Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Let’s finish the job.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Go Get ‘Em, Joe!

Go Get ‘Em, Joe!

by | 140 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

So proud that Joe is telling it like it is.

*link from zhena gogolia in another thread.

I have an alternate view in my prediction of the short-term future related to the Federalist Society judge.

I think that with every hour – and every day – that goes by, that judge has less and less ground to stand on to approve a Special Master.  It appears that she had very little legal ground to stand on to begin with, but it’s only getting worse by the day by the minute as more information comes out.

Safer America: President Biden (LIVE) at 3:30

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  2. 2.

    bbleh

    Saw a report that said Biden had been itching to give a speech like this for a while.  That probably has something to do with why he delivered it so effectively.  And the man definitely has learned something about timing in his 150-odd years …

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    FWIW I agree on the special master issue.  Every hour of delay gives her more time to think about about whether she wants to insert herself into a case that is not actually in her court and make an embarrassingly public bad decision.

  6. 6.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Omnes Omnibus: As someone noted in an earlier thread, judges hate to have their decisions overturned by a higher court, which a decision for a Special Master would seem to cry out for.  So yes, hopefully she will see how wrong a decision for a SM would be, and not do it

    And as you point out above, as each hour goes by, a SM becomes less and less relevant!

  7. 7.

    JoyceH

    @Omnes Omnibus: I agree. This judge has little or no experience in these issues, but former DOJ officials filed a friend of the court brief that clearly explained the issues, and if she has any smarts, she’s going to realize there’s no way she can rule in Trump’s favor without labeling herself a crooked, dirty judge.

  8. 8.

    Barbara

    Pointing to potential violations of “privilege” is the merest fig leaf for asserting oversight here. The judge might be trying to figure out how to get out of it while not looking like she was an idiot to let it get this far. The fact that TFG is asking the judge to exercise equitable powers is a tell — that’s like acknowledging that there is no clear right being asserted here, that she should make it up as she goes along, and puts her in the middle of doing things (actively supervising prosecutors) that will quickly exceed her authority.

  10. 10.

    bbleh

    @Omnes Omnibus: on this one I gotta side with mistermix. She’s given every sign she’s sympathetic to the idea and doesn’t see too much harm in it, and a few days to issue an opinion is nothing. Heck, it just delays things further, which in the end is the point.

  11. 11.

    MattF

    @Omnes Omnibus: She’s been dragged into this, she knows the correct answer, she knows what the appellate courts will do. Is she a flat-out Trumpist? Looks like no one really knows.

    ETA: And, oh, btw, do you think there are classified docs at Bedminster and Trump Tower?

  12. 12.

    Barbara

    @Omnes Omnibus: Some are more risk averse than others.  New judges (she’s still a relative novice) hate being reversed, but most develop a thicker skin as they go along.

  14. 14.

    Barbara

    @MattF: ​ So I have been here before with judges. They act a bit impulsively and realize when they give it more thought (or their clerks do) that they really kind of overreached. I got a client a TRO that was reversed a week later after additional briefing. Client was so bummed, but really, the judge never should have indulged us to begin with. The easy thing for her to do is to tell Trump to avail himself of the process in the search warrant and then he can appeal from that if he doesn’t like the outcome.

  15. 15.

    Mallard Filmore

    It appears that she had very little legal ground to stand on to begin with, but it’s only getting worse by the day by the minute as more information comes out.

    That’s what gag orders are for. Or requiring each motion from the DOJ to be filed under seal.

  16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    Also worth keeping in mind that the judge is a former AUSA. There can be little doubt that she knows how this shit is supposed to work. She has to know that any ruling in Trump’s favor is going to get shredded by the 11th Circuit, which has already given her one mulligan.

  17. 17.

    Ken

    @MattF: And, oh, btw, do you think there are classified docs at Bedminster and Trump Tower?

    They could be anywhere he’s visited for the last two years, since he seems to just stuff every document into the nearest folder, briefcase, box, or desk drawer when he’s done with it. But that’s not enough for a warrant, I’m sure.

  18. 18.

    Barbara

    @bbleh: ​ Regarding delay: DOJ is not going to indict Trump prior to election. So nothing of that nature is being delayed. In addition, without any kind of order in place, DOJ can continue to examine documents and proceed unhindered with the investigation. She knows this. Once she issues an order, DOJ will use every avenue to appeal — she knows this too. Plus, it’s Labor Day weekend, which, at least when I was a baby lawyer, is the week when your new clerks first walk in the door.

  19. 19.

    Tony G

    “Peter Doocy”.  Yeah, right.  “Gravity’s Rainbow” was full of characters with ridiculous names.  Maybe Thomas Pynchon is writing the script for our current “reality”.

  20. 20.

    Suzanne

    I still cannot get over the term “Special Master”. I don’t have a courtroom kink, but, hey, I’m GGG.

  21. 21.

    waspuppet

    @Barbara: At the risk of being pedantic, as regards Donald Trump “the election” is more than two years off and he hasn’t declared he’s running for anything. Republicans are pushing this notion that you can’t indict him three months before midterm elections that he’s not running in. It’s a confession that they’re a full-on cult, and I wish someone would point that out.

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    I have no idea how the judge will rule, but one consideration that seems rather urgent is that the intelligence community needs to review the documents to figure out if people and information have been compromised so they can mitigate the damage. Wouldn’t a judge who delays that process be taking a terrible risk on behalf of the entire country and all its allies?

  24. 24.

    Baud

    @waspuppet:

    Republicans are pushing this notion that you can’t indict him three months before midterm elections that he’s not running in

     

    Meaningless. If they indict him the day after the election, the GOP will complain they should have done it before the election so that voters could decide how to respond.

  25. 25.

    hueyplong

    I am also under the impression that they’re reviewing the documents and that failure to rule simply allows that process to continue.

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    With all the recent competition for world’s worst people I’m adding this entry from the ruralest of rural California. Mere words do not suffice.

    Last April, Jessica Long’s family bought a 4-month-old goat and took it to their Shasta County home, where Long’s young daughter named it Cedar, feeding and caring for it and bonding with it as she “would have bonded with a puppy.” “She loved him as a family pet,” court papers say. The little girl was enrolled in the local 4-H chapter youth program, and in June she took Cedar, a white goat with chocolate markings framing its face, to be exhibited at the Shasta District Fair livestock auction.

    Before the auction began, the family asked to back out but fair officials refused, saying fair rules prohibited that and put the goat up for auction, where a representative for state Sen. Brian Dahle, also the Republican candidate for governor, bid $902 for Cedar’s meat. “After the auction, (the girl) would not leave Cedar’s side,” according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday by the girl’s family in Sacramento over the ordeal.

    She “loved Cedar and the thought of him going to slaughter was something she could not bear,” the suit says. “While sobbing in his pen beside him, (she) communicated to her mother she didn’t want Cedar to go to slaughter.”

    So, before Cedar could be killed, the girl “exercised her statutory rights” as a minor to reject any contract she may have had with the fair, the suit says, and her mother took Cedar from the fair and told fair officials “in no uncertain terms” that she would pay for any losses from the decision to spare Cedar. The goat ended up at a farm in Sonoma County because of concern over how saving Cedar might “be a point of controversy” in the neighborhood, the suit says. “Plaintiffs live in an agricultural community, and feared that deviating from a 4-H program through resisting the slaughter of livestock would upset other 4-H members and community members,” the suit says.

    If like me you said “whew” upon reading little Cedar was happily frolicking in Sonoma County, then you do not know the psychopathy of today’s Republicans.

    But Sonoma County wasn’t far enough away. The fair’s livestock director, B.J. Macfarlane, called Long and threatened her with a grand theft charge if Cedar was not returned. Long became desperate, the suit says, offering to cover any losses and reaching out to Dahle’s office for help. “In response to Plaintiff Long’s inquiry, Sen. Dahle’s representatives informed her that he would not resist her efforts to save Cedar from slaughter,” the suit says, adding that Long sent the fair a letter “in an effort to get them to understand, as human beings,” her position that her daughter was heartbroken and did not want Cedar killed. “Our daughter lost three grandparents within the last year and our family has had so much heartbreak and sadness that I couldn’t bear the thought of the following weeks of sadness after the slaughter,” the letter said, according to the suit.

