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

Battle won, war still ongoing.

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You are here: Home / Politics / This and That on Wednesday Morning

This and That on Wednesday Morning

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You may have already heard the Judge Cannon came out with two rulings last night – rulings that came down on the side of the DOJ and not the indicted former guy.

I would so like to be a fly on the wall to know what caused the sudden turnabout, but I’m guessing it’s more that her back was against the wall than that she was suddenly driven by some new-found urge to get this right.   Now, not only did she give Jack Smith another opportunity to spell things out in his public filings – ever so clearly in very plain language – but her actions resulted in Jack Smith having to spell out exactly how dangerous those documents are.

With 95% of the results in, uncommitted in Michigan is only at 13%.  Even in Wayne County where the big protest was going to happen, uncommitted is at 17%.

In the middle of the good news from Michigan and the rulings from Cannon in the MAL documents case, it was sad to see that there’s someone on death row waiting for a ruling about whether they are going to be killed or not.  I know nothing about the case, but to me the death penalty is nothing more than state-sanctioned murder.

Score another win for Marc Elias!  You’ve got to give it to the Republicans in Wisconsin; they never stop trying to subvert democracy.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

197Comments

  2. 2.

    Ohio Mom

    WaterGirl, the site is acting weird — flashing on and off and crashing. I am on oldish iPhone and Safari.

  4. 4.

    Big Fly

    If Cannon did everything correctly and promptly till the very end, to my mind she’ll remain a piece of shit.

  5. 5.

    Barbara

    I hate the death penalty.

    For those who can relate, I would love to know your thoughts.  I am now facing the prospect of a total hip joint replacement on my left side.  I won’t bore you with the back story — but the pain escalated dramatically in December.  I am going to physical therapy and I am a star patient, and I am taking analgesics and while these things are making my life bearable, I am unable to get back to any semblance of the activities that I have long enjoyed, let alone anything new (like increased traveling) that might be in the future.  I have spoken to two surgeons and it appears I have dysplasia — I assume it isn’t “severe” or I would have known about it long before now — but it’s enough to accelerate deterioration of the joint.

    Not what I expected.

  6. 6.

    lowtechcyclist

    You may have already heard the Judge Cannon came out with two rulings last night – rulings that came down on the side of the DOJ and not the indicted former guy.

    I see one of them mentioned above – the one to block classified discovery on the part of Nauta and DeOliveira.

    What was the other one?

  8. 8.

    Juju

    I’m having a loading issue as well. I have an iPhone XR and safari. I can get to the page by skipping the whole front page, but I am having trouble telling you about my problems. This is the third try. Fingers crossed.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I’m gonna repost this from the end of the earlier AM thread:

    Glynn Simmons had been in Oklahoma for six days when he was arrested on suspicion of robbery. He was 22, he didn’t have a criminal record and the police had no obvious reason to pick him up that day in 1975.

    The robbery victim didn’t recognise him; Simmons was told he was free to leave. Just as he was about to be released, however, the police told him that they were short of men for a lineup and asked him to take part. Simmons didn’t know that it was within his rights to refuse. His mother had taught him the importance of respecting officialdom. So, dutifully, he took part. It cost him dearly.

    Simmons was later charged with the murder of a 30-year-old liquor store worker, Carolyn Sue Rogers, who had been shot in the head during a separate robbery. Along with Don Roberts, he was convicted and sentenced to death, later reduced to life imprisonment. In July 2023, he was released, before being exonerated in September. In December, he was legally declared innocent of the crime. Simmons, now 70, had spent 48 years, five months and 13 days in prison – the longest time anyone in the US has been jailed before being cleared.

    “You used the term miscarriage of justice,” Simmons says in his sonorous voice. “But what happened to me wasn’t a miscarriage of justice where they simply got it wrong. What happened to me was deliberate. There’s another title for that.” Is there a term he prefers? “Yes. Attempted murder.” Simmons says it is attempted murder because the police knew he would receive the death penalty if found guilty.

    Attempted murder indeed:

    Told that he had been identified in the case, Simmons assumed it was a mistake that would quickly be rectified. After all, the police were there to uphold the law, not to abuse it. But then he was charged. Again, he assumed he would be cleared, because he hadn’t even been in Oklahoma at the time. Rogers had been killed on 30 December 1974; Simmons had flown from Louisiana to Oklahoma on 5 January 1975. Twelve witnesses testified that they had seen him on the day of the murder in Harvey, Louisiana; a number of them said they saw him playing pool in the evening, when the killing took place.

    There was a lot more criminal abuse of the law against him than that. The kicker?

    Just before his release, Simmons was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer. To add insult to injury, he was given no money to ease his rehabilitation into the community. People wrongfully convicted in Oklahoma are eligible for up to $175,000 in compensation. This would work out at a paltry $3,645 for every year Simmons was jailed. So far, though, he has received nothing. He relies on a GoFundMe campaign, which has raised nearly $350,000.

    I salute his strength, courage, honesty, and most of all his simple joy at being alive.

