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I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Monday Evening Open Thread: Readership Capture

Monday Evening Open Thread: Readership Capture

by Anne Laurie|  March 18, 20246:28 pm| 49 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Readership Capture, Trump Crime Cartel

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we are just cleaning up in this divorce https://t.co/RtCQEe05bv

— zeddy (@Zeddary) March 18, 2024


In the ‘national divorce’ the GOP loves to talk about, Dems already got ice cream, football, Taylor Swift…

Genuinely good news, assuming it happens:

🟡SCOOP: There's a deal for a clean one-year extension of the lifesaving PEPFAR program in next tranche of gov't funding bills, per two advocates connected to the effort and one source familiar with the decision. It was caught up in GOP-led abortion fight

Story TK

W/@kadiagoba

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig (@josephzeballos) March 18, 2024


 
… Aaand, another development from the Trump Crime Cartel:

According to the Washington Post, Paul Manafort was “criticized for Russia ties.”

Yes, 25 counts of criticism for Russia ties, for which he pleaded guilty & was sentenced to 6 years in federal prison pic.twitter.com/26umuVQpdQ

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 18, 2024

Anyway, I'm sure all the signals that the Trump world is sending that they'll do deals (bribes) have nothing to do with their desire to welcome foreign help.

— Clean Observer (@Hammbear2024) March 18, 2024

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Previous Post: « Three Months That Changed The World (Respite)
Next Post: Monday Night Open Thread »

Reader Interactions

49Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 18, 2024 at 6:31 pm

    Not a good day in the NY courts for Trump.  In the New York election interference case, the judge has ruled on the motions in limine.  Trump did not do well. 

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 18, 2024 at 6:35 pm

    Glad to see Teller and Penn saying good things about Democrats. Last I knew, they were raving Libertarians.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    March 18, 2024 at 6:37 pm

    John Wilkes Booth was criticized for ties to the Confederacy.

  4. 4.

    Kayla Rudbek

    March 18, 2024 at 6:38 pm

    Creepy, dangerous app: newrepublic.com/article/179397/evangelical-app-targeting-immigrants-surveillance

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 18, 2024 at 6:38 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    What does in limine mean? Yeah, of course I could look it up. Would rather have a BJ lawyer provide an explainer.

  6. 6.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 18, 2024 at 6:40 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Motions about evidence and procedure that are decided before trial.

  7. 7.

    SiubhanDuinne

    March 18, 2024 at 6:43 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Ah, okay, thanks.

  8. 8.

    Anne Laurie

    March 18, 2024 at 6:45 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Last I knew, they were raving Libertarians.

    When even the Libertarians abandon the GOP as ‘too extreme’…

  9. 9.

    Urza

    March 18, 2024 at 6:45 pm

    @Baud: Pretty sure he wasn’t convicted though, so both sides.

  10. 10.

    Matt McIrvin

    March 18, 2024 at 6:45 pm

    I don’t know about Teller, but Penn seems to have had some kind of revelation when he realized that antivaxxers were assuming he was a natural ally.

  11. 11.

    dr. bloor

    March 18, 2024 at 6:46 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Jillette is a long-standing libertarian.  His response to COVID was the outlier in his politics.

    He endorsed Yang last cycle.  I hope Raskin took a long, hot shower after touching him.

  12. 12.

    Starfish

    March 18, 2024 at 6:47 pm

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    This article is weird. I have seen some concerns with the Christian app’s lately, but Gloo is not explicitly Christian and has an office where I live, and I knew people who worked there.

    People need to take their concerns about data harvesting and generalize concerns about TikTok and some Christian apps to hammering out some privacy rights legislation out of them instead of saying “Be afraid of this app or that app.”

    This app and that app collect as much of your information as they are legally allowed to. Their purposes are probably aligned with capitalism as opposed to aligned with some nefarious intent. All this tech is old enough that it should be regulated.

  13. 13.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    March 18, 2024 at 6:48 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: Might also help that he legitimately was interested in a less authoritarian government and that is emphatically not on offer from the Republicans.