    SHASTA SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES SENT FOR GOAT

    Despite Long’s efforts, fair officials and Macfarlane, who did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday, continued their efforts to have Cedar returned and eventually involved the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office, the lawsuit says. “Two sheriff’s deputies left their jurisdiction in Shasta County, drove over 500 miles at taxpayer expense, and crossed approximately six separate county lines, all to confiscate a young girl’s beloved pet goat, Cedar, after she decided not to auction him for slaughter,” the suit says. “Cedar was her property and she had every legal right to save his life.”

    The Sheriff’s Office declined to comment Wednesday on pending litigation, and the lawsuit says the upshot is that Cedar was slaughtered.

    “As a result, the young girl who raised Cedar lost him, and Cedar lost his life,” the suit says. “Now plaintiffs can never get him back.” “She was pretty upset when I told her,” Jessica Long said in an interview Wednesday. “She cried the whole night. “When she thinks about him she’s upset. She says, ‘They don’t know how mean they are,’ and she asks why they did that.”
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article265138311.html#storylink=cpy

    To sum up, little girl enters pet goat in county fair, decides not to auction goat, county fair people invoke “no takebacks” rule, Republican macher buys goat for slaughter, family hightails the goat out of there and brings him to safety, county fair director threatens to sue and the sheriffs drive hundreds of miles to confiscate the pet goat and deliver him to slaughter. (Shasta county having no crime to speak of, apparently.)

    Republicans have a barbecue, one of whom is running for governor,

  27. 27.

    Jeffro

    Barr just twisted the knife a lot harder by saying there was “no legitimate reason” for trumpov to have the classified documents.

    And I believe he said it on Fox, too.

    The guy is just a mensch when it comes to protecting the Republican Party establishment from the consequences of enabling trumpov.  Burying the Mueller Report, running cover for the Lafayette Square fiasco, and now this.  Mama Barr must be so proud!

  28. 28.

    Ken

    @Baud: I think it’s more likely that the day after the election, the story changes to “too close to the 2024 election, where he may be running.”

    Or — gag — too close to the 2024 campaign season, which — gag — will be starting within 90 days of the November election.

  29. 29.

    MattF

    @Betty Cracker: I think the US IC needs to figure out just how badly they’ve been damaged, and they are doing that now regardless of what the judge does. Foreign ICs have long ago done the damage, including buying floor plans of buildings in which they need to locate the windows and balconies.

  30. 30.

    FelonyGovt

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m currently on an arbitration panel with a retired Federal judge. He HATED getting overturned and now is incredibly paranoid about possibly having our eventual award vacated, to the point where he is letting all conceivable evidence in, unduly prolonging the hearings.

  32. 32.

    New Deal democrat

    @Omnes Omnibus: “Every hour of delay gives her more time to think about about whether she wants to insert herself into a case that is not actually in her court and make an embarrassingly public bad decision.”

    I agree with you on this. But my take is slightly different. I think she had a draft opinion teed up and ready to go last Friday, with the exceptions of the paragraphs summarizing the DoJ’s arguments and then rejecting them.  But the more time that goes on as she re-works her opinion, the more she realizes how boxed in she is and how, er., creative she has to be if she intends to stick with her intended result.

  35. 35.

    Betty Cracker

    @trollhattan: What horrible people. I hope the girl’s family pauperizes whatever corporate entity they’re suing and that an avenging herd of mutant supergoats eat Dahle, the sheriff and any other shitheads involved in this act of shocking cruelty.

  36. 36.

    Montanareddog

    @MattF:

     

    And, oh, btw, do you think there are classified docs at Bedminster and Trump Tower?

    I started out thinking that all these jokes about documents in Ivana Trump’s coffin were ludicrous. But with the revelation about empty folders, I am starting to have my doubts.

    Good luck with probable cause for a disinterrment, though.

  37. 37.

    EriktheRed

    “It appears that she had very little legal ground to stand on to begin with…”

     

    Since when has that kind of thing stopped the MAGAts?

  38. 38.

    Betty Cracker

    @MattF: I realize they’re doing that now, but there are 10K documents to review, according to the latest inventory. Seems like that might take awhile.

  39. 39.

    kindness

    I like the team Democrats have put up.  I think Democrats biggest liability is how deep in the tank the MSM is for Republican Daddies.  Just look at how they freaked out about the ‘optics’ of during President Uncle Joe’s speech that there were 2 Marines standing at attention in the background.  I have good feelings about our election chances, none the less.  Republicans and the Supreme Court have shown their hand and it scares the hell out of most Americans.

  40. 40.

    Ken

    @Betty Cracker: an avenging herd of mutant supergoats

    Hmm. I thought it sounded like the setup for a horror movie adaptation of “The Pet Goat“, but I was envisioning a more traditional revenge-slasher treatment. I guess the super-mutant genre would work too.

  42. 42.

    Matt McIrvin

    @kindness: Trump used uniformed service members as props in what amounted to campaign events ALL THE TIME. That’s not even getting to George W. Bush. The degree of double standard just amazes me.

  46. 46.

    bbleh

    @Barbara: @FelonyGovt: @burnspbesq: @Omnes Omnibus: Well, but she has also indicated she was considering ordering the FBI (although not the IC) to stop examining the documents while the SM does his/her work.  And SMs in the past have taken months, and that’s for routine attorney-client privilege review.  This could take as long or longer, and then there will be appeals, quite possibly to SCOTUS, given the Weighty Constitutional Issues involved.

    It would depend very much on the scope of the wording of any hold on use of the documents, but I don’t think it’s beyond the bounds of possibility that the entire search product would be off-limits until the completion of litigation up through SCOTUS review (and of course then there’s the possibility that this SCOTUS would say none of it can be used because Article II Executive Reasons).

    I do not put anything past these people.   And yeah “judges hate being overruled,” but that assumes she wants to STAY a judge AND that she cares about what those old fossils think, neither of which necessarily holds for someone focused on a career in the larger right-wing ecosystem.

    Mr Sunshine out.

  47. 47.

    geg6

    @Betty Cracker:

    I can’t remember who it was, but someone on MSNBC who is versed in such things said that they know what they’re looking for and don’t have to read all of a document to know what is what.  Much of it is just looking for the markings on every page (and, apparently, every paragraph) that indicates that it’s secret or top secret.  Anyway whomever it was said that they are probably pretty far into that process.  They’ll be looking more carefully later, but are probably just whipping through a quick id process.

    Whether or not that is true, it made sense to me.

  48. 48.

    Bupalos

    He REALLY needed to add at the end “now those things do seem to be more and more central to Trump himself, and is spreading throughout that party. This idea that if I can’t win, I lie about it, I throw a tantrum, I try to do a bunch of malarky with redefining districts and trying to subvert county level officials and threatening and committing violence. So these aren’t disconnected, but no, it’s possible to vote for Trump and the legitimate parts of his political agenda without embracing his whole attempt to subvert democracy, I suppose. But it’s getting to be a mighty fine line and one that way too many Republicans are allowing themselves to be drug across.”

  53. 53.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin: I still remember Shrub swaggering across that aircraft carrier in his flight suit (with the parachute straps still on to make his crotch stick out better), and Chris Matthews creaming his suit pants in orgasmic joy over how “manly” he looked.

  54. 54.

    Scout211

    @Betty Cracker: The judge said in court yesterday  (according to the report I read and posted on a thread here yesterday) that even if she did appoint a special master to temporarily halt the DOJ from reviewing the documents, she would not stop the IC from continuing to review the documents.

    In her verbal statements, she appears to be trying to split the baby in all things regarding this case.  We’ll see if she can keep doing that in her written decision.

  57. 57.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @kindness:

    I was wondering about those Marines. It’s been many decades since I visited Independence Hall as a child, and I honestly don’t remember if there’s a ceremonial Marine presence there or not. But for an historic patriotic place like that, it wouldn’t surprise me.

    In any case, I can’t think what would be objectionable about the presence of Marine sentries for a Presidential address. And certainly TFG was not shy about using the military whenever it suited him. Again, the MAGAts and their media enablers are screaming about a nothingburger. Or nothingberder.

  61. 61.

    trollhattan

    @SiubhanDuinne: TFG and the entire TFG klan going back generations have done bupkis defending the country (bad young Donny did get sent off to military academy, so at least learned to march and stuff). The same cannot be said for the Bidens, to be sure.

  63. 63.

    zhena gogolia

    @Citizen Alan:

    From Media Matters:

    On the May 7, 2003, edition of Hardball, Matthews asked former Nixon administration official G. Gordon Liddy what he thought of the response to Bush’s landing on the Abraham Lincoln. Looking at the footage, Liddy commented that Bush’s flight suit made “the best of his manly characteristic.” From the May 7 Hardball:

    MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?

    LIDDY: Well, I — in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know — and I’ve worn those because I parachute — and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those — run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

  64. 64.

    Anonymous At Work

    Is the DoJ’s strategy purposeful here?  Are they counterpunching as part of a deeper level of thinking?  Merrick Garland has raised huge walls against possible DoJ interference in 2022 election.  Every Trump action has resulted in DoJ putting out larger and larger tracts of damning evidence.  Is this how Garland planned/wanted to get around his own public prohibition?

  67. 67.

    Bill Arnold

    @MattF:

    do you think there are classified docs at Bedminster and Trump Tower?

    Both should be blocked up with crime scene tape, IMO.
    If at the very least surveillance videos are not being monitored, preferably in real time, the Feds are not being responsible. (I’d be considering shutting power off just to de-power paper shredders that might be used by traitors.)

  68. 68.

    ian

    @trollhattan: That story sounds like the parents put their girl’s goat up for auction.  The bad people in this story are the parents, who did not realize their child was bonded to the kid until the auction started, and the fair people, who refused to back down after the kid decided to change her mind.

    This is from the Sacramento Bee article you linked to

    “In response to Plaintiff Long’s inquiry, Sen. Dahle’s representatives informed her that he would not resist her efforts to save Cedar from slaughter,” the suit says,

     

    The junior livestock auction brochure, which touts the event as “Sunshine, Smiles and YOU,” also leaves little doubt about the final destination for animals, listing 530 animals for sale and pegging meat processing charges for goats as $95 per animal

    I’m sure we can find better things to attack this Republican over then a goat auction he neither directly participated in, nor demanded be carried through.

  69. 69.

    Citizen Alan

    @Antonius: A Democrat could be indicted a day before an election on the flimsiest evidence and no one in the GOP or the MSM would care. And one probably will the next time we get a Republican president.

  70. 70.

    Citizen Alan

    @ian: Yeah, but we all know if it had been a marginally competent candidate with some degree of human empathy (or at least good political instincts), they’d have made a point of turning the goat back over to the child and had reporters on hand to take pictures of an adorable moppet and her pet goat. But the Republican says “Imma gonna eat this child’s pet!”

  71. 71.

    different-church-lady

    @ian: For cryin’ out loud, we’re trying to fend off semi-fascisim and you’re busy with being principled?   ;-)

  72. 72.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: I assume, but do not know (obviously), that the NARA has had their hair on fire since 12:01 PM January 20, 2021.  They probably have a list of all the records that were checked out by TFG’s people and not returned before he left office.  They’ve been trying to get them back for months and months.