    I ask how he is coping with the outside world. He grins the widest of grins. “Look at me! Look at me! You can tell. I’m so happy.” What is life like? “Life is beautiful, man. It’s so beautiful.” He tells me about the importance of his faith, his relationship with Glen, now 52, with whom he has been living, the exhilaration of driving for the first time in almost half a century.

    I have talked to many people who have been wrongfully imprisoned and most are raging with anger, post-traumatic stress disorder or both. But Simmons is luminous with hope. He is even convinced he can beat cancer. “That’s receding, too. I came out of jail with stage four cancer. This thing’s down to stage two now.” He stops to take it all in. “Remarkable,” he says.

    A longish read but well worth it.

  12. 12.

    Anoniminous

    “By winning a mere 81% of tne vote a shattered and weak Biden limps into Super Tuesday.

    Trump waltzed to victory with an overwhelming 61% of the vote setting the stage for triumph next Tuesday”

    — said every media outlet everywhere

  14. 14.

    WaterGirl

    @lowtechcyclist: I believe it’s this one.

    Bradley P. Moss
    @BradMossEsq
    Stand by for another ruling from Cannon tonight. Looks like she will be denying Trump’s CIPA motion for access and ruling on the remainder of Smith’s Section 4 motion.
  16. 16.

    WaterGirl

    @Juju: Try the front page again and report back, right away if you can.  If the problem isn’t resolved from the first thing I did, then there’s one more quick thing I can try.

    But I need feedback on whether the first thing made a difference – before I am going to change something else.

  18. 18.

    tam1MI

    I figured that the push for “Uncommitted” in Michigan had gone off like a damp squib for 2 reasons: 1. The organizers of the effort suddenly started lowballing what they would consider the numbers for a successful effort to be – never a sign of confidence, and 2. The “Genocide Joe” assholes were not all over BJ today preening and gloating.

  21. 21.

    lowtechcyclist

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    One thing I have long thought is that there should be a compulsory minimum payment by the state to someone found to have been wrongfully imprisoned, a payment that would in effect put a floor monetary value on being free to come and go as one pleases.

    My non-lawyerly thinking is that this could be legislated by Congress and applied to the states via the Eighth Amendment, defining for the purpose of such a law that being imprisoned though innocent is cruel and unusual punishment requiring recompense.

    I’d say $75K for each year of being denied freedom would be a start.  Again, this would be just for having been denied freedom, and the person receiving such relief should not have to give up his/her right to sue for additional damages.

    Having a chunk of one’s life taken away unjustly is a big fucking deal; we only get so many years on this planet, and you can never get those lost years back.  There should be substantial recompense for that loss in and of itself.

  22. 22.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    @Barbara: I live in the DC area and has a hip/femoral knob replacement when I turned 60 (the knob dissolved over the years and messed up my hip socket, as well as itself being missing).  It was nothing – outpatient surgery, walking up stairs that day, only Tylenol for pain meds. Felt better immediately.  Hip replacement is not a major thing anymore.  Good luck to you.

  25. 25.

    Jackie

    Marc Elias deserves a medal for everything he’s done, and continues to get done! I’m so glad he’s out there fighting for voter’s/ our rights everyday!

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: We had one 2 week stint of real winter weather with below 0 temps at night and single digit highs or lower teens back in January. Then we had a period of highs in the30s, 40s and low 50s, which is not abnormal for us but the fact that it got there and stayed there was unusual (usually periods of deep cold break it up). Then this week we’ve been in the 60s and 70s with yesterday’s high at 83.

    Cold front came thru last night, expecting a high of 41, a couple days of 50s, then 60s and 70s again.

  36. 36.

    WaterGirl

    @schrodingers_cat: I just did check out the comments.

    If you’re talking about Kay, what I see isn’t gloating or trolling, just honest disagreement on an issue that she considers important.

    If I thought BJ was missing the the boat on a really important issue, I would be banging the drum hard, too.

  37. 37.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @WaterGirl:

    It sounds like the problem I am having and have had for awhile, which I doubt you can affect:  With a lot of Twitter embeds on the page, scrolling past them before they finish loading makes Safari on an iPhone go haywire.

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    It is entirely possible that Judge Cannon has realized that she’s not only been working for the wrong side thus far, but she’s in quite deep.  Like, “you’re about to betray your country” deep.

    I’d hate to be in that kind of position…but then again I’m not the type of person who would have gotten himself in that kind of position in the first place.

    Do the right thing, Aileen!  =)

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat: With a utility knife. After 40+ years, I can’t do it any other way. I have seen sharpeners for them but they may not be on the market anymore.

    eta, mind you, we never need a fine point, a crow’s foot being enough.

  44. 44.

    geg6

    @WaterGirl: ​
     
    Same for ticks. If we don’t reach a certain very cold temperature for an extended time (basically the entire winter), ticks are horrible the next spring/summer/fall.

  46. 46.

    TBone

    Jamie Raskin and AOC on CNN re: Hunter but MSNBC is stuck at the Texas border?  Now, Swalwell.  Will try to find clip soon. Apparently, some Reps were using speaker phone behind closed door !

