Day 849 – Before, During, and After

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Yesterday was a day of extraordinary headlines. Most of them sad and despicable, but here we are.

One thing the far right, the “conservatives”, The Republican Party, the super wealthy be they businesses or individuals who secretly give money to PACs and – lest I forget – DJT and his MAGA supporters, his toadies, and his imitators have taught me is more about the law, The Constitution, and how our government works and doesn’t function than I ever wanted to know – but thank-you.

One mystery that I eluded to recently was that the judge in the defamation and sexual abuse case against the orange one was that the judge would not let another case of similar complaint be combined with this one. Well, now I have learned something, and while I don’t know the judge’s reasoning I have learned that you can sue someone multiple times for roughly the same offense if they keep doing it, albeit at different times.

DJT got sued for defaming a woman before he was President. That cost him five million dollars.

He continued to defame her with roughly the same words while President. That case is still working its way through the judicial system and is asking for a lot more money than five mil.

And now at a CNN sponsored town hall, held on TV to a national office, he has repeated his defamatory statements and the lawyer for Ms Carroll is considering suing him again.

Wow. I guess Donald will have to be sued for defamation continually on the same kind of comments until he learns that you can’t keep saying nasty things about people just because you lost a case for saying those nasty things before. I guess he thought he bought immunity.

Speaking of nasty, he called the moderator of the CNN town hall nasty for pointing out the facts. I guess she could sue, but you’d have to show loss of income, status, something. So, I don’t know if she has a case. I think she has a case against her employer for being so stupid as to put her in that position. But they got the ratings! Whoopie. Maybe, we should have live town halls with what is essentially like a video review, but in this case it’s a fact check.

We’d need refs.

Donald says something stupid (five seconds into the thing.)

Ref blows a whistle and says, “The previous statement is under review.”

A team of fact checkers are sitting on a three tier stand that looks like a phone bank at a telethon.

One of them says, “The previous statement is false.”

And as they go on to explain the evidence a giant red stamp in a cartouche is slammed across the face of Trump. Then we proceed.

Donald says something else.

Ref blows a whistle and says, “The previous statement is under review.”

A team of fact checkers are sitting in a three tier stand.

One of them says, “The previous statement is false.”

And as they go on to explain the evidence a giant red stamp in a cartouche is slammed across the face of Trump. Then we proceed.

Rinse and repeat.

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Okay, that’s one. Here’s two.

A woman is suing Rudy, Mr. Mayor. Aside from the fact that he insisted she work in the nude, give him blow jobs (so he could feel like Bill Clinton), and that she quoted language he spoke so foul it can’t be repeated on TV, he also said he and Donald were selling pardons for two million and that they’d split the money. This is apparently on tape. If so, and if found guilty, there are four Federal crimes alleged in that plot. This is without the tawdry sex stuff.

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Number 3 – a constituent with a baseball bat entered a field office of a Congressman and hit two people with it and destroyed computers and furniture. One of the people hit was an intern on her first day on the job.

Hey, young people become an intern! Learn on to perform sex acts on old men and take physical abuse from crazed people stirred up by lies. Sounds like fun to me.

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Number 4 – The Durham Final Report is out! Hoorah. Truth! This will lay the woke mob low (or something like that.) After four years, millions of dollars, lots of effort, we have 306 pages of … wait for it … NOTHING.

Wait? What? At year three an initial report was released and it had nothing, but we were told wait for the final, and like the initial we got nothing.

So what were the results:

1. Dunham brought two case to court and lost both by unanimous jury vote.

2. He and Attorney Barr went to Italy to further investigate. Most legal folks have said that an AG hanging out with a special prosecutor is not only extremely unusual but never heard of before this time. 

3. What were they doing over there? We don’t know. We do know that they hung out together over here too. Also, never heard of. 

4. But…but they did find evidence of a crime while in Italy. They reported it to the public. Big news. Ah ha.

5. Ah. Now, we are getting somewhere, yes? No. After reporting they had evidence of a crime they failed to disclose what the crime or crimes were that they found. They also failed to disclose that it was handed to them on a silver platter by Italian authorities. And, oh yes, it wasn’t what they were seeking. It was evidence some guy named Donald J Trump had committed crimes. What did they do with that evidence. I dunno. Put it in a drawer?

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Number 5 – Some Republican Congressman who is leading some investigation has so far come up with nothing, but … but he has a witness. An informant who will reveal all and we will tell the truth! Right on! (Man, haven’t heard that phrase in a long time.)

There’s a problem. He can’t find the informant. He lost him. Not sure how that happened. Maybe, he’s in the drawer with the Dunham/Barr papers on Trump? I don’t know. Sounds like the kind of excuse a corrupt politician makes when caught with their hands in the pussy jar, “I was doing my own investigation.”

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Number 6 – The Deficit and the Debt Limit. During Joe Biden’s term he has reduced the Deficit 1.7 trillion dollars. One time he might have said “Debt Limit.” OMG! go crazy on the right wing! And they did. 

Deficit is how much in the hole the government is. Debt Limit is how much we can borrow to cover our debt.

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Number 7 – The Supreme Court is using The Shadow Docket to make rulings and instructing lower courts to abide by these rulings as precedent. 

Until last night I never heard of The Shadow Docket. It’s a procedure that is supposed to be used for rush cases. For example, someone is about to be executed. The court can say, “don’t do that.” No reason has to be given. No one on the court has to sign the order. It is supposed to be used only for that particular case and not as precedent, (because there may be no reason given for it, so how can another court follow the logic if no reason is given?)

But now, big consequential cases are being done in this manner. I guess the justices don’t want to take responsibility for their actions? 

Enough for now. OMG, we’re all gonna die.

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One last thing – Kevin McCarthy ain’t that bright, but he’s not the dumbest person in Congress. I hold that desalted position (as opposed to “exalted” ha ha, get it?) for Virginia Foxx. The only time I see her is in group photos when she is backing some really stupid outlandish thing someone in Congress is doing.

I can’t forget the last time olde Kevin tried to be speaker he lost to Paul Ryan, I have to credit the loss to a statement he made about something or other “XXXstan” where the XXX stands for some made up phrase that he thought was a country. (“Rorastan, Topekastan, DontGiveaDamnastan” etc.)

Two last things – Ron DeSantis. It has been pointed out that he has little personality and he really doesn’t like to be around people. This, one observer, doesn’t mean he can’t become President – look at Nixon! 

So old Ronnie tries to make up for it by using his governmental powers to silence and suppress people and things he doesn’t like. He wrote a book and the word “Freedom” in the title. Maybe, it was the title. But he, like a lot of the Republican politicians, claim they are for freedom and equality, and transparency and all this kind of stuff when what they do is to try and suppress and intimidate via government action. Doesn’t sound like freedom to me.

The other annoying thing about DeSantis (and Hawley, and Cruz, and Cotton) is that while they try to play the shucks down home, good old boy, cards let’s not forget that they went to Harvard and Yale. Not quite down home places. Like Kid Rock trying to pretend he’s red neck when he grew up in a mansion in Michigan. (5,660 square foot, five bedroom, seven bathroom. 5.5 acre estate selling for $1.3 million. sound like white trash to you?)

Three – this is the last one, I promise (fingers crossed) – Roy Cooper, Governor of North Carolina vetoed a heinous abortion ban bill. But he didn’t do it at his desk. He did it at a rally. The bill was dressed up to make it seem like they were giving women more access, all the while making it harder to get access. (Btw this is the typical Republican dodge, like “right to work” really means the company can fire you for any reason without cause.)

Four – Oh no I broke my promise – sorry. A bunch of white supremacists marched on the Mall. Looking at the video it seemed they had more protection than the Capital had on Jan 6th. They stopped for a speech. A fellow on a red bike came to comment. He sat astride his bike just outside the park police line surrounding the rally. As the speaker would pause the fellow would comment:

“Your pants don’t match.”

“Nobody likes you.”

“Cargo pants are out.”

“Reclaim your virginity.”

“You can’t even memorize your speech.” (This btw was the reason for the speakers pauses. He had to pull the paper out of his pocket to see what the next thing was he was going to say.

As to the 150 or so on the mall. They were a brave bunch with their faces hidden behind goiters pulled up to their noses and wearing sunglasses and caps. What were they afraid of? Oh, maybe the truth? I don’t know. I think at a minimum they should be arrested, photographed as part of the booking process and their names released to the public so everyone can know who these fake patriots are. Trump would like that – book now, apologize later.

Okay, I’m done.