  14. 14.

    HumboldtBlue

    March 18, 2024 at 6:49 pm

    Tish James and the soon-to-be-newly-named Trump Tower.

    Trump is broke. Auction Time SOUND UP

    This Dear, Dad political ad is perfectly terrifying.

    Aaaaaaannnnnndddddd: BREAKING Supreme Court denied Peter Navarro’s last-minute bid to stay free from prison. Navarro has to report to Miami prison tomorrow. LAW AND ORDER!

  15. 15.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    March 18, 2024 at 6:53 pm

    @HumboldtBlue: See this guy earning a living at his parents’ house making pocket change from Uber Eats? I have more money than Donald Trump right now.

  16. 16.

    Starfish

    March 18, 2024 at 6:54 pm

    @Starfish: Oh, I guess it is now. This is weird. I thought they were into education and B2B stuff. Wild.

  17. 17.

    oldster

    March 18, 2024 at 6:58 pm

    When I first saw Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign back in 2015 — that’s when I knew that Trump was a Putin asset, or as good as one.

    I had already watched Putin use Manafort to try to rig the elections in Ukraine, and if he couldn’t rig them, to disrupt them. Manafort is Putin’s guy, his fixer.

    Jailed for being a Russian asset, and now he’ll go back to destroying democratic elections. Because Putin is still trying as hard as he can to destroy the United States, and the Republicans are helping him.

  18. 18.

    HumboldtBlue

    March 18, 2024 at 6:59 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They’ve always been staunchly pro-vaccine.

  19. 19.

    Starfish

    March 18, 2024 at 7:03 pm

    @Starfish: At its founding it was about churches and non-profits and its community building ideas felt less nefarious?

  20. 20.

    twbrandt

    March 18, 2024 at 7:03 pm

    As this is an open thread, this is a pretty cool article: The neuroscientist formerly known as Prince’s audio engineer

      She earned her PhD in her 50s.

  21. 21.

    danielx

    March 18, 2024 at 7:04 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
     So, begging your indulgence, that means…what? That the judge has already laid out the prevailing rules regarding evidence and procedure in his/her court and therefore a lot of SFB’s usual tactics of delay and obfuscation won’t fly?

  22. 22.

    Sure Lurkalot

    March 18, 2024 at 7:05 pm

    Washington Post…canceled them last year! Vying to be as clueless, bothsidesy and malevolent as the FTFNYT. We’re at the point that no news they believe is fit to print is fit to read.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    March 18, 2024 at 7:06 pm

    Rebo and Zooty are on our side!   This is excellent news!

  24. 24.

    Eolirin

    March 18, 2024 at 7:06 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Penn was always a quite bit less crazy than your median Libertarian, and Trump and then COVID opened his eyes on how insane the rest of them really were so he jumped ship completely. 

    Teller afaik has never really been as ahem, vocal, about politics.

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    March 18, 2024 at 7:10 pm

    @danielx: The Trump people asked for a bunch of things to be excluded from evidence and the court basically said no to all but one.  They can’t use Stormy Daniels’s lie detector results.  It was a sweeping loss for the defense.  The trial should go forward in April.

  26. 26.

    Pete Downunder

    March 18, 2024 at 7:10 pm

    @danielx: I was never a New York lawyer but on the left coast motions in limine (at the threshold) were used to dispose of procedural issues and anticipated evidentiary problems so as not to have issues in front of the jury

  27. 27.

    RedDirtGirl

    March 18, 2024 at 7:11 pm

    @dr. bloor: Here is a recent article about Jillette from Cracked of all places. He has renounced his libertarianism and has good things to say about Biden.

  28. 28.

    Jackie

    March 18, 2024 at 7:11 pm

    @HumboldtBlue: I hope it’s televised LIVE. Navarro is almost as big a baby as TIFG. I also hope he leaves prison aged by four years+ in the four months he’s incarcerated. And TIFG sees it and really goes off his rocker!

  29. 29.

