Streaking These Down, Here

The Conservatives are Turning the United States into Just Another Shithole Country

complete with travel, advisories, because the USA is not a safe place to visit.

To the Right, "freedom" is "the freedom to force your beliefs on others." in that regard, the Right differs from the Taliban and the Iranians only to the extent of which religious-based morals and behaviors they are trying to cram down other people's throats.

Freezin' Mitch (and Putzim Rudy)

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell appeared to briefly freeze up and was unable to answer a question from a reporter at an event in Kentucky on Wednesday, weeks after he had a similar episode in Washington.

According to video from a local news station, the 81-year-old McConnell was asked whether he would run for reelection in 2026. The senator asked the reporter to repeat the question before trailing off and staring straight ahead for about 10 seconds.

A woman standing at the front of the room with McConnell asked him whether he heard the question and she repeated it. When McConnell did not answer, she announced to the room that “we’re going to need a minute.” McConnell eventually answered two additional questions — though not the one about a 2026 campaign — and was halting and appeared to have some difficulty speaking. The woman then ended the news conference and McConnell left the room, walking slowly.

This all seemed to begin after he fell and hit his head. Concussions can really mess up a person.

Meanwhile, Rudy was playing fuck-around games with the case in which he is being sued for defamation. Today, he found out:

A federal judge on Wednesday held Rudy Giuliani liable in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud, ruling that the former New York city mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the punishment was necessary because Giuliani had ignored his duty as a defendant to turn over information requested by election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, as part of their lawsuit.

Most practicing lawyers are smart enough not to get caught in a discovery dispute. But Rudy isn't a practicing lawyer and, when he was doing law over three decades ago, he was a glory-hogging prosecutor. He has no business driving the bus on a case in which he's being sued. Like his Orange Overlord, he apparently let his ego get in the way. And it's going to cost him, bigly.

Reporting on Crime in Chicago is a Dangerous Business

You can get robbed in the process.

A Chicago television news crew reporting on a string of robberies ended up robbed themselves after they were accosted at gunpoint by three armed men wearing ski masks.

Spanish-language station Univision Chicago said a reporter and photographer were filming just before 5 a.m. Monday in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood when three masked men brandishing firearms robbed them, taking their television camera and other items.

Too bad they had no footage of them being robbed. That would be a global story.

Striking These Down, Here

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Family matters will keep me offline for most of the week. I will endeavor to check in from time to time to moderate comments. Regular features are cued up.

Expect other posts when you see them.

Who Knew That Election-Stealing Was Part of the Official Duties of a White House Chief of Staff?

That's Mark Meadows's argument:

Mark Meadows testified in court Monday that actions detailed in a sweeping indictment that accuses him of participating in an illegal conspiracy to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss were all part of his job as White House chief of staff.

By Meadows's argument, if the TOFF had strangled some PYT in the Oval Office, it would have been part of Meadows's job to dispose of the body so that his boss could get back to work.

Looks Like Fun

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An Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Time

The S&W Model 65 "Ladysmith".

There is something about 3" K-frame revolvers. They have enough heft to shoot without punishing recoil, enough of a barrel to get meaningful velocity out of the cartridges and the round-butt guns carry very well. The fixed-sight guns (M13, M65) are all business and were popular guns for detectives who felt they might need to use it.

Anyhoo, if you want this one, expect a winning bid will be over a grand.

Kenneth Chesebro is So Smart That He's One of the Dumbest Motherfuckers Around

A Fulton County Superior Court Judge on Thursday set an Oct. 23 trial date for one of the 19 defendants in Georgia’s sweeping election subversion case.

In a day of fast-moving developments, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis proposed the new, aggressive start date for the 41-count racketeering trial in response to Kenneth Chesebro’s motion seeking a speedy trial. Judge Scott McAfee weighed in a few hours later setting the trial date Willis wanted but ruling it would apply only to Chesebro, a Trump-affiliated attorney who was indicted for his work helping assemble a slate of “alternate” Republican electors in Georgia.

Chesebro bet that Willis wouldn't go for an early trial date, a bet that he lost. So now he gets to go to trial, on his lonesome. Thanks to Chesebro, Willis gets a free training run at her trial strategy against a guy who has basically admitted, in his memo, that his fake-electors idea was not legal.

There is a legal term of art for conduct that is not legal: A crime. Most people who contemplate doing a crime are not so stupid as to memorialize their dastardly plan in a fucking memo. The boss of this criminal enterprise would not be so dumb.

If Chesebro is convicted, that will put a lot of pressure on the TOFF's co-conspirators. For the old rule is that the first to flip gets the best deal.

Sometimes, He's Still Teflon Fucking Don

Every year, New York City’s Department of Transportation collects tens of millions of dollars from property owners in return for permission to place street furniture on, over or under city sidewalks. This includes, but is not limited to, signs, filigreed lampposts, benches, bollards, planters, permanent trash receptacles, delivery ramps, underground vaults and just about anything else imaginable, including ornamental clocks.

Set smack on the sidewalk at 725 Fifth Avenue is just such a clock: 16 feet tall and made of aluminum with gold and black accents, it has four faces. Each bears the surname of its owner, Donald J. Trump.

It was installed without permission more than a dozen years ago. No permit was applied for. No permission was granted. Belatedly, the City of New York would like to be paid for allowing the Trump Tower clock to occupy part of a public sidewalk.

P01135809 does what he wants, when he wants, and he doesn't pay any attention to the law or to morality. Most of the time, he gets away with it and that draft-dodging small-handed fuck has for over fifty years.

Meanwhile, Stormy Daniels is laughing at the idea that the TOFF only weighs 215lbs:

On Friday, the adult film actress and director took to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to explain why she doesn’t believe the 77-year-old controversial politician was telling the truth when he claimed to stand at 6-foot-3 and weigh 215 pounds, according to the official paperwork from his booking at Fulton County Jail in Georgia.

The current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination was booked Thursday to face charges in the Georgia election interference case, when both his mugshot and measurements overshadowed most of the day’s news.

“Mmmkay! And I’m 110lbs and a virgin,” Daniels wrote on X Friday, adding a laugh-out-loud emoji.

“I’m not a scale or a doctor but I have spent some time beneath 215lb men and Tiny was not one of them,” she added.

More on the Nazi Asswipe of Jacksonville

He may or may not have intended to shoot up a historically Black college.

The local sheriff thinks not, but it's a hell of a coincidence that the nazi asswipe parked there to don his bullet-resistent vest before driving to another location to kill people who didn't look like him. And I'm not a big believer in such coincidences.

Couple of thoughts: If confronted by such a turd and you're armed, your options are to try and shoot him in the pelvis and hope his vest doesn't go down that far or, preferably, shoot him in the head. Second, if you're related to that waste of carbon, you may want to change your name and move away. Especially if your name is the same.

Meatball Ron Continues Destroying Florida

He pushed through a law to strip local governments' power to protect historic buildings and, sure as shit, greedhead developers are demolishingiconic buildings.

Florida's teachers are leaving, OB/GYNs are leaving, a degree from a Florida state school will soon be about as valuable as one from ITT Tech or Trump U.

It's also become apparent, in recent years, that any lobbying group that has the words "freedom" or "liberty" in their name is focused on restricting people's liberties and freedoms to learn things other than that which is approved by the neo-Nazi wing of the GOP.

One final thought about Meatball Ron: I don't know whether or not, in his heart, he is a racist and a homophobic bigot. But he seems to have grasped that playing one on the political stage is his route to power. It's the same calculation that was made by George Wallace sixty-five years ago.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

Martin B-26:

A lot of men were afraid to fly it. The Army Air Force sent a team of WASPs to demonstrate the airplane around the various air bases.

Another White Nationalist At Work

A white man fatally shot three people inside a Jacksonville, Florida, Dollar General store on Saturday in a predominately Black neighborhood in an attack that the local sheriff called “racially motivated.” The shooter then killed himself.

“He hated black people,” Sheriff T.K. Waters told a news conference. “There is absolutely no evidence the shooter is part of any larger group.”

Waters said the shooter, who was in his 20s, used a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle with at least one of the firearms painted with a swastika.

Another one of the guys that The Dumbest Man in the U.S. Senate(tm) didn't think was racist at work.

Caturday

Waiting for "Lupper".

Country Music Question

Am I the only person who wonders if “Rich Men North of Richmond“ could be shortened to “Jews“?

Because It's Friday

Canadian steam:

Rebranding These Down, Here

Zoom May Spy on You (and Other Capitalist Bullshit)

Zoom updated its Terms of Service on Monday after a controversy over the company’s policies about training AI on user data. Although the policy literally says that Zoom reserves the right to train AI on your calls without your explicit permission, the Terms of Service now include an additional line which says, essentially, we promise not to do that.

The company’s Terms of Service call your video, audio, and chat transcripts “Customer Content.” When you click through Zoom’s terms, you agree to give Zoom “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights” to use that Customer Content for “machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing,” and a variety of other product development purposes. The company reserves similar rights for “Service Generated Data,” which includes telemetry data, product usage data, diagnostic data, and other information it gets from analyzing your content and behavior.

However, an update to the legal documents now contains a new clause, which appears in bold: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”

When you use a free service, you're not the "customer", you're the "product". Even if you pay for some stuff (like newspapers). Of course, Zoom is going to listen in on your calls and harvest all the data that they can. They're not in business for their health or to do good for people.

H/T

In other capitalist news, the family that owns Subway is looking to cash out. One thing seems to be consistent in this life" When "private equity" buys a company, the quality of the product goes down as the vultures try to shave costs and the price goes up. (Not that Subway has been exactly a primo maker of grinders.) An open question will be whether or not Subway's new owners try to make their employees sign noncompete agreements, the way that they were making Jimmy John's workers do, before they got caught doing it.

Apparently, There Were No Handy Windows.

Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed among the passengers on a plane that crashed while en route from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency reported on Wednesday.

Reports of a plane crash near the village of Kuzhenkino in Russia’s Tver region first appeared on Russian Telegram channels. The Russian Emergency Services Ministry later confirmed that a private plane had crashed in the Tver region, killing 10 people on board, including three crew members.

Telegram channels linked to the Wagner Group claim that both Prigozhin and the mercenary outfit’s first commander, Dmitry Utkin (callsign “Wagner”), died in the crash. However, these reports have yet to be confirmed.

Everybody in and around Russia is going to presume that Putin had Prigozhin whacked. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an "accidental" shoot-down by air defenses.

The real shocker is that it took as long as it did for Prigozhin to become corpsified.

FYI, I haven't been blogging about what's been happening to Alexei Navalny because he was a complete and utter fool to go back to Russia after recovering from being poisoned.

Trump-Funded Lawyers Should Be Investigated, Prosecuted, Disbarred and Imprisoned

A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

The aide — described as “Trump Employee 4” in public court filings but identified elsewhere as Yuscil Taveras — held the title of director of information technology at Mar-a-Lago. He initially testified to a grand jury in Washington, D.C., that he was unaware of any effort to erase the videos, but after getting the new attorney “immediately … retracted his prior false testimony” and detailed the alleged effort to tamper with evidence related to the investigation of the handling of classified information stored at Trump’s Florida home, the new submission said.

Whoever that lawyer was, he or she is the second Trump-funded lawyer I know of who encouraged their clients to commit perjury.

A Trump-allied attorney who previously represented a key January 6 witness urged her to mislead the January 6 committee about details she recalled, according to CNN.

The committee did not identify the witness or the person they claimed tried to influence the testimony, but CNN reported that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House who represented former aide Cassidy Hutchinson, was the lawyer.

Passantino advised Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources told CNN.

These guys need to have the book thrown at them.

Rob a Bank, Say You're Running for President, and the Courts Will Go Easy on You

Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists.

The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs as some of his supporters post racist screeds about the same targets.

The rhetoric is a reminder of Trump’s tendency to use coded racial messaging as a signal to supporters, an approach he has deployed over several decades as he evolved from a New York City real estate tycoon to a reality television star and, eventually, the president. Even if he doesn’t explicitly employ racial slurs, his language recalls America’s history of portraying Black people as not fully human.

Passing over the clear fact that the only way the TOFF could be even more openly racist would be to walk around dressed in Klan robes, anybody who acted the way that the TOFF has would have, long ago, had their bail revoked and have been tossed into the nearest Federal jail. I agree with Charlie Pierce, it is far past time that he be treated like every other criminal defendant.

Advisers say the Trump campaign sees a benefit in him testing boundaries by publicly attacking judges and prosecutors — either he gets away with it, or he gets to play the victim for being censored by the courts. Some of Trump’s political advisers said they are betting that judges will not risk the blowback of imposing sanctions on a major-party candidate.

Let's test that theory, shall we? Toss him in a cell. Slap a GPS tracker on one of his swollen ankles and confine him to his banana farm in Florida. Drop a multimegaton fine on him every time he goes batshit on social media. Freeze his assets. Treat him like a mob boss, a drug kingpin, or the leader of a terrorist cell because, in one way or another, he is all three of those things.

If his corporal's guard of a legal team wants to litigate these measures, let them have at it. If his mouthbreathing devotees want to make trouble, point them towards the hundreds of people now doing time for what they did on January 6. If he wants to test the strength of the rule of law, let the rule of law at least give him a battle without tying its hands through timidity and anticipatory dread. It's worth fighting for.

DoJ, Georgia, NY, get a fucking clue. TOFF is a criminal facing over ninety felony charges, start treating him like a defendant so charged.

Indicting These Down, Here

You can guess the theme of the day.

First Time That Defendant TOFF Doesn't Get a Free Pass

Donald Trump’s bond has been set at $200,000 in the Georgia case accusing the former president of illegally scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss, according to court papers filed Monday.

Trump is also barred from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case — including on social media — according to the bond agreement signed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump’s defense attorneys and the judge. It explicitly includes “posts on social media or reposts of posts made by another individual on social media.”

In the previous cases, he's gotten a free pass when it comes to bonding. Multiple felony counts and he gets a ROR. He hasn't been required to fork over his passport in those cases, or in this one. I can't wait for the MAGA crowd to start whining about that, all the while forgetting how much they have complained about bail reform.

My guess is that he won't abide by the bail conditions in the hope that he'll be locked up, just like his spiritual master. He's probably got someone already ghosting his prison memoirs

One Thing is Clear About OceanGate

If Stockton Rush isn't currently in the deepest pit of Hell, being tortured by legions of demons every nanosecond of eternity, there is no justice in the afterlife.

This is why.

I don't know if anyone associated with the design of that craft is still findable, and I'm not sure what jurisdiction can reach them, but I think there is an argument that they should be charged with four counts of manslaughter.

But not for the death of Rush. He got what he earned.

A MAGA Terrorist At Work

A business owner in California was shot and killed after a dispute over a LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed outside her store, authorities said.

Officials from the San Bernardino county sheriff’s office said Laura Ann Carleton, 66, was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting on Friday night.

Officials said that during an initial altercation at Carleton’s clothing store, a male suspect “made several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag that stood outside the store before shooting Carleton”. He then fled the scene.

Deputies were able to locate the suspect, who was armed, and he was shot dead after a confrontation with the officers. By Sunday, the man had not been identified.

This is on those politicians, like the TOFF and Wrong DeSantis, who have made anti-gay bigotry a central part of their "platform". They are engaging in stochastic terrorism and I believe that they know what they are doing.

Sad Truth: Lawyers Sometimes Have to Argue Stupid Shit On Behalf of Their Clients

What may be a realistic legal argument can sound really stupid politically.

The Newport News Education Association President condemned the premise of the school division’s motion to dismiss Abigail Zwerner’s pending $40 million lawsuit.

The motion was filed last week by attorneys representing the School Board and argues that Zwerner, who was shot in her classroom at Richneck Elementary in January by a 6-year-old student, is only entitled to file a worker’s compensation claim because the injury she sustained from the shooting is a “workplace injury,” and that the shooting was a hazard of the job.

I suspect that they have a fair chance of getting the judge to agree. Students violently attack teachers frequently. The chances of being shot in a school shooting are very low (just under 131,000 K-12 schools in the country and there were fifty-one school shootings last year), but the perception is there and the judge may agree with it.

A good lawyer would ask their client if they wanted that argument made. It would be malpractice to not make such an argument without the client's vetoing it.

On the other hand, there are stupid clients. You know to whom I am referring.

H/T

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A boatload of military jets:

The TOFF Keeps Losing in Court

A New York federal judge expressed growing impatience Friday with what he calls ex-President Donald Trump’s “repeated efforts to delay” a defamation lawsuit against him, saying he won’t stop a January trial to await the outcome of a “frivolous” appeal of one of his rulings.
...
“This case was largely stalled for years due in large part to Mr. Trump’s repeated efforts to delay,” Kaplan wrote. “Mr. Trump’s latest motion to stay — his fourth such request — is yet another such attempt to delay unduly the resolution of this matter.”

Frivolous and bullshit motions are a hallmark of how he litigates. The lawyers in this one are probably anticipating being sanctioned by their tate bar.

How to Ensure Even More Time in Stir

Go on the lam before sentencing is a good way.

Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday.

Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years.

If he can stay in the wind, maybe he'll catch a ride on TOFF Force One for the flight into exile.

Come to think of it, he could be hiding out in the warrens in Mar-a-Lago.

Caturday

Chip shows his ass.

The Freude is Particularly Schaden Today, Christian Taliban Ed.

Tennessee pastor Willie McLaurin, who leads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, resigned Thursday from his position as interim president and chief executive after it came to light that he presented false information about his educational qualifications on his resume.

The Executive Committee’s hiring team was considering McLaurin as a candidate to permanently replace former chief executive Ronnie Floyd who resigned in 2021. On a resume he submitted for the job, McLaurin falsely listed that he had earned degrees from North Carolina Central University, Duke University Divinity School and Hood Theological Seminary, according to the Baptist Press, an official SBC news outlet.

To sum up, a historically racist religious denomination tried to find a Black guy to help pretend that the past is over and the guy they chose enhanced his credentials.

Because It's Friday

South African steam:

The operator of the trains has shut down.

Trumpanzees: Now With Even More Arrests!

Authorities in Georgia said Thursday they’re investigating threats targeting members of the grand jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies.

Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat’s office said investigators are working to trace the origin of the threats after the names of grand jury members and other personal information were posted online. The sheriff’s office said other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies were assisting.

Everyone who has made such threats is a flaming imbecile. One wonders if their real goal is to share a cellblock with Their Orange Overlord.

Jetting These Down, Here

More Trumpist Fuckery

A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.

Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.

In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.

Let me hazard a guess: Alcohol was involved. Or that'll be the perp's defense. I suppose that this is one of he side-benefits of the demise of payphones, it's a lot harder for low-wattage asswipes to make anonymous threatening phone calls.

Shifting gears, there seem to be some serious ethical and legal issues about the TOFF's legal defense fund. It is to laugh, really.

First off, is there anyone who seriously believes that El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago gives a shit about ethics or the law? The man is a criminal, plain and simple. He has conducted his entire adult life with an eye to avoiding being prosecuted, whereas most people just don't go around breaking the laws or pushing legal boundaries.

Second, as to the people sending in smallish donations: Are all y'all fucking serious? You're giving money to a billionaire? How stupid does one have to be to do that? Don't answer the last question, just go look into a mirror and you'll find out the answer. And no, they're not indicting Trump instead of you or in place of you. They're indicting him because of his alleged crimes. If you did crimes for Trump, fuck yeah, they'd indict you. Example #1 is the lead story to this post. There are over a thousand other examples. And more are being added almost daily.

Politics aside, would you give money to a legal fund for Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Elon Musk? If you think that the idea of giving money to a billionaire to help him out of a legal jam is laughable, then why would you even think of sending your hard-earned cash to The Donald?

Rust Gun Bullshit

Prosecutors have received a second expert analysis of the revolver fired in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of a Western film in New Mexico, as they weigh whether to refile charges against the actor.
...
Special prosecutors dismissed an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin in April, saying they were informed the gun might have been modified before the shooting and malfunctioned. They commissioned a new analysis of the gun, along with other weapons and ammunition from the set of the movie, “Rust,” which moved filming from New Mexico to Montana.

The new gun analysis from experts in ballistics and forensic testing based in Arizona and New Mexico relied on replacement parts to reassemble the gun fired by Baldwin — after parts of the pistol were broken during earlier testing by the FBI. The new report examines the gun and markings it left on a spent cartridge to conclude that the trigger had to have been pulled or depressed.

Replacing parts and then testing the gun? I'm pretty certain that any number of expert witnesses will blow holes through that report large enough to have flown the Mriya through it. A good lawyer will almost certainly argue that the report is inadmissible, as by replacing parts, it's not the gun in the condition that it was when the shooting took place.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Baldwin. He seems to be another self-righteous prig who confuses celebrity with an ability to opine on all matters for which he knows zip point shit. But that's no reason to send him to prison with bullshit proof.

Bad Time to Buy or Sell a House?

The Multiple-Listing Service has been shut down due to a ransomware attack on Rapottoni, the service provider.

As the .357 Magnum Blog has noted, nobody is reporting anything more than the basics. The cited article did say the company doesn't provide a PR contact, so there's nobody to talk to.

Parceling These Down, Here

Funny Thing How Charging Someone for Conspiring to Commit Fraud, Harassing Election Workers, Illegally Accessing Voters' Information and Stealing It is Considered to be "Persecution" When Republicans Get Caught Doing It.

You can bet that is the talking point of the Trumpist Republicans: Trying to steal an election and the rest is perfectly fine for them.

Nothing new in that regard. Republicans have decided that they will tolerate all manner of criminality and greed from their guys. You need only compare Jared Kushner to Hunter Biden to see that play out.[1]

The Trump re-election campaign was a criminal enterprise. He has continued his criminality and so have a number of his henchmen.[2] For it seems that he is doing his absolute best to talk himself into jail ahead of his trials.

Either the TOFF believes that he is above the law, that he can truly kill poeple with impunity or he thinks that if he goes to jail, his campaign to destroy American democracy will be unstoppable.[3] You can mull over that question at your leisure.

A separate point: The TOFF's fundraising apparatus is said to have been paying for all defense lawyers.[4] It'll be interesting to see if they can pay for eighteen lawyers who are all familiar with defending RICO cases in Georgia.

The old advice of "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime" still applies.
___________
[1] Hunter traded on his dad's name. Jared pused his financial interests while "working" as a high-level staffie in his father-in-law's administration, including arranging to create a multi-billion dollar slush fund under his control. You can guess which one the Republicans are screaming about.
[2] The term "henchmen" is not gender-specific.
[3] Easy guess as to from which past German leader he is drawing his inspiration.
[4] That seems to be a classic mob boss defense tactic to presumably to reduce the chances of anyone flipping on His Orangeness.

PA GOP Loves Carpetbaggers

Their new candidate for the Senate is some Wall Street hedge fund rich fuck who resides in Westport, CT. When he sold his condo in NYC earlier this year, he listed his place of residence as CT.

One would think that after the OZian Debacle in 2022, where the voters chose a stroke victim over some TV clown from New Jersey, the state party in PA would have gotten a clue. Evidently, not.

Marion County, Kansas is a Fascist Hellhole

Local police in Marion, Kansas, conducted a raid on the offices of a local newspaper on Friday as well as the homes of the publication’s publishers and reporters.

Eric Meyer, the owner and publisher of the Marion County Record, told the Kansas Reflector that the city’s entire five-officer police force and two sheriff’s deputies conducted the raid, which included the seizure of computers, cellphones and reporting materials.

That's the move of an authoritarian state, like Communist China or Putin's Russia, to raid a newspaper and seize ther computers because the powers that be didn't like what was published. One of the owners of the paper, who was in her upper 90s, died as a result.

The title of this post should be the headline on every newspaper article about this story.

The stormtrooper in charge was Chief of Police Gideon Cody. The local magistrate judge, who apparently knows less about the law than does someone with a room-temperature IQ, was Laura Viar, a judge who would one would assume aparently believes that neither Federal law nor the Constitution cut any ice in Marion County.

Somebody needs to lose their license to practice law: The judge, the county prosecutor, the town attorney, one or all of them. The alleged victim, Kari Newell, should be looked at for perjury.

And the county should warn up its checkbook. Because yes, freedom of the press applies to small towns, too.

Your Sunday Morning Prop Noise

The Breitling Super Constellation:

Breitling dismantled the airplane in 2019 for whatever fucked-up reasons went through their anacephalic minds.

A Fetus is Not a Person When It Suits Texas

In defending themselves against a lawsuit, Texas officials have argued that an “unborn child” may not have rights under the US constitution, putting them in tension with arguments made by the state’s attorney’s general’s office as well as Republican lawmakers to support restrictions to abortion.

A guard at the state prison in the community of Abilene filed the lawsuit in question after she asserted that her superiors barred her from going to the hospital while she experienced intense labor pains and what she suspected were contractions while seven months pregnant and on duty.

The guard – who is named Salia Issa – was finally able to leave to go to the hospital two and a half hours after the pain started. She was rushed into emergency surgery after doctors were unable to find a fetal heartbeat, and she ultimately delivered the baby in a stillbirth. The lawsuit claims that if Issa had been able to get to the hospital sooner, the baby would have survived.
...
The prison agency and the Texas attorney general’s office have argued in defense of the lawsuit that the agency should not be held responsible for the stillbirth and that it is not clear the fetus had rights as a person. Both entities advance those positions despite consistent arguments made in lockstep by the attorney general’s office and Texas legislators that “unborn children” should be recognized as people starting at fertilization.

I understand that it's common practice to parties to take diametrically opposite positions in different litigation. But it looks pretty bad for Texas to claim that a fetus isn't a person when it's to their advantage to deny the very thing that they have been arguing for ages.

A Warning Shot Over The TOFF's Bow?

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried left a federal courtroom in handcuffs Friday when a judge revoked his bail after concluding that the fallen cryptocurrency wiz had repeatedly tried to influence witnesses against him.

Bankman-Fried drooped his head as Judge Lewis A. Kaplan explained at length why he believed the California man had repeatedly pushed the boundaries of his $250 million bail package to a point that Kaplan could no longer ensure the protection of the community, including prosecutors’ witnesses, unless the 31-year-old was behind bars.

After the hearing ended, Bankman-Fried took off his suit jacket and tie and turned his watch and other personal belongings over to his lawyers. The clanging of handcuffs could be heard as his hands were cuffed in front of him. He was then led out of the courtroom by U.S. marshals.

Bankman-Fried claimed that he was only defending his reputation, which sounds sort of familiar.

A federal judge will allow former President Donald Trump to publicly release some evidence in his election fraud case – but warned any statements from him or his lawyers intended to intimidate witnesses would result in swift action from the court and could push the case more quickly to trial.
...
“The fact that he’s running a political campaign currently has to yield to the orderly administration of justice,” she said. “And if that means he has to limit what he says about witnesses in this case, that’s how it has to be.”

[The TOFF's mouthpiece] said Trump would “scrupulously” abide by any conditions Chutkan imposed, but argued he shouldn’t be restricted in his speech on the campaign trail. He highlighted former Vice President Mike Pence, who is both a potentially key witness for the government and one of Trump’s opponents for the Republican presidential nomination, as a particular sticking point.

“He’s a criminal defendant,” Chutkan responded. “He’s going to have restrictions like every other criminal defendant.”

I'll bet that just ground his gizzard to be reminded that he's a criminal defendant.

Caturday

The post-canned food nap.

How This Latest Bit of Trumpist Bullshit Will Go

The company behind Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform has filed a $3.78bn defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post.

The lawsuit, filed by Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (TMTG) in Florida’s Sarasota County, claims that a 13 May article that alleged the company may have committed securities fraud was false and defamatory, and posed an “existential threat”.

I predict that this case will be thrown out and that TMTG will have to pay the WaPo's legal fees.

In the 1/6 case against the TOFF, the judge intimated that the more he runs his mouth about the case, the sooner it will go to trial.

Ride-Hailing in the Eastern Hemisphere

If you are there and you use Yango, your information is being (or soon will be) shared with the KGB FSB.

Yango is trying to sell off subsidiaries in other nations while they are still worth anything. The guy who owns it is feeling the heat.

Because It's Friday

The "Indiana Rail Experience":

At Least This Nazi Asshole Had a Sudden Attack of the Smarts

The only wise thing this jerkoff apparently did was to not answer his door with a gun in his hand.

A Follansbee, West Virginia, man was arrested today on criminal charges related to his alleged obstruction and witness tampering in a federal trial.

Hardy Carroll Lloyd, age 45, was taken into custody early this morning without incident. According to the criminal complaint, Lloyd began commenting online about the federal hate crimes trial in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooter. Lloyd, a self-proclaimed “reverend” of a white supremacy movement, made threatening social media posts, website comments, and emails towards the jury and witnesses during the trial. Lloyd also placed or had others place stickers in predominantly Jewish areas of Pittsburgh, directing people to the website containing his threats and antisemitic messages.

I've heard that his email threats were far wider than just the jury and witnesses and that he's being charged with those, as well.

He's a frequent flyer, so look for him to go away for awhile.

Scratching These Down, Here