    I don’t know (obviously) how they segregate the lists of normal government records that are missing from lists of classified government records that are missing, but I’m sure that there’s detailed lists of the latter (but it may take a while to collect and sort and do whatever needs to be done with them).

    tl;dr – Classified stuff has a paper trail.  Last person who checked the document out and didn’t return it is in big trouble…

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  74. 74.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @bbleh: Someday we will find out why now, as opposed to a month ago, or two years ago, or forty-two years ago.  I do not necessarily believe in “better late than never”; I almost exactly believe that “late” (even a little bit late) means “ridiculous”.  Everything that can be said now — and Biden has still not said the thousandth part of it — could have been said in 1980, and the fact that it wasn’t has deprived it of any prima facie credibility to be said now, the more as time goes by.  If Biden has been waiting to feel the wind at his back, is that a creditable posture?  But if the wind is now at his, and our, back, that is a good thing — if we exploit it.

  75. 75.

    trollhattan

    @ian:

    You don’t find the connection among a state senator, senator’s advisor, the county fair director and the county sheriffs–who drive hundreds of miles to confiscate evidence of petty theft, to be problematic? That’s a lot of power to wield upon a child.

    You don’t have an issue with the county fair director threatening the family with grand theft charges when the sale price does not meet the California criteria for grand theft (i.e., he lied in making the threat and committed a crime doing so)?

    Yup, definitely all on the parents.

  77. 77.

    WereBear

    @Citizen Alan: I know from connections in rural areas that children are discouraged from seeing pets as anything but utilitarian and this might have been some Trumper butthurt going on.

    Nothing is too petty for a tyrant.

  79. 79.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @Barbara: ​ “…DOJ is not going to indict Trump prior to [the midterm] election…” There is no reason not to. He is a private citizen whose name appears on no 2022 ballot. His “leadership” of the Republican Party is purely unofficial and conveys no standing whatever; no more does any previous tenure of any office. He is clearly an immediate (from each second to the next) national-security risk and a flight risk. Every single point of fact or process that justified the search — now seen to have been incomplete! — of Mar-a-Lago also justified Trump’s arrest.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    Jeez, here we go:

    …Fire Warning…
    The following message is transmitted at the request of Siskiyou OES.

    …Wildfire burning in the Weed… Lake Shastina… and Edgewood areas. Please leave these areas immediately…

    A significant chunk of Weed (I know, I know) burned a scant few years ago.

  81. 81.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @trollhattan:

    Yes, IIRC TFG’s Drumpf grandfather (or great-grandfather) was a draft evader from whatever German state he hailed from. I read about him once, but can’t be arsed to look up the details now.

  83. 83.

    Scout211

    re: the goat “scandal”

    Kids from all over the country raise animals through 4-H programs every year. The good 4-H  leaders help the kids understand what raising an animal and showing it at the fair means. You show it and you sell it at auction. There’s often tears and sadness, but good 4-H leaders and parents have prepared their kids to say goodbye to their animals at the fair.

    Either the parents or the 4-H leaders (or both) did not adequately prepare this young girl to say goodbye to her goat because being in 4-H she should have known and been prepared. Or she should have dropped out of the program before the fair.

    I read this story earlier and it didn’t sit well with me.  There’s parts of the story that seem to be missing.

  85. 85.

    Eunicecycle

    @Citizen Alan: It does seem like a really big missed opportunity for a feel good story. And allow them to be painted as heartless assholes, which I think they are.

  87. 87.

    Ksmiami

    @Citizen Alan: exactly- the GOP has lost its mind, it’s humanity, it’s sense of self preservation. They’ve become cartoon villains but with real life cruelty in result.

  88. 88.

    The Moar You Know

    I’m sure we can find better things to attack this Republican over then a goat auction he neither directly participated in, nor demanded be carried through.

    @ian: I see no reason not to attack him with it anyway.  You use what you have, and you play to win.

    Can you say in good faith that if the positions were reversed a Republican wouldn’t crucify a Dem with this?  Of course you can’t.

    Play to win.

  90. 90.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: There could have been a lot of pressure on the girl.  “Don’t be a sissy.”  Parents saying that she started the program so she has to see it through, so she tried to stick it out but in the end it was too hard for her to think of the goat being killed.  Some kids and some people are more sensitive than others.

  91. 91.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Scout211: FIL was an ag teacher and 4-H advisor for 30 years. You’re right. Something is missing here

    Eta: that sell for slaughter part is one reason I was never in 4-H and hated the livestock auctions.

  95. 95.

    Prometheus Shrugged

    @Bill Arnold: Also Ted Nugent’s house, though, to be fair, that’s probably a pretty secure repository because no one has paid attention to Ted Nugent in 40 years.

  96. 96.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @ian: But that’s not the entire issue. Once the parents found out that the daughter had bonded, and stated that they’d make the fair whole wrt to money potentially lost, the organizers should have backed off. At the end of the day, we’re talking about children and family issues. 4-H is not Evil, Inc., or at least, shouldn’t be.

    As for the sheriff sending deputies across the state to fetch the goat, well, that pretty much proves that his IS a cog in the machinery of Evil, Inc. Fuck ‘im, hope he dies in a fire.

  100. 100.

    Subsole

    @Matt McIrvin:

    What double standard?

    For there to be a double standard, those gutless suckups in the media would have to hold Republicans to ANY standard at all.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I wish.  But I am sending email to her at the email address she has used to send me email in the past.  So i don’t think it’s a bad email address thing unless she suddenly deleted her aol account after 20 years.  (or whatever)

    We were so worried about Amir, and that turned out okay.  Fingers crossed.

  105. 105.

    JPL

    @WaterGirl:  Since I initially used a bogus account, I hoped she did also.   I miss her.  Even though we have never met, as a community we still bonded.

  106. 106.

    gene108

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    There’s no downside to inserting herself into this and covering for TFG.

    She is a judge for as long as she lives or wants to be. Any decision she makes won’t change that.

    Bork was rewarded for firing a bunch of DOJ people who disagreed with Nixon by Reagan nominating him to the Supreme Court.

    Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr investigating President Clinton.

    Amy Barrett was involved with shutting down the Florida recount, in 2000.

    Being a loyal Republican lawyer or judge willing to do what may seem distasteful to others has been rewarded. She knows this might be her shot at SCOTUS in the next 5-10 years, should a Republican win the presidency.

  109. 109.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    My friend who used to be an FBI agent was roll playing Trump and an agent today:

    Trump: I would never throw those confidential documents on the floor. I kept the confidential documents in my desk!

    Agent: OK, dude. Thanks!

  112. 112.

    WaterGirl

    Are we expecting to hear something today?  Nearly 5pm, 6 pm eastern time, this would be the perfect time for a Friday dump, wouldn’t it?

    But I wonder if the Friday news dump is a thing of the past because the internet never sleeps.

  113. 113.

    Jim Appleton

    @Ksmiami:   if by “good” you mean good at being a Republican, you’re clearly wrong.

    If you mean “good” ethically, morally, legally, doing what’s-best-for-their-own-grandkids, …

  115. 115.

    MazeDancer

    One of the lawyers talking to Lawrence last night – Weissman, Kayal, or Moss – said the judge’s decision depended on what she wants her future to be.

    Stick with her nice lifetime job, advance to appellate, or get on the Federalist Society SCOTUS list.

    She could come down hard for Trump, doesn’t matter what the law says, if she is ultra ambitious.

  116. 116.

    Peale

    Egads. I’d really like to know who is funding “Friends of Andrew Cuomo.” He’s been popping up wherever I go begging me to resuscitate him. I can’t feel sorry for him, but I’d like to know who the donors are so that I can skip voting for any candidates they back in primaries if I can avoid it.

  118. 118.

    RaflW

    Was in the car this afternoon, and NPR’s Ailsa Chang said she was bringing on former Rep Barbara Comstock (R-Va) to talk about Biden’s speech. I cringed.

    And then Comstock started talking, and wow, she was way more directly calling out MAGA Republicans that I think NPR was expecting? Barbara just ripped on Trump (‘the Mar a Lago mess’), Mastriano, and “this lunacy” and “[Trump] is deadly for the party” and “Trump-weak candidates … who are not sellable to moderate Republicans”. So much more. Worth six minutes to hear.

  120. 120.

    Ruckus

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):

    @JoyceH:

    I wonder if this judge is taking the time for the feds to finish their review and then will inform the SFB crew that a Special Master would have to have a Top Secret clearance and a need to know to see many/all of the documents and therefore would have to be approved by the entity in charge of the documents to become a special master, which would defeat the purpose entirely. Just a thought.

  125. 125.

    RaflW

    @Peale: In Feb of ’22 the FTFNYT reported that Friends of Andrew Cuomo – the official campaign account of that scoundrel – still had a lot of money and was then launching a $369,000 TV ad campaign across the state of NY for reputational ‘salvage’.

    So I guess he still has donor money to burn now? What a turd.

  127. 127.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: FYI, I saw something in an earlier thread today that shortly before debbie stopped commenting, debbie had said something like she thought she might have Covid.

    I just went back through all the debbie comments for the two weeks preceding her last comment, and there was no mention of Covid, and the comments were just like you would expect debbie’s comments to be.

  129. 129.

    Captain C

    @Peale: I call foul on that group. As a New Yorker, I find it nearly impossible to believe Andrew Cuomo has any real friends. Users, enablers, and sycophants, perhaps, but not actual friends.

  131. 131.

    gene108

    @MazeDancer:

    Stick with her nice lifetime job, advance to appellate, or get on the Federalist Society SCOTUS list.

    She could come down hard for Trump, doesn’t matter what the law says, if she is ultra ambitious.

    The way things are now she’d have to be an appellate judge either to have that as the capstone to her career or on the path to SCOTUS.

    The only thing working against her shot at SCOTUS is her age. She’s already 41. She only has 10 years to get noticed by the Federalist Society as SCOTUS material, and hope Republicans control the White House and Senate in that time, as well as one of the nine justices croak during this window.

  132. 132.

    J R in WV

    @trollhattan: ​
     

    To sum up, little girl enters pet goat in county fair, decides not to auction goat, county fair people invoke “no takebacks” rule, Republican macher buys goat for slaughter, family hightails the goat out of there and brings him to safety, county fair director threatens to sue and the sheriffs drive hundreds of miles to confiscate the pet goat and deliver him to slaughter.

    And all these monsters will tell you they are devout Christians, also, too… so not so!

  134. 134.

    J R in WV

    @Anonymous At Work:

    Merrick Garland has raised huge walls against possible DoJ interference in 2022 election.

    Trump is not a candidate for any position in the 2022 elections. He is as eligible for indictment as any neighborhood smack dealer! More so, really!!!

  136. 136.

    persistentillusion

    @Spanky: I was seated near G. Gordon and a woman clearly not his wife in a restaurant in the Bahamas.  She was gushing rhapsodizing about Gordon ordering a split of champagne. I wondered how small her fee was, cause none of this was first quality.

    His name, much less that photo (eye bleach stat!), still makes me twitch.

    ETA to make my disgust clearer.

  138. 138.

    Honus

    @J R in WV: exactly. You can give the goat back to the girl or kill it. Not a hard choice.  And I grew up on a farm in West Virginia where we killed animals all the time.

  139. 139.

    Miss Bianca

    @trollhattan: @ian: I mean…the thing is (she said as someone who lives in Ruritania) the whole *thing* about raising livestock animals for 4H competition is that they’re explicitly intended for sale and subsequent slaughter. You don’t get to just show them and go home with them. It’s sad for the girl and her mom and the goat too, that somehow things got to the point where the goat was actually sold. It’s also sad that the Republicans in question were such fucking psychos about it.

    @Scout211: This, exactly.

  140. 140.

    SWMBO

    @Betty Cracker: I haven’t read all the comments but I’m wondering if the guy running for governor paid for the goat meat with campaign funds.  Would make it a bit sticky, no?

Comments are closed.