone suffering from gender dysphoria or understanding the underlying research. I don’t know families struggling with the issues, including suicidal ideation. I sure would not want a child to die because the issue gets caught up in the culture war. I’m also suspicious that the increase in cases might represent a curiosity induced because of so much media attention — could it be a new way to act out and gain attention?

    Still, it’s reasonable to ask what is the role of government, both federal and state, in regulating personal health care? On one hand, we don’t trust the government’s vaccinations but on the other we trust democracy to assign the best rules for unique psychiatric care. I kind of like leaving it to the laboratories of democracy to see what is best….and I like states to err on the side of best practices as we understand them. I fear broad-tailored bans are fundamentally based on politics and hot-takes rather than genuine compassion. How many suicides are worth handing it to the libs?

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  185. The Haleys covering a lot of bases, just in cas

    urbanleftbehind (aedbaa)

  186. steveg (59f0ed) — 4/15/2023 @ 8:49 pm

    Kevin M (1ea396) — 4/15/2023 @ 10:38 pm

    No concern about the larger point of article that Congress is mandating retention of legacy weapon systems solely to provide jobs to their constituents, to the detriment of taxpayers and modernization of the military to confront China?

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  187. Would you feel bad if someone commits suicide because their treatment is terminated?

    Would I feel bad? Probably. Would that change my mind? No. I also don’t see the shooting of a child as grounds for general gun control.

    Let me turn this back on your, though. Would you feel bad because a boy, at age 18, decides he doesn’t really want to be a girl, but doctors tell him that his penis will always be 1 inch long due to the long-term effect of puberty blockers and his time for choice has passed? THEN he kills himself?

    All because of a social and medical fad.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  188. Dana, as always I appreciate these weekend posts, but the Twitter links render slowly and the comment section jerks uncontrollably for a good minute after each comment posts and they render yet again on the page refresh.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  189. No concern about the larger point of article that Congress is mandating retention of legacy weapon systems solely to provide jobs to their constituents, to the detriment of taxpayers and modernization of the military to confront China?

    The A-10 was largely cancelled to provide an addition claimed use for the F-35, even though no one is ever going to use an F-35 in close combat support where it could get hit by man-portable weapons.

    The A-10 wasn’t being cancelled because the military didn’t want it — the Arm=y would have loved them, but the Air Force, which has a monopoly on fixed-wing aircraft, didn’t want them. It is no coincidence that AF women were flying them in combat.

    But whatever. If you truly think they should be gone, give the working ones and parts to the Ukrainians. Let them figure out the pilot issues. I’m going to bet that a lot of retired US pilots would be willing to give it a go if the government didn’t stop them.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  190. The Haleys covering a lot of bases, just in case

    I really don’t think they arranged all this to help the campaign. And it is not clear that it will help them in the South.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  191. Transgender individuals are up to three times more likely than the general population to report or be diagnosed with mental health disorders…

    Tautologies are often unconvincing.

    But I also have to acknowledge not knowing anyone suffering from gender dysphoria or understanding the underlying research

    I have a transgender nephew, um, niece. She is not doing all that well and the meth addiction which seems to have preceded this declaration is probably not helping. I don’t think that it is really gender-affirming care she needs as much as she needs to stop using meth and getting her head clear. Sadly, her father has been unwilling to deal (and has his own problems), and the rest of the family does not seem inclined to take in a meth head of whatever gender.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  192. Rip

    So you are saying if we’d seen the light a year ago, the Ukrainians would be flying A10’s now?

    You have to remember I live in CA. For example I’ve heard every reason why we don’t build new reservoirs but the favorite is some version of “even if we were to start today, it would take at least___ years.” Which is just an excuse, mixed with a brush off, not an explanation.

    Also, if you don’t think this fight is going to last in one form or another for more than another year, you are delusional. Even if Ukraine can somehow manufacture a decisive victory, reclaiming the Donbas and Crimea, Russia will keep trying. They may need to wait a few years, rebuild, get sanctions lifted, but they’ll be back

    steveg (ebd080)

  193. Rip

    Apologies for using the word delusional. You are not, and I could have used a better word

    steveg (ebd080)

  194. Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 11:40 am

    I know you’re fixated on A-10, but you didn’t respond to larger question raised in the article (the link to which is free so you can read it) about Congressional interference in military modernization decisions regarding obsolete weapon systems. The point is (using the A-10 as an example) Congress has forced the AF to spend $4B over last ten years on an aircraft it doesn’t think can survive in today’s anti-aircraft missile environment.

    Your claim that “no one is ever going to use an F-35 in close combat support” applies equally to the A-10.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  195. Again, your assumption is that the doctors are flying blind and caught up in a fad, whereas the opponents, some with a wiki-level understanding, are more noble and well informed. I trust the people closest to the situation and the most invested to make hard decisions. That tends to be parents and their trusted physicians. Parents know their kids best and have the most interest in doing what’s best, including looking out for 1-inch penises. There’s a presumption here that liberal parents are experimenting on their poor kids and must be stopped. I tend to distrust such broad sweeping memes as just being politically motivated, though obviously there can be some of that.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  196. So you are saying if we’d seen the light a year ago, the Ukrainians would be flying A10’s now?

    No-I’m saying the A-10 is not the aircraft for the Ukrainians for the same reasons that the USAF doesn’t want them. Neither believe the plane could survive the current Russian anti-aircraft environment. The F-16 Viper and F-35 will take over the close air support role, and their avionics will allow them to operate without getting as close to the ground as the A-10.

    Which is why the Ukrainians are begging for the F-16 and not the A-10.

    I’ve been called worse than “delusional”-no harm, no foul.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  197. The fingers ad does not show footage of the real DeSantis. It is based on a 2019 story about what DeSantis supposedly did once on a private plane.

    Sammy Finkelman (170eb5)

  198. I don’t believe itt would have been legal for Donald Trump to greenlight that ad. More likely, someone who left his staff. T

    It’s by a PAC, which is not allowed to co-ordinate wit the candidate or the candidate’s committee.

    Of course, it is an anti-DeSantis ad that doesn’t meantion any election – purely an issue ad.

    Sammy Finkelman (170eb5)

  199. 133. That’s the WSJ article I read. So I think the member(s) of the group who are in Ukraine are fighting, or pretending to be fighting, with the Wagner Group.

    Lucca, the member who posted the photos to another Discord group in early March, from which it was in turn copied to a forum that dealt with Minecraft also bought some stuff from someone with the Russians in Ukraine.

    The person who described himself as evil (for his comments in the original forum) must have had a real basis for that.

    Teixeira must have been the one who deleted the original forum. He stayed in contact with the members by telephone. ‘
    His handle was identified, and billing records revealed his name.

    Ukraine is not fighting a united enemy,

    Sammy Finkelman (170eb5)

  200. Rip, to continue the conversation on the A10 and Ukraine.
    I think it is safe to say the subgroup in the DoD that wants the A10 around is the infantry and they are agnostic to how they get air to ground support but tend to lean towards the A10 because there are some younger generals and such who had their butts saved by one.
    We may not agree about my above thoughts, but we agree that the DoD thinks the A10 is obsolete.

    I think we can agree that the Ukrainians have seen the hundreds if not thousands of published Pentagon PR that contains all of the reasons why the USAF and Pentagon want to scrap the A10, and the Ukrainians (and the entire world of warfighters) are well educated about how the Pentagon feels about operating A10 in a contested environment.
    But the Ukrainians still want them, the Pentagon does not want them, so what is the problem? Maybe A10 upgrades contain secret stuff…? Then say so. Strip it out and bill it to the Biden Ukraine war account

    I think the absolute worst outcome for the USAF is innovative use of the A10 by Ukraine and the USAF gets stuck with A10, or even worse than my absolute worst is if Ukraine innovates and the USAF finds out the US Army Aviation Branch is trying to take over flying the A10

    steveg (ebd080)

  201. Fuzzy Math:

    Earlier this month, Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign touted an impressive number: A news release said the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador had raised more than $11 million in the six weeks since launching her campaign for the GOP nomination.

    But filings on Saturday with the Federal Election Commission show that her campaign drastically overstated its haul. The campaign appears to have double-counted money it moved among various committees.
    The filings, covering the first three months of the year, show that three committees affiliated with Haley collectively brought in about $8.3 million.
    ………….
    Haley has been raising money across several committees. …………..
    Haley’s joint fundraising committee raised about $4.4 million, its filing shows.

    The campaign committee’s haul of about $5.1 million included a transfer of $1.8 million from the joint fundraising committee.

    And Haley’s other committee, known as a leadership PAC, posted gains of about $1.5 million, including a transfer of nearly $900,000 from the joint fundraising committee.

    In arriving at $11 million, Haley’s campaign appears to have summed the three committee’s cash infusions, even though two of them took a significant chunk of money from the third.
    ………..
    ………..(N)ot all of the $8.3 million reported by Haley’s various groups can be used for her campaign. Money in Haley’s leadership PAC, a sort of group often deployed to boost allies or promote a particular message, cannot be used to finance her own campaign.

    The haul promoted by Haley’s team in advance of her FEC filings impressed donors, who said the number was a sign of the strength of Haley’s campaign.
    ……………

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  202. I think it is safe to say the subgroup in the DoD that wants the A10 around is the infantry and they are agnostic to how they get air to ground but tend to lean towards the A10 ……..

    I think it’s safe to say that the next war (defending Taiwan) won’t involve a lot of infantry but carriers, missiles, and cyber attacks.

    Unless the administration does a 180, Ukraine will never see A-10s. And as noted above, the Ukrainians want the F-16, not the A-10.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  203. I know you’re fixated on A-10, but you didn’t respond to larger question raised in the article (the link to which is free so you can read it) about Congressional interference in military modernization decisions regarding obsolete weapon systems.

    I didn’t respond to that because it has been going on since the Mexican War and is not ever going to change. Do not use this against the A-10 because the exact same thing is true of the F-35 and who got contracts there.

    The problem is that all those advanced systems are NFG for the infantry, The Air Force won’t let the Army get a fix-wing aircraft for that purpose, but won’t develop another flying tank themselves. Trying to blame this back to procurement isn’t persuasive.

    And you still don’t explain why the Ukrainians can’t have them. As steveg suggests, their main problem seems to be fear of bureaucratic embarrassment.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  204. The more the press, Trump, the neverTrump turned never GOP, hit at DeSantis the more I start to realize this guy DeSantis is really ruffling the feathers of everyone I don’t want running the country, so they must know more than I do about how great DeSantis is.
    I’d characterize it as a bunch of barking seals on an iceberg suddenly launching into the water because the killer whale is scaring them.

    I could be wrong, but I’ve also got 15-16 months to be entertained by the barking mad seals.

    steveg (ebd080)

  205. AJ,

    Please explain to me then, why, if this is all just disinformation and stupid opponents, why the FDA is not approving these therapies?

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  206. https://www.realcleardefense.com/2023/01/03/ukraine_asked_us_for_100_a-10_warthogs_to_fight_russians_873472.html

    This article said that Ukraine asked for 100 A10’s. I would agree that they’d rather have f16’s

    steveg (ebd080)

  207. The Donbass Devushka story was picked up by the WSJ. If you want to know how the classified intel that Teixeira stole became so widespread, point your finger at this anti-American scuzbag.

    On April 5, the Donbass Devushka Telegram account posted four of the allegedly leaked classified documents to its 65,000 followers, according to a screenshot seen by The Wall Street Journal. That led several large Russian social-media accounts to pick up on the documents, after which the Pentagon launched an investigation. Ms. Bils says another administrator posted the four files.
    […]
    Airman Teixeira’s posts had languished online for months, shared among a small circle of fellow war and computer-game enthusiasts who had joined his invitation-only server on the Discord platform. Even after another member reposted the files to a larger Discord server, they remained unnoticed by the broader public. It was only after the posting of some of the files on Donbass Devushka’s account that they turned into fodder for military enthusiasts and Russia supporters across the internet. Several dozen other classified files have been found in Discord since then, mostly dealing with the war in Ukraine but also containing a variety of secrets about other nations

    Here’s some more about her propagandizing for Putin.

    The Donbass Devushka Telegram account that Ms. Bils oversees describes itself as engaging in “Russian–style information warfare.” 

    Linked accounts using the same name on other platforms also promoted the Russian agenda after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Donbass Devushka network hawked merchandise featuring Wagner and the Russian military, promising to send proceeds for the “freedom of Donbass” and to help “our men on the front.”

    Ms. Bils was promoted to the E-7 rank of chief aviation electronics technician in late 2020, a senior NCO position, according to promotion records posted on the Navy website and photographs of the ceremony on her former installation’s Facebook page. Ms. Bils left the military in November last year with an honorable discharge and with the lower rank of E-5, according to military records. The reason for that significant demotion couldn’t be immediately determined. Ms. Bils said she left the Navy for medical reasons, after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “Some very interesting potential intel,” the Donbass Devushka Telegram account posted on April 5, attaching images of four files that Airman Teixeira allegedly stole from the U.S. military. “The authenticity cannot be confirmed but looks to be very damning nato information.” The post remained online for several days. 

    Ms. Bils said that another administrator had posted these images, and that she was the one who later deleted them. “I don’t even know the authenticity of the documents or what they say. I am not very well versed in reading documents like that,” she said. 

    In addition to the Telegram account, established a year ago, the Donbass Devushka persona operates popular accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and other platforms. The Twitter account has been in existence since 2012.

    Some of the slides reposted on the Telegram account overseen by Ms. Bils had been altered from the otherwise identical photographs allegedly posted by Airman Teixeira on Discord—changed to inflate Ukrainian losses and play down Russian casualties. A subsequent post on the Donbass Devushka Telegram channel, on April 12, denied that the image had been doctored by the administrators. 

    “We would never edit content for our viewers,” the post said.

    Ms. Bils has recorded podcasts with guests advocating for Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, according to a review of the podcast content. As a podcast host, Ms. Bils, originally from New Jersey, spoke with a slight Russian accent and claimed to have been born in Luhansk, in the Russian-controlled Donbas. In an interview, Ms. Bils said she had “some” Russian heritage, without providing details.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  208. Why the US’s A-10 Warthog just isn’t the right jet for the war Ukraine is fighting

    Why do you care if you want it gone?

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  209. And you still don’t explain why the Ukrainians can’t have (A-10s).

    1. If we gave A-10s without any training and told them to “figure it out on their own” they would lose more of the limited number of pilots due to non-combat crashes.

    2. If the Air Force were to train the Ukrainians it would take at least a year, removing those pilots from flying combat missions against the Russians.

    3. A-10s are highly vulnerable to current surface to air missile threats. The reason the aircraft succeeded in Iraq and Afghanistan is that the air space was dominated by the US. No one controls the air battlefield over Ukraine.

    4. Unless directed by Congress, the Administration is unlikely to change its mind.

    5. The Ukrainians don’t want them:

    Yuriy Sak, an advisor to (Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii) Reznikov, had also said that the Ukrainian Air Force needed higher performance and more multi-role combat jets, such as U.S.-made F-16 Viper fighters, rather than any A-10s. He explicitly said that Warthogs “will not close our sky, they will not stop bombers and missiles” and “will be a target for Russian jet fighters and anti-aircraft defense.”

    The only way A-10s can be successfully used in Ukraine right now is have to American pilots fly them; but of course the aircraft would still be vulnerable to Russian anti-aircraft systems.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  210. This article said that Ukraine asked for 100 A10’s. I would agree that they’d rather have f16’s

    steveg (ebd080) — 4/16/2023 @ 2:34 pm

    Most of the 100 A-10s the Ukrainians identified are on concrete blocks:

    As of November, there were 100 Warthogs – 49 A-10As and 51 A-10Cs – at the boneyard (at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona). However, many of those aircraft, especially the older A variants, are in a non-flyable state, having been heavily cannibalized for spare parts over the years. The U.S. Air Force has another 281 A-10Cs in service, assigned to active-duty squadrons and units in the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard. ……

    See also my original post, with photos of stripped planes.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  211. Looks like DeSantis struck back, not a good strike, but a strike.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  212. The Ukrainians and Neo-Soviets both use the very capable, very durable Su25 as close air support. There is plenty of video out there showing Su25’s eating stinger type anti air in one of its two engines and flying home. For reasons the USAF would never allow, Ukraine can still fly Su25 in close air support against neo Soviet positions. So the airspace is contested, but the Ukraine has not lost all its Su25’s. That isn’t true, Ukraine had 17 operational at the beginning of the 2022, has lost 22. They also received “spare parts” from various places which added 14. So the Ukrainians have about 9 left.

    The story on those “spare parts” is teams went into Hungary, Georgia and maybe a couple other places, disassembled Su25’s and then reassembled them after transport. Side story. The US did that for Great Britain before entering into in WWII, except the US took everything up to a field on the Canadian border and the Canadians using horse for muscle, hauled them across the border into Canada and then shipped them to Great Britain.

    I think if A-10s had been trained for and now delivered, they would have played a big role in close air support during the upcoming counter-offense, and yes, they would lose a lot of them because without f16’s the air space is not contested enough. I would imagine the Ukrainian would use any aircraft as an innovative guerilla air force.

    steveg (ebd080)

  213. A-10 Warthogs Sent To Boneyard For The First Time In Years
    ………….
    “I would say over the next five, six years we will actually probably be out of our A-10 inventory,” Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the chief of staff of the Air Force, told reporters at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Warfare Symposium in March.

    This schedule would’ve been almost unthinkable just two or three years ago. Members of Congress, famously including the late Senator John McCain, spent years blocking Air Force requests to divest the Warthogs. Legislators long contended that the service had not sufficiently demonstrated that it could provide adequate close air support capabilities in place of the A-10……..

    The Air Force has challenged those positions, saying that a range of other aircraft in its inventory, ranging from the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter to the B-1B bomber, can and do perform these tasks. The service has further argued that the nature of close air support has changed significantly since the A-10 was introduced, particularly as a result of the now routine use of precision-guided munitions.
    ………….
    ………….(L)awmakers now seem to be increasingly siding with the Air Force’s position that it is time for the A-10 to finally go. The service’s current central argument is that divesting the Warthogs is critical to freeing up resources for major modernization programs that are now in progress, particularly those under the broad umbrella of its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program.
    ………….

    In addition to the Air Force ground support options, regarding close air support, the Army has its own air force –helicopters.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  214. Well, I am fairly certain, Ukraine always asks for more than they think they are going to get. Of course they ask for 100, maybe get 10-20. The Ukrainians started the war with 17 close air support planes so 10-20 A10 would give them a big bump in capability.

    it is kind of odd the USAF and Pentagon are being so stingy about a plane they do not to want, its obsolete, yada yada yada yada, yet they can’t scrape up 10.

    I’m going to switch topics: wonderful news from Sudan! I realize, civil war in Africa: yawn. Much more rare to have there not to be a civil war in Africa, but this isn’t shaping up as a global summer of love

    steveg (ebd080)

  215. Females in the Russian military who’ve been sexually assaulted are known as “field wives“. That’s quite the euphemism.

    5/ Field wives are an old tradition in the Russian (and previously Soviet) armed forces. During World War 2, female soldiers were often coerced into sexual relationships, or were simply raped. Some established relationships with senior officers to protect themselves from rape.

    6/ Such women were known as Mobile Field Wives (‘Pokhodno-Polevye Zheny’, abbreviated PPZh in military jargon, a pun on submachine guns – PPSh). For some women, getting pregnant was a useful way to get out of the fighting, as they would always be discharged as a result.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  216. Looks like DeSantis struck back, not a good strike, but a strike.

    Strictly speaking, that’s a PAC ad. If DeSantis has anything to do with it, it would be a campaign finance violation. Which I am sure he is taking pains to avoid.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  217. So, Rip, your answer is to pat the little Ukrainians on the head and tell them it’s no good for them and they should eat their broccoli. This from a country that told Zelensky he was going to lose in 3 days.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  218. Looks like DeSantis struck back, not a good strike, but a strike.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f91g1SNy2I8&t=7s

    DCSCA (408b62)

  219. So, Rip, your answer is to pat the little Ukrainians on the head and tell them it’s no good for them and they should eat their broccoli. This from a country that told Zelensky he was going to lose in 3 days.

    Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 5:08 pm

    Since Ukrainians themselves don’t want the A-10, why force it upon them?

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  220. Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 5:08 pm

    The only people who want the Ukrainians to have the A-10s are Americans-not Ukrainians. I’m all for giving them F-16s and more sophisticated weapons. But giving the Ukrainians something that will fail to help them is not a solution.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  221. RIP jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal (92).

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  222. Since Ukrainians themselves don’t want the A-10, why force it upon them?

    You keep quoting ONE GUY. That’s not the same as “Ukraine.” I bet you $1000 against a jelly donut that they would take them if offered.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  223. Rip,

    I know we have a longstanding debate about Trump vs DeSantis vs ?, with you claiming “?” is the empty set. I see Youngkin is out, and I expect that Pence will be out soon, being hated by both fish and fowl.

    So, we have left for the third candidate spot (for the many Rpublicans who are unhappy with Trump v DeSantis) Haley, Scott and Hutchinson. I think that Hutchinson’s (overridden) veto is a deal-breaker. I think that Haley’s campaign so far has been a colossal dud. Although she did raise $10 million in the first month, she has not caught fire.

    But Tim Scott. My reaction to his opening, after knowing nothing about him, was quite positive. Right now he has nearly zero visibility, both in name recognition or policy. That’s OK, as I’d think less of him if he grandstanded a lot (a criticism of DeSantis), but he is capable of a broad appeal. Right now his problem is the same as Haley’s — Trump is consuming most of the oxygen and DeSantis only gets a few breaths by referencing Trump.

    BE interesting to see how this goes, but I thin #3, if there is one, is Tim Scott. Which is extra bad news for Nikki.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  224. RIP Sgt. Major (Ret.) Billy Waugh (93), “the Godfather of the Green Berets”:

    Over parts of a decade in Southeast Asia, he helped train counterinsurgency forces in South Vietnam and Laos. He participated in parachute drops to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which required jumping from aircraft at altitudes of 20,000 feet or more, he said, free-falling in the nighttime to the lowest possible height before popping the chute, to avoid enemy detection.

    And he served with the innocuously named Studies and Observations Group of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, a clandestine unit that ran reconnaissance and rescue missions in South and North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
    …………
    In June 1965, Mr. Waugh, then a master sergeant, was nearly killed when his team was overwhelmed by North Vietnamese forces in Binh Dinh Province, along the South Vietnam coast. He was shot in the knee, foot, ankle and forehead in a rice paddy. Thinking he was dead, North Vietnamese forces stripped him naked.
    ………..
    He was saved by two soldiers, one of them his commander, Capt. Paris Davis. Despite his own gunshot wounds, to an arm and a leg, Captain Davis helped Mr. Waugh crawl to a helicopter.

    Those actions by Captain Davis earned him the Medal of Honor, which was belatedly presented to him by President Biden in 2021. Mr. Waugh received the Silver Star.
    …………
    He enlisted in the Army in 1948 but did not taste combat until he joined the fighting in the Korean War three years later. He rose from private first class to infantry platoon sergeant.
    …………
    …………(In 1977) Mr. Waugh became an independent contractor for the C.I.A. In Sudan in 1991 and ’92, he watched and photographed Osama bin Laden, who, long before he masterminded the 9/11 attacks, was already on the agency’s radar as the founder of Al Qaeda. Mr. Waugh sometimes jogged past bin Laden’s compound.
    …………
    He also tracked down and monitored Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, taking photographs of him at his apartment in Sudan before French intelligence agents captured him in 1994.
    …………..
    During two months on Team Romeo, a combined Special Forces and C.I.A. unit whose mission was to root out Taliban soldiers and Al Qaeda terrorists, Mr. Waugh acted as a liaison between the soldiers and the C.I.A. operatives, advised Afghan troops and patrolled defenses.
    …………

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  225. Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 5:48 pm

    Haley raised just over $8M for her presidential campaign, see here.

    Right out of the gate Tim Scott has bobbled the abortion issue:

    ………
    On his second day of campaigning since announcing a presidential exploratory committee, the South Carolina Republican pivoted, deflected and avoided specifics when repeatedly pressed on where he stood on federal abortion restrictions.

    On Wednesday, Scott dodged questions as to whether he would support a federal abortion prohibition, such as a 15-week ban introduced by his colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), when pressed by both national and local Iowa media.

    By Thursday morning in New Hampshire, Scott said he did believe some type of federal restriction should be implemented, and said if president, he would “definitely” sign into law a 20-week ban — a measure he has supported in the Senate.
    >/blockquote>

    More:

    .”If I were president of the United States, I would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress,” Scott added, regarding a federal ban.

    “Even if that was six weeks?” the reporter clarified.

    “I’m not going to talk about six or five or seven or ten,” Scott replied.
    ………
    Scott has also declined to take a position on whether abortion medication should remain legal in America……..

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  226. I bet you $1000 against a jelly donut that they would take them if offered.

    Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 5:36 pm

    No point in giving them an aircraft that they can’t fly. By the time they’re trained on them in it the war will be over, one way or another.

    Remember, he has the gold makes the rules.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  227. I wish I had a nickel for every time I was told the “war” will be over. “I don’t know what I believe, I’ll be home by christmas eve!”

    asset (5b1741)

  228. I’ll be home by christmas eve!”

    They just never say what year.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  229. Published on April 13, 1953. A first edition can cost you plenty.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f)

  230. Leaked Pentagon documents suggest US is pessimistic Ukraine can quickly end war against Russia

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/politics/pentagon-documents-ukraine-war-assessment/index.html

    DCSCA (f6f56f)

  231. Chinese Spy Balloon’s Solar Panels Could Power Sophisticated Radar -Washington Post

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Chinese spy balloon that was shot down by the U.S. in February carried solar panels that could generate enough electricity to power a type of radar that can generate images at night and through clouds, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing leaked U.S. intelligence documents.

    The balloon’s surveillance capabilities were detailed in a U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) document allegedly leaked to a Discord chatroom by Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, the Post said. – https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-04-15/chinese-spy-balloons-solar-panels-could-power-sophisticated-radar-washington-post

    DCSCA (f6f56f)

  232. James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal takes Propublica reporters to task and really puts meat on the bone regarding Justice Thomas’ reporting on the home sales:

    Assuming Justice Thomas received one-third of the sale price (or any amount more than $1,000), the text of the federal financial-disclosure statute would require him to have reported the transaction in Part VII (“Investments and Trusts”) of his annual AO-10 form for 2014. He didn’t do so and may need to file an amended form.

    But my review of Justice Thomas’s disclosures and other documents convinces me that any failure to disclose was an honest mistake. On all other matters involving his scanty real-estate inheritance, he followed the Filing Instructions for Judicial Officers and Employees, prepared by the Committee on Financial Disclosures of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Those instructions don’t make clear the statutory obligation to disclose the 2014 transaction.

    Further, the ProPublica troika made a sloppy reporting error, the effect of which is to cast Justice Thomas’s disclosures in a falsely unfavorable light—to make them look shambolic or perhaps even dishonest when in fact they followed the filing instructions without fail.

    The reporters’ error involves a confusion about what Justice Thomas did disclose. “By the early 2000s,” ProPublica reports, “he had stopped listing specific addresses of property he owned in his disclosures. But he continued to report holding a one-third interest in what he described as ‘rental property at ## 1, 2, & 3’ in Savannah.” It’s worth noting—ProPublica doesn’t—that the filing instructions (on page 32) prescribe disclosing rental properties in precisely this manner.

    Read the whole thing. It is not behind a paywall.

    Dana (1225fc)

  233. But my review of Justice Thomas’s disclosures and other documents convinces me that any failure to disclose was an honest mistake.

    “Honest mistake?” So ‘ignorance of the law’ is an excuse. Even for a SCJ.

    Storm the castle.

    DCSCA (f6f56f)

  234. If this flight tomorrow morning succeeds it will open a whole new chapter in HSF– as well as human travel back to the moon and on toward Mars…

    Scheduled for Apr 17, 2023

    SpaceX is targeting as soon as Monday, April 17 at 8:00 a.m. CT for the first flight test of a fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Starbase in Texas.

    Starship is a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon and travel to Mars and beyond. With a test such as this, success is measured by how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship.

    To date, the SpaceX team has completed multiple sub-orbital flight tests of Starship’s upper stage from Starbase, successfully demonstrating an unprecedented approach to controlled flight. These flight tests helped validate the vehicle’s design, proving Starship can fly through the subsonic phase of entry before re-lighting its engines and flipping itself to a vertical configuration for landing.

    In addition to the testing of Starship’s upper stage, the team has conducted numerous tests of the Super Heavy rocket, which include the increasingly complex static fires that led to a full-duration 31 Raptor engine test – the largest number of simultaneous rocket engine ignitions in history. The team has also constructed the world’s tallest rocket launch and catch tower. At 146 meters, or nearly 500 feet tall, the launch and catch tower is designed to support vehicle integration, launch, and catch of the Super Heavy rocket booster. For the first flight test, the team will not attempt a vertical landing of Starship or a catch of the Super Heavy booster.

    A live webcast of the flight test will begin ~45 minutes before liftoff. As is the case with all developmental testing, this schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our social media channels for updates.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5QXreqOrTA

    DCSCA (f6f56f)

  235. Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 5:48 pm

    But Tim Scott. My reaction to his opening, after knowing nothing about him, was quite positive.

    What I knew about him (besides his being a back Republican)was that , last year or so, (actually this was 3 years ago, in 2020, but I only read a column that mentioned it last year – perhaps there wass a further push) he came up with a police reform bill, that was intended to stop bad things from happening without stopping good things, and the Democrats expressed no interest in it.

    https://www.scott.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/JUSTICEActText.pdf

    Here’s Senator Tim Scott on a Biden executive order regarding olice work:\
    https://www.scott.senate.gov/media-center/press-releases/senator-tim-scott-statement-on-bidens-policing-executive-order

    “After the radical ‘defund the police’ movement helped create the current crime wave, President Biden is pursuing a partisan approach to many of the exact same policy solutions I proposed in the JUSTICE Act just two years ago. The fact is Democrats used a filibuster they call racist to block my reforms that they’re now embracing,” said Senator Scott.

    “While my proposal added funding to help local law enforcement comply with higher standards, the Democrats’ proposal sets departments up for failure by issuing unfunded federal mandates. Making it harder for police to do their jobs to the best of their ability should be a nonstarter, yet that’s exactly what the Biden plan does. I’m disappointed that the president who campaigned on unity has once again fallen into the trap of divisive politics.”

    Background:

    In June 2020, Senate Democrats blocked the JUSTICE Act, a police reform bill introduced by Senator Scott and co-sponsored by 48 Senate Republicans.

    In 2021, homicides in U.S. cities reached near record highs.

    The JUSTICE Act would have addressed many of the issues included in the executive order, including:

    Sec. 301 – Required local police to maintain a system for sharing police disciplinary records

    Sec. 106 – Increased penalties for all law enforcement officers who intentionally submits a false police report in connection

    JUSTICE Act Title II – Incentivized body-worn camera use for local law enforcement, and provided penalties for non-compliance

    Sec. 105 – Incentivized the banning of chokeholds by local law enforcement

    Sec. 106 – Required DoJ to develop training standards on in alternatives to use of force, de-escalation tactics, and techniques for responding to a behavioral health crisis

    Sec. 801 – Provided grants for improved recruitment and hiring

    Sec. 901 – Required new best practices on fair and effective policing tactics and procedures

    Sec. 101 – Tracked use of force or serious bodily injury incident data

    Right now he has nearly zero visibility, both in name recognition or policy. That’s OK, as I’d think less of him if he grandstanded a lot (a criticism of DeSantis), but he is capable of a broad appeal. Right now his problem is the same as Haley’s — Trump is consuming most of the oxygen and DeSantis only gets a few breaths by referencing Trump.

    BE interesting to see how this goes, but I thin #3, if there is one, is Tim Scott. Which is extra bad news for Nikki.

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  236. 240.

    Further, the ProPublica troika made a sloppy reporting error, the effect of which is to cast Justice Thomas’s disclosures in a falsely unfavorable light—to make them look shambolic or perhaps even dishonest when in fact they followed the filing instructions without fail.

    This was no error. This was malice.

    A previous notable ProPublica “scoop” was the revelation of what was in the contents of 15 tax returns from rich people, including Bill Gates, — without mentioning that the leak to them waa violation of the first principle of IRS rules, and a felony by the original leaker.

    https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  237. 242. Why is Elon Musk calling a vehicle that can, at best, go to Mars, a Starship ?

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  238. Leaked Pentagon documents suggest US is pessimistic Ukraine can quickly end war against Russia

    We needed leaked documents to know that?

    There have been verbal leaks about this all the time.

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  239. China ss racing ahead with elecctric cars, (and starting production of sodium instead of lithium batteries.

    Some of the cars are being prodcuced for forein companies, like BASF, but the engineers are Chinese.\
    Sodium batteries are bulkier than lithium batteries that can hold the same charge (which is why the first market is electricity generation storage) but the sodium batteries are much ceaper (though not as cheap andd pollution free as they could be, because China does not want to import sodium from the United States) and they don’t lose their charge in extremely cold weather.

    They developed a sodium battery that can be made sing the same equipment now used to make lithium batteries.

    One idea for cars is to have mixed batteries – the sodium for emergency use.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/business/china-sodium-batteries.html

    Sodium, found all over the world as part of salt, sells for 1 to 3 percent of the price of lithium and is chemically very similar. Recent breakthroughs mean that sodium batteries can now be recharged daily for years, chipping away at a key advantage of lithium batteries. The energy capacity of sodium batteries has also increased.

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  240. What are the odds that Trump will not see another indictment and that DeSantis may yet underwhelm on the national stage? There still needs to be other options who can credibly run. Worst comes to worst, they would be potential running mates for DeSantis. For Trump, I still see him running with Kari Lake. They’re perfect together. Haley at least was a governor and an ambassador. Scott’s credentials are thinner. Hutchinson is the adult in the room, which means this year will likely not be his year even if Trump and DeSantis implode.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  241. Starship launch scrubbed. Pressurization issue in first stage.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  242. This was no error. This was malice.

    Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
    –Robert Conquest

    Propublica began as a centrist organization, but is now controlled by people like Louis Henry Gates.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  243. Hutchinson is the adult in the room

    Yes, but which room?

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  244. New York State seems to have created a new extended form of s statute of limitations and the judge whom KAthy Hchul agreed to appoint after her first nominee was defeated by the “progressives” in the State Senate signed a decision to do so.

    This decision treats all prosecutors as normally aggressive.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-judge-rowan-wilsons-injustice-on-rape-20230415-iacnkxa3xre7libz5lqsbzw2te-story.html

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/15/hochuls-new-top-court-pick-freed-rapist-stunned-victim

    he victim, who was 22 at the time, had been out drinking with her boyfriend and another couple after an Aug. 9, 2009 wedding reception and invited them all to stay at her upstate Norwood home afterward so they wouldn’t have to make the drive back to their houses.

    She woke up in the middle of the night with Regan on top of her, raping her, she said.

    His weight was crushing her so she couldn’t move and when he saw that she was awake he got off of her, she said. She then went to get her boyfriend, who had been outside on the porch making a phone call.

    The boyfriend immediately called a friend to come get the couple out of her home, she said. He also called her parents, who drove her to the hospital, where a nurse performed an exam and took a rape kit.

    Cops showed up at the hospital and she reported the rape to them.

    Police immediately questioned Regan, 42, a former Army sergeant and Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, and he denied having sex with her, but told cops “he wished he had,” according to court records.

    Delays in the case continued for more than three years until November 2012, when a warrant application was submitted and Regan’s DNA was finally taken. Regan was free and living in the same town as the terrified victim, who saw him out at restaurants and at stores, she said.

    On Feb. 23, 2015, six years after the attack, a 12-person jury finally convicted Regan of first-degree rape. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

    The victim recalled her nightmare waiting for justice.

    As the New York State Police and Lawrence County District Attorney’s Office investigated, the case dragged without an arrest. New investigators were assigned to her case at least three or four times. Prosecutors kept telling her they still hadn’t gotten Regan’s DNA, she said.

    Andrew Regan, an Army war veteran, was convicted of a 2009 rape in 2015 and served eight years of a 12-year sentence before his conviction was overturned.

    The prosecutors blamed delays on “incompetence,” according to the court record. It wasn’t made clear whose incompetence they were citing.

    “I was frustrated that nobody was doing anything and that nothing was happening,” she said. “I felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously.”

    Regan filed an appeal and on March 16, Wilson and the six member Court of Appeals vacated the conviction in a 4-2 ruling, citing “inexplicable delays” that violated Regan’s right to a speedy trial. He was sprung from prison that day.

    In the majority opinion, Wilson wrote the decision would protect “vital societal interests” and that the legal system must spur “prosecutors to take crime seriously and give all parties the prompt closure they need to move on with their lives.”

    He blamed the delay on prosecutors, writing that police had “complainant’s sworn statement and witness interviews immediately; the only missing evidence was the DNA evidence from defendant, which could have been obtained with speed and ease.”

    But in a strongly-worded dissenting opinion, Judge Madeline Singas argued that “if law enforcement negligently delays rape investigations, women’s voices will continue to be stifled, rapists held unaccountable, and jury verdicts discarded.”

    The victim was floored by Regan’s release four years early.

    She slammed Hochul for choosing Wilson as her nominee for chief judge of the Court of Appeals — a move critics said was meant to appease left-wing Democrats who sunk her first choice, centrist appellate Judge Hector LaSalle, in February. He would have been the state’s first Latino in the seat.

    “With all the changes that she’s trying to make to make the world better for sex assault victims, she’s definitely not making the right choice by picking this judge,” said the woman of Wilson.

    This could harm rape victims especially, and maybe people who are being protected by law enforcement because of corruption.

    This doctrine of delayed prosecution existed before, but was more limited

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  245. The centrists are seizing every opportunity to miss an opportunity. There is a vast political gulf between Trump and Biden, and its wider in 2024 than in 2020.

    Choices:

    1. A man who is campaigning on the idea of retribution. It’s not about “owning” the liberals, it’s about driving them from public life by any means necessary.

    2. A man who wants to create a government-run economy with central planning and ruinous taxes on those competing with government, backed by a party unified in that desire.

    We can do better.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  246. Kevin M, #249: I wish that EM spent ALL of his time on SpaceX instead of silliness on Twitter. But that’s me.

    The #ElonH8 I see on social media is horrific. It’s as if no one can give the person any credit at all for leading us toward something that our current NASA sure could not have.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  247. And no, I will not post quotes from movies and such.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  248. Kevin M, #253: I agree wholeheartedly. And it looks as if both Team D and Team R are more and more about statism, hypocrisy, and retribution.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  249. Trump is most in danger of being indicted on charges of defying a subpoena/obstructing justice because he reportedly went through the papers in his possession deciding which ones (that the lawyers said complied with the subpoena?) and took out the ones he wanted to still keep. He also lied to his lawyers about something not specified.

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  250. Senator Tim Scott is basically a completely conventional Republican (and that has been impacted by Trump’s issues)

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/12/our-nations-soul-put-to-the-test-we-must-fight-the-liberal-agenda

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  251. In her deal with the legislative super majority, snd the radical left Democrats, Kathy Hochul is amenable to trying to get a do-over of the Congressional redistricting. (which may be one reason the legislature wants its own Court of Appeals judges)

    https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2023/attorney-general-james-and-governor-hochul-urge-court-order-independent

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/15/new-york-redistricting-lawsuit-could-end-gop-house-majority

    In June, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court in Albany will hear arguments in a case seeking to overturn New York’s current district lines and have them redrawn by the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission for the remainder of the decade.

    Any new map even vaguely resembling the state’s old partisan gerrymander — which was repeatedly tossed by courts — would almost certainly result in Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island) and Rep. George Santos (R-Long Island) being ousted by Democrats. Rep. Nick Lalota (R-Long Island), Rep. Mike Lawler (R-Rockland) and Rep. Brandon Williams (R-Syracuse) could also be in big trouble, GOP insiders say.

    They argue that the 2022 redistricting was only for that election.

    Now the 2014 amendments say clearly that protecting incumbents cannot be a reasson for drawing lines.\\Hochul also tried to name a replacement for the judge getting a promotion, buut the state constitution says judges must be nominated separately, Each time she gets a list of seven names.

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  252. 254, Elon Musk is alittle bit too quick to react and repeat the latest right wing meme. He was so sure that Bill Lee had been killed by a stranger (because that’s what everybody said) rather than by someone he knew, like in a Columbo story line. Apparently he thought the married Lee was interested in his sister)

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  253. Airman Teixeira’s posts had languished online for months

    Since December or January. The Washington Post said there were altogether 300 of them (not 50 or 100 as had been widely reported)

    He started by typing out paragraphs \(off a screen)

    He resorted to whole documents because he was more afraid of being seen typing than of smuggling out printouts.

    He did it because he could not gety them to pay attention to his information in their soeculation.

    A lot of people, having no fear of prosecution and perhaps anxious to clear their reputation, talked freely to reporters and must have sent them screenshots and/or downloads..

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  254. The documents probably lasted longer online on Disord and elsewhere than theory did in the classified system because what Texeiera had access to was a system for circulating the latest current intelligence (not raw though).

    Sammy Finkelman (b434ee)

  255. @95

    @ whembly,

    Having a wealthy friend, showering you with gifts like that isn’t illegal.

    Furthermore, no one has shown me the actual corruption that is being round-a-bout alleged. Nor has there been ANY court cases that Thomas had to participate in that affect his rich friend.

    Just another faux-controversy to bring down a successful conservative black man.

    What is in question isn’t whether it’s a violation that a wealthy friend showered a SCJ with gifts, or whether any court cases that Thomas has participated in have affected Crow. What is in question, as I read it, is whether he violated reporting requirements concerning the sale of the homes. According to the report: A federal disclosure law passed after Watergate requires justices and other officials to disclose the details of most real estate sales over $1,000. Thomas never disclosed his sale of the Savannah properties…The disclosure form Thomas filed for that year also had a space to report the identity of the buyer in any private transaction, such as a real estate deal. Additionally: Federal officials, including Supreme Court justices, are required to disclose the details of most real estate transactions with a value of over $1,000. Thomas would not be required to report the purchase if the property were his or his spouse’s primary personal residence, but this stipulation does not apply to this purchase, which Thomas did not report.

    By labeling this “just another faux-controversy to bring down a successful conservative black man,” you are politicizing what does not appear to be a political attack but rather a simple violation of requirements for SJC and federal officials. If there is a reporting requirement that Thomas violated, it would be just that, and not a political hit job, not a smear, not a left-right matter, and not an attempt to bring down a conservative Black man. There is a danger in assuming that any controversy (against one’s team) is just political theater or an attempt to take them down because what if the violation is proven?

    (Note: I don’t doubt that ProPublica has been digging into Thomas for some time. He’s long been target-ripe. Are they digging into Kagan or Sotomayor in the same way? Probably not. Or perhaps there hasn’t been anything on the radar that compels a further look. I don’t know. Regardless of the motivation, it appears that they’ve they’ve uncovered a reporting violation by Thomas, then that becomes its own issue.)

    Dana (1225fc) — 4/15/2023 @ 11:02 am

    I’m calling out the bad faith reporting here Dana.

    As you surmised later, ProPublica isn’t going after Kaga or Sotomayor because they’re an extreme partisan outfit that everyone should question their “conclusions”.

    If indeed, Thomas failed to meet some reporting requirement, then he should rectify it as soon as possible.

    But the framing here by those on the left that this is so bad, that he need to step down or be impeached, is laughable.

    And because this is only directed at Thomas, as stand by my “just another faux-controversy to bring down a successful conservative black man”. Really, that should be everyone’s reflective response to any attack on Thomas, until irrefutable evidence says otherwise.

    whembly (d116f3)

  256. @135 Pat, I do think NJRob is being a bit unfair, however…

    I think it is fair to summarize NJRob’s position here as: “Dana has slandered me by saying I support Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom I support.”

    I do think this is an unfair characterization.

    Are you saying, that one cannot separate a politician’s policies from the person.

    Are we only ever allowed to like a certain policy position only if we support the politician?

    whembly (d116f3)

  257. @161

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f) — 4/15/2023 @ 7:28 pm
    Re: A-10 Warhog

    Hey Rip, I want to point something out.

    This, is an example of a propaganda by those who wants to retire the A-10. Either by the Airforce, or F-35 lobbyist or some other lobbying entities wanting a larger piece of the pie.

    I cannot find the article, but the Air Force/Congress purposely made it so that it would be extremely difficult for the Marines/Army to take over that platform, as they absolutely love the CAS these Warhogs provided.

    whembly (d116f3)

  258. @173

    Calling this “gender-affirming care” is like calling abortion “medical care.”

    (I lament the lack of a preview in advance)

    Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/16/2023 @ 8:11 am

    One of the most destructive argument about this “gender-affirming care” is the fact that puberty blockers only “delays” the puberty.

    That is 100% false, as the human body has a finite “window” for the body to change/grow during puberty.

    The other, is the concept of informed consent. This concept is being obliterated by these folks.

    whembly (d116f3)

  259. @177

    @175, why do you think the AMA and APA may disagree with you? Do you feel you have a deep understanding of the topic and are trying to read more to understand the other side? There is evil in the world and there are well-educated people who can be wrong….but why should you be the last say on how someone’s kid gets treated for a complex condition? How confident are you that your opinion should purvail in all situations? Would you feel bad if someone commits suicide because their treatment is terminated?

    AJ_Liberty (8114a6) — 4/16/2023 @ 8:37 am

    AJ… the AMA and APA’s own behaviors during COVID should disabuse you of the notion that these groups are anything but political organizations.

    Furthermore, the AMA/APA don’t “speak” for everyone in the industry, and they have more than their fair share of detractors.

    whembly (d116f3)

  260. @201

    Again, your assumption is that the doctors are flying blind and caught up in a fad
    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 4/16/2023 @ 11:58 am

    I think by and large, this is true.

    I work with doctors, pharmacists and whole swath of clinicians at my day job. Just because they’re highly credentialed, doesn’t mean they’re also highly principled.

    These are people just like you and me, who can come from a whole swath of political persuasion.

    Furthermore, there’s a massive financial incentive to participant in gender-affirming treatments, as it creates a permanent class of patients that would need near-constant treatment.

    But, if you don’t want to even thing about the financial incentives… just look at medical history – which is a graveyard littered with “good ideas” at the time that only made things worse.

    whembly (d116f3)

  261. @217

    The only way A-10s can be successfully used in Ukraine right now is have to American pilots fly them; but of course the aircraft would still be vulnerable to Russian anti-aircraft systems.

    Rip Murdock (b6f09f) — 4/16/2023 @ 2:49 pm

    I think the arguments for/against the A-10s is mostly missing the point.

    The role of the A-10 is NOT the same as the F-35s.

    Could the F-35s do the job as the A-10s? Probably.

    Could the A-10s match the F-35s? No.

    The F-35s (and F-22s) main role is to maintain air superiority. Once that is established, then other platform, like the A-10s, can proved the CAS that the infantry division desires.

    With respect to Ukraine, could they ever get to the point have having air superiority? I think the answer to THAT question will drive whether or not the A-10s would be a good fit. Personally, I don’t think they need A-10s, they simply need more modern planes, (ie, F-16s) as those platforms can give the Migs a run.

    whembly (d116f3)

  262. Whembly:

    This, is an example of a propaganda by those who wants to retire the A-10. ……
    …….
    I think the arguments for/against the A-10s is mostly missing the point.

    1. The Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 for decades, particularly since the 2010s, see the links in my previous posts.

    2. Do you think the Ukrainians, without US training and experience, can successfully use the A-10?

    3. Actually, the F-35 and F-16s are multirole aircraft, and part of their mission is close air support (and least the US Air Force thinks so).

    Anyway, its a moot point, as the Administration will not be transferring A-10s to anywhere except the boneyard. see post 222.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  263. The other, is the concept of informed consent. This concept is being obliterated by these folks.

    When the negative possibilities are denounced as “transphobia” it makes actual discussions difficult. This is just another way that corrupt “scientists” (read: politicians in lab coats) attempt to prohibit backtalk.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  264. @267, I agree that some of this is driven by ideology. Again, my gut impulse is like you and Kevin that kids, even ones with serious emotional problems, should not be experimented on….especially since a lot of teens are dealing with stuff, fitting in and dealing with their bodies. The parent in me would want to exhaust every avenue before going the pharmalogical or surgical route. I can hardly imagine a case where a child would absolutely know that modifying or mutilating their body was the right call. Even adults who have “sex change” operations seem to have mixed results. Is there a best practice? Does the research really point toward a certain therapy? I don’t know which gives me a little pause about following the mob….either of them. I think Hutchinson’s view changed when he met with therapists and tran sufferers (for lack of a better term)…and got more perspective. He does not impress me as being gullible or rash. I would like to hear more voices that are smart and comfortably away from the reactionary extremes. I certainly would like extreme measures limited to truly extreme situations. Maybe bans aren’t correct and stricter guidance/approval processes are what is needed.

    AJ_Liberty (5f05c3)

  265. Actually, the F-35 and F-16s are multirole aircraft, and part of their mission is close air support (and least the US Air Force thinks so).

    There is no way that anyone will use a $75 million F-35 in a place where it can be defeated by a WW2-era AA gun. Less likely still is using a $140 million F-22.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  266. Is there a best practice?

    “The only winning move is not to play.”

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  267. The Dominion v. Fox Defamation Trial Has Been Delayed:

    ……..
    Judge Davis took the bench Monday morning to address the delay but provided no new details, saying the brief postponement wasn’t unusual. “This is not a press conference,” he said.

    Fox has made a late push to settle the dispute with Dominion Voting Systems out of court, people familiar with the situation said Sunday.

    Dominion has been seeking $1.6 billion in damages but appears to have softened its claims. An April 14 email from Dominion to Fox, attached to a new Fox legal filing on Sunday, indicated that Dominion wouldn’t present a jury with claims for alleged lost profits. In its original 2021 lawsuit, Dominion sought lost-profits damages of not less than $600 million.
    ……..
    Media organizations enjoy robust protections under the First Amendment, making defamation cases difficult for plaintiffs to win. Most lawsuits don’t even make it to trial, prompting some to argue that modern precedent makes it too difficult for businesses or individuals to vindicate their reputations in court.

    Legal observers say the Dominion case could prove to be a notable counterexample. The company has come to the eve of trial riding momentum: Judge Davis has already concluded that Fox News and Fox Business did in fact broadcast false claims about Dominion, voiced by both network hosts and Trump associates, including Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who appeared as guests.

    The judge has also said Fox had a credibility problem and questioned whether the company failed to provide required disclosures and information in the litigation. Fox denies wrongdoing.
    ………
    Wall Street analysts said that while Fox could absorb a substantial financial penalty, that might limit its flexibility to engage in share buybacks. “They can afford it, but of course there’s other things that they’d rather do with that cash,” said Joseph Bonner, a senior analyst at Argus Research.

    Fox had just over $4 billion in cash when it last reported quarterly earnings back in February. …….
    ………


    Just negotiating how big a check Fox needs to write.

    Related:

    Former president Donald Trump offered some unconventional legal advice to Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch on the eve of the Fox News-Dominion Voting Systems trial.
    ………

    “FOX NEWS IS IN BIG TROUBLE IF THEY DO NOT EXPOSE THE TRUTH ON CHEATING IN THE 2020 ELECTION. THEY SHOULD DO WHAT’S RIGHT FOR AMERICA. WHEN RUPERT MURDOCH SAYS THAT THERE WAS NO CHEATING IN LIGHT OF THE MASSIVE PROOF THAT WAS THERE, IT IS RIDICULOUS AND VERY HARMFUL TO THE FOX CASE,” argued Trump, before addressing Murdoch directly. “RUPERT, JUST TELL THE TRUTH AND GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. THE ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLLEN…YOU KNOW IT, & SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE!”

    Trump’s mid-morning missive on Monday followed a 2:39 AM post in which he submitted that

    “IF FOX WOULD FINALLY ADMIT THAT THERE WAS LARGE SCALE CHEATING & IRREGULARITIES IN THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, WHICH WOULD BE A GOOD THING FOR THEM, & FOR AMERICA, THE CASE AGAINST THEM, WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED AT ALL, WOULD BE GREATLY WEAKENED.”

    “BACK UP THOSE PATRIOTS AT FOX INSTEAD OF THROWING THEM UNDER THE BUS,” continued the former president.
    ………

    With advice like that who needs lawyers.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  268. There is no way that anyone will use a $75 million F-35 in a place where it can be defeated by a WW2-era AA gun. Less likely still is using a $140 million F-22.

    Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/17/2023 @ 9:03 am

    Yet you want to send Ukrainians A-10s in the same environment. F-35 avionics allow them to operate the CAS mission at greater distances from and higher than an A-10 can.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  269. Kevin M:

    What do you think of Tim Scott’s abortion position?

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  270. @270 Whembly:

    This, is an example of a propaganda by those who wants to retire the A-10. ……
    …….
    I think the arguments for/against the A-10s is mostly missing the point.

    1. The Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 for decades, particularly since the 2010s, see the links in my previous posts.

    Yeah, I know. But the weird thing about this is that the Air Force won’t let the Army take over the A-10 platforms. Why is that?

    2. Do you think the Ukrainians, without US training and experience, can successfully use the A-10?

    Probably. But only if we build *new* A-10s. (yes there were/are plans with actual mfr lines only needing a few months to prepare).

    But you and I know this will never happen.

    3. Actually, the F-35 and F-16s are multirole aircraft, and part of their mission is close air support (and least the US Air Force thinks so).

    F-16s, yes can provide CAS.

    They’re not going to use F-35s for sustained CAS.

    The advantage of the A-10 is they can loiter providing CAS for much longer than even the F-15s/F-35s. That’s why the ground forces are such a fan of that platform.

    Anyway, its a moot point, as the Administration will not be transferring A-10s to anywhere except the boneyard. see post 222.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 4/17/2023 @ 8:57 am

    Agreed. They should be sending F-16/18 as soon as feasible imo.

    whembly (d116f3)

  271. What do you think of Tim Scott’s abortion position?

    On Wednesday, Scott dodged questions as to whether he would support a federal abortion prohibition, such as a 15-week ban introduced by his colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), when pressed by both national and local Iowa media.

    Right here you see the MSM recasting the world-standard 15-week limitation as a “ban.”

    .”If I were president of the United States, I would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation that they can get through Congress,” Scott added, regarding a federal ban.

    “Even if that was six weeks?” the reporter clarified.

    “I’m not going to talk about six or five or seven or ten,” Scott replied.

    Exactly correct. The reporters are playing a game of “let’s you and him fight.” Speculative answers do nothing useful, unless you are an opponent running attack ads.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  272. Yet you want to send Ukrainians A-10s in the same environment.

    The A-10 is a flying tank. It is very hard to shoot down. They were quite successful against Saddam Hussein in 2004. Now, sure, it would help if the Ukrainians also had air superiority, but that is actually a separate topic and the issues of training don’t disappear.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  273. The advantage of the A-10 is they can loiter providing CAS…..

    As can drones and Army helicopters, which more maneuverable than A-10s.

    A-10 training takes up to a year, so I doubt the Ukrainians can learn it on their own, without crashing quite a few and killing their pilots.

    Since the production of A-10s ended in the 1980s, and the tooling destroyed (a standard practice) there will be no new A-10s.

    I understand the fascination with the A-10s, it looks really cool when that Gatling gun fires, but it has never really been flown in a heavily contested environment against a peer enemy. As Kevin M has said, if you’re not going to fly a F-35 in “where it can be defeated by a WW2-era AA gun” why would you fly a slower, fatter target like an A-10?

    We can go back and forth forever about this, but it really is a moot point.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  274. Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/17/2023 @ 9:29 am

    Or take a stand, like Ron DeSantis. Scott comes off wishy washy.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  275. The A-10 is a flying tank. It is very hard to shoot down. They were quite successful against Saddam Hussein in 2004.

    Air dominance is key. The US dominated Iraqi and Afghan air space. Ukrainian air space is not dominated by anyone. Also, the anti-aircraft missile environment is far different now than nearly 20 years ago. And the A-10 needs to fly low and slow to hit its targets.

    As I said, unless Congress directs the Administration to give Ukraine A-10s, they are headed to the boneyard.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  276. @245. Why is Elon Musk calling a vehicle that can, at best, go to Mars, a Starship ?

    Poetic license, most likely, Sammy. Why does SpaceX call their Dragons ‘capsules’ when the more appropriate term is ‘spacecraft’? Why did Von Braun label his series of heavy lift LVs ‘Saturn’ as they were engineered for moon flights? Why was the U.S. moon program named ‘Apollo’ when that mythological figure flew his chariot to the sun? Go figure.

    DCSCA (55fcc7)

  277. 53 years ago today, April 17, 1970– the ‘odyssey’ triumphantly concludes:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX8-Vmys-Fk&t=10s

    “We show you on the mains.” – Dr. Joe Kerwin, Capcom

    DCSCA (55fcc7)

  278. @255. “Does he look like the kinda guy who’d put doo doo in the capsule?” – Jack Ridley [Levon Helm] ‘The Right Stuff’ 1983

    DCSCA (55fcc7)

  279. @277. It’s the same as DeSantis going Kramden on Ukraine:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IH7-qcp8nA

    DCSCA (55fcc7)

  280. Infantry are adjusting to a new world of close air support being delivered from miles away, rather than from an airplane that flies right overhead that they can hear and see. Back when bombs were dumber, the higher the drop, the more likely the chances the infantry would be hit by friendly fire. The new doctrine is nearly 100% reliant on technology. I think A10 gives a comfort of participation on nearly the same level as infantry that can be summed up as their “here comes the cavalry” moment. F16 or f18 doing their passes do the same thing for morale.

    steveg (7e48ca)

  281. Judge Davis has already concluded that Fox News and Fox Business did in fact broadcast false claims about Dominion, voiced by both network hosts and Trump associates, including Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who appeared as guests.

    There’s no jury?

    Sammy Finkelman (036909)

  282. What is in question, as I read it, is whether he violated reporting requirements concerning the sale of the homes.

    That was the follow-up accusation, delayed so that Thomas’s defenders would look bad. If I hssv this right. The initial accusation was that he didn’t report gifts (of trips and hospitality – no cash) The reporting requirements had changed about that.

    Sammy Finkelman (036909)

  283. Here’s a small dent in alleviating the housing shortage in Frisco. I doubt the NIMBYs there will approve it.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  284. Or take a stand, like Ron DeSantis. Scott comes off wishy washy.

    No, Scott comes off smarter, since there is nothing at all he can do as a Senator. I hope that he avoids the Cruz/Rubio type of in-debate squabbles over who supported what amendments to what bills.

    DeSantis was stupid to sign that bill, which will be overturned by the state court anyway. It puts him firmly in the “Can’t get elected nationally” camp of the GOP aspirants.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  285. Here’s a small dent in alleviating the housing shortage in Frisco. I doubt the NIMBYs there will approve it.

    I favor destroying SF housing and replacing it with parks where the “unhoused” can live.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  286. When the MSM is calling modest restrictions on abortion “bans” only an idiot would answer their questions. It should be a given that the press will just use part of any answer to cast further bad light.

    DeSantis signed the 6-week bill because it would get him press attention. Ne doesn’t care that they will lie about him, he just wants his name spelled right. He’s using Trump’s strategy of acting out for attention that has been working for Trump since childhood.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  287. “A key figure in the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” campaign has apologized after being accused of asking teenage boys for sexual pictures.

    Ali Alexander has become one of the most ubiquitous figures in the MAGA movement. Trump himself reportedly requested that Alexander speak at his rally before the riot, with his appearance only quashed by a last-minute intervention from Trump’s aides. But this week, Alexander stands at the center of a scandal that raises questions about how powerful men in the far-right treat their younger acolytes.”

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/stop-the-steal-organizer-ali-alexander-apologizes-after-being-accused-of-asking-teen-boys-for-sexual-pics

    Article doesn’t mention if he’s trans or a drag performer.

    Davethulhu (fe2f72)

  288. Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/17/2023 @ 12:18 pm

    No, Scott comes off smarter, since there is nothing at all he can do as a Senator.

    He’s saying there’s nothing he can do as president except either to sign or not sign bills, and he says he’ll sign any anti-abortion bill that can pass Congress.

    It is not quite true that a president’s position affects nothing – since he can go to court, and affect various regulations.

    We we see it now with the first anti-abortion pill(which sounds like it is mostly to prevent discomfort, or make the abortion go easier and reduce the risk of other medical intervention.

    The plaintiffs are being hit on standing.

    I hope that he avoids the Cruz/Rubio type of in-debate squabbles over who supported what amendments to what bills.

    That’s all right, on that and other issues.

    But we need to know background knowledge, executive ability, ability to pick people, and ability to think (hopefully)

    (Trump was actually good at picking people, by although he mostly followed a heuristic – almost always pick from among the most right wing persons who were generally respected by their peers and most ofthe more conservative Republican Senators, partly because most of his nominees needed Senate confirmation.

    The need for Senate confirmation shouldn’t be ignored as an important factor in the way the Trump Administration turned out and it affected even jobs for which Senate confirmation was not needed because the same procedure was used for finding them .

    And also, of course, that they wouldn’t criticize him.

    He made a few mistakes like Rex Tillerson.

    Trump might not do something similar given a second try.

    DeSantis was stupid to sign that bill, which will be overturned by the state court anyway.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  289. DeSantis was stupid to sign that bill, which will be overturned by the state court anyway

    DeSantis thought he was smart.

    Sign the bill, but do it as quietly as possible – no press, just fly back to Florida, sign the bill and leave)

    He figured that if he didn’t sign it he would be lambasted by anti-abortion people, but they didn’t need for the bill to get any attention, while if he called attention to it he’d be criticized by people who thought the bill went too far.

    It puts him firmly in the “Can’t get elected nationally” camp of the GOP aspirants.

    DeSantis was trying to attract the least attention to the question.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  290. No, Scott comes off smarter, since there is nothing at all he can do as a Senator.

    Which doesn’t explain why in the past Congress he co-sponsored and voted for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  291. 275.

    Donald Trump

    …THE ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLLEN…YOU KNOW IT, & SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE!”

    Therehe goes again.Not ony saying that the electon was stolen, but that everyone agrees (Hillary would say everyone who has looked into it.rump leaves out this qualification from his lies.

    It is, or was, theoretically possible, that Trump could believe that the election was stolen. But not that everybody believes so.

    He uses the word “rigged” to include possibly illegitimate changes in election laws. But the person who made these changes affect the election outcome was chiefly Donald Trump himself.

    Except in Florida.

    There, he told his people to vote absentee by mail because the Florida Republican Party had things well in hand.

    https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/08/04/trump-reverses-himself-says-voting-by-mail-in-florida-is-fine

    Asked why Florida is ok for mail ballots, but other states aren’t, Trump replied: “Florida’s got a great Republican governor,” a reference to his political ally, Gov. Ron DeSantis….

    After claiming inaccurately for weeks that mail voting is rife with fraud, President Donald Trump is now backing off his attacks on mail ballots in his home state.

    “Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True,” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

    Trump’s tweet — in stark contrast to numerous others in recent weeks warning of a rigged election — comes as Republican mail ballot registration lags behind Democrats in Florida ahead of the November election, which will be held under the cloud of the novel coronavirus pandemic….

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  292. There’s no jury?

    Sammy Finkelman (036909) — 4/17/2023 @ 11:37 am

    There will be to decide if Fox’s broadcasts constituted “actual malice.”

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  293. RIP

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/world/europe/benjamin-b-ferencz-dead.html

    Benjamin B. Ferencz, Last Surviving Nuremberg Prosecutor, Dies at 103

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  294. Rip Murdock @101.

    Why no jury about the underlying fact?

    If Fox stipulated it, why was it necessary for the judge to rule?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  295. When the MSM is calling modest restrictions on abortion “bans” only an idiot would answer their questions. It should be a given that the press will just use part of any answer to cast further bad light.

    They are bans against abortions after certain time periods, six, 15, 20, or whatever weeks. I’m not sure what else you could call them.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  296. Davethulhu (fe2f72) — 4/17/2023 @ 12:33 pm

    Article doesn’t mention if he’s trans or a drag performer.

    It says:

    Alexander, who has described himself as bisexual in the past, added that he was “battling with same-sex attraction.”

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  297. The new Florida law, I think allows abortions up to six weeks after conception (four weeks after a missed period), with abortion allowed under the usual conditions, (rape or incest, backed up by a police report or restraining order) up to 15 weeks.

    It is set up to be another test case. It only takes effect if the current 15 week law is upheld.

    30 days after the Florida Supreme Court either

    1) upholds the 15-week ban from last year,

    2) reinterprets the privacy clause in the State Constitution or revisits prior cases to decide that the clause does not apply to abortion rights.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  298. Why no jury about the underlying fact?

    If Fox stipulated it, why was it necessary for the judge to rule?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 4/17/2023 @ 1:11 pm

    Fox didn’t stipulate it, the court ruled on a Dominion motion for summary judgement, which he granted on all the issues except whether Fox committed “actual malice.”

    ……….
    “The statements at issue were dramatically different than the truth,” Davis said in a summary judgment ruling, which denied Fox’s effort to throw out the case as well as Dominion’s request for a victory without a jury. “In fact, although it cannot be attributed directly to Fox’s statements, it is noteworthy that some Americans still believe the election was rigged.”

    Fox’s failure to reveal extensive evidence contradicting the fraud claims “indicates that its reporting was not disinterested,” the judge wrote.
    ………
    In methodically going through each side’s arguments, Davis said neither Fox nor Dominion had presented a convincing argument for him to rule on whether or not the network acted with malice.

    “These are genuine issues of material fact and therefore must be determined by a jury,” he said.

    Davis denied summary judgment to Dominion on whether Fox Corp., the news network’s parent company, was liable for the statements being aired — meaning the corporate executives’ responsibility will have to be settled at trial.
    ……..
    Davis ruled that the statements Dominion had challenged constitute defamation “per se” under New York law. That means Dominion did not have to prove damages to establish liability by Fox.
    ……..

    See also here:

    “While the Court must view the record in the light most favorable to Fox, the record does not show a genuine issue of material fact as to falsity,” Davis wrote in his ruling. “Through its extensive proof, Dominion has met its burden of showing there is no genuine issue of material fact as to falsity. Fox therefore had the burden to show an issue of material fact existed in turn. Fox failed to meet its burden. The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true.” (emphasis in original)

    Source Summary judgement ruling.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  299. Shouldn’t it be an issue of fact if Fox was actually endorsing the allegations as it pertained to Dominion? (it clearly wanted to avoid contradicting them)

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  300. Shouldn’t it be an issue of fact if Fox was actually endorsing the allegations as it pertained to Dominion? (it clearly wanted to avoid contradicting them)

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 4/17/2023 @ 1:48 pm

    That’s the “actual malice” part, that Fox knew, or should have known, the allegations against Dominion where false, but allowed them to be broadcast anyways.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  301. Chairman Xi sounds as thin-skinned as Trump.

    Two men were arrested on Monday and charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government in connection with a secret police outpost they operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, federal officials announced.

    The men are accused of using the police outpost to intimidate Chinese dissidents living in the United States, on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. Charges were also unveiled in two related cases: one against 34 Chinese police officers accused of harassing Chinese nationals who lived in the New York area, and another against eight Chinese officials accused of directing an employee of a U.S.-based tech company to remove dissidents from the platform.

    Paul Montagu (8f0dc7)

  302. https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/insights/legal/practical-guidance-journal/b/pa/posts/summary-judgment-making-the-motion-ny

    …Summary judgment enables a party to subject its adversary’s claims or defenses to the scrutiny of the presiding judge, who may resolve some or all of the issues in the case. Properly utilized, summary judgment motions save significant time and expense by limiting the scope of the case or disposing of it entirely. But making a summary judgment motion is itself expensive and time consuming….

    ….Any party may move for summary judgment in any action.2 A court will grant summary judgment if, upon review of the record, the moving party sufficiently establishes the cause of action or defense at issue to warrant judgment in its favor as a matter of law.3 The court will deny summary judgment if any party shows “facts sufficient to require a trial on any issue of fact” unless the case qualifies for immediate trial.4

    Motions for summary judgment in New York state court follow a burden-shifting approach. First, the moving party must demonstrate that there is no triable issue of fact and that the party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.5 Once the moving party satisfies its initial burden, the burden shifts to the party opposing summary judgment to submit evidence that raises the possibility of a factual issue and/or that the moving party is not entitled to judgment as a matter of law.6

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  303. Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 4/17/2023 @ 1:55 pm

    Which is exactly what the Delaware court did.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  304. Xi is not think skinned. He is thorough. (but he actually has a small and inefficient secret police)

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/determined-to-flee-china-thousands-take-a-long-dangerous-route-to-the-southern-u-s-border-73acfbe9

    …Mr. Huang, 30 years old, said he had invested nearly $3,000 to become a certified fitness trainer. When Covid-19 hit in 2020, many gyms closed. After two jobless years, he was hired at an iPhone plant in central China in November but became involved in protests over contracts. He said he was let go after a scuffle with security guards.

    Police in his hometown in Hubei province called to ask him to come explain what happened. The call terrified Mr. Huang, who had been jailed for six months as an 18-year-old after what he says was a false charge that he solicited prostitutes. Worried he would go to jail again, he said he started to plan his departure.

    In China, a new hashtag—#zouxian, roughly translated as trek—started gaining popularity last year when some migrants posted footage of their journeys through Latin America on TikTok’s Chinese version, Douyin.

    [Yes, the whole thing is co-ordinated on Tik Tok]

    After stumbling upon the videos in December, Mr. Huang borrowed $13,000 from lenders online—a relatively simple process in a country accustomed to online payments and finance. The first obstacle was getting out of China. In the pandemic, China had restricted passport issuance to those who could show they needed it for study, work or business purposes. To get a passport, Mr. Huang paid money online for a fake acceptance letter made to look like it came from a college abroad.

    He obtained a visa to Turkey, lied to Chinese border officials that he was going there to survey restaurants [not the same story he used to get a passport] and was allowed to go abroad for the first time. In Istanbul, Mr. Huang said he sold his iPhone 13 and bought an outdated model that he thought wouldn’t attract robbers on the road. From there he flew to Ecuador, the only country along the Latin America route that lets Chinese enter without a visa.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  305. 312. But what about the defense they weren’t endorsing the lies about Dominion?

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  306. No, Scott comes off smarter, since there is nothing at all he can do as a Senator.

    Meh. ‘Hamlet on the Hudson’ DeSantis vs. Canned Scott is Kramden vs., Norton. Choose.
    Pompeo, literally the smartest person gathering splinters on the GOP bench- the Alice Kramden of the trio– chose to stay there and sit this pie fight out.

    The quickest way to flame out Donald Trump is let him win the nom this cycle and watch him lose again. And should he win the general thanks to Joey’s incompetence, it’s only 4 years and the #2 spot holds the most value– as Haley well knows. Now suppose Joey doesn’t run? If he declares he stop being POTUS and has to be campaigning; if he cops a health excuse and doesn’t run, he’s instant lame duck and all hell will break loose for the D’s ferreting out a fresh rat to run who ain’t named Kamala. Ike presided at Columbia before he ran for POTUS. The fireplug in drag ‘teaches’ there now, too…

    DCSCA (d75834)

  307. It seems a judge could issue a summary judgement against Donald Trump on the same grounds, if anyone cared to sue him personally especially with regard to his claim that THE ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLLEN…YOU KNOW IT, & SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE!”

    Trump says that everyone who disputes that is lying.

    “EVERYONE” knows it.

    Of course Trump did not accuse any specific person or company of being guilty of election fraud. I don’t know if he ever mentioned Dominion himself.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  308. 312. But what about the defense they weren’t endorsing the lies about Dominion?

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146) — 4/17/2023 @ 2:06 pm

    The judge barred them.

    ……..
    ……..Dominion’s burden will be to convince a jury that people inside Fox acted with actual malice, meaning either that they knew the allegations they broadcast were false but did so anyway, or that they acted so recklessly they overlooked facts that would have proved them wrong.

    Fox has argued that while it understood many of the claims made by its guests about Dominion were false, they were still worth covering as inherently newsworthy. Fox’s lawyers have taken the position that there is nothing more newsworthy than claims by a former president of the United States that an election wasn’t credible.

    “Just because someone is newsworthy doesn’t mean you can defame someone,” he said, referring to pro-Trump lawyers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, who appeared repeatedly on Fox News and Fox Business in the weeks after the 2020 election and linked Dominion to various conspiracy theories.

    The judge admonished Fox’s lawyers, saying they cannot make the argument that the false statements about Dominion came from guests like Ms. Powell and not from Fox hosts. That argument is irrelevant, he said, because the fact remains that Fox is responsible as the broadcaster.

    “It’s a publication issue, not a who-said-it issue,” he said.

    Dan K. Webb, a lawyer representing Fox, explained that hosts would testify that they weren’t certain about the truth of the allegations but covered them because the former president and his lawyers said they could prove them.

    Judge Davis responded, “Just because they say it, doesn’t mean it’s true.”
    ………
    Fox has also made the argument that its actions were not defamatory because many hosts and guests said on the air that there was a lack of convincing evidence that suggested widespread voter fraud.
    ……..
    “You can’t absolve yourself of defamation by merely putting somebody on at another time to say something different,” he said.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  309. Fox News banned Trump legal team from air in December 2020.

    https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/31/business/fox-news-dominion-trump-legal-team/index.html

    Fox News swiftly banned then-President Donald Trump’s election-denying lawyers from appearing on the right-wing channel in December 2020 after being threatened with a defamation suit, a text message made public on Friday revealed.

    Dominion, however, has demanded a retraction, not just silence:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/dominion-fox-news-needs-retract-lies-2020-election-rcna74041

    Dominion: Fox News needs to ‘retract the lies and tell its audience the truth’

    In a new court filing, the voting machine company noted that the network hasn’t retracted any claims that it “rigged” the 2020 election.

    March 8, 2023, 8:27 PM EST
    By Dareh Gregorian and Jane C. Timm
    Fox News has acknowledged in court that its on-air claims that Dominion Voting Services “rigged” the 2020 election were false — but it still hasn’t acknowledged that to its audience, the voting machine company charged in a court filing Wednesday.

    After giving a platform to allies of former President Donald Trump falsely claiming Dominion “flipped” millions of votes to Joe Biden, the network “still refuses to level with its audience,” lawyers for Dominion said in papers filed in Delaware Superior Court.

    Dominion said that Fox has acknowledged in their own court filings and through testimony that there was no evidence to back the bogus claims of a number of Fox hosts and guests such as Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell.

    “Despite having conceded it was all a lie, and despite internal documents proving they knew it was a lie all along, Fox still will not retract the lies and tell its audience the truth,” the company argued, pointing a finger at Murdoch….

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  310. Mccurtain county OK. maggot officials being investigated for complaining that they are not being allowed to “lynch uppity blacks!” caught on tape. (DU)

    asset (ed82a4)

  311. It could be argued that Fox News gave the allegations too much credence.

    But where are you if there’s no difference between saying something yourself and a person being interviewed saying it?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  312. Santos needs to run (for now anyway) in order to raise money, to,among other things, refund money

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  313. 319. Where do they think they are? Mexico?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  314. Why settling the Dominion lawsuit is so imperative for Fox News

    ……….
    Fox News has countless reasons to settle. We’ll address three of them:

    1. Bad PR

    Every phase of this case has demonstrated the depravity of Fox News to the rest of the world. ……..

    While it’s possible the release of those materials means the network has already absorbed most of its public-relations pain, there’s no telling how an extended trial would play out. A few slip-ups by top Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson or Fox Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch could expose fresh instances of mismanagement and dishonesty.
    ………

    2. A skeptical judge

    Pretrial hearings last week were a disaster for Fox News. If Davis wasn’t criticizing the network’s lawyers for preparing backdoor arguments that might contradict his rulings, he was criticizing them for failing to tell him about Murdoch’s official title at Fox News or for withholding evidence from Dominion. ……
    Any worthwhile risk assessment by Fox News must contemplate the possibility that its lawyers would keep getting hammered by Davis in the jury’s presence.

    3. What would happen if Fox News, somehow, prevailed?

    Just suppose that Fox News’s lawyers convince the jury that the network, in broadcasting the false and damaging statements about Dominion, didn’t proceed with “actual malice.” …….

    ………A Fox News victory in Davis’s courtroom, accordingly, could be seen as enshrining the media’s right to lie. An appropriate statement on the courthouse steps would be: We are the media, and we can smear anyone we please.

    Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly stated his wish to revisit and possibly overturn Sullivan; Justice Neil M. Gorsuch has declared himself open to reconsidering it. …….

    Yet a Fox News victory in the case might well convince liberals, too, that the standard needs to go. If “actual malice,” after all, isn’t pliable enough to condemn Fox News’s conspiratorial treatment of Dominion, what good is this doctrine?
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  315. failing to tell him about Murdoch’s official title at Fox News or for withholding evidence from Dominion

    Rupert Murdoch’s technical title doesn’t measure his influence or how active he is. He’s more than the title – and less.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  316. In the Chicago mayorale lection (decided by 16,000 votes) the youth vote went overwhelmingly for the “progressive”

    What happened?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  317. Trump Civil Litigation Watch II:

    Former President Donald Trump has “no justification” for a “cooling off” period between his indictment and E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of rape, a federal judge ruled.

    In the ruling, Senior U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan noted that Trump “invited or provoked” some of the media coverage of his hush-money prosecution that he now cites as a reason for an adjournment. The judge added that the next month could shape up worse for the former president.
    ……..
    “Developments in at least one of these matters (the Fulton County investigation, the Mar-A-Lago and January 6 DOJ investigations, and New York Attorney General Letitia James lawsuit against the Trump Organization) as well as actions and statements by Mr. Trump in relation to any, may well give rise to intense publicity that, in some respects, Mr. Trump might claim to be prejudicial in this case,” the judge’s footnote reads. “Mr. Trump’s suggestion that a one-month trial postponement in this case would ensure the absence of any such developments in the period immediately preceding jury selection is not realistic.”
    ……….
    “The ‘heart of this litigation’ is whether Mr. Trump did or did not rape or sexually assault Ms. Carroll in a dressing room at a New York department store,” Kaplan wrote. “The apparent ‘heart’ of the New York State indictment is whether Mr. Trump falsified business records to cover up an alleged payment of ‘hush money’ to ‘Woman 2’ (presumably an adult movie performer, Stormy Daniels), to induce Woman 2 to keep quiet about an apparently consensual and adulterous sexual relationship she claims to have had with Mr. Trump and that Mr. Trump denies. To be sure, at a certain level of generality, both cases do indeed have something to do with ‘sex.’ But the ‘something’ that each has to do with it is dramatically different.”
    ………
    “It is difficult also to ignore the possibility that this latest eve-of-trial request for a postponement is a delay tactic by Mr. Trump, a concern the Court has discussed in previous rulings,” the ruling states. …….

    The trial in this case is scheduled to start on April 25th.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  318. Rupert Murdoch’s technical title doesn’t measure his influence or how active he is. He’s more than the title – and less.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 4/17/2023 @ 2:42 pm

    It was enough for the judge to impose sanctions.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  319. Oklahoma Governor Calls for Resignations After Threatening Audio Surfaces

    Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt called for the resignations of several officials of a county in the southeast corner of the state after a newspaper published surreptitiously recorded comments in which the officials allegedly discussed killing two of its reporters and expressed nostalgia for past decades when Black people were frequently lynched.

    Audio of parts of the conversation, which took place after a public meeting of McCurtain County Commissioners on March 6, was published by the McCurtain Gazette-News, which left a recording device in the meeting room, according to the newspaper. The publisher and his son, both of whom write for the paper, were the subject of the comments about killing reporters, the newspaper said.
    ……….
    The governor called for an investigation and the resignations of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning and Larry Hendrix, the jail administrator, who were identified by the newspaper as being in the room March 6 during the time the recording was made.
    ……….
    The newspaper said audio of the meeting had been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office. The FBI declined to comment. The Attorney General’s office said it had launched a probe into the situation, but declined to comment further.
    ………
    In the section of the recordings that the newspaper made public, people are heard discussing the hiring of hit men and the use of deep holes, ostensibly to hide the bodies of the two reporters, according to the newspaper. One person can be heard on the recording, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, saying he would run for sheriff “if it was back in the day when” someone would “take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell.” Chris Willingham and Bruce Willingham are both white.

    “Well, it’s not like that no more,” another person responds in the recording.

    “I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got,” one person is heard saying in the recording.

    Joey Senat, an associate professor of mass communication at Oklahoma State University, said recording a public meeting is legal in Oklahoma and that since the officials stayed in the same room and the room was ostensibly still open to the public, the officials likely wouldn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
    ………

    Appalling.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  320. 40 Officers of China’s National Police Charged in Transnational Repression Schemes Targeting U.S. Residents

    Two criminal complaints filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York were unsealed today in federal court in Brooklyn charging 44 defendants with various crimes related to efforts by the national police of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) – to harass Chinese nationals residing in the New York metropolitan area and elsewhere in the United States. The defendants, including 40 MPS officers and two officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), allegedly perpetrated transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC government, such as advocating for democracy in the PRC.
    ………
    “China’s Ministry of Public Security used operatives to target people of Chinese descent who had the courage to speak out against the Chinese Communist Party – in one case by covertly spreading propaganda to undermine confidence in our democratic processes and, in another, by suppressing U.S. video conferencing users’ free speech,” said Acting Assistant Director Kurt Ronnow of the FBI Counterintelligence Division. “We aren’t going to tolerate CCP repression – its efforts to threaten, harass, and intimidate people – here in the United States. The FBI will continue to confront the Chinese government’s efforts to violate our laws and repress the rights and freedoms of people in our country.”
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  321. I’m not sure what else you could call them.

    Regulation. Restrictions. Lots of words. Even a 6 week bill is not a ban (although its effect may be, as practitioners might not want to argue “was it 5 or 7 weeks?” in court).

    There is such a thing as a bad regulation, or an unworkable restriction. Europe has PROVEN that 15 weeks is workable and a compromise that holds. Six weeks is just political posturing, as it is unworkable, unjust and rides roughshod over liberties with very little cause. If you can set the bar at 6 weeks, zero weeks is not a huge step.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  322. Kevin D Williamson at the Dispatch gives a good argument as to why the GOP is poised to lose again:

    Meet the Whigs

    There are some Republicans who are pretty good at articulating what they’d do about abortion nationally if they had uncontested power, or if they had at the national level the kind of wide political latitude that Republicans enjoy in Texas, Florida, or Oklahoma. Explaining what they will do in a context in which Democrats get a vote, too—and in which Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans—they are not so good at. Partly this is because it is distasteful to engage in moral compromise on a life-and-death issue such as abortion, but in larger part this is because the idea of compromise with Democrats about anything is agonizing to them. It is not what they have organized their party and their individual careers to do.

    The ongoing abortion fight will create some real challenges for Republicans, beginning with Ron DeSantis. One year ago, the Florida governor signed a law severely restricting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy; now, the Florida legislature is poised to send him a bill that would narrow the abortion window to six weeks. The 12-to-15-week window is much closer to where Americans are on the issue, and it is closer to the norms in Western Europe—as a political matter, it is easier for Republicans to be able to point to abortion regulations that they can defensibly characterize as being no more radical than those of France. In a perfect world, there would be no abortion at all, but we live in this imperfect one, in which policy proposals that cannot be realized in the political environment that actually exists are not, properly speaking, political proposals at all, but are better characterized as philosophical exercises.

    Anti-abortion advocates who want to expand the range of the politically possible have a big job in front of us, one that does not begin with electing anti-abortion politicians (we have plenty of those) but with persuasion and consensus-building. Big, durable social changes require consensus—as the anti-abortion world knows at least as well as anybody else, even a brute-force imposition of policy by the Supreme Court, as in Roe, will eventually fail without genuine widespread social and political buy-in. That buy-in doesn’t have to be universal—I am writing for adults here—but it does have to be wide and deep.

    Read the whole thing. We are now at a place where neither party will compromise with the other, as their base will go ballistic. The base is unhappy even when they talk to their own centrist members. So we lurch from 51-49 to 49-51 and nothing gets done. There’s a reason why Congress’s approval rarely breaks 20%.

    At some point the system will break. Either we get a new party grabbing the unoccupied center 70% of the spectrum, or we get an Emperor who can make Congress hop when he says frog. We already saw one candidate for that. There are others.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  323. George Santos Says He Will Run for Re-election in 2024

    Well, he’s welcome to do it. If he wins again, it won’t be based on lies. Or at least not the same lies.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  324. Regulation. Restrictions. Lots of words.

    Euphuisms.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  325. Regulation. Restrictions. Lots of words.

    Euphemisms. Just like the word “choice.”

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  326. 335, 336: This is probably the weakest argument you have ever made.

    I ask for a vote.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  327. Europe has PROVEN that 15 weeks is workable…….

    How so? Have abortions declined compared to the period before the 15 week ban went into effect?

    Speaking of weak arguments.

    Rip Murdock (4b62ad)

  328. @AJ@272 My experience is that very few young teenagers are put on any kind of drugs or medical treatment. I do deal with the younger end, but over my almost 20 year career working with thousands of students, I only have had one student who started a medical transition via puberty blockers.

    @Sammy@306 Pregnancy is counted from the end of the last period, so 6 weeks pregnant is 2 weeks after a missed period. It isn’t unusual for women to be late or miss a period due to life stressors or health issues.

    Nic (896fdf)

  329. How so? Have abortions declined compared to the period before the 15 week ban went into effect?

    Not my point. It may be yours.

    By “workable” I mean “a socially accepted political compromise that has stood for years, and works as intended.”

    Now, you seem to be the flip side of the abortionists who saw Roe as the LAST WORD, and tried to make everyone agree with them by force of law. You have utterly no desire to argue, appeal or convince; you just want to shove YOUR position down their throats, as much a zealot as the leadership of NOW.

    The point of Dobbs was to find acceptable political solutions, and what we are seeing from abolitionists run amok is not that. It will be undone — and soon — but you seem to be willing to burn down the party to get your way, even if it’s just for a moment.

    Bah.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  330. @333 The problem the whig party had was southern wigs pro slavery and northern wigs opposed slavery to varying degrees. As for abortion your 70% is actually less then 20% as ross perot demonstrated in 1992. 40% are republicans who say democrats are gun grabbing commies! and 40% + are democrats they have won the popular vote all but once since 1992 who say republicans are white supremacistis and nazis! You gunners say you will never give up the second amendment and your gun will have to be pried out of your cold dead hand, yet you expect democrats to submit to the supreme court’s abortion ruling because democrat party doesn’t believe in anything. Since the 1960’s a minority of gun nuts have dominated the gun control issue winning elections and intimidating democrats. Now a MAJORITY of abortion rights democrats and independents will be intimidating republicans and winning elections on the abortion issue. 2022 was just the beginning.

    asset (d80ab1)

  331. @339, Nic, you listen to some people and you get the impression that johnsons are getting hacked off left and right, and that half of the student population is on puberty blockers. Again, it’s hard to get a sense of proportionality. Is this a legitimate reaction or just another example of the culture war on over drive? Is is worthwhile legislation if it only impacts a handful of kids?

    AJ_Liberty (8fe377)

  332. In the Chicago mayorale lection (decided by 16,000 votes) the youth vote went overwhelmingly for the “progressive”

    What happened?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 4/17/2023 @ 2:43 pm

    The CTU’s candidate had the great fortune of having 2 parent households out of Chicago during the system’s (and the Archdiocese’s) Spring Break, the same week as the election. Also J B Pritzkers unwitting Perfect-enemy-of-good enough conservative fellow travelers started mumbling that lifelong Democrat Vallas wouldn’t do much better anyway.

    urbanleftbehind (aedbaa)

  333. Is this a legitimate reaction or just another example of the culture war on over drive?

    Finally, kidnapping and child abuse now legal in Washington State. Other states to follow.

    A Washington state law that would remove parents’ ability to intervene in their children’s medical care in some circumstances cleared the House, paving the road for Gov. Jay Inslee to approve it.

    “The only thing [the bill] would do is cause harm by driving a wedge between vulnerable kids and their parents, at a time when a teen lacks the perception and judgment to make critical life-altering decisions,” Braun said. “A parent may not even know why the child ran away and could involve law enforcement or other groups in a desperate search… all the while going through an unnecessary emotional nightmare, imagining the worst about what might have happened.”

    Other states, including as California, are exploring laws that would limit the rights of parents. Some opponents of the bill have accused them of “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

    California filed a bill in March that allows adolescents to be admitted to a group home without parental agreement with clearance from school counselors. The bill is currently being considered in the State Senate.