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat: It’s not too difficult to avoid the knife blade. Hold one end in your hand and push the knife away from yourself at the other end. Take shallow cuts. If you need a fine point you can just rub the tip back and froth on a piece of paper/wood/damned near anything until it is as fine as you need it to be.

  50. 50.

    AM in NC

    @Barbara: The one person who I know had a hip replacement is SOOOOOOOOO glad she did.  She was a college athlete, and by 50 she was limping along and in a lot of pain.  Post hip replacement, she walks like a new woman!

  51. 51.

    smith

    @Jeffro: Cannon has had a couple of very accurate shots across her bow in Jack Smith’s filings, and she knows another goof might very well take her off the case. She wants to be there for the trial when she will have a lot of latitude to do a lot of damage.

  54. 54.

    geg6

    @Barbara: ​
     
    When my John had double knee replacement surgery, his orthopedic surgeon told me that hip replacements are the easiest types of orthopedic surgery to recover from as long as the patient takes the rehab seriously and doesn’t gain a lot of weight. He said knees were second easiest and the hardest of all is shoulders. I can attest that his takes on the knees and shoulder are absolutely correct. John has had both types of surgery and he has said he’d do his knees every day compared to the shoulder.

  57. 57.

    Dangerman

    My local hangout didn’t have any ketchup packets for my fries; I don’t think Donald has been there but how can I be sure?

  60. 60.

    smith

    In other news, the 11th Circuit denied Mark Meadows’ appeal to have his GA case removed to federal court.

  61. 61.

    greenergood

    Just an amazing article, about an amazing man – I was in tears by the end. Does anyone know how/where to write to him?

    Ticks: yuk. This ‘winter’ in the west of Scotland has been mild, wet and, can I say again(?),  mild.  Ticks are gonna be awful this year – I have deer in my postage-stamp-sized garden, and sheep in the field across the lane – so even a walk in my tiny garden will involve leg inspection every time, thanks to Senor Lyme’s Disease …

  63. 63.

    La Nonna

    @Barbara: I’ve had a shoulder replacement, and a knee replacement, great improvement in quality of life to be without daily persistent pain, inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis, at 74 still looking for years of good mobility.  Physio was a bear.

  66. 66.

    jonas

    @OzarkHillbilly: My daffodils are just about to bloom. In upstate NY. In late February. JFC. In terms of climate change, that’s like being able to go ice fishing in the Adirondacks in July.

  67. 67.

    WaterGirl

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yeah, some of those posts with a ton of Twitter embeds end up being 10x the recommended page size for a WordPress post.

    Not much I can do about that.  I did change the setting from 7 posts on the front page to 6 posts, but I haven’t seen a comment from any of the people who reported the problem, so I don’t know if that helped or not.

    Without feedback after I change something, it’s like trying to troubleshoot in the dark.  It takes both sides and timely feedback to get to the bottom of a technical issue like this.

  68. 68.

    Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)

    @geg6: Do you see a lot of ticks inyour area of W.PA?

    When Iived in Pittsburgh while I  was growing up I saw exactly one tick in those 21 or so years before I moved to Eastern PA in 1977. It was a dog tick on one our beagle’s ear. I palyed outside all the time too. My mother was the why don’t you go play outside kind of mom.

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    @Jeffro: You are giving Cannon more credit than I do.  I suspect this was her only choice unless she wanted to get smacked down AGAIN, for the 3rd time on this same case.  And maybe it would have been a smackdown, or maybe she would have been removed.

    I can’t credit someone with doing the right thing when they do it because they basically have no other choice.

    But we’ll never know, so maybe you’re right on this, even though I don’t think so. :-)

  72. 72.

    geg6

    @Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!): ​ They are endemic to Beaver County and, especially, my yard because we have a deer trail that comes right through the middle of our yard. They go back and forth on it every day and night.I swear by the Soresto collars. Otherwise, we’d have to train our dogs to go in a litter box because they wouldn’t be able to go outside without getting ticks.​

  73. 73.

    Kristine

    Late to report, but I could not load BJ on the iPhone versions of Safari or Chrome this morning. The front page would attempt to load, flash on and off once or twice, then crash. Latest versions of everything.

    I tend to blame Xitter code. Not a biggie b/c I just switch to the laptop.

  74. 74.

    jonas

    Judge Cannon came out with two rulings last night – rulings that came down on the side of the DOJ and not the indicted former guy.

    Looks like someone was eager not to get their slow-walking ass removed from the case entirely. Cannon is utterly corrupt, but not stupid. She’ll be looking for plenty more opportunities going forward to make sure this case proceeds like a barrel of frozen molasses.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat: Yeah, box cutter too. I use them for damned near anything when I am in the shop or on the rare occasions when I strap a tool belt on again. Mine tend to dull quickly as I do not often concern myself with what is below what I am trimming/cutting etc, so I change the blades often. A sharp blade is much easier to control than a dull blade.

  76. 76.

