Senator Chris Murphy speaks his mind on the state of the conflict in the middle east.
(click on the image to see a bigger, non-blurry version)
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How long can Biden continue what I presume is the strategy: fully supporting Israel in public, and pushing hard – in private – against the way the war is being conducted?
I don’t see how the current Biden Administration approach to Israel is sustainable if Israel continues to conduct the war in Gaza as it has. My latest.https://t.co/q58DYOfraC via @thedailybeast
— David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) November 2, 2023
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It seems that Chuck Schumer is running out of patience with the House.
SCHUMER says that the Senate won’t even *take up* the House’s Israel proposal.
So the reality for the House is that they will likely get an Israel-Ukraine-Taiwan bill and @SpeakerJohnson will have to decide what to do with that. https://t.co/JRVs5hnHCG
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 2, 2023
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This seems important. Surely there have to be 10 or so Republicans that support the US Military? It’s time to bench “the coach” who hates the military.
The Senate parliamentarian has told the authors of this resolution that the threshold for passage will be at 60, not 67. We were initially told by committee staff that the committee would decide the threshold.
Also, as the tweet below says, this is a standing order resolution. https://t.co/Se6S9UbjQF
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) November 2, 2023
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I can’t remember – is Eric the dumb one and Jr. is the one who appears fond of the white powder?
Unbelievable. Eric testified today and basically just lost the entire case.
1) After testifying he “never heard” about the Trump org statement of financial condition until recently, he later admitted that he knew about it in 2013.
2) After saying he never worked on it, he was… pic.twitter.com/i6vJ8d8QJD
— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) November 2, 2023
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Oh, and Trump seems to be trying to put one over on the judges for the DC and Florida cases. It seems to me that he’s trying to get the DC case delayed because of the FL case, and vice versa. No one will notice, right?
New overnight: Special Counsel filed a smart brief to Judge Cannon to the fact that Trump filed a motion to delay his 2020 election trial in DC — after asking her to delay his classified docs trial (tho they also made a big typo in the final line) https://t.co/ltVfiqEBgx pic.twitter.com/JeL1QaVEql
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) November 2, 2023
News flash: If you have a wife or a daughter, you aren’t a misogynist. Or so Trump attorney Chris Kise seems to think!
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Totally open thread.
skerry
I’m willing to bet that every misogynist had a mother.
Martin
Eric and Don Jr are both dumb, but Eric does deserve some credit for not being openly antagonistic toward the people who hold his fate in their hands. That’s a level of emotional intelligence that most 5 year olds figure out, which his brother and father never learned. The bar is so low with these people that we kind of just assumed crossing it was an unavoidable part of development, like object permanence and learning how to take turns.
HumboldtBlue
Another open thread? Well, if you insist.
In much better women and equality news:
I see Tony Jay is alive and kicking downstairs, I’m sure he’s got some insight to share on the news.
sab
I have a female friend whose loving father sent her brother to an exclusive private prep school, an Ivy League University, and law school . She went to public school. No college.
She knows her dad loved her, but she is in her 60s and still outraged. Of course Daddy was a misogynist. She is married to a successful lawyer. She is a bright lady and doing useful work in the non-profit sector. She still would have liked to have had more career choices.
Geminid
I haven’t really followed the New York civil fraud case, but a friend who has closely thinks the judgement against Trump will likely exceed $500 million. And there are other civil suits in the works, including one by cops injured in the January 6 Insurrection.
WaterGirl
@skerry: I would not take the other side of that bet!
dmsilev
Wait, Sinema is cosponsoring the push to (temporarily) change Senate rules to get around Coach Potatotown’s hissy fit? What ever happened to the sacred filibuster and all of that?
I know, I should be grateful that she’s not being a roadblock, but still.
smith
@Geminid: Yep, and E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation suit, coming right up in January.
dmsilev
@Martin: Apparently the Trump attorney didn’t learn that lesson. Attacking a judge’s clerk? Bad idea. Doing so after your client got slapped repeatedly with a gag order for the same damn thing? Really really really bad idea. Especially for a bench trial where there’s no jury involved.
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: Not to worry, there’s no need to upgrade your opinion of Sinema. Rest assured, you can safely conclude that her reasons are self-serving.
Speaking of the object permanence that Martin mentioned, perhaps she thinks that this will erase all the bad marks from her permanent record?
WaterGirl
@sab: Yikes! I bet she’s spent some time in therapy. I would still be angry.
schrodingers_cat
What is with the yellow stars in this post?
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: I suspect the goal is to goad the judge into crossing some line, which they want to use in an appeal.
Can you even appeal a civic case? Could Trump possibly get a stay on selling off his precious company pieces while it goes up for appeal?
HumboldtBlue
@dmsilev:
She’s doing it because she knows her time in the Senate is up. The latest poll showed Gallego with something like 43 percent, Kari Lake at like 27 percent and Clown Show Kyrsten at 17 percent.
Eunicecycle
@dmsilev: of course Kise is doing it for TIFG who wants his attorneys to FIGHT. Which he interprets as being an asshole. Also the questioning of Eric was going badly so he wanted to interrupt the prosecutor.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: oh, in the past few weeks Musk has done something with Twitter so I can no longer paste in the URL and WordPress magically turns it into a tweet.
So I have to paste in the embed code, and that’s a mess code-wise if you have multiple tweets. So I put the emojis in as separators so the tweet code doesn’t merge together.
I HATE the emoji set that we’ve had on the site since they merged all the sites together a year ago – they are all tiny and don’t look like they are supposed to look.
One of the only ones that still looks like it’s supposed to is the star.
I mentioned that in some post in the past couple of weeks, but I know that most people don’t read every word of every post.
WaterGirl
@HumboldtBlue: She’s trying to up her maverick street cred.
smith
Yes, TFG has already filed at least one appeal in this case, and you can be sure he will file more when the bill for this one comes due. I think the appeals court is likely to act expeditiously, however, so it won’t be too long before TFG has to bid a tearful goodbye to his precious money.
sab
@WaterGirl: We are both almost 70. Not at all unusual for upper middle class white girls back then.
When I was living in the Jim Crow South ( Florida) in the sixties, Black families that could afford it educated their daughters not their sons. Daughters could be teachers in Black schools, and nurses. Education for men was less useful. Fight forever with the state licensing agencies and then scramble to develop a practice, or do more manual work for more dependable pay.
WaterGirl
@smith: Fingers crossed that you are right!
WaterGirl
@sab: No wonder people who come from money are often fucked up.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Of course. As long as you can pay the filing fees and find a lawyer to file a brief.
JaneE
You can’t be a misogynist if you have a wife and daughters? Have you ever heard of spousal and child abuse? Better yet incest.
Maybe the misogynistic husband will spare his own, but hearing the hatred for all other women should qualify as abusive by itself.
Redshift
Always remember – neither is “the smart one.” (Though it took a while for us to learn that.) You are correct that Don Jr. is the one with a penchant for “powdering his nose,” though.
Uncle Cosmo
Similar situation with our HS valedictorian – family resources for college were earmarked for her brother, consolation prize was nursing school. (When she told her favorite teacher he shook his head and said What a waste.) Eventually she managed to get around that (and a bad first marriage) to a career in IT (and a much better second marriage) but she didn’t deserve the hassle of time and effort lost.
(FTR we lost her last year, far too soon. RIP Jenny.)
WaterGirl
@JaneE: I hope it was clear that I wasn’t suggesting that he was right. My intent was to call him out on his bullshit.
Kise might have been smart enough to get his 3 million bucks from Trump up front, but he sure doesn’t seem very savvy to me.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: What’s your take on Kise as an attorney?
japa21
@WaterGirl:
As we found out earlier today, not even you.
Tony Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
Christ. New blood in the PGMOL? She can only improve the awfulness of their… well… their everything. Absolutely the worst group of match officials in the professional game. Terrible at their job, corrupt, arrogant, and yet blissfully convinced of their own superiority. After all, would the serious footballing trendsetters of the Gulf be willing to pay them so much money for refereeing exhibition games over there (coincidentally just days before they referee games involving the clubs owned by Gulf states in the Premier League) if they weren’t the elite? 🤮
If they’re letting a woman into their little boys club it can only be as a PR jape to show how progressive they are, and probably as a clumsy effort to further their campaign to make questioning the absolute authority of the ‘real’ referees verboten. Expect lots of outraged pearl clutching if and when some sweaty millionaire in shorts mouths off at her for a dodgy call followed by eleventy billion column inches on how THIS PROVES that referees are the real victims.
Shorter – The PGMOL would much rather have a conversation about misogyny in sport than continue defending their own calamitous ineptitude.
Frankensteinbeck
@WaterGirl:
Which is why I think the judges are escalating punishments in a patient, measured way. They’re not going to win the battle and lose the war.
Especially not since it’s becoming clear to me Trump believes there is still some One Weird Trick that will completely reverse the already finished trial saying Trump Org will be broken up.
Peke Daddy
@WaterGirl: Here’s some lawyerly speculation:
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-lawyers-enraged-judge/
Tony Jay
Really? Even after all that practice? Tsk. Talk about Republican ineptitude.
Geminid
@Omnes Omnibus: Would Trump have to post an appeal bond for the amount of the judgement?
Kay
@Geminid:
It’s been gratifying to follow, because it really bothers Trump. This case has gotten to him to an extent that suprised me – he is furious. I think his fake business empire is the only thing he really cares about.
Kay
@Geminid:
It’s been gratifying to follow, because it really bothers Trump. This case has gotten to him to an extent that suprised me – he is furious. I think his fake business empire is the only thing he really cares about.
WaterGirl
@japa21: I’m talking about the post itself, not the comments.
As far as I can tell, the topic in question wasn’t in the post itself, was it?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Based on attacking communications between a judge and law clerk? Idiot. Communications between a judge and their clerk is the whole point of having clerks. They are there to provide assistance to the judge (research, writing drafts, observing, etc.) In return, they get to be in the inside of the process, to learn from an experienced professional, and to get a prestigious credential.* The attack was nonsensical. Anyone who has ever litigated in anything higher that a municipal court has seen and interacted with clerks.
*I learned more about legal writing during my clerkship than I did anywhere else in my career.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid:
No.
Warblewarble
It is not good enough for supporters of Israel to now try to back away from the murderous onslaught that has been unleashed against men,women and most terribly children of Gaza. Those complicit in these excessive deaths and injuries ,remain complicit whatever their present unease and squeamishness .It was entirely predictable how this extremist Israeli settler regime would conduct their campaign against the population of Gaza. Given their previous vicious and unjust treatment of Palestinians over decades ,this slaughter comes as a surprise only to the willful blind.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes! I really think he is unable to comprehend that the cake is baked on that one. I guess as long as he can appeal, the cake isn’t totally baked. But I think the man who has never had to experience consequences cannot comprehend it all.
WaterGirl
@Peke Daddy: ooh, can’t wait to read that. (even if it is raw story!) thanks.
Kay
Least surprising news ever. Good fucking riddance. What is it about NYers and mayors? Guiliani and now this creep.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Could you explain what an appeal bond is? Is that like Trump was supposed to put the 5 million to E. Jean Carrol in some sort of escrow-like thing while he appealed the verdict?
WaterGirl
@Kay: I agree, no surprise. The only surprise to me is that he at least pretends to be a democrat.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Here you go.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
He’s just such a clown. Don’t hire mayors who say they want to be paid in bitcoin. “Mayor” is a real job. It’s not like he’s a Republican in the US House. He has actual work to do.
Frankensteinbeck
@WaterGirl:
Having read a couple of his public statements about it, I think Trump badgered his lawyers into telling him that the appeal decision saying to wait on the second fraud trial was actually ordering a do-over. So, he A) thinks if he wins this trial he wins completely, and B) thinks the appeals court is sympathetic to him.
Geminid
@Kay: My friend who has followed the trial is fairly obsessed with Trump. Although Warren always voted and voted for Democrats, he was never interested in politics much. But once Trump beat Hilary Clinton, who Warren really admired, he became like Ahab and Trump is his Great White Whale.
Warren really likes Judge Engeron. He says Engeron grew up in the Bronx, about a mile from Fred Trump’s house. Judge Engeron is just a few years younger than Trump, I think.
Layer8Problem
@Kay: I’m kinda wondering “In return for what??”
“Mr. Adams’s decision to cancel high-level meetings with senior White House officials about an issue that he has warned will hollow out New York’s budget and destroy the city suggested an unusual level of urgency.”
Gee whiz, it certainly does sound that way.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I was looking for a simpler explanation, but okay, I skimmed it and I’m slightly smarter than I was before.
Why is the answer NO for Trump in this case?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: The assets of the Trump Org are already under the control of a third party IIRC and the suit is at this point basically about what to do with those assets.
frosty
@sab: Same situation in my wife’s family, who only had enough money to send one of the three kids to college, so they put his brother through for a BA. He ended up as a cabinetmaker and artist. The sisters scraped and got degrees, with help from their spouses. My wife got a MS and her sister earned a doctorate, both from Hopkins.
It was the way things were done in the 50s and 60s and it was unfair.
Frankensteinbeck
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, my understanding is that the business will be broken up, and this case is ‘how much of its assets will be sold off to pay Trump’s penalties’ and court watchers are expecting the answer to be ‘everything’. I am basely and ignobly looking forward to Mar A Lago being sold out from under his orange ass, since I’m pretty sure it’s a Trump Org property.
WaterGirl
@Peke Daddy: Surely the prosecutors would just go back to the line of testimony later, right?
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: I hope Trump is wrong about the appeals court. Does he have any reason t think they are sympathetic?
Geminid
@Kay: I wonder what the Turks wanted out of Eric Adams. Maybe they thought he could help get Mr. Gulen extradited. They say Gulen’s organization helped organize the coup in July of 2016. But Gulen lives over in Pennsylvania, in the Poconos.
Frankensteinbeck
@WaterGirl:
If I understand correctly (big if), the appeals court declared that Trump Org should wait and not be broken down until after the second case is settled. Trump interprets that as them siding with him against Engeron.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, that part I understand, What I don’t really get is how an appeal plays into all of this.
After this trial, does everything get put on hold because of the appeal? So his assets stay intact, even if they are under control of a third party?
Tony Jay
This is what I like to see. Actual Labour MP who has been suspended by Starmer’s regime for having a non-approved opinion on the Israel/Palestine issue (peace would be better for everyone – bloody antisemite!) is suing the Tory MP who accused him of justifying Hamas terrorism.
1) He’ll win.
2) More Labour MPs should sue the fuckers who lie about them. Especially when it’s other Labour MPs.
3) If there’d been a LOT more of this 2017-2019 then the country would be better off and/because half of the UK News Media would have gone bankrupt, along with more than half of the current Nu-New Labour Front-bench.
Old School
@frosty:
It caused grief in my family. My aunt felt she should get a larger share of my grandmother’s estate since her brothers were put through college and she wasn’t.
It’s a shame the family wasn’t overly close after that.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: ah. that makes sense.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Basically, yes. The litigation process isn’t done until all avenues of appeal have been exhausted or foreclosed. Cases take a long time. Complex cases take longer.
Ohio Mom
@Frankensteinbeck: I have always assumed that Trump and his kids have money stashed various places, like off shore accounts but maybe they don’t? Is it just a blow to Trump’s ego to lose his little business empire or is it going to be a financial disaster for him?
Hoping for financial disaster myself. Would be interesting to see.
Also, I am wondering who would want to buy Mar A Largo.
HumboldtBlue
Here’s a funny doggy voice-over.
Elizabelle
Sam Bankman-Fried convicted. All seven charges. Looking at maximum of 110 years.
Omnes Omnibus
The Bankman-Fried jury found him guilty on all counts in under five hours of deliberation.
CaseyL
SBF guilty on all charges (Elizabelle got there first).
@Omnes Omnibus; Less than 5 hours to deliberate? Guess the jury wasn’t as easily confounded by newage techbabble garbage as the defense hoped!
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.
Elizabelle
@Baud: Hello stranger.
SBF goes down on all counts. May the Trump family be quaking in their high heeled boots over that.
Splitting Image
@Elizabelle:
The part of me that feels sorry for him is small enough to play a suitable violin.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ohio Mom:
Everything I have heard is that Trump is not very liquid. Most of his actual cash money is in the PACs, and he’s been pouring that like a river into legal fees. Most of his wealth is in real estate he owns, golf courses, stuff like that.
What I know for damn sure is that Trump treasures his golf courses. They are a big supporting pillar of his endlessly needy self-esteem. They’re something he brags about a lot, and where he spends the only time he eve seems to be out having fun.
I think he is facing gigantic disaster both on a practical and emotional level. He is currently at the stage of being pissed because his brilliant tricks that he knows will save him haven’t worked yet because he’s being treated so unfairly.
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
And boom goes the dynamite.
Captain C
@dmsilev: I suspect a) it gets her name attached to something other than Dolores Umbridge flavored contrarianism, and b) this is important to many of her active duty, reservist, and retired military constituents (who would be making it known) and quite possibly herself, as well.
Captain C
@Eunicecycle: Basically resorting to the pound on the table approach.
Anyway
@Ohio Mom:
Sku Melon comes to mind …
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: Just remember from the Jan 6 convictions that the theoretical maximum sentences are almost never what actual sentence looks like.
Layer8Problem
Oooo, you rascal!
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: only wish his parents could be going down the river with him. Superb ethicists. Not.
Anyway
@Elizabelle:
I hope that’s the last we hear of Effective Altruism for 110 years …
geg6
@sab:
My mother, an only child and whose father worked steadily through the Depression and even more during WWII, did not believe in college for women. My mother, a very intelligent woman, was not permitted to go no matter how she begged. So when he died, after she’d birthed six kids, she took a big chunk of the money he left her and got her degree. She went on to be a journalist. She thought of it as the sweetest sort of revenge.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh yeah. But may he do more than that Fyre Festival organizer.