    A counselor who testified against the bill said, “It is apparent that one result of this bill will be the removal of trans-identified children from the family home.”

    “In the dystopian nightmare we are in, if a parent doesn’t use the child’s chosen pronoun or name, they are labeled dangerous,” Pamela Garfield-Jaeger said in her testimony, according to Daily Signal.

    JF (aad514)

  334. Kevin,

    12 weeks is the accepted norm in most European nations.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  335. AJ,

    you get the impression that 12 year olds are getting raped and impregnated all the time in states that have limits on abortion. It’s not the case and is very rare.

    Why is that?

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  336. It all depends on who you believe is right.

    There is no compromise possible, except to let different parents decide differently in similar cases.

    Sammy Finkelman (ce06df)

  337. What is required in Washington State, and perhaps soon in California (even without a court order, usually needed, for instance, to require chemotherapy) is prohibited in Arkansas.

    The people who want to do “gender-affirming” care are wrong, and the increase in numbers, and contagious effect are a reducto ad absurdum.

    The tide is receding in the UK and other places, but here, the people who want to do it have control of the professional organizations.

    Sammy Finkelman (ce06df)

  338. Shelters for juvenile runaways are a good thing. A very good thing. So is medical treatment against the parents’ wishes when a child needs a blood transfusion and the parents are Old Testament fanatics.

    You know what’s a bad thing? National divorce. That’s a bad thing. A very bad thing.

    nk (1871f9)

  339. NJRob, you just don’t understand. The dismissive “culture war” label only applies to one side.

    JF (aad514)

  340. Maybe if Ohio had shelters for ten-year old girls whose mother is pimping them out to the lodger there might not be an abortion in Indiana. And you know what I’m talking about.

    nk (1871f9)

  341. And no school counselor’s or emergency room doctor’s recommendation is going to terminate nobody’s parental rights. All it will do is get a judge’s attention. That same day, maybe that same hour. While the kid has a safe space.

    But you all don’t like “safe space” either, right? It’s Leftspeak?

    nk (1871f9)

  342. Good article on mercy by one of my favorite writers.

    Time123 (e9d20b)

  343. nk (1871f9) — 4/18/2023 @ 7:15 am

    no the abortion would’ve been in Guatemala, and you know what I’m talking about

    but, do continue with your usual theater of the absurd

    JF (aad514)

  344. no the abortion would’ve been in Guatemala, and you know what I’m talking about

    No, I do not know what you are talking about. I know there was a ten-year old girl in Ohio, living at home with her “parental rights” holder, who went to Indiana for an abortion, and the “parental rights” holder spoke out in defense of the girl’s molester afterwards.

    but, do continue with your usual theater of the absurd

    And you with your war against 0.1% of children. If even that many. They’re the easiest target.

    nk (1871f9)

  345. 12 weeks is the accepted norm in most European nations.

    It varies. That’s the minimum, though. There are also major differences regarding exceptions (rape, fetal defects, etc). A good roundup on Wikipedia.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  346. So is medical treatment against the parents’ wishes when a child needs a blood transfusion and the parents are Old Testament fanatics.

    Indeed. And there are provisions for that now. These new laws are not about that. They are about allowing life-altering medical experimentation on children. Mengele would be so proud.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  347. There were provisions for that in 1977, when I was writting (habeas corpus) “parents” to Juvenile Court from Joliet Correctional Center to have their “rights” terminated.

    nk (1871f9)

  348. And you with your war against 0.1% of children. If even that many. They’re the easiest target.
    nk (1871f9) — 4/18/2023 @ 7:38 am

    how’s the weather up there on your pedestal?

    JF (69a706)

  349. It’s April in Chicago. Between 32 degrees with snow and 20 mph winds, and 60 degrees, sunny and mild, depending on the time of day.

    nk (1871f9)

  350. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Europe

    12 weeks Kevin. And that’s using lefty Wikipedia which only uses leftist sources like “the center for reproductive rights,” which only supports murdering the unborn so talk about a misnamed group.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  351. Chicago: Cloudy with a good chance of murder

    Colonel Haiku (be9b75)

  352. By “workable” I mean “a socially accepted political compromise that has stood for years, and works as intended.”

    As NJRob pointed out, most European countries allow elective abortions for shorter periods than 15 weeks. And I would debate that they have “stood for years.” France’s 14 weeks was enacted just last year; and in Germany abortion is illegal, but not punishable during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy under the condition of mandatory counseling.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  353. That Was Quick:

    A jury here is scheduled to hear opening statements on Dominion Voting Systems’ allegations that it was defamed by Fox News after the 2020 presidential election, following a one-day trial delay and settlement efforts by Fox that haven’t produced an agreement.

    After jurors are seated for the case, they are set to begin considering whether Fox News and Fox Business defamed Dominion in a series of broadcasts in which associates of then-President Donald Trump claimed the voting-machine company helped rig the election for Joe Biden. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages, saying it lost contracts after the broadcasts and has faced other business harms.
    ………
    To prevail, Dominion will need to show that Fox knew it was broadcasting false claims or acted with a reckless disregard for the truth.
    ………

    Live updates.

    I’ll bet the case doesn’t go the jury. Fox will settle mid-trial after testimony by their “talent” goes south.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  354. DeSantis’s Gamble on Abortion

    Ron DeSantis’s decision to sign a new Florida law that bans most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is a political gamble that Democrats are eager to attack. The Governor’s obligation now is to explain and defend it if he wants to win the White House.
    ………
    The Florida law will now be one of the country’s most restrictive. The state had a 15-week ban, but abortion opponents deemed that too expansive since more than 90% of abortions occur before 15 weeks. But the new law amounts to a near-ban because at six weeks many women may not know they are pregnant.

    The law has restrictions for rape, incest and human-trafficking pregnancies up to 15 weeks. It also has an exception if the life of the mother is endangered. Drugs that induce abortions would have to be dispensed in person, not by mail. Democrats will portray this as a blanket ban, and every poll of public opinion says voters oppose a ban even as they support some abortion restrictions.

    Florida Republicans deserve to be taken at their word that their opposition to abortion is a matter of moral conviction. …….(P)resumably (Mr. DeSantis) also supports the ban out of personal belief. This is admirable in our age of political cynicism.
    ………
    Donald Trump has also been notably silent about abortion since Dobbs, and his advisers are telling reporters that Mr. Trump thinks the issue is a loser for Republicans. …….. Mr. Trump may figure that since he appointed the Justices who overturned Roe, he can now run to the left of Mr. DeSantis on abortion.
    ………
    Mr. DeSantis could say the issue should be settled at the state level, and that Florida’s law shouldn’t dictate to Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. That works for us, but you can expect other candidates to challenge that as insufficient. …….
    ###########

    Free link.

    Tim Scott’s bobbing and weaving on abortion is surprising for someone who co-sponsored Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the last Congress.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  355. DeSantis: The Phantom Menace.

    DeSantis will not run. His cronies will not let him. The ones that have enriched him, and the ones he has enriched. They will not withstand the scrutiny of serious oppo research.

    But he’s having fun as Trump’s Nightmare At Mar-A-Lago.

    nk (1871f9)

  356. DeSantis will not run.

    Comedy gold!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  357. Twin Tragedies:

    First Ralph Yarl and now Kaylin Gillis:

    A New York man who allegedly shot at a vehicle that mistakenly drove up his driveway, killing an “innocent young girl” who was inside, is now facing murder charges.
    ……..
    Deputies said that Gillis was in the passenger seat of the vehicle on Saturday night while she and three other young people were looking for another friend’s home. Murphy described the area as rural, without a lot of cellular service or internet. Finally, the group reached Monahan’s home in the town of Hebron.

    “Unfortunately, they drove up this driveway,” the sheriff told reporters.

    Deputies claim Monahan, the homeowner, fired at least two shots while on his front porch. One struck Gillis. The vehicle quickly left the scene. …….

    “Monahan was uncooperative with the investigation and refused to exit his residence to speak with police,” deputies said. “He was later taken into custody with the assistance of the New York State Police Special Operations Response Team after several hours.”
    ……..
    Monahan faces a charge of murder in the second degree. …….
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  358. ” Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?

    Why is there suddenly talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

    Why are Japan and India shrugging that they cannot follow the United States’ lead in boycotting Russian oil?

    Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a “beautiful relationship”?

    Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?

    What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, a mere neutral, or a de facto enemy?

    Why are there suddenly nonstop Chinese threats toward Taiwan?”

    https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/14/the-biden-10-step-plan-for-global-chaos/

    Colonel Haiku (11c899)

  359. Breaking-

    Fox News Settles Defamation Suit, Averting Trial

    The judge in the Fox News defamation case said on Tuesday that the case was resolved, abruptly ending a long-running dispute over misinformation in the 2020 election just as a highly anticipated trial was about to begin.

    It was a last-minute end to a case that began two years ago and after the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that peeled back the curtain on a media company that has long resisted outside scrutiny.

    Details of the settlement were not yet known.
    ……..

    Sad! And I have all this popcorn!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  360. @370. Great photo of guards, behind iron fence clutching illegal trespasser
    ‘breaking-in’ to the WH grounds. Too bad it wasn’t taken at the border.

    DCSCA (7423d7)

  361. @369. Rest easy. Joey’s at the controls and knows where he’s going…

    “It’s Ireland!” – Charles Lindbergh [James Stewart] ‘The Spirit of St. Louis’ 1957

    DCSCA (7423d7)

  362. DeSantis will not run.

    He be a total Donald Duck. Believes he can build a ‘better mousetrap’ by wasting millions constructing a prison next to Florida’s ‘Mousewitz’ — when a nuclear power plant would be better.

    DCSCA (7423d7)

  363. I’m hearing that Dominion settled for a measly 785,500,000$.

    Time123 (8e2273)

  364. I was reading in the New York Times (and elsewhere) this morning that one sticking point in a settlement could be the exact statement that Fox News would make. But maybe it wasn’t.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/business/fox-dominion-trial-delay.html

    The reason a settlement has been elusive so far is not just monetary. Fox, one of the most profitable media companies, would have to issue an apology to Dominion under the terms Dominion would accept, according to several people familiar with the limited settlement discussions that had taken place in previous months.

    But doing so would come at a significant reputational cost to Fox News, which has continued to air programs casting doubt on the culpability of Trump supporters in the riots of Jan. 6, 2021.

    That’s not the same issue.

    But it might show that Fox cares about what Trump-following stolen election believers think. But that didn’t rest solely on one supposed means of vote fraud – an impossible one, by the way, given the double entry bookkeeping style of election records, not to mention the fact that Dominion machines couldn’t be rigged that way, regardless of what Hugo Chavez might or might not have done in Venezuela years before using machines that had nothing to do with Dominion

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  365. This is the story about an hour ago today from newser:

    https://www.newser.com/story/334182/fox-defamation-trial-abruptly-called-off.html

    Apr 18, 2023 3:23 PM CDT

    …The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox announced Tuesday that the parties “have resolved their case” and dismissed the jury just as the trial was to begin. …The sudden announcement came after jurors had been seated and attorneys were preparing to make opening statements for a trial that had been expected to last six week. Terms were not disclosed for the proposed settlement, which still needs approval from the judge overseeing the case.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  366. https://www.nbcnews.com/media/fox-news-settles-dominion-defamation-lawsuit-rcna80285

    [Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric] Davis re-entered the courtroom just before 4 p.m. to announce the settlement with the lead attorneys on the case rushing in after him…… During pretrial conference hearings, Davis sanctioned the network for withholding evidence, and admonished it for not being straightforward with him. He said he would allow Dominion to conduct an additional deposition with Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch at Fox’s expense. Davis also ruled that Fox lawyers could not use newsworthiness as a legal defense, limiting their possible trial strategies.

    On Tuesday, Davis also appointed a special master to investigate whether Fox had adequately complied with court-ordered discovery.

    Also, a Fox statement in quoted:

    Fox News, in a statement, said it acknowledged “the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.”

    “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” the network said. “We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  367. 369.. DeSantis’ gamble is simply that

    1) The bill he signed will never become law at least not before election day 2024,

    2) Pro-choice ads will not interest people before a bill becomes law

    3) Anti-abortion people will care – or would have cared if he did NOT sign the bill.

    4) Nobody much will remember what he did by the time of voting.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  368. There’s another lawsuit coming, this one from Smartmatic:

    In a 5-0 decision, the Appellate Division in Manhattan said Smartmatic USA alleged in “detailed fashion” how Fox News and some anchors and guests “effectively endorsed and participated in (defamation) with reckless disregard for, or serious doubts about” whether the company engaged in election fraud.

    Smartmatic had sought $2.7 billion in damages, saying Fox News knowingly lied about its technology and how it was used in order to boost ratings, and keep Trump supporters from defecting to the right-wing networks Newsmax and One America News.

    I don’t know how these things work, but it would not surprise me if Dominion shares some of what it has learned with Smartmatic.

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  369. DeSantis is talking about doing other things to hurt Disney – maybe build a competing amusement park – and he said that someone said to build a prison near Disney — “the possibilities are endless”

    https://floridapolitics.com/archives/604047-a-prison-at-disney-world-possibilities-are-endless-gov-desantis-says

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  370. 366. nk (1871f9) — 4/18/2023 @ 10:10 am.

    His cronies will not let him. The ones that have enriched him, and the ones he has enriched. They will not withstand the scrutiny of serious oppo research.

    What might be discovered with serious opposition research – even more serious than is given in a Gubernatorial race – might explain both Mario Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo not running for president – and perhaps Mike Pompeo.

    But what, if anything, specific are you talking about with regard to Ron DeSantis, or is this just speculation, based on his evident cynicism?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  371. asset @319. See Rip Murdock #330.

    They weren’t talking about lynching anybody. They were talking about killing the publisher, and his son, who were also acting as reporters or writers of a local newspaper the family had owned for 40 years, the McCurtain Gazette-News. The son was writing stories against the sheriff.

    The tone was that it was too bad they couldn’t just take some black guy and whip them and throw them in a cell, and they can’t lynch anybody either.

    The reporter-son of the publisher filed a lawsuit against the sheriff on March 6 accusing county officials of defaming him. The same day the newspaper left a recording device in the meeting room of the McCurtain County Commission – and apparently left – so it should look like nobody from the public was still there at this open meeting.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  372. What’s good enough for Patterico, Dana, Paul Montagu, and Kevin M.(any others) is good enough for me.

    I subscribed to The Dispatch.

    norcal (15fce4)

  373. The recording was legal since the public meeting was still open to the public.

    They discussed hiring of hit men, and the possible use of deep holes to hide the bodies after they killed them. And how back in the day they arrest and beat up a black man and throw him in a cell – ad hang them with a rope. But, one said. they can’t do that any more.

    “They got more rights than we got” said one of the persons in the room.

    The publisher and his son are both white. They were really talking about unchecked power, although the reference to rights might be to blacks.

    The complete audio of the meeting has been turned over by the newspaper to the FBI and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office. The paper only made public a bit.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  374. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/10/1169162240/mad-magazine-cartoonist-al-jaffee-obituary

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/arts/al-jaffee-dead.html

    He created the Mad Fold-In, which he did from April 1964 (in issue number 86) till he retired in 2020 (that issue had a fold-in he’d created in 2014 to be used if he retired with one exception in 2019. when Mad magazine had stopped printing new material except once a year He actually was a freelancer all the time)

    The New York Times obituary gives detail of one example of a fold-in:

    For instance, the fold-in from the November 2001 issue asked, “What mind-altering experience is leaving more and more people out of touch with reality?” The unfolded illustration showed a crowd of people popping and snorting various substances. But when folded, the image transformed into the Fox News anchor desk.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  375. Yes, New York City is still the safest city in the country, but the most important factor in the amount of crime is the level of crime (and criminally inclined) recently.

    Nobody ever compares the current level to that of the days of Giuliani and Bloomberg – and the first two years of DeBlasio, when crime was dropping year to year – and so, eventualy, was the jail population.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  376. https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/04/16/california-goes-full-communist-utilities-to-base-what-they-charge-on-how-much-you-make-n1687622

    Congratulations to communist California in leading the way to their utopia.

    Basing the price for electricity and heat on how much you can afford versus how much you use. Capitalism was so quaint and for a less modern time.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  377. Sammy,

    I was in Manhattan last week and the number of scam tables selling garbage and homeless people laying on the sidewalk was insane. It’s worse than it was under Dinkins.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  378. 12 weeks Kevin.

    I guess you missed the map on the right with about 20 different rules listed.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  379. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/torching-the-modern-day-library-of-alexandria

    Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria

    ”Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.“

    Originally publised in the Atlantic in 2017.

    By James Somers

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  380. As NJRob pointed out, most European countries allow elective abortions for shorter periods than 15 weeks.

    *I* said 12-15. Rob said NO IT’S 12, then linked to a site that said 12 or more.

    And I would debate that they have “stood for years.”

    From the Abortion in Europe page that Rob linked:

    Sweden was the first liberal democracy in Europe to legalise abortion, in 1938. Liberal abortion laws were introduced in Western Europe from the 1960s onwards, one of the first of which being the Abortion Act 1967 in Great Britain alongside similar liberalisations in Norway in 1964, Finland in 1970, and Denmark in 1973.

    Abortion on request during the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy was permitted in East Germany in 1972. The same policy was enacted in West Germany in 1974 but was ruled unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court as it infringed on the right to life of the unborn child. A revised law, with restrictions on abortion, was introduced in 1976.

    The law on abortion in France was liberalised in 1975 and the changes in France and Germany were followed by similar changes in the law elsewhere in Europe:

    Austria – 1975[21]
    Italy and Luxembourg – 1978[22][23]
    Netherlands and Portugal – 1984[24][25]
    Spain – 1985[26]
    Greece – 1986[27]
    Belgium – 1990[28]
    Switzerland – 2002[29]

    You would debate the sun coming up in the morning (or, if you prefer, the earth continuing to rotate).

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  381. On 86 ST in Brooklyn by 23rd Avenue it is normal goods, like a weekly street fair. Chessboards, socks.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  382. Tim Scott’s bobbing and weaving on abortion is surprising for someone who co-sponsored Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the last Congress.

    Unlike DeSantis, Tim Scott does not want to put abortion front and center, so he declines to give hard numbers to extremists of either side, knowing that it will not be used to his advantage.

    Trump has no problem, however. Although what he said yesterday might not be what he says today. Or tomorrow. And everyone understands that.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  383. How can I put this more clearly? Most Americans do not want to hear another gd word about abortion. Ever. A candidate who locks himself into repeating, defending or just arguing about some hard and fast rule will repel everyone to his left OR right on the issue. It’s just stupid.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  384. @384. Dispatched to the Dispatch, eh? “The Alamo” welcomes another defender. 😉 Stove piping behind a paywall is comforting but inhibits disseminating messaging and efforts to persuade others.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  385. Business Insider has a little list of lawsuits to come from Dominion and Smartmatic.

    (Unfortunately, they put it in one of those rotating thingies I have come to despise. But there are only 9 items in the list.)

    Jim Miller (0e46f9)

  386. How can I put this more clearly? Most Americans do not want to hear another gd word about abortion. Ever.

    Always been crabgrass in the lawn of a house on fire. But 21st century women voters won’t forget the GOP’s stand to inhibit a long held right. Hell hath no fury… etc., etc.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  387. @388: As someone who lived in LA for years, those fixed rates are hilariously low. I easily spent $500/month on electricity in the summer. Just think what it would have been with an electric car.

    This will be a sad discovery soon and force the rates to go up several hundred percent by the time they are implemented. Mostly at the top end.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  388. It’s too bad that Dominion didn’t demand they fire some people.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  389. DeSantis is talking about doing other things to hurt Disney – maybe build a competing amusement park – and he said that someone said to build a prison near Disney — “the possibilities are endless”

    No doubt competitor Universal Orlando would not take kindly to that idiocy. Maybe DeSantis should just burn his marriage license and wedding photos– he was married at DisneyWorld. He is a fool:

    The World’s Top Media Companies

    Ranked 2. Walt Disney (DIS): $238.21 Billion

    Disney (DIS) has a $238 billion market cap, generating almost $67.42 billion in revenues over the trailing 12 months (TTM). Disney, founded in 1923 and headquartered in Burbank, Calif., is a large media and entertainment group with multiple subsidiaries and an international presence.

    https://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/021815/worlds-top-ten-media-companies-dis-cmcsa-fox.aspx

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  390. https://nypost.com/2023/04/16/how-the-us-is-subsidizing-high-risk-homebuyers-at-the-cost-of-those-with-good-credit/

    More leftist redistribution of wealth from the Biden adminastration from the responsible to the irresponsible.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  391. There is such a thing as a bad regulation, or an unworkable restriction. Europe has PROVEN that 15 weeks is workable and a compromise that holds. Six weeks is just political posturing, as it is unworkable, unjust and rides roughshod over liberties with very little cause. If you can set the bar at 6 weeks, zero weeks is not a huge step.

    Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/17/2023 @ 5:25 pm

    Kevin you wrote the above and I said most have a 12 week ban. So in actuality Europe has proven that a 12 week ban works in most places.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  392. And next most common was 14 weeks. France is at 16 weeks. Some are at 3 months or 90 days. The terms also get fuzzy in that the start may be conception, or the last menstrual period, generally about 2 weeks apart.

    Florida was at 15 weeks, which is why I used that number, but Europe is roughly the same time, depending on which country and how you count.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  393. They weren’t talking about lynching anybody. They were talking about killing the publisher, and his son, who were also acting as reporters or writers of a local newspaper the family had owned for 40 years, the McCurtain Gazette-News. The son was writing stories against the sheriff.

    The tone was that it was too bad they couldn’t just take some black guy and whip them and throw them in a cell, and they can’t lynch anybody either.

    Nostalgic for the good old days.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  394. “This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” the network said.

    Comedy gold!

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  395. You would debate the sun coming up in the morning (or, if you prefer, the earth continuing to rotate).

    Kevin M (f94f4f) — 4/18/2023 @ 4:01 pm

    That is one thing we can agree on, but when you make statements that are demonstrably incorrect (through a simple Internet search) or exaggerated like “Europe has PROVEN that 15 weeks is workable….” when Europe hasn’t proven anything of the sort, it begs to be disputed.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  396. It only gets worse (or better, depending on your point of view) for Fox:

    ……..
    Investors are using provisions in Delaware corporate law to demand internal Fox records to investigate how Fox’s leaders acted as its Fox News network aired segments on Trump’s false claims that he lost the 2020 presidential election due to voter fraud, two sources confirmed.

    In moves not previously reported, shareholders are looking for records such as board minutes, emails and texts that may contain evidence that Fox directors and executives were derelict by allowing the network to air the false claims.

    The shareholders could use these as well as evidence presented in other lawsuits to build a case for the leaders to be held personally liable for costs from two defamation cases by voting-machine companies over the Fox coverage.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  397. The most common in Europe is 12.
    Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria,
    Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan,Latvia Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, North Macedonia, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Slovakia, Switzerland, Ukraine.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  398. Kevin M-

    I apologize for comments directed at you in post 408. I shouldn’t have singled you out. There are plenty of people here who make demonstrably incorrect or exaggerated statements that deserve to be politely corrected.

    Rip Murdock (c79034)

  399. NJ,

    My issue was that you made a fairly petty and somewhat inaccurate correction about where world government stand. I was arguing that 15 weeks had been shown to be a workable restriction, allowing women to have some useful time for an early abortion, but not too much time. THat 12 weeks also works isn’t much of a rebuttal, although I think that, like Rip, I got some of the argument crossed.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  400. Also, the page below is a bit more thorough.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law#Summary_tables

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  401. The majority of abortions performed in the United States, 93.1%, that’s a big majority, during Roe, were in under 13 weeks. That would be like 12 weeks or fewer?

    93.1%. Now do you see why abortion opponents might not consider 12 weeks much of a “victory”?

    nk (bb1548)

  402. Nk,

    It shows life matters and gets the left to admit their lie is about choice versus beimg North Korea.

    NJRob (7ed191)

  403. Kevin,

    I apologize for beijg a stickler, but limiting it to the first trimester is a big step in acknowleging the life growing within a woman. It matters from a public perception and getting people to understand their must be limits on “the right to choose.” *spit*

    NJRob (7ed191)

  404. @NJRob@346 I have had more pregnant jr. high students than medically treated trans students. And, very very unfortunately, more kids being sexually assaulted by adults than both other things. This year we’ve had one student who was being trafficked by her mother and one student who was being regularly raped by her step father.

    Nic (896fdf)

  405. Dispatched to the Dispatch, eh? “The Alamo” welcomes another defender. 😉 Stove piping behind a paywall is comforting but inhibits disseminating messaging and efforts to persuade others.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 4/18/2023 @ 4:09 pm

    DCSCA, speaking of efforts to persuade others, has your mind ever been changed by other commenters here on any issue? If so, please state what it was.

    norcal (15fce4)

  406. Rob, I also apologize for my sometimes harsh responses. I am so very tired of the whole subject and a bit bewildered by the way some politicians seem to take Dobbs as license to be just as extreme as the Roe people were.

    If Roe had never happened, we would have a consensus by now, somewhere at the end of the first trimester (or a damn good reason).

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  407. I should also apologize to Rip, not so much for what I said, but for the way I said it.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  408. I’m in complete agreement with you on abortion, Kevin. Too many people are in love with absolutes, and can’t handle nuance or gray areas. The extremes on both ends of this issue are like religious zealots.

    Both sides need to recognize that neither abortion on demand through all nine months, nor a complete ban, will ever be accepted by the majority of people.

    norcal (15fce4)

  409. The abortion dog caught the car now what? You gun fanatics (I try to be civil so I don’t say gun nuts!) Know how you feel about guns. Well thats how democrats feel about the abortion issue. You are not interested in compromising about guns and democrats are not interested in compromising on abortion. As you know the gun fanatics cost democrats election after election over gun control. We will do the same to republicans over abortion. I have gun supporters that it is not fair for democrats to do the same back to republicans that they have been doing. @416 to nic I hope you have reported this to law enforcement.

    asset (a4ab0a)

  410. Well thats how democrats feel about the abortion issue.

    Sure. And, like us gun nuts, they know that every attempt to compromise is followed by a more strident demand from the other fringe.

    But I ask you, are Democrats really concerned that abortion on demand the day before delivery is something they should go to the wall for? Even the NRA did not defend machine guns.

    How many sexually active young women are concerned that they might only have 3 months to do something about an unplanned pregnancy. I’m going to bet that Texas women would chose that over current Texas law. Or Florida’s new 6 week rule, which fails for the same reason that a 13-week rule succeeds.

    Democrats are adamant that there be reasonable access to elective abortion, and that abortion for good cause (fetal deformity or life-threatening complications) be allowed at any stage. But elective abortion at 29 weeks? Not even California goes there.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  411. BTW, I see no reason that rape or incest be an exception to a 13-week on-demand period. Maybe in the case of children who have no agency of their own, but not generally.

    Kevin M (f94f4f)

  412. In the early campaign for legal abortion by Planned PArenthood and the Reader;s Digest, circa 1962-68, fetal abnormality (birth defects) was a proposed reason for a an abortion, but it’s been left off the list for decades. Not even death of the fetus is given as a reason for an exception. It isn’t used in polls. It’s just rape, incest or the life of the mother and you also have a woman and her doctor.

    More recently, in the last decade or so, the tide has really turned against birth defects as a reason, because it could be interpreted as being against the disabled.

    Sammy Finkelman (8228f2)

  413. I was arguing that 15 weeks had been shown to be a workable restriction, allowing women to have some useful time for an early abortion, but not too much time.

    That is the crux of the matter. There are those who oppose abortion, and those who don’t.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  414. @Asset@421 Yes, of course. Not only is it the law, but we wouldn’t leave one of our students in such situations.

    Nic (896fdf)

  415. Two notable quotes I read:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/opinion/leaked-documents-desantis-biden-budget.html

    Bret Stephens: Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and senator, emailed me a letter he was considering putting in the mail. He gave me permission to share it with our readers, so here you have it:

    Dear Federal Government,

    When a 21-year-old National Guardsman gets access to top secret briefings, my first conclusion is: You guys left the keys in the car and that’s why it was “stolen.” And when journalists find out who committed the crime before you do, my conclusion is that you folks are overpaid.

    Bob …..

    https://www.wsj.com/video/series/wonder-land-henninger/wsj-opinion-jack-teixeira-and-the-gamification-of-accountability/F3191764-F680-442C-97CA-98760AE832FB

    : “What intrigues me about this story—because I think it has implications beyond the intelligence breach itself—is how Jack Teixeira and his gamer pals seem to have made no distinction between their fantasy world of war and a real war in which Ukrainians are dying each day.”

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  416. Photo of bomb crater in Belgorod , Russia. Russian MoD takes responsibility in a statement

    https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1649158690568564739

    Russian Defense Ministry commented on the explosion in #Belgorod
    “In the evening of April 20, while performing a flight of a Su-34 aircraft of the Air Force over the city of Belgorod, there was an accidental fall of an aircraft munition,” the ministry said in a statement.
    According to the Defense Ministry, there were no casualties, but there were damaged buildings. An investigation is underway.

    steveg (263377)

  417. A better translation:
    On April 20, during the flight of the Su-34 aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces over the city of Belgorod, an abnormal descent of aviation ammunition occurred.” – Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

    steveg (263377)

  418. The boom-boom actually detonated. Was the fuze somehow armed before it was dropped? Is that why it was dropped? Because it would not be safe for the plane to land with the bomb armed?

    Somebody should sue. I recommend Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk in the Northern District of Texas. If anybody can determine if the Russian Ministry of Defense is testing its bomb fuzes properly, he can.

    nk (701c95)


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