    Eolirin

    March 18, 2024 at 7:12 pm

    @HumboldtBlue: Yeah, and pro science and staunch atheists. The current GOP is entirely anathema to their worldview. They really detest conspiracy theories. Right now only the Democrats are pro-reality and that’s done a lot of work. 

  30. 30.

    Anoniminous

    March 18, 2024 at 7:23 pm

    I am thinking we are looking at the same kind of shift in politics that happened with the societal shift in Gay Marriage. A number of factors came together in 2011 in a Black Swan Event that decisively flipped public opinion from Anti to Pro.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    March 18, 2024 at 7:23 pm

    @Eolirin

    “It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.”
    – Richard Feynman
    .

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    March 18, 2024 at 7:28 pm

    @Eolirin: Years ago they were giving a platform to anti-environmentalist hacks like Steven Milloy and were case studies in the infection of the skeptic movement with libertarian politics. Penn Jillette already expressed regret for doing that years ago and also seems to really hate Donald Trump on the basis of having met him. So he’s been evolving.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    March 18, 2024 at 7:29 pm

    @NotMax

    Or, more succinctly,

    “[I call myself] an atheist. Agnostic for me would be trying to weasel out and sound a little nicer than I am about this.”
    – Richard Feynman
    .

  34. 34.

    Marmot

    March 18, 2024 at 7:36 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Penn Jillette already expressed regret for doing that years ago and also seems to really hate Donald Trump on the basis of having met him.

    Off to look that up!

  35. 35.

    Anoniminous

    March 18, 2024 at 7:37 pm

    @NotMax: ​
     
    Sapolski’s lecture on “Biological Underpinnings of Religiosity” is deadly.

  36. 36.

    geg6

    March 18, 2024 at 7:38 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I saw an interview with Penn Gillette a while back where he discussed his conversion to reality.  I do not remember exactly what it was that triggered it but he realized that libertarianism was just stupid and cruel.  And he didn’t want to be stupid or cruel.  Now he’s a total liberal.

  37. 37.

    Marmot

    March 18, 2024 at 7:51 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Aw man, now that I’ve looked, I just want a conservative / libertarian to join Good without it being about some personal impingement.

    (I don’t know this source, the Review-Journal.)

    At the time, the reason seemed to be that Jillette had run afoul of Trump by making fun of the then-TV star in his 2012 book, “Every Day Is an Atheist Holiday!” A passage from the tome: “We’ve chosen to make this whack job, with the cotton candy piss hair and the birther (crap), into someone we want to please.”

    And that was eight years ago.

    Trump evidently never forgave the jabs, exacting his revenge by giving the “Apprentice” title to Adkins.

    Two years later, in July 2015, Trump dug in again, just after he announced his run for presidency. Early in his campaign he took what would be a familiar Twitter tone, blasting Penn & Teller’s Broadway show: “I hear @PennJillette show on Broadway is terrible. Not surprised, boring guy (Penn). Without the Apprentice, show would have died long ago.”

  38. 38.

    rikyrah

    March 18, 2024 at 7:52 pm

    @Kayla Rudbek:

    That shows you just how they are losing followers. That was creepy as phuck

  39. 39.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    March 18, 2024 at 7:52 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus: Wow. That’s some lengthy list of losses for Trump.

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    March 18, 2024 at 7:52 pm

    @HumboldtBlue:

    is it a REAL prison, or a Club Fed?

  41. 41.

    rikyrah

    March 18, 2024 at 7:55 pm

    @oldster:

    Because Putin is still trying as hard as he can to destroy the United States, and the Republicans are helping him.

     

    No lie told. It’s quite obvious.

  42. 42.

    MagdaInBlack

    March 18, 2024 at 7:56 pm

    @NotMax: ❤️

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    March 18, 2024 at 7:56 pm

    There was a front page post about Jillette back in January.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    March 18, 2024 at 8:56 pm

    @HumboldtBlue: Yeah, even when they were claiming secondhand smoke wasn’t bad for you, they were opposed to most alt-med bullshit.

  45. 45.

    Melancholy Jaