Thought experiment.
Think for a minute about how you would have felt – how we all would have felt – if the verdict in the E. Jean Carroll case had been a hung jury.
It would have felt like one more body blow. It would have been discouraging. It would have been demoralizing. We would be thinking that as long as a MAGA could be on the jury in any case, Trump would always walk, just as he always has before.
Thankfully, that’s not what happened.
I have never understood why, if something is a big Joe Biden deal of a problem, having the problem fixed isn’t an equally big Joe Biden deal. Is it just human nature?
I can’t imagine why I am thinking about this today, but I am.
Open thread.
Tim C.
Since November of 2016, I think there’s a kind of long-term mental/emotional damage that most of the “good guys” have been nursing and probably will all our lives.
Far more people in this country than I beleived possible before that night are racist ass-hats who are frankly more than happy to end democracy if they get what they think they want.
Far more people in this country than I beleved possible before that night will willingly live in a mad-max hellscape as long as they think “those people” are in marginally worse shape.
The wins just feel like holding actions at this point. And they should matter, but for me, faith is broken and it’s not coming back.
Glad there’s people who still have it though, makes it worth still trying.
NotMax
Nothing about Dolt 45 is hung.
//
JPL
@Tim C.: That’s how I feel.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
lol
Raoul Paste
I will be tired of winning when we take over Congress, expand the Supreme Court, re-elect Biden, and convict the plotters of the insurrection.
And if Roger Stone is in jail
danielx
OT: today is my birthday and I am sitting on a balcony on Grassy Key looking out at the Gulf of Mexico.
Life is good, barring the mass of sargassum clogging the beach.
Baud
Not entirely, it’s because over the last two generations, liberals have formed social bonds based on being underappreciated losers. Winning battles and celebrating the wins means betraying that community. It is human nature to not want to betray one’s tribe, as we often see manifested among the GOP base. But it is not human nature to create social ties based on losing. That’s a purely cultural phenomenon created by a mix of external and internal social forces.
In sports, you would bring in new coaches and players to change the culture. We don’t have that option.
Baud
@danielx: Happy birthday.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tim C.:
Nope, the assholes have and always will be there, but there are more of us. 2016 was a perfect storm. We know how to prevent it from happening again and we have been doing what needs to be done from the 2017 Women’s March through the April 2023 WI supreme court election. We just need to keep on and not give up.
TriassicSands
DONALD TRUMP: SEXUAL PREDATOR FOR PRESIDENT
It’s got a real ring to it.
Brachiator
Could you even have a hung jury in a civil case with a nine person jury?
Trump has often lost or settled lawsuits when he was a purely private citizen. It is only the presidency and cover by the GOP which has given him any immunity from his misdeeds.
When he can’t use presidential power to offer protection, he relies on a raggedy private legal team. Unless a judge is in the tank for him, he regularly gets slapped down.
Still, I didn’t know how this civil case would turn out. But it appeared that Trump’s legal team was lame and Trump was not helping his case.
News anchors say that they expected the jury to deliberate for days and were surprised at how quickly a verdict against Trump was reached. But to me Trump’s deposition, where he admitted that “stars” could assault women with impunity, seemed clearly damning. Practically an admission of guilt.
Trump is a loser. The losses may start accumulating.
It’s about time.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Well written. I guess political consultants would be the closest thing to coaches, but they’re largely useless imo
Josie
@Tim C.:
I have always been one of those that had faith, but things are happening in Texas that have me wavering. Abbott is pushing to have the power to overturn election results in Harris County. The whole idea is making me sick to my stomach. It looks like there is a strong possibility he will succeed. Voter suppression is going to be our biggest enemy going forward.
smith
The 2016 election was traumatic, but even more so was the wholesale whitewashing by Republicans of TFG’s many crimes and misdemeanors and general bad behavior, especially the Big Lie and J6. There is a sense that our society has become profoundly unmoored from any recognizable values at all.
Mousebumples
@Omnes Omnibus: When we vote, we win.
And now I’m determined to approach every election (especially in Wisconsin) like we’re 5 points down. #GOTV
Tim C.
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I’m not giving up. Not by a mile. It’s just the fear has replaced the confidence. Perhaps that’s a good thing. No small part of the victories since 2016 have been about all those things. The way Democrats and lets call us all the “Allied left and center” have managed to hold back the storm is admirable. It’s entirely possible enough of the country breaks in our direction like California did 25 years ago is all there. Boomers will Die, Milennials and Zoomers will rise, and God bless every one of them for it.
sdhays
It’s well past time for the Republican Party as a whole to experience this sense of community.
Old Man Shadow
I expected him to win. I am pleasantly surprised.
I will be even more delightfully surprised if he spends his remaining days in a maximum security military prison in an undisclosed location for insurrection and sedition.
eclare
@NotMax:
Hahaha…that’s good!
eclare
@danielx:
Happy birthday!
UncleEbeneezer
@Tim C.: The thing that gives me hope though…it’s ALWAYS been like this. Sure, the past 7 years have made it clearer than ever and opened a lot of our eyes, but the reality is that the % of shitty people was this way even when we’ve made our greatest advances/progress. Which means we can do it again. And young voters also give me hope because Demographics may not be a quick fix, it will matter.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mousebumples: I think that when we are ahead, we can play like we are winning. That doesn’t mean letting up or coasting. Instead, it means being confident and reaching for more. I have no issue with trying to run up the score.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: HBD!
rikyrah
don’t forget.
The majority of the jury were men.
Betty Cracker
Here’s a different thought experiment. Imagine you are the “1” in the “1 in 4” women who has been sexually assaulted. Imagine that your country is so deeply misogynistic that it elevated a self-confessed sexual predator to the presidency in 2016, and that you saw that sexual predator elevate another sexual predator to the United States Supreme Court.
Imagine the SCOTUS sexual predator joined a colleague on the bench who had sexually harassed a female employee in particularly gross, leering ways and that two brave women had come forth in both cases to try to stop their ascent, only to be smeared and see their assaulter/harasser elevated to your country’s highest fucking court anyway. Imagine that those two contemptible shit-stains then joined in a decision to rip away women’s right to bodily autonomy.
If you were/are that woman, would you be happy that E.J. Carroll won her civil case against that grotesque monster who assaulted her? Sure!
But maybe you wouldn’t think the Big Joe Biden problem was the possibility that the grotesque monster Trump would skate yet again (as he had so many times before) but rather that he assaulted innumerable women and was still elected president and is still the frontrunner for his party’s nomination for the next election.
I don’t mean to pick on you, WG — you’re a good person. But goddamn it, after reading through the comments in my Gates of Hell post from yesterday, I feel obligated to speak up when the allegedly muted reaction to the Trump verdict is framed as a morale issue for Democrats that we can tut-tut at. For some of us, lots of us, it’s deeper than that.
Baud
@rikyrah: I can’t forget it because I didn’t know that until now.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: They had to get all 9 votes in order
to convictto find them liable.They would have had to get all 9 votes in the other direction in order
to acquitto find them not liable.8-1, 1-8 and all other permutations in between would have been a hung jury.
Per Andrew Weissman.
opiejeanne
I was startled that they didn’t find him guilty of rape, because I thought penetration with anything, including fingers, qualified as rape. She was penetrated and despite being unsure if it was his tiny fingers or his tiny peepee, it shouldn’t have mattered which because it was penetration. And they apparently believed her.
Is there a different definition of rape now?
Baud
@opiejeanne: I don’t know, but I assume there may be some variations in state law.