    Barbara

    @WaterGirl: The appellate panel that slapped her original decision down last year had judges with experience and familiarity with national security issues and they were not amused at her — how shall we say — free-spirited — approach to the matter.  My assumption is that if she doesn’t want to flirt with being removed from the case, at least when it comes to national security issues,  she will not stray again.  That doesn’t mean she won’t fuck with other aspects of the case.

  79. 79.

    Gin & Tonic

    @geg6: We swear by Simparica, a miracle drug. The collar gave our dog the shits, it was awful. Haven’t seen a tick in two years since we started on it.

  80. 80.

    smith

    @Barbara: That doesn’t mean she won’t fuck with other aspects of the case.

    Yep, like jury selection and deciding what evidence can be introduced at trial. Lots of room for bad faith judging there.

  82. 82.

    geg6

    @Gin & Tonic: ​
     
    We tried Simparica but neither dog would touch it. If we forced it in, they spit it out. Every. Single. Time.
    The collars don’t seem to bother them at all. And we haven’t had a single tick since we started using them.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @schrodingers_cat: ​ My mother gave each of the males in her life a custom made knife one Xmas.* Absolutely beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. My father gave me his when his Alzheimer’s was kicking into higher gear. A couple years ago I passed them on to my sons. I figured why wait until I’m dead?

  85. 85.

    Barbara

    @WaterGirl: That opinion might as well have had a watermark in it that said “the judge is an idiot.”  It should have been humiliating for a serious jurist to be that wrong about even a single important legal issue, but she was wholly and completely wrong about a whole series of issues.

  87. 87.

    Citizen Alan

    @Barbara:

    I hate the death penalty.

    I genuinely believe that if Hillary Clinton had become President and appointed Scalia’s successor, the death penalty would have been struck down as unconstitutional by now.

    Buttery males.

  88. 88.

    Dangerman

    @jonas: She’ll be looking for plenty more opportunities going forward to make sure this case proceeds like a barrel of frozen molasses.

    I dunno; she will never be a speed demon as no one, not even her, needs the whackjob threats, but something else MAY be in play.

    Let’s say you need to raise a buttload of money right away but don’t want to part with your prized possessions like Mar-a-Lago. Melania, sure, if the price is right, but not Mar-A-Lago.

    What do you have the can raise just a shitload of money in a hurry? Think some TLA agencies are watching Donald like Donald looks at a bucket of KFC (or Vlad) and whispering some not so sweet nothings in her ear?

  89. 89.

    Barbara

    @geg6: Did you try peanut butter?  My elderly dog now takes two separate sleep medications (which assures sleep for us as well) and we tried to give it with different treats — cheese, wet food — but boy oh boy did peanut butter solve our problems.  She’ll even eat it right off of a spoon.

  90. 90.

    Sid

    @tam1MI:

    Any American who pays federal taxes (some of it used to support the IDF) is complicit in the slaughter in Gaza, as well as the preexisting horrid living conditions there, and I’ve never run away from any debate about the guilt of this country. However, anyone on a high enough moral high-horse to use “Genocide Joe” to refer to Biden should be putting their money where their mouths are come April 15.

  93. 93.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jeffro: ​It is entirely possible that Judge Cannon has realized that she’s not only been working for the wrong side thus far, but she’s in quite deep. Like, “you’re about to betray your country” deep.

    It is even more entirely possible that her handlers at the Federalist Fascist Society sent her detailed instructions on how to rule in these cases so as not to be recused – and will continue to send instructions for walking on the cliffsedge til such time as she can make the indictment go away before Jack Smith can do anything to stop her.

    My money’s on the latter. These bastards are playing for keeps and shoehorning Trumplthinskin back into the WH is key to the whole enchilada.

    FTR I also believe that we are approaching the climacteric of World War O-for-Oligarchs this November, and that the combined forces of the bazillionaires and the autocrats in other nations will do their damnedest to crash the economy sometime between late July and the end of September to get Orangecandyass back into office.

    (“Even paranoids can have real enemies” – Kissinger.)​

    (“Paranoids are not paranoids because they’re paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.” Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Proverbs for Paranoids #5 )

  95. 95.

    Jinchi

    If the numbers at the link below are correct, the absolute number of uncommitted votes in Michigan this year is about five times larger than normal.

    A lot of the difference could be that there is no credible primary challenger for those voters to go to this cycle, but I don’t see how you can claim that the uncommitted campaign “fizzled”.

    Does anyone here have a more official source on that point?

    https://www.wxyz.com/news/national-politics/america-votes/heres-how-many-people-voted-uncommitted-in-past-michigan-presidential-primaries

  96. 96.

    Baud

    @Jinchi:

    A lot of the difference could be that there is no credible primary challenger for those voters to go to this cycle

     
    The only analogous year is 2012.

    I don’t have a view on whether “fizzled” is an apt description.

  97. 97.

    WaterGirl

    @Gin & Tonic: It seems like different flea & tick products have greater or lesser success depending on where you live.

    A couple decades ago, Frontline stopped working in our area, but in other areas of the country it was still working just fine.

    Mr. Bear, my cat, is impossible.  But my little Henry will take just about anything if a little bit of cheese goes along with it!

  98. 98.

    Ksmiami

    A full ban on the Death Penalty is imperative to the nation. If the (totally not) right to lifers deman an abortion ban, they should be ok with this… oh wait, no

  99. 99.

    WaterGirl

    @Jinchi: Don’t you have to take into account the total number of people voting in the Democratic primary in order to compare the absolute number of committed votes from one primary to another?

    I read something last night that Dems already had 2x the raw votes in the primary than Obama had, and that was with far less than half of the precincts reporting.

    So there were a lot more Democratic primary votes than usual.

  100. 100.

    gvg

    @WaterGirl: You would need to make it paid by the source of the problem conviction. And some of them don’t have it. Plus it’s not always the police/prosecutors or government. Sometimes its liar witnesses or bad science testing and presumption, or sometimes people are just wrong. Some small towns around here have unincorporated. As long as his sentence was, the source of his wrongful conviction might not exist now. He still should get compensated but making it a punishment for the bad justice source would be problematic.

  101. 101.

    WaterGirl

    @WaterGirl: Okay, I found the source, with specifics:

    During Obama’s incumbent primary in 2012, he got a total of 174,054 votes in Michigan. There were a total of 194,887 votes cast in the entire Dem primary.

    Joe Biden already has over 343,000 votes – with only 46% of the votes in.

  102. 102.

    smith

    @Jinchi: The raw numbers of votes aren’t what’s important, it’s the percentages. There was a fairly high turnout this time compared to other primaries. The best comparison may be the 2012 primary which also had an incumbent president, when uncommitted came in at 11%. So a bump of 2% compared to that one.

    In my opinion the emphasis on number of votes and not percentages was a deliberate strategy of those pushing for uncommitted votes. It’s the same (probably deliberate) misleading presentation you see in corporate media when, for instance, they report the raw numbers of murders in major cities, not the rate per capita. It makes it look like large blue state cities are the most dangerous in the nation, when they are simply the most populous, and in fact the majority of the top murder rates are found in smaller cities in red states.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @Sid: Palestinians need good allies; I think the people calling Joe Biden “Genocide Joe” are crappy allies, but they don’t speak for the many people who have a sincere interest in the people harmed by this war.

  107. 107.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Jeff Timmer via OP: Unless or until the uncommitted vote in the Michigan Dem primary exceeds 20% the protest didn’t happen. Ten to twenty percent uncommitted is the historic norm.

    So I thought an interesting data set would be the share of the uncommitted vote specifically against incumbents within their own party.

    I’ll start with 1996 because I deemed looking earlier to be likely fruitless. Neither Clinton nor anyone else was on the ballot. Uncommitted got 86.61% to 13 write ins. This reflects 142,000 total participation. (Wikipedia)

    There is literally nothing I could find on Bush 2004.  The Michigan Secretary of State has a helpful little tool to find the rest.

    2012, Uncommitted got 10.69% reflecting 20,833 votes out of 194,887. Obama drew no primary opposition.

    2020, uncommitted got 4.17% reflecting 28,485 out of 683,431 voters. Trump’s primary opponents drew smaller percentages than Williamson and Phillips did.

    So far this year, I understand they’re still counting, uncommitted has 13.25%,  100,401 out of 757,574 counted.

    First thing that stands out, hyping Presidential primaries for incumbents sure seems new. Overall participation swelled for both Trump and Biden. Anyone before them doesn’t seem to bear mentioning.

    That 100,000 uncommitted does stand out this year. As a raw number it is 5 times any year prior. It can’t be ignored. This is a time for conversation, though, not internal recriminations. Those can wait til after the election

    Edited for links and readability

    Also, though, as deep as Rs are into defending their boy; more of us, still, are showing up for ours. Even tho he don’t got brick and mortar merch stores dotting the country.

    Edited for “rah-rah” 👏✌️

  113. 113.

    Dangerman

    @Ksmiami: A full ban on the Death Penalty is imperative to the nation.

    I’m not sure I can join you on a full ban; there are some cases where I think it needs to be an option.

    Now, full disclosure, I was VERY peripherally involved with something that happened near (like across the street near) UCLA back in the mid-80’s. Shit, right now, I can’t even remember her name (I take a ridiculous number of pills plus I consume limited coffee) or the exact year. He’s on the Row. He’ll also never be put to Death. California.

  126. 126.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: I believe this is what we at the University used to refer as “life’s too short, fuck it” when the bullshit got too much.

    I suspect the 4 leaders meeting with Biden and Harris yesterday was enough to make him want to throw in the towel.

    I mean, if you’ve had a position of power, who wants to stay once you are no longer respected, and what you say doesn’t appear to carry much weight any longer?

  127. 127.

    BretH

    @WaterGirl: Same trouble iPhone 12 and Safari. I loaded just the Covid News and that went OK. Probably crap twitter embeds that just overloaded when the whole front page tried to load.

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    As people pointed out when Cannon was named, she still has the power to get the entire case dismissed with no possibility of appeal, but *only* if she hangs on as judge until a jury is selected, the trial technically starts and jeopardy attaches.

    But if that were her actual strategy, she’d have done better to play the straight arrow and speed the case along until that point.

  131. 131.

    Jackie

    @SiubhanDuinne: In November. So TIFG will try to take credit, but if it’s after the election it won’t matter – assuming Biden wins. And if we manage to hold the senate🤞🏻

  133. 133.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Barbara: I’m way late to this, but my mother has had both hips replaced, about a decade apart.

    Her quality of life went from “barely able to move” to “pretty much normal” in a couple months each time. I don’t know that will translate to your situation, but here’s hoping.

  134. 134.

    smith

    So, TFG has made an appeal to reduce the bond required in the NY fraud case to $100 mil. I guess that tells us how much money he can actually raise.

    ETA Link

  136. 136.

    wjca

    @WaterGirl: Yep, I agree that consequences should fall on the shoulders of the people who make the decisions, not the taxpayers.

    Seems like, if the man had a dozen witnesses that he wasn’t even in the state at the time and got convicted anyway, among those responsible should be the members of the jury and/or the judge.  Need some guardrails for honest mistakes, but in a case like thus….

  138. 138.

    Geminid

    @WaterGirl: You could hurt yourself that way. Try to bash your head on the more yielding spaces between the framing, maybe tap your forehead along the wall first in order to locate the studs.

  139. 139.

    Juju

    Holy cow!, I just got a news flash that Mitch McConnel is going to step down as Republican senate leader in November. Health issues?

  140. 140.

    Jackie

    The three Johns — John Thune, John Barrasso and John Cornyn — are all expected to vie McConnell’s position. Let it be for minority leader!

    More incentive to (as if needed!) to keep Tester, win AZ, and hopefully kick Ted to the curb!

  141. 141.

    Jeffro

    @Uncle Cosmo: I hear ya, I hear ya (about the possibilities re: Cannon), and I think you’re right about what’s at stake this November.  I have some serious concerns about what the billionaires (especially Musk and Crow) will do to disrupt the election and put Mr. RWNJ Rubber-Stamp back in the WH.

    As for this:

    “Even paranoids can have real enemies” – Kissinger.)

    “Paranoids are not paranoids because they’re paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.” Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Proverbs for Paranoids #5

    I’ll see you a Kissinger and Pynchon, and raise you a Godfathers ;)

    (“Just Because You’re Not Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out to Get You”)

  142. 142.

    TBone

    Pentagon says it still has $4 billion in Presidential drawdown authority it could use for Ukraine aid.  Better late than never.

  143. 143.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jinchi: The absolute number is a lot higher, but so are the total numbers of votes. Percentage wise for a primary, it’s in the ‘normal’ range for an incumbent president with slightly higher numbers in Muslim communities.

    I don’t think it “fizzled”, but the uncommitted campaign was also pretty clearly not a success in terms of voting results, either. But it happened and it got a lot of media attention, so it’s probably a political success and may shift Biden’s policy somewhat.

  144. 144.

    TaMara

    @Barbara: My friend had hers replaced a year ago November. She went from using a walker at a very young age to walking w/o and doing almost everything normally within 6 weeks. We climbed the steep hills at Cheyenne Mt. Zoo this summer.

    And her surgery was outpatient (still flabbergasted by that) but they didn’t cut the muscle, they just “move it aside” replaced the joint, and stitched her up. She was home by dinner.

    Her PT was basically they gave her the amount of steps she needed to take each day and build up.

    She was 65 at the time of her surgery.

  146. 146.

    Jeffro

    @SiubhanDuinne:McTurtle is stepping down.

    oh, so it’s going to be one of THOSE years then, eh?  a (knock on wood) good one?

    with all due apologies to my liver: IT’S ABOUT TIME!!  (woot!)

  149. 149.

    Jeffro

    @Geminid: tap your forehead along the wall first in order to locate the studs.

    thoughtful, quality advice there.  =)

    btw I am still gleeful about Bob (No)Good being kicked out of a trumpov pop-up shop for being insufficiently right-wing.  LOL!  Thanks for that Cardinal News link earlier in the week!

  150. 150.

    TBone

    @Jackie: I’m not sure yet, saw it on a breaking news chyron and am getting my hopes up!  Since it is funding already given, my hopes are WAY up.

  154. 154.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Juju: When you say three Johns are you referring to a three stall bathroom?

    No, nothing so elegant, refined, or even useful.

  155. 155.

    Anoniminous

    @smith: ​
    Isn’t adjusting the amount of the fine awarded by the judgment appealing the judgment and to do that the entire fine must be turned-over?

    But IANAL so WTFDIK

  157. 157.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: As we say in Greene County: no problem!

    Glad you liked the Cardinal News article. They are a good resource for Southside politics.

  159. 159.

    Scout211

    Well-crafted (convenient) story Mitch, but I don’t believe a word of it.  You were forced out. Link

    McConnell on Wednesday said his decision to step down came following the death of his wife Elaine Chao’s youngest sister, Angela, in a traffic accident earlier this month.

    As some of you may know, this has been a particularly difficult time for my family. We tragically lost Elaine’s younger sister, Angela, just a few weeks ago. When you lose a loved one, particularly at a young age, there’s a certain introspection that accompanies the grieving process. Perhaps it is God’s way of reminding you of your own life’s journey to reprioritize the impact of the world that we will all inevitably leave behind,” he said.

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Definitely not like the Three Tenors; more like the Three Stooges.

    More seriously, something’s going on with McConnell’s health. I think his preference would be to wait until after November 5 to announce his retirement. This starts a leadership fight in the middle of election season, something Nancy Pelosi was careful to avoid in 2022.

  162. 162.

    smith

    @schrodingers_cat: AG James has already filed her reply, asking that the stay of the execution of the judgment be denied. She cites all the monkey business the Trump Org has indulged in even while the monitor was watching, as well that attempt to surreptitiously change the addresses of several businesses to FL after the judgment as reasons not to trust them.

  163. 163.

    Beavis C Dawg

    @Barbara: I had my left hip replaced due to arthritis late 2017, so I feel your pain. It’s been good so far but I always worry about falling on it. My only advice is to get off the opioids ASAP and be religious with therapy and exercises. it will take about three months out of you life.

  164. 164.

    smith

    @Anoniminous: No, I think they can appeal at any time, but they have to post bond to keep AG James from taking their assets right away. At least that’s what the lawyers at Meidas Touch are telling me.

  166. 166.

    Leto

    @Scout211: MSNBC is replaying his going away speech, and he’s saying it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter; fucker, your next chapter is the grave, and it can’t come soon enough. You’re 82, Addisson. You don’t have shit left to contribute, and you never did.

  168. 168.

    wjca

    @Jinchi: If the numbers at the link below are correct, the absolute number of uncommitted votes in Michigan this year is about five times larger than normal.

    A lot of the difference could be that there is no credible primary challenger for those voters to go to this cycle, but I don’t see how you can claim that the uncommitted campaign “fizzled”.

    Quite simple, actually.  While the numbers of “uncommitted” were up, the percentage was actually smaller than in the past several elections.  So, new voters this time were less uncommitted than prior voters have been.  Sounds like a fizzle to me.

  169. 169.

    Jackie

    @TBone: It appears the money is there to spend as the Pentagon wishes; just no guarantee congress would replenish the funds. From your link:

    The Defense Department still has around $4 billion in presidential drawdown authority funds available for Ukraine, which allows the Pentagon to draw from its own stockpiles to send military equipment to Kyiv.

    But the Pentagon had previously been reluctant to spend any of that remaining money without assurances it would be reimbursed by Congress through the administration’s $60 billion supplemental funding request, because taking from DoD stockpiles with no plan to replenish that equipment could impact US military readiness.

  170. 170.

    evodevo

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Yep..same here in ole KY – picked a tick off the dog the other day (she doesn’t run loose outside, either)..NOOOOOO! Last year was bad enough – the deer ticks around here are off the charts compared with the “old days” when we first moved out here. Not looking forward to the what the situation will be this spring/summer.

  171. 171.

    Sid

    @Paul in KY:

    Yes you, and me, and every other American taxpayer:

    https://www.businessinsider.com/us-aid-spending-israel-military-defense-gaza-war-2023-10?op=1

    How exactly did you think the IDF became the world class military it is?

    Also this:

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/19/a-history-of-the-us-blocking-un-resolutions-against-israel

    Protesting American foreign policy is fine, and “uncommitted” votes are a great way to protest, but it’s disingenuous and hypocritical for any American to resort to calling Biden “Genocide Joe” (unless, of course, they’re prepared to go to the mat by refusing to pay the taxes that support that genocide) when the blood has been on all of our hands for many decades.

  172. 172.

    wjca

    @Juju: When you say three Johns are you referring to a three stall bathroom?

    We’re talking reactionaries here.  So more like a three hole privy.

  173. 173.

    Ruckus

    @Barbara:

    I used to be somewhat ambivalent about the death penalty because it takes a lot for it to be used – but. It’s not a penalty, OK yes it is, but it’s also retribution. And that doesn’t seem – proper.

    I believe life in prison is not exactly all that and a bag of chips. Decades of living in a cell cannot be a great deal of fun, a life well lived. In a country where basic freedom is it’s basis, a jail cell is the exact opposite. It is a penalty and I imagine that decades of living that penalty of having one of the basics of life here in the US (freedom) taken away does two things. 1 – it effectively keeps any other innocent people alive, 2 – it can not be in any way considered fun, or much of a life, living and dying in prison. IOW I’m not all that sure which is worse for the perp. But a daily reminder that you would never be able to have any control of your life ever again and only nature fixes that for you seems better than the concept of removing all that time. Now even if that person never accepts that they did wrong, they still have more than a bit of time to contemplate their actions.

  175. 175.

    Jackie

    @Scout211: If McConnell was forced out, he’d be stepping down immediately, effective now.

    He’s managing to step down without letting TIFG take any credit – which undoubtedly will piss TIFG off.👍🏻

  177. 177.

    wjca

    @Ruckus: I used to be somewhat ambivalent about the death penalty because it takes a lot for it to be used

    I have no problem philosophically with the death penalty.  But as a practical matter it just doesn’t make sense.  There are just way too many cases of wrongful conviction.  (Even 1% would be way too many IMHO.)   Getting released years later due to a wrongful conviction is bad.  But with a death penalty, there is simply no way to address a mistake.

    So, get rid of it.

  178. 178.

    Geminid

    @wjca: There is a substantial minority of Arab-Americans who normally vote Republican, around 35% I think. Some of them may have crossed over, and not neccesarily just to sabotage Democrats.

  181. 181.

    Sid

    @Geminid:

    There are around 185,000 Chaldeans (Iraqi Catholics) living in the metropolitan Detroit area. My personal experience has been that they’re overwhelmingly Republican. I suspect two of the reasons are abortion and the Bush war on Iraq (and toppling of Saddam Hussein).

  182. 182.

    geg6

    @Barbara: ​ Yes. My two insane dogs are the only dogs I know that don’t like cheese or peanut butter. We tried putting it in various meats, too. They are weird.​
     

    ETA: If I could figure out a way to put meds and such in popcorn, that might work.

  183. 183.

    Barbara

    @wjca: In addition to the possibility of wrongful conviction, to me, the real issue is wrongful application — it’s easy to agree that there are some things that are so terrible a sentence of death would not be unjust.  But in a system that is supposed to uphold equality before the law, there is no systematic way to ensure that those are the only ones where the death penalty can be applied.  There is public passion, politically motivated prosecutors, overwhelmed defense attorneys trying to represent underresourced clients, and the yawning, gaping prospect of racial bias in both directions — perpetrator and victim.

    I have been peripherally involved in three separate death penalty cases in which a death penalty was ultimately overturned and every one of them had at least two of these elements.

  184. 184.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:

    I’ve been having trouble off and on for 2 or 3 days. Sometimes I get only the very first inch of the first page and then nothing loads for 20-30 seconds. It is not every time I open the site but it is/was somewhat regularly happening.

  187. 187.

    Ruckus

    @MisterForkbeard:

    As an old I’ve known a number of people that have had hips replaced and while the recovery time is relatively short it does seem to take a bit to recover from what is pretty big surgery. But every single person I know who’s had it done and through recovery was extremely glad they did it.

  188. 188.

    Miss Bianca

    @wjca: Yeah, someone pointed me to a link to WXYZ News out of Detroit, which breathlessly reported the raw *numbers* of “uncommitted” votes in past and present primary years, but somehow completely neglected to include percentages of those numbers as total votes.

    So…not terribly illuminating.

  189. 189.

    Ruckus

    @WaterGirl:

    I’ve been on and off the computer the last few days and so now it wasn’t just early morning. And come on, an old retired fart gets up early without an appointment of some sort……?

  190. 190.

    Roberto el oso

    Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Houston-Galveston is an extremely telegenic cleric who reeks of ambition. I will however say this much for him: his insistence that the ‘pro-life’/anti-abortion stance of the Catholic Church must go hand in hand with an absolute opposition to the death penalty. He has made a point of organizing candlelit and attending vigils at every execution in Texas. He makes his fundamentalist brethren uncomfortable, to say the least.

  192. 192.

    Jinchi

    @wjca: ​Why do you assume that percentages are the more important metric?
    I’ve yet to see anyone talking about the Michigan results and not making circular arguments, whether they consider them dire or non-consequential.

  195. 195.

    laura

    @Barbara: I, too, hate the death penalty. I, too, am experiencing left hip pain that is interfering with going about my business. I’ll reach Medicare age at the end of September and am hoping for a hip replacement. Sciatica struck Thursday night and it’s slowly getting better, but it has been a misery from the hip to the knee to the top of ny foot. Solidarity Sister.

  196. 196.

    Kathleen

    @Barbara: I sympathize with your frustration and possibly trepidation at the prospect of surgery. For what it’s worth, I know several people who have had hip replacements and they’ve felt so much better and did not have problems. That being said, I would be nowhere near as stoic as you. I’d be screaming followed by cowering under a table in a fetal position. I do not handle these things well. I wish you the best.

  197. 197.

    wjca

    @Jinchi: ​Why do you assume that percentages are the more important metric?

    This is probably a dead thread, but I think your question deserves an answer.  So, on the off chance you will see it, here goes.

    There is a pretty consistent percentage, over the last several elections, of voters in Michigan primaries who vote “uncommitted”.  So if that percentage remains the same, even though the absolute number of voters is up, it seems likely that what this tells us is just that the new voters are pretty much like the previous voters in this regard.

    For the various campaigns to get people to vote “uncommitted” to have had a significant impact, that percentage would need to have moved.  Since it didn’t, either the campaigns failed, or the campaign succeeded with previous voters but the new voters were far less likely (in spite of the campaign) to vote “uncommitted” than previous voters.  And if those new voters are mostly young voters, who are reported to be those most likely to want to punish Biden for failing to magically fix the situation, the latter seems improbable.

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