Incidentally, that weasel is trying to put together another mega-event. And the first block of tickets sold out. Somewhere, PT Barnum is laughing.
Captain C
@Peke Daddy: Won’t they just start tomorrow with that line of questioning then? Perhaps they think it’ll give them just enough time to prep Eric with a BS story that won’t be quite enough to get him busted for perjury? Personally, I think that would take a bit more than one all-nighter, given who’s involved, but then I’m not a lawyer at all, let alone one who’s savvy enough to get $3 million in advance from one of the most notorious payment skippers in history.
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
I know! It’s not just that he was so incredibly shady that it took the jury such a short time (barely long enough to get in some nice Thai food) to find him mega-guilty, but he was apparently incapable of understanding how incredibly, astonishingly, gongtasticaly guilty as fuck he came across in his ‘defence’.
They taught their boy well. I’m just not sure exactly what it was they taught him. To be a self-absorbed prick, apparently.
Elizabelle
@Tony Jay: they didn’t spend much time on grooming.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you!
WaterGirl
@Baud: Baud!
Captain C
@Kay: I’m fine with whatever gets rid of him, and expeditiously, but if this is what does it I’ll be a little bummed it also didn’t involve weird* scenes in a squalid night club in the Meatpacking District.
*not necessarily gross, just really strange
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Tony Jay: I would guess he also annoyed them by being such a self-satisfied twit on the stand.
Tony Jay
@Elizabelle:
Hey, that’s what prison friendships are built on.
Tony Jay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
“But, you see, that’s how I got all those investors to back me, and they were really smart people. Why couldn’t the jury be smart people? Wait, brainwave! It’s supposed to be a jury of my peers, yeah? But I’m super smart, and they weren’t. Can I win an appeal on that?”
“Pasta or fries, kid. You’re holding up the line.”
Warblewarble
The thoughtful and compassionate statement from Irelands President Michael D. Higgins stands in marked contrast to the tap dancing of American and European politicians now claiming to be quietly whispering to the apartheid regime that perhaps it might look better if they were not killing quite so many children, while providing the means to do so. Palestinian schools are destroyed , yet the illegal settlements remain, settler violence increases under the protection of the IDF . And the crocodile tears flow
WaterGirl
@Warblewarble: Some are surely crocodile tears, but some may be real as people who maybe haven’t paid that much attention are now seeing reality and don’t like what they are seeing.
stinger
@WaterGirl:
It’s like an episode of Jeers, “where everybody knows your nym”.
WaterGirl
@Warblewarble: What did you think of Chris Murphy’s statement up top? I thought he called it what it is.
Warblewarble
Chris Murphy’s statement was better the some, but still contained it’s share of tap dancing. Read it again, then read Micheal D.
WaterGirl
@Warblewarble: I didn’t find the actual statement, but I found this article.
WaterGirl
@Warblewarble: I don’t see tap-dancing in Chris Murphy’s statement.
I still think it was good, as was the Higgins statement, or at least the parts I saw in the article I found.
Sally
@Ohio Mom: I have just begun wondering that too, do they have off shore hidey holes. I think they don’t, going by what I read. I think it is more important to trump for the world to see his “worldly goods” plus some made up, than to hide it for tax purposes. He has other ways of lying to the IRS, ie, just lying. If he weren’t such a fragile macaroon, and if he were a real billionaire, he would have stashes elsewhere.
As an addendum, I think (some) wealthy religious people keep their money hidden, as much from the church as the IRS. I always thought that was why Romney didn’t release many tax forms. Some church leaders might figure out what ten percent of all the lucre is.
Warblewarble
“And I know Israel cares about the impact of this war on innocent Palestinians” C Murphy. Show me the evidence for this assertion.
WaterGirl
@Warblewarble: You’ve got me there. But I think that’s diplomacy, not something Murphy actually believes. I think Israel, as a country, has lost its way and lost the plot. Never again means never again for anyone. At least it should.
That is not a slag against Jewish people, just at the direction the leadership of Israel has taken the country.
Warblewarble
appreciate what you say, and as always you have my respect. the full statement from President Higgins can be found at Media Library ,and in my view is the most fair minded and compassionate and thoughtful comment made by any statesman.
Jinchi
What if you want to cheat on your wife with your daighter? What would TFG’s lawyer consider that?