MattF
I’ve thought that Trump’s immediate outburst after the verdict, that he had no idea who this person, Carroll, was— was an incredibly damning and damaging admission. It might take a bit of time for that to sink in, but it’s just awful.
eclare
I have to have hope. Yes, 2016 opened my eyes in a big, disappointing way. And yes, things are happening in red states that are horrific. I live in one, I know. But I look at the struggle for Civil Rights, how long it took, how hard it was, and I say we can do this. We just have to keep marching on, together.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: As one of the people commenting on that thread I will say, point taken.
@WaterGirl: Not a criminal trial, so acquit and convict do not apply. It’s either a finding of liability or not.
UncleEbeneezer
@Tim C.: Okay, I see what you mean. Yes, totally agree. I still have hope but 2016 did kill pretty much any confidence I had of seeing major progress in the near future. I still think we’ll get there eventually but it’s gonna be much slower and more painful than I would’ve wagered in October of 2016 (I was confident the electorate would choose Hillary, which we did by about as much popular vote as I expected, but I didn’t anticipate the Electoral College loss).
cmorenc
The outcome of the E. Jean Carroll case was undoubtedly strongly influenced by the venue in which it occurred – New York City. Not saying there aren’t plenty of other places in the US where there’s nearly as good a chance of getting a jury persuadable to find liability, but also there’s an abundance of places where the odds are much greater that jurors resistant to persuasion would find their way onto the jury. A win in Mobile, Alabama would be possible, but far less likely than in New York City.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Is that secret fraternity talk?
Josie
@eclare:
Thank you. This is a message I need to put on a post-it note and look at every day.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: And at least one of the guys primarily gets his news from the show of some right-wing nut job.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mousebumples:
@Omnes Omnibus:
👍
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
E Jean Carroll was very impressive (along with her lead atty) on MJ this morning. Her atty said as soon as TFG misidentified E Jean as his wife, Marla, in that photo in his deposition, she knew she had him.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne: NY uses a common law definition of rape which requires penetration by the penis. Anything else is sexual assault. Many states use the definition of that you mention, penetration by anything. I think the important thing is that the jury fully believed everything Carroll said. That’s why she won.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
IMHO one of the worst things we do to ourselves is try to predict how long progress will take, because it leads to a boom-and-bust emotional cycle that, again IMHO, makes progress harder and longer than it should be.
CaseyL
@opiejeanne: AFAICT, NY State law does specify that “rape” must involve penetration by a penis. Anything else is sexual assault – and that is what they convicted him of.
ETA: Not “convicted,” as this wasn’t a criminal trial. Sexual assault is what they found him liable for.
eclare
@opiejeanne:
I think it’s a state law thing. Or what Baud said.
Scout211
@WaterGirl: Yes getting to unanimous so quickly is amazing.
A reaction:
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: You should have told me this earlier!
Seriously tho, yes. Agreed. It’s a hard impulse to resist.
smith
@eclare: Actually, I think this is still the same struggle touched off by the Civil Rights movement. The Democrats, in response to that movement, somehow decided to do the right thing and came down on the side of recognizing the rights of all citizens. That led directly to the Republican Southern Strategy, and the descent of that party into white nationalism.
In fact, you could conceptualize all of this as a continuation of the botched and incomplete process of Reconstruction.
Maxim
@opiejeanne: In many jurisdictions, the penetration has to be penile for it to count as rape. Which is a stupid, awful distinction that ignores the fact that rape is about violation and control, not particular bits of anatomy.
Anyway
@Baud:
I call BS… does not resonate for me at all.
eclare
@cmorenc:
E Jean’s atty said only two of the nine were from NYC. Most were from further north, and she said most were working class, not Village hipsters.
Baud
@smith:
Given the history of the Democratic Party, I contend, as I have before, that this transition is one of the most remarkable transformations in history.
Baud
@Anyway: Ok.
beckya57
Answer here is easy. (1) Trump will drag out endless appeals, and if all else fails he’ll just raise the $$ from his supporters. He won’t pay a dime. (2) The legal issues haven’t hurt him politically in the slightest; if anything they’re helped him. He’ll be the GOP nominee, and given the pro-GOP slant in the EC he could very well “win” again.
Sorry to ruin your day.
Baud
@eclare: I get the real politic of the situation, but village hipsters are just as qualified to sit on juries as working class folks.
eclare
@smith:
Very good points, going back to Reconstruction.
smith
@Baud: Yes, especially as they knew going into it that they would lose Southern Democrats, and did it anyway.
opiejeanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Thanks. I didn’t realize there were variations by state.
Someone I heard yesterday said that her admission that she didn’t know which it was, meant that she was honest. She won because they believed her, which made me happy.
Elizabelle
@danielx: Happy Birthday! What a splendid view to be enjoying. (Minus the seaweed.). Enjoy!
JML
Liberals have always struggled with wins, at least in the modern political environment. A lot of our issues that we’re crusading for have nuance and complexity, and we rarely get everything we want in one swell foop. As a result, there’s always a significant part of that body politic that focuses on what still needs to be done and both implicitly and explicitly criticizes the result that was just achieved. So even when we win, often a majority is unhappy with the result even if it’s for different reasons.
I think that creates a lot of frustration and reduces our ability to celebrate the wins. And when we don’t, it opens more windows for people to complain about us not accomplishing “anything”.
the E. Jean Carroll case is instructive. Trump got nailed with a HUGE loss. It’s a civil verdict that pins him as a sexual abuser, and these (even with the lowered burden for a civil case) are often very hard to prove, especially when far distant from the inciting attack. But it happened. Immediately on social media, however, I saw a lot of complaints about how could they have possibly let him off on the rape charges and found him guilty on the sexual abuse, instead of celebrating how this woman who has suffered for so long finally got a measure of justice, winning not just on the core charge (if not the “worse” count) but also on defamation. nailing Trump on defamation is enormous, and opens him up to tremendous liability because he’s so reckless with what he says, can’t stop talking, and can’t stop attacking people. never again can he say he’s never defamed anyone: a court has said he has.
I don’t think we’re tired of winning. I do think we’re bad at taking victory laps, and looking for the positives in an outcome, rather than highlighting the worse aspects.
UncleEbeneezer
THIS!
eclare
@Baud:
Agree. But you know what I mean. I could have said Manhattan elites or something else.
Also for those who think the jury was just left leaning New Yorkers, Tacopina had a hand in jury selection, too.
Geminid
The 2018 Blue Wave” that made Rep. Pelosi Speaker Pelosi renewed my optimism. It also added a bunch of very talented Democrats to the House. Forty of them flipped red seats.
The January 5, 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs were also critical victories. Mitch McConbell was planing to choke the Biden Presidency with austerity, but Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff blew that plan up.
Speaking of talented Democrats in the House Class of 2018, former New Mexico Rep. Xochitl Torres Small isanswering questions from Agriculture Committee Senators right now, at a hearing on her nomination to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. Both environmental and ag industry groups have endorsed her, and I think she’ll be confirmed with no problems. Xochitl Torres Small is 38 years old.
cmorenc
@UncleEbeneezer:
The fact that just a couple weeks before election day 2016, Clinton still had a seemingly commanding lead in most reputable polls in terms of both the popular and electoral college, that she and her campaign staff failed to see the shifts in likely turnout in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania coming, and concentrated her end-game campaign in the wrong places to be effective. True, Comey threw her a wicked knuckleball 8 days before election day, and the press were still treating Trump as a fascinating shiny object, but nonetheless, the Clinton campaign end-game committed some tactical errors as well.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Even as president he lost a lot. Especially on his abhorrent application of immigration policies . But the legal delays made the lives of all those caught in the cross-hairs a mess.
ETA: Rescue kitty update : relaxed and chill
Baud
Also, too, while others may disagree, even if I had to fake it, I would, because I don’t think normies want to be associated with perpetual sourpusses.
opiejeanne
@Maxim: What you said.
I think my expectation is based on my living in California all my life, until 13 years ago. Pretty sure the definition there includes penetration by anything including foreign objects constitutes rape, and I thought it was self-evident because penetration without permission is the entire issue.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: Pretty kitty! When did you get him/her? Have you decided on a name?
Baud
@cmorenc: That’s a lot of words to say “Comey.”
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Looks content.
Steeplejack
@danielx:
“Grassy Key” should have been a tip-off.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Yay! Kitty kind of looks like a tiger with those stripes.
Also that is a pretty couch or chair, fabric is gorgeous.
WhatsMyNym
@Maxim:
Sexual assault is about violation and control.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Art update
From Hannah Karlzon’s Day Dreams.
I have used Colored pencils, Crayola Supertips and FB gelatos.
oatler
@danielx:
That sullen and aborted Sargassum mass can breed tiny monsters.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Very vibrant.
eclare
@WhatsMyNym:
It is an act of violence where sex is the weapon, is what I was taught.
Almost Retired
I am thrilled by the E. Jean Carroll verdict. And I’m also thrilled that the media keeps playing those abhorrent clips from Trump’s deposition, which was especially vile (and orange). And then there’s Santos – with a potential reduction in the Squeaker’s narrow majority. “Today, I didn’t even have to use my AK; I gotta say it was a good day.”
ETA: That’s an Ice Cube lyric, not a campaign slogan from a Texas legislator.
NotMax
@danielx
Celebrate!
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Very nice colors!
Baud
@eclare: I think “act of violence” is old school thinking. The modern view focuses on the absence of consent because too many people thought “non-violent” rape or sexual assault was impossible.
opiejeanne
@cmorenc: This again: she didn’t go to X state.
No, she stayed in Florida to comfort survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting. Blame the voters in those three states.
eclare
@Almost Retired:
I used a line from that song in a comment yesterday. Also, DiFi coming back.
Renie
So happy my horrible pathogical liar rep Santos is finally been charged. But very disappointed there was no perp walk as they let him go in the backway through a tunnel at EDNY. He didn’t deserve that. His face needs to be shown all over with that pompous smirk wiped off his face.
eclare
@Baud:
Gotcha. That is from a long time ago.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I obviously didn’t do a good job of communicating the point I was trying to make in the post.
When I managed my IT group at the university, someone would call with their hair on fire about some technical issue, big or small. Fix it, and maybe you go an “oh, thanks”.
When we rolled out the new Balloon Juice site with the site upgrade, there were there were things that a few people felt very strongly about, and as something was fixed, or changed from one thing to another because someone/s felt strongly about it, it went from loud, vocal displeasure to “ho hum” when it was fixed.
Many of us HATED the ads on BJ, and when I clicked a link to Raw Story earlier this week and saw those hideous square box ads I was reminded of what a big BFD it is not to have to fight the ads on Balloon Juice every day, and yet we got the win and then moved on.
To my mind, if it’s important enough to scream and yell about, then it’s also important enough to celebrate.
It’s like the losses are HUGE, but we seem to take the wins, say “that’s nice” and then tuck them in our collective pockets.
So I was asking if that’s human nature. I think it is, but I don’t think it’s necessarily good for us. In fact, I think it’s not.
For many of us, if someone says something nice we definitely appreciate it, but it sure as hell doesn’t hold the same weight as when someone is critical. And it doesn’t stay with us as an emotional event for a day or a week the way it can when someone is a total dick or someone makes up lies about you.
It’s like we are programmed for the opposite of joy.
And I do think that in the long battle ahead, it’s useful to really take in the wins, at an emotional level, before we move on to the next fight.
So I’m not wearing a cheerleader outfit, trying to drum up an online pep rally for the win.
Life these days is truly exhausting, with all these existential threats, and if we can remind ourselves that the wins are really big fucking deals, too, then we will have more energy for the long fight.
So it’s less pom-poms and pep rallies, and more experiencing the relief of the wins when we do win.
JML
@opiejeanne: there’s still a fair amount of variation in state criminal codes. and a lot of out-dated ones. Good states try to clean them up, but even then it’s not always easy as the Law of Unintended Consequences can rise up.
schrodingers_cat
@O. Felix Culpa: Yesterday. A group of women on Nextdoor rescues critters and rehomes them. I got in touch with them offering to foster/adopt an older cat whose owner was moving to assisted living.
That cat had already found a home but they contacted me about this kitty last week. His home was in a fire and he kept returning to the gutted house. This group has been feeding him since the end of Feb. They had managed to trap him once before but the owners were in no position to take him back and now they seem to have moved with no forwarding address
He doesn’t have a name yet.
Omnes Omnibus
@opiejeanne: I think that admission certainly helped, because if she was lying why wouldn’t she go all the way?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Thanks! Its better in person. I think light is not great.
O. Felix Culpa
@schrodingers_cat: Poor kitty. How hard to lose one’s home–and people–like that. Good on you for taking him. I hope he settles in quickly and stays put!
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: I think Rescue Kitty is smiling.
He is dreaming “I am in the right place.”
ETtheLibrarian
And George Santos was arrested so that was a bonus for this week.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer: Good post.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for the info; I corrected the language in my comment. But my point stands. It’s either 9-0 (liable) or 0-9 (not liable) and anything in between is a hung jury.
Almost Retired
@eclare: YES! DiFi is coming back, at last. She claimed her doctors wouldn’t let her fly. So I was on the brink of organizing a Balloon Juice automobile relay from San Francisco to DC, like we sometimes do for cats. I was up for taking her as far as Reno.
patrick II
@Baud:
To me picking Durbin over Whitehouse to head the Judiciary Committee is a symptom of that loser culture. We are timid because we don’t want them to hurt us. Bullying works in the Senate. I saw the Kavanaugh hearings. I saw how Graham acted there and what really burns me about that is now that truth speaker Whithouse was next in line to head Judiciary the Democrats changed the rules to bring in milquetoast Durbin. Stockholm syndrome by way of bringing back blue slips.
Jackie
@rikyrah: And TWO followed RW media. I’ll always wonder if there’d been two different jurors instead of them, if TFG would have been found guilty of rape.
WaterGirl
@Anyway: That’s not true for me, either. For me, the bond we have is over the issues, which means the way we view life, freedom, etc.
randy khan
I’m happy about the wins because I’d much rather have them than not.
That said, I am all too aware that any win is provisional until we can fix things in a more permanent way. Although I am 100% confident they’re not going to get it in the budget negotiations, the House Republican proposal to roll back everything done in the first two years of the Biden Administration kind of drives home that point. (This is somewhat ironic because many of the Republican Party’s historical big supporters also supported much of that legislation.) Given the chance, that’s what they’ll do, and more, and so even when we win something we still need to be on guard.
tobie
Along the lines of nothing ever being a big deal when the Biden admin succeeds, today we learned that US inflation sunk to 4.9% in April. By contrast, the German inflation rate is hovering around 7.4%. The EU is at 7%. Here’s how the NYTimes reported the news on Mastodon:
I guess a global perspective on global inflation is out of the question. The NYT’s summary is so much like Halperin’s infamous line following the 2008 market crash, “Good news for John McCain.”
Baud
@patrick II: Once again, the Dems did not bring back blue slips. The Republicans never eliminated blue slips for district court nominees. The current blue slip rules are the same. You can argue that we should eliminate blue slips, but the misinformation that Durbin brought them back appears to be just that — misinformation.
I have not heard before that the Senate Dems changed the rules on committee membership. Do you have a cite for that?
WaterGirl
@JML: That brings to mind Sally Field’s “They like me, they really like me!” comment.
I think for E. Jean Carroll right now, it’s probably “They believe me, they really believe me!”
eclare
@Almost Retired:
Hahaha…also, trains. Rent out an entire car for her and a couple of assistants.
Jackie
@opiejeanne: NY defines rape as penis penetration. Other states define rape as penetration with anything.
WaterGirl
@UncleEbeneezer:
Dammit! :-)
Elizabelle
Woke up today thinking: Trump has been found liable for sexual assault and defamation. DiFi is back in Washington. Charges upcoming against Santos.
And then: learning how many and serious the DOJ charges against Santos are. They are going to learn a lot about his sources of funding. Some of which may be traced back to bad actors.
Even more than the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Santos indictment must have TFG and his coterie deeply concerned, and maybe even depressed.
So: happy dance!
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker’s satirist:
Anyway
@WaterGirl:
Yes, definitely. And I’ve had it with the R ethos of “punching down”. Fighting creeping fascism is the biggie for me.
eclare
@tobie:
Yeah and UK is somewhere around 10%.
japa21
My 2 cents worth.
20 years ago, and before that, it was easier to accept losing and being thrilled at winning. Today, not so much.
When looking at terrorism, the common statement, “We have to win every time, they only have to succeed once.”
Well, over the last 20 years the GOP has morphed into a terror group. Everybody felt good that the “red wave” didn’t occur, but enough of one did that we are dealing with what even just a minor success by the GOP can lead too. The debt ceiling crisis is real.
I think there may be a tendency not to over celebrate because we can’t afford to lose and over celebration can lead to over-confidence. Omnes points out that it doesn’t have to, and I agree, but it is easy for it to happen.
Unfortunately, it is too easy for the terrorists to succeed again.
Baud
@WaterGirl: Not mutually exclusive. Societies bond over more than one thing.
But I will say that if issues were paramount to our bonds, we would have less difficulty getting left-of-center people to turn out.
UncleEbeneezer
@cmorenc: There is only one thing we can point to that killed Hillary’s poll numbers in real time. It was Comey’s bullshit press conference and letter. And it was more than enough to account for the margin of loss in the three crucial states that threw the EC to Trump.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@UncleEbeneezer:
Great post
rikyrah
@Tim C.:
It’s always been this way, TimC.
My Peanut asks me:
” Why do you make everything about race?”
My answer:
” Because, in America, everything is about race. ”
We can’t have nice things because of Race.
When Socialism was WHITE Socialism…
there wasn’t a remote problem about it.
But, when non-Whites began to access such help…then it is called SOCIALISM.
Why doesn’t America have a National Healthcare system?
Race.
Harry Truman went to bed believing that he had worked out the outline of National Healthcare system.
It was destroyed because Southerners knew it would mean the desegregation of medical facilities.
College was basically free until non-Whites started going to college.
Why do we have credit scores?
Because they were cracking down on banks’ redlining practices.
The highway system?
Where you find a highway, you will find a self-sufficient Black neighborhood that was destroyed.
Peanut has been watching all these videos on TikTok of high school kids in their college tshirts, and of the hashtags is Feeder Schools.
Had to explain to her that, on the surface, they’re talking about the handful of private and very few public schools that seem to send a disproportionate number of their students to the most elite colleges.
I also told her that there is also a state college – feeder high school pipeline.
That most state schools want their populations to be from in-state.
I told her ‘most’.
I said that the University of Alabama has a large portion its students from out of state. I told her that they choose to give scholarships to students from out of the state….rather than improve their school system so that more of their own population can go and succeed at the University of Alabama.
That over 30%of the population of Alabama is Black is just a coincidence for this choice..I’m sure…..
Elizabelle
And The New Yorker has an apropos daily cartoon up.
Guy shopping for a greeting card. Sections are: Mom, Grandma, Indicted Republican Politician.
It’s all coming. Provision yourselves adequately with popcorn and bubbly.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
On MJ she said yesterday was the happiest day of her life.
eclare
@Elizabelle:
ROFL!
Baud
@rikyrah: I didn’t know that about Alabama.
I am wary of saying that there is only one thing that explains everything, but I share the view that race has been the primary driver of our politics.
tobie
@eclare: Do folks in the UK talk about the effect of BREXIT on the inflation rate?
Jackie
@UncleEbeneezer: Well said! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Baud
@tobie: So inflation is going down while new jobs continue being created. Fascinating.
gvg
@opiejeanne: there are many different definitions of rape. Different states have different definitions for sure. Also at different times the definitions have changed.
Not to long ago there really was no marital rape for instance. So never assume you know.
I also think it may have to be whatever the law was when the event happened, though I haven’t seen a lawyer answer that.
smith
@patrick II: Not convinced it’s a Dem loser culture that keeps them in a defensive crouch. Going back to the discussion above about the Democrats deciding to take the loss of the South after endorsing civil rights, the solution they came up with to replace those votes was to move rightward economically to pick up support from businessmen and corporations. Thus the Clinton-style Democrat, who tried to appeal to a coalition very different from the New Deal coalition. This made them very cautious about walking very fine political lines.
The party has only recently been able to back off from this compromise because of the change of generations. The Youngs simply aren’t having it — another striking lesson from 2016. Some old school Dems, like Biden, have seen the writing on the wall, and have decidedly moved left. If there is anything positive to be said about recent political trends, that is it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@tobie:
This sounds like a job for Tony Jay!
tobie
@Baud: Yes, it’s an unusual pattern but certainly heartening to see it
Elizabelle
Thinking about the Comey letter (and fuck that guy) reminds me again that that was fruit of dealing with the NY FBI field office.
They’ve now arrested two former feds from there. I think a lot of spiderwebs are being traced.
They will learn a lot from the Santos investigation and trial. And, since Russian money is very likely involved. …
It is beyond time to review Russian interference in the 2016 election again. Stop sweeping that under the rug, and making Bill Barr smile. This would be a great time to bring that up again.
eclare
@tobie:
I assume the talk about that breaks down by party. I read the Guardian, so articles there will argue part of inflation is due to Brexit. The Torygraph probably does not.
sdhays
@schrodingers_cat: I’m sure you remember that one of the first things he tried to do was ban Muslims in general (well, anyone from most Muslim countries), and the response was really heartening. Immediate protests at airports(!), members of Congress physically going and putting pressure on the
jackbootsCBP, and the courts quickly placing an injunction on the policy, and ultimately ruling it unconstitutional.It was a critical win, although it was followed by so much shit it’s easy to forget.
Baud
@tobie:
The three phenomena science can’t explain: dark energy, dark matter, and Dark Brandon.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@tobie:
@Baud:
I skimmed an article the other day and a hedge fund manager said that this isn’t a typical recession because it’s been largely contained to the rich, upper middle class, etc. It’s mostly assets like stocks, bonds that have been hit but lower income people have seen some gains
ETA: I thought it was an interesting perspective
JaySinWA
@patrick II: Speaking of Lindsey Graham, I’ll re-up my comment from last night. Kind of a “why we can’t have nice things” downer:
I just read this Bulwark piece by Wil Saleten https://specialto.thebulwark.com/p/the-corruption-of-lindsey-graham
It’s more than a case study of Lindsey, it tries to use his history as an example of the corruption of the bulk of the Republican party.
It is definitely a long read. It does present a view into motivations driving R’s to support T no matter what he says or does.
It provides a lot of detail into Lindsey’s descent into full-throated suppor
ETA We had a small libation last night in honor of the victory yesterday.
tobie
@Elizabelle: I gave up waiting for DOJ IG Michael Horowitz to issue a report on the NY FBI field office’s involvement in leaks in the 2016 election. I don’t think it ever came…unless he made confidential criminal referrals.
Eunicecycle
@schrodingers_cat: can’t be much more chill! So cute!
tam1MI
Has he decided on his name yet
ETA: Well, that’ll teach me to comment before I have read the entire thread!
tobie
@Baud: ;-)
eclare
@JaySinWA:
I read the first section, very well done. I’ll bite off more as time permits. Thanks for the cite!
Jeffro
@Raoul Paste: don’t forget, we need to expand the House, too!
sdhays
The Democrats ran Mondale and Dukakis before Clinton and got steamrolled. Clinton won. I don’t like a lot of the things that Clinton did, but he was better than the alternative, and the evidence that someone more leftwing would have actually won is thin.
Elizabelle
@tobie: I know. The whole thing is teaching us way too much patience.
But I have faith that Jack Smith and Merrick Garland take all of this very seriously.
I dare to hope that one outcome will be revisiting and invalidating Citizens United. Democracy is not safe with this dark money funnel.
Brachiator
@Baud:
There are long suffering fans of losing sports teams who would disagree with you about this.
O. Felix Culpa
@Brachiator:
White Sox represent!
ETA: And da Bears!
Jeffro
this is excellent – 110% spot-on
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
@O. Felix Culpa:
The Cleveland Browns can definitely relate
Jeffro
@Geminid: hey Geminid, I saw your note in the earlier thread.
FYI while I haven’t seen Deeds or Hudson stop by the house yet, I like them both (but like Hudson better) and I already early-voted.
I have seen both of my House D primary candidates, though!
rikyrah
Anyone here watched Queen Charlotte on Netflix?
I just finished episode 3.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah:
Does that mean you liked it? :)
smith
@sdhays: I certainly wouldn’t argue that a more left-wing candidate would have won. Clinton Democrats made a deal with the devil for practical political reasons. Those reasons have greatly diminished recently, and we can hope that Democratic politicians (and voters) have gotten the message.
tam1MI
There’s one day accounted for. What is the excuse for the rest of the campaign?
To be clear, I am not sure at all that Hillary visiting Wisconsin and forward slash or Michigan would have made any difference at all. But it might have given her a heads up that her campaign was losing those States in time for her campaign to do something about it.
zhena gogolia
@JML: Good comment.
Danielx
@Elizabelle:
Even with the seaweed there are compensations. There are chickens in the trees down here. Who knew?
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: So cute! Why do I keep thinking it’s a girl?
sdhays
@smith: Agreed. As I’ve said before, I’ve never seen the Democrats so “on the same page” in my lifetime.
Miss Bianca
@JML:
This take resonates with me.
UncleEbeneezer
@sdhays: Right. People forget that the Dem Party was struggling to get back to a position of national viability, after being successfully tarnished with Tax&Spend, Soft-On-Crime, Big Govt smears in multiple elections.
Baud
@sdhays: Same. It’s heartening to see.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I understand what you’re saying, and it is an interesting question about human nature. The topic when applied to the Trump verdict landed for me the way it did because I’d just read a heartbreaking story in the previous thread that explained why one person didn’t feel much like celebrating. But your larger point — that it’s important to celebrate victories — is a good one.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@schrodingers_cat:
That kitty looks at home! Very cute
Elizabelle
@Danielx: I did not!
And you are past the danger of freezing iguanas falling out of same trees.
It is another world down there.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: I’m hoping George Santos takes a plea bargain, and we learn about the Russian money when he testifies at former Rep. Lee Zeldin’s trial.
Maybe Rep. Stefanik will be at the defendant’s table too.
gvg
@rikyrah: College was not basically free before they desegregated. It was a lot more “affordable” in some states, but boy it wasn’t free and it was terribly hard for my mother. California was the best example of basically free. There was huge variation. A lot had to do with how big the state dreamed I think. I know desegregation would have contributed to making it worse, but it wasn’t quite utopia before then and it always varied around the country.
I don’t know about Alabama but in Florida the out of state issue is really about cuts in state funding to the Universities. The state caps what we can charge in state because they don’t want to make parent voters mad at them, but they largely don’t care if we gouge the out of state non voters…so we charge them higher and higher tuition and as long as our reputation is good enough, they keep coming. It’s not just “out of state”, that’s how we end up with a lot of foreign students too. On the other hand our out of state tuition is still lower than many other states in state cost! Tuition costs around the country are not really logical or consistent. It varies a lot by state.
There used to be some in state tuition reciprocal agreements between certain areas of southern Alabama and some Florida panhandle State Colleges. Not sure if those are still in effect but look around, deals like that may exist wherever you are.
This country has always had differences in different areas of the country and it changes over time. In the past there were areas without hope who were too cheap and conservative to support education just like now, even when it was all white. Places where the parents tried to stop the kids from leaving (my grandparents in Wisconsin).
Elizabelle
@Geminid: That could happen.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@UncleEbeneezer:
I think it’s hard to imagine these days a repeat of Reagan’s winning map in 1980. He won nearly every single state
JML
@sdhays: I agree with this as well. And I’m hoping that it will extend not just to votes in Congress and so forth, but in an ability to focus on our successes and aspirations leading into elections. I’m seeing increased pride from people in being a Democrat, which has not been the case at all.
patrick II
@Baud:
Durbin was whip and was not supposed to be able to hold both jobs. Dems had a secret vote to change the rule and put Durbin in charge over Whitehouse.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/09/senate-democrats-durbin-lead-judiciary-444042
And thanks for straightening me out about the blue slips. I had read that virtually everywhere.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Nixon had almost as big a win in 72. And 1980 and 1988 were solid wins for the GOP, even if not as dominant as 84 and 72.
smith
@Geminid: I don’t think we can put much hope into the possible damage Santos could do by flipping. Would a prosecutor enjoy relying on the testimony of such a flagrant fabulist? My guess is they will prosecute him fully with no deals and let him stand as an example.
Danielx
@schrodingers_cat:
part of the brown tabby tribe!
UncleEbeneezer
@tam1MI: They already knew they were in trouble in those states. The question is: what do you do? Nobody knows that answer with any certainty. Just ask the people who actually run campaigns. It’s like playing Blackjack on 20 tables at once, each with different hands, where the cards of your hand and the dealer are constantly changing and each decision made on any table can also effect the cards on other tables. It’s not nearly as simple as people think.
Citizen Alan
@Tim C.: I will never forgive the people responsible for Trump becoming President. I will hate them from beyond the grave. Because I now believe that for the rest of my life, I will never know a moment’s peace or contentment because of the continuing fear that the 49% of the country that is so depraved they might as well be Manson cultists will gain power–even if only for a few years–and kill us all.
different-church-lady
There’s a built-in asymmetry to things. Modern conservatives (a.k.a. Fascists) punch everything all the time. They just love punching things. It’s about power and dominance. The only discrimination they have is they know dominance is easier to achieve when they’re punching at the weak.
Democrats are interested in mutual benefit. We don’t want to have to punch at things all the time, we only do it when we have to. And when we do it, we’re punching upward. Belligerence isn’t the primary part of our make-up, and when we do it we’re only doing it because something’s gone very wrong.
So when we win a battle, we’re far less likely to do vigorous end-zone dances. Because we’re not in it for the fight, we get no thrill from it, we’re usually exhausted from having to fight in the first place. Boot in human face just ain’t the Stanley Cup for us like it is for them.
So, yes, I’m happy that there has been justice for this one woman, and I’m happy it will have significant ripple affects. But tendency towards actual joy is dampened by the knowledge that this battle needs to play out over and over and over again. This is game one of the first round, not a series clincher.
Baud
@patrick II: Thanks for the link. I appreciate you digging that out.
smith
@Citizen Alan: I’m at the same emotional space. In a functioning democracy routine elections should not bring on existential terror, and that’s the way it will be here for the foreseeable future.
rikyrah
@O. Felix Culpa:
I do like it. I love it. And, this is from someone that took forever to watch Bridgerton.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: I think you are both right. We have a tendency in general not to celebrate as much as we commiserate. I think that’s partly human nature, especially because we care so much about the injustices. I wish we would celebrate more, but I struggle with it too. Trump winning despite being an obvious sexual predator (and racist, xenophobic etc.) will always be especially depressing. I feel that too. I go back and forth between WG’s camp and yours all the time.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for the clarification.
schrodingers_cat
@sdhays: Of course I remember, I was directly affected by it and many of the other nonsensical things he pulled. If not directly then someone close to me was affected.
I canceled my trip to India for a wedding on the advice of my immigration attorney who thought I should wait till I swore the oath of citizenship and not travel on a GC even though I was not Muslim.
Geminid
@smith: Oh, no jury would convict on Santos’s testimony alone. His campaign treasurer would be a credible witness though; I think she was a veteran of Long Island Republican polititics. There are probably others as well. The most important evidence will be documents like financial records.
But Santos’s testimony sure would get a lot of attention outside the courtroom!
Ruckus
@Tim C.:
This country, and a lot of the world is going through the largest transition of humanity, in it’s existence. That transition is being the person you want/need to be rather than the one that is picked for you. Now there have been humans who don’t identify with the gender they were born with – which of course only has 2 sides, since the first humans but, and it a huge round and squishy but. It is now, at least somewhat acceptable to not identify with the identity you were born with. Add in all the humans now on the earth, add in the complete assholes running some countries and our ability to communicate, such as we are doing now, and that the one thing I point out above is just one of many squishy things about being human that is now far more out in the open than any time in even my life and I’m not even the oldest on this blog. For some, the concepts of being human have been (and should be!) very straight forward, penis/vagina. But it isn’t nearly as straight forward as it used to be. And that is one thing. How about the number of billionaires? How about the number of humans per square mile in many places? A lot of humans like/want/demand a level of certainty and control and that really doesn’t exist the very controlling way it did less than a lifetime ago, and it is very much harder to hide the differences of today and a few yesterdays ago.
patrick II
@Baud:
You are welcome. And blue slips aside, I am still picking the more assertive Whitehouse over Durbin in a walk. The fact that it wasn’t just Senate rules but a vote by Democrats to avoid that outcome pisses me off.
Suzanne
No. Some problems are unfixable. A court verdict doesn’t undo damage caused.
E. Jean Carroll gets a nice check, and a measure of vindication. She doesn’t get to be un-raped. We don’t get to rewind to 2016 and elect Hillary Clinton. Those things are not fixable.
Hoodie
@JaySinWA: Read a good bit of this, but it tends towards the same vein that most Saletan pieces end up at, i.e., trying to rationalize the irrational. I came away with the conclusion that Lindsey Graham is a piece of shit and probably has always been a piece of shit. You really learn about people when their ethics get tested. Lindsey failed miserably; the takeaway is that he never had been tested, not that he was corrupted. GOP pols who support Trump are pieces of shit, nothing more complicated than that. They’re like Russian mercenaries. It’s pretty fucking bad when even Mitt Fucking Romney and Liz Fucking Cheney aren’t afraid to call Trump a piece of shit, and you can’t even line up with them.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: You were given excellent advice by your immigration attorney.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Trump is a loser. The losses may start accumulating.
It’s about time.
Here hear. And I disagree slightly, it’s way past time. This country and humanity have protected people like SFB (OK, thankfully there aren’t a lot like him, but the number is more than one…) because of MONEY and that needs to end.
RaflW
What happened yesterday is important. Absolutely, having Trump face some smidge of accountability matters.
But the machinery of our collapse rolls on. CNN will host their god-damned town hall tonight. Imagine being Kristen Holmes and tweeting this utter dreck. The day after Trump is found liable for sexual assault of a woman, she normalizes him.
Citizen Alan
@cmorenc: In her defense, I believe the thinking was that they thought they had the White House and so they switched focus to close Senate races in the belief that Hillary actually achieving anything as President would require at least 50 Senate votes.
bbleh
@Omnes Omnibus: this. yes.
@Brachiator: I think the standard in a NY civil jury is at least 5/6, which would mean they could have got a verdict with 8 but not with 7
@TriassicSands: SEXUAL BATTERY 2024! HEY, TECHNICALLY IT’S NOT RAPE!
rikyrah
Skeptical Brotha![]()
![]()
![]()
(@skepticalbrotha) tweeted at 11:10 AM on Wed, May 10, 2023:
Giving Trump a town hall and covering an authoritarian like a normal politician is white supremacy in action. No matter what lazy bullshit they peddle, Republicans are always taken seriously by the corporate media and the red carpet is always out for them.
(https://twitter.com/skepticalbrotha/status/1656330900605468673?t=kQ4jhSu0TWNI-hL5vqeFXw&s=03)
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: @JML:
I would change that up a bit.
rikyrah
Jess Piper (@piper4missouri) tweeted at 6:56 AM on Wed, May 10, 2023:
When you see the videos of folks walking through Missouri streets with guns, just know, this is what the Missouri GOP wanted. They nullified fed gun laws. They pushed open carry. They rolled back conceal carry permits and training.
They wanted a lawless state. This is on them.
(https://twitter.com/piper4missouri/status/1656266938169917440?t=DGuHJ3h5AGij8nIU_MYkVQ&s=03)
different-church-lady
@RaflW:
“For a view of how the rain in tomorrow’s forecast will affect the zombie apocalypse, we turn to meteorologist Bert Harris. Bert?”
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: I’m generally not into costume-thingies these days, but given your stamp of approval, I’ll give it a try.
M31
Balloon Juice After Dark strikes again
patrick II
@Baud:
LGM wasn’t too happy about Durbin or the process either.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/05/the-great-institutionalist
rikyrah
They arrested the woman who stole the machine gun in Texas. But, no recovery yet of the machine gun. Uh huh
Uh huh
StringOnAStick
@beckya57: I don’t agree. My RW authoritarian father who spends all day and night watching FOX or other RW websites, has emailed me that he refuses to ever vote for tRump again, calling him a “crying baby”. My father and I have had a fraught to worse relationship for my entire 64 years, with many periods of refusing to speak to each other and it was always over his rage that I am a liberal. He brought this up in an email to me, the only way we still communicate because he is always on that FOX-induced hair trigger for rage over any damned thing, no matter how nonpolitical it is. Him writing that to me is a HUGE admission that he voted for someone he now considers extremely dangerous.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: I am hoping that a few other Republicans in NY get found out for their slimy deeds, as part of this as well. Because you know they have surely been involved in some.
Frankensteinbeck
@Citizen Alan:
And they were right, until Comey pulled the mother of all October surprises because he just had to put That Woman in her place.
Sean
@Citizen Alan: Hard same. I think constantly about how different the world would be had Trump not won in 2016. a 6-3 (or even 5-4) Left/Liberal SCOTUS alone would have changed the entire paradigm. There would still be a lot of problems, and we’d be far from perfect, but I think we’d all be safer and happier, and we were robbed of that by self-serving, spiteful morons.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
That’s true. Those kind of landslide presidential elections have become a thing of the past in the last 20-25 years
WaterGirl
@bbleh:
Not in this trial, in this court. Unanimous.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: He is kinda petite and dainty, may be that’s why.
Our big orange girl used to get mistaken for a boy even at the vet’s.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl: OK, fair enough.
bbleh
@WaterGirl: maybe cuz federal court not state court? But they got it so whatever. I read something about this was federal cuz Trump isn’t a NY resident or in NY, but it’s still a NY state law, so I’m ???
rikyrah
President Biden is out here changing lives.
Think on this.
Before President Biden, only 7,000 people got their loans discharged under this program.
I remember reading about it during Dolt45’s term that 1% of people who applied were approved.
ONE PHUCKING PERCENT.
And now, under President Biden…..
SIX HUNDRED FIFTEEN THOUSAND
Have had their loans forgiven.
THAT IS REAL.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-government-cancels-42b-public-service-workers-student/story?id=99168938#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16836323713348&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2FPolitics%2Fus-government-cancels-42b-public-service-workers-student%2Fstory%3Fid%3D99168938
rikyrah
Come sit by me.
They will never be forgiven.
Ever.
patrick II
Run, Hide, Fight
from the FBI by way of Digby.
https://www.fbi.gov/video-repository/run-hide-fight-092120.mp4/view
What a country we live in.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Either of those explanations sums up the problem. If you never enjoy the victories (of whatever size), then everything become and endless slog. That’s no way to live. Emma Goldman’s aphorism about dancing and the revolution applies.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
Is there a different definition of rape now?
There are differences in state law, across the country. Sometimes they may give answers that have different outcomes for the same offense. And it’s a jury trial, not every jury is the same so not every outcome is the same. The evidence here must have been overwhelming and really, who likes SFB? It’s humanity, some do it well and some not. But money can buy some people a lot that normal humans would never get away with. SFB has used his money to get out of a lot, hopefully life has caught up with his crap.
smith
@Geminid: Regarding his campaign treasurer’s testimony, it looks like Santos has that covered — it looks like (of course!) his current treasurer doesn’t actually exist.
Luckily, his former treasurer does exist, so there may be someone at least nominally reliable who can testify. It’s possible that she’s already given a deposition and that may be one leg on which these indictments stand.
I’m still skeptical, though, about how far the taking down of Santos can reach other miscreants.
Geminid
@smith: Santos may be notorious, but he’s essentially a small fish. Lee Zeldin was and is a powerful person in the New York party, especially on Long Island. He’s a big fish.
Zeldin was almost certainly involved in Santos’s political career. I think it took Zeldin’s help for a lightweight like Santos to be nominated twice for the 3rd CD. So what was Zeldin getting out of it? An obvious possibility is a lot of Russian money, maybe from oligarch Viktor Vekselberg by way of his cousin, Andrew Intrator.
Last Septmember the FBI executed a search warrant on Vekselberg’s Long Island home, and reporters say agents loaded a number of boxes into their van. When Santos’s shaky history came out a couple months later, I wondered if he was already on the FBI’s radar.
Andrew Intrator was Santos’s biggest campaign donor, and backed at least one of Santos’s bogus businesses. Now Intrator says that Santos took advantage of him, but Intrator does not seem like the kind of operator that gets taken advantage of.
Mike in NC
Only Donald Trump would hire a sketchy lawyer that people laughed at as ‘Joe Tapioca’.
Ruckus
@MattF:
SFB is old enough and shitty enough that maybe life is finally catching up with his shit. He’s been a shitty human for a long time but his money kept him out of much of the trouble as he could and did get himself into. That seems to have been overridden by his need to play on a very big stage and have every bit of his shitty life on display for all to see. Maybe for once it’s catching up to him in a way that his money can’t buy his way out. Let’s hope so.
Spanish Moss
@Betty Cracker: I am one of those “1 in 4”, and I definitely viewed the verdict more from a sexual assault perspective than a Trump gets what is coming to him perspective (though that was great too!). Look how far we have come! She stood up to someone rich and powerful, and the ubiquitous victim blaming didn’t work. They believed her.
Maybe this victory will give others the courage to step forward in the future. I hope we never have another Anita Hill or Christine Blasey Ford experience. It seems like courtrooms are more effective than political hearings/investigations at getting to the truth.
I am ecstatic and so are my family and friends. We don’t care much what pundits are saying. They are focused on the politics of it and that is secondary to me and mine. I thought it was a great day.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne: I try to console myself with the knowledge that if Hillary had become President, she’d have been impeached because 50k or so Americans died of Covid and that, to Republicans, would have been the greatest humanitarian disaster in US history.
smith
@Geminid: We certainly can hope, and I am as eager as anyone to see the Feds pick apart the Russian money trails.
tam1MI
Some people in her campaign knew, yes. But apparently they were the ones that kept blowing off all the indications that Michigan and Wisconsin were going south. It is unclear as to whether the alarm was ever communicated upward to those who might be in a position to do something about it.
I live in michigan. In the run up to the 2016 election, the mayor of Detroit was running around with his hair on fire hollering as loudly as he could to anyone in Hillary’s campaign who would listen that Michigan was slipping out of their grasp and that their firewall there was crumbling quickly. If he had had a chance to speak to Hillary one on one, would that have made the difference? Like I said, I’m not sure anything would have made a difference, but it is worth noting that was a possibility.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
To me, though, part of the problem is we were doing exactly that in 2016. Hillary thought she was far enough ahead it was time to try running up the score. Instead, it was still close enough that a last-minute surprise was enough to turn the election. I think that’s a big thing that has so many people running scared. At the very least, I would say we need to assure victory before we worry about running up the score.
FWIW, I suspect this is part of why Republicans hate early voting. They want to be able to pull some last minute shenanigans, but it doesn’t work as well if people might be voting any time in the last month of the campaign.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan: Agreed.
I just hate the idea that everyone’s a big fucken bummer, sad trombone, buzzkill, etc. Like, I am thrilled about yesterday’s verdict, and it is important, but it doesn’t unshit the bed!
Geminid
@smith: Intrator has Trump connections as well. He was a big donor to Trump’s inauguration, and put a lot of money in Michael Cohen’s hands as well.
You are right that the Santos affair might only trap Santos. But it could end up having a wider scope.
Sandia Blanca
@schrodingers_cat: How about “Fuego”? Spanish for fire.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Your rescue kitty looks a lot like my Gary!
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Ruckus: It’s true that there are different definitions of rape in different states. It’s also true that the definition in New York requires the use of a penis. Contrary to what someone suggested upthread, California’s definition has also always required that. Penetration with anything else is defined here as the offense of “penetration by a foreign object.” I don’t know if New York has that offense, but even if it does I would guess that Carroll’s lawyers preferred to keep the options for the jury as simple as possible.
On the general topic of the post, I think one reason it’s hard for liberals to celebrate our wins is that whenever we go to liberal blogs we’re immediately confronted with 20 demands to do X or to stop doing Y, always presented as the most important thing to do or stop doing right this minute. With that mentality, how can people ever feel as if we’ve won anything vital, or as if we’re not always on the brink of doom?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
kitty is cute :)
Tim C.
@rikyrah: All this is true. And yeah, the discussion here today reminded me, once again, how far there’s always been to go.
I was probably too confident after 2008. I thought the corrupt-incompetent GOP was about to die. Bush was that bad, and we had 59-60 seats in the Senate. Of course we were about to change the soul of the country..
And yes. No forgiveness.
UncleEbeneezer
@rikyrah: Them and people who refused to get vaccinated. Two things I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I understand your position, too. It’s complicated!
I was hoping there would be some thoughtful discussion about this, and there has been,
so I think I’m gonna go find a fight suit and a gigantic sea carrier and declare mission accomplishedI’m happy about that.WaterGirl
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
Your comment made me think about to-do lists. We might have one for the grocery store and another list of house projects, and another list for packing for vacation, and another list of things to accomplish this week at work.
How could we ever stop and feel good about any of our progress if all those lists were one GIANT list, including packing for the next trip we want to take, and the one after that.
We simply cannot think about everything, all at once. We have to focus.
If Another Scott were here, he would say this: Eyes on the prize.
Ruckus
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
With that mentality, how can people ever feel as if we’ve won anything vital, or as if we’re not always on the brink of doom?
We are all the same and we are all different. Some will always see any win as vital and some will always see the brink of doom. We are making strides as a country but we are not all on the same side nor do we all see the same path forward, or even if there is a path to find. It’s humanity, and that gives us a gigantic range of desires, skills and expectations. We still have many humans who see women as baby factories and nothing more. Or less. We still have many who think that anyone with a penis is better than anyone without. It is humanity, with all it’s good points and every damn one of it’s faults. But humanity is an overwhelming force for, well everything, both good and bad. Money still can buy shitty humans. Or make them shittier. An old saying, “It’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back” seems to be appropriate here. Humanity has 7+ billion brains in it now, some of them function well and some don’t met any definition of actual function at all. Is the world a better place than it was when I was born? Yes. And No. And there are many reasons for both answers. Life takes time and each of us only has so much of it. I had a cousin who lasted 6 months. His mom only lasted one more kid and less than 2 more years. Her sister lasted 95 yrs. There is no rhyme or reason of life. Some do the best they can, some do the worst. We always do vital things and we are always on the brink of doom. The only value you can add is to do better, be better for mankind, the world. You still may only get that 6 months. Or you might get that 95 yrs.
It’s always a crap shoot, this thing called life.
brantl
I think it’s that we’ve all had this massive weight on our backs, and it takes a while to work them out when it’s removed. Also, we don’t tend to gloat over defeating an enemy, we tend to exhult over helping a friend.
WaterGirl
@bbleh: Yes, things that are not federal court issues can end up in federal court. In this case, Trump moved to FL, so it was E. Jean Carroll in NY, and Trump in FL. He thought he was being so clever moving from NY to FL – hope he’s pleased with this result! :-)
Beth H
I’m sorry I’m late for these comments, because I want to commend Water Girl for this post which I think leads to a profound truth about the human psyche and sociopolitical discourse. Our tendency as humans is to minimize the good news, to take the wins for granted, and obsess and fret over the bad losses. It’s our nature to focus on threats, to survive.
One of the best things about Balloon juice is the number of positive posts. It’s really important to remind each other of the wins. It inspires us, gives our souls energy to keep going amid the losses.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I suppose it’s that winning feels a bit like this.
I’m glad there are people on our side with the fortitude to keep slogging on. I’ll always be grateful to Liz Warren for an interview she did in January 2017 where I realized that she is in there fighting these people face to face every single day, and she has the will and the strength to do that. It pulled me out of some very dark despair.
JBWoodford
@Geminid:
Intrator does not seem like the kind of operator that gets taken advantage of.
Well, not more than once by the same person.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: Pretty Kitty. Looks happy and healthy 👍
cain
@danielx: Tomorrow I will be you – as tomorrow is my birthday! :D
I think Watergirl needs to splash “blackcain’s birthday!” on the front page ;)
Geminid
@JBWoodford: Intrater strikes me as a shrewd and careful man, the kind of person Viktor Vekselberg, his oligarch cousin, would entrust with large sums of money. I bet he knew more about George Santos than Santos knew.
Now, it may turn out that Santos was too flaky to use as a conduit for illicit campaign money. But I tend to agree with a theory others have stated, that it was assumed that Santos would lose and not attract so much attention.
Noskilz
When I was at a college radio station in the late 80s/early 90s, the station manager once quipped that being at the radio station meant she got sick of music six months before everyone else did.
I think something similar is at work – many of the situations have been carefully followed for months or even years, so by the time it shows significant results, it’s old news to news junkies who have had plenty of time to game through the possible outcomes. And of course the steady appearance of fresh unnecessary disasters hanging overhead kind of crimps the mirth.
Am I tired of seeing these shmucks have their pasts catch up with them? Nope, not even a little bit.
Bill Arnold
@Geminid:
A small fish that pushed McCarthy into the Speaker of the House position, though. McCarthy is (perhaps/probably) Speaker due to election fraud. Non-traditional election fraud, basically a completely fraudulent resume that enough voters were impressed with.
Geminid
@Bill Arnold: I think another Republican would have won the New York 3rd CD last year. So yeah, Santos was one of the 217 Republicans who put McCarthy over the top, but I don’t think he played any bigger role than any of the other 216.
My point anyway was that he is a small fish compared to Lee Zeldin.
Dan B
@Josie: LGBTQ rights were on the same rough road from the Lavender Scare that booted tens of thousands from government jobs under Eisenhower to the struggles over being listed in the DSM (mentally ill) to AIDS crisis being ignored and Prop 8, Windsor and Obergefell to today’s Don’t Say Gay and attacks on trans children and adults. For many groups it’s a struggle with occasional much needed relief.
Geminid
@Dan B: A fun fact: Roberta Kaplan, E. Jean Carroll’s attorney, was Edith Windsor’s attorney as well. Kaplan also represented plaintiffs in their successful lawsuit against organizers of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Timill
And now Santos appears to be pushing new boundaries in election fraud: Santos’ treasurer may not exist
Ramona Rosario
@different-church-lady: Your observation here that we do not glory in punching in the way that right-wingers do strikes me as the closest to the truth. I find the other explanations convincing as well but this asymmetry you point to seems to be the main reason we liberals don’t glory as exultantly in “winning”. Temperamentally, I have always been one ready to battle and I’ve been chastised by my fellow liberals for being angry and aggressive which leads me to suspect that people like me constitute a smaller number of liberals than those of a peacable temperament. I am hugely pleased by the jury’s decision in E. Jean Carroll’s case because it sustains my faith in the possibility of the good in human nature. There is a tendency to take goodness for granted but it should always be appreciated because it is of value. It is unfortunate that goodness of human nature is not as common as I hope it would be but I comfort myself often with the fact that it exists and often prevails.
Dan B
@rikyrah: Good points and the neo fascists keep trudging along with adding the differently abled, LGBTQ, and more. Since there’s racism in LGBTQ people and homophobia in BIPOC it’s a great way to divide by identity / tribe. Until AIDS there was a nasty divide between lesbians and gay men. How do we get gay men to condemn Peter Thiel and Richard Grenell? Those two are roundly condemned by most gay men but not feared. I believe that many gay men feel that Thiel’s billions won’t be used to harm LGBTQ people but they’re wrong. Anything that supports racist and classist gays is a potent, albeit indirect, harm to gay men.
Dan B
@rikyrah: Episode 1 last night. It’s got camp, boatloads of eye candy, thirst traps, twists and turns. It’s nit high brow but it’s a romp with enough intelligence to make it tasty but not over the top, well, not too much…
Aussie Sheila
@tobie:
I have often wondered at the relative lack of global comparisons utilised in US political discourse. Apart from gun violence where it seems to be used, no one seems to care how the country is travelling compared to peer countries. From here, the US recovery from the Covid induced meltdown looks very good. Biden et al have done a masterful job.
This would be more obvious if international comparisons were used. I know people vote their ‘feels’, naturally, but in the general background discourse it would be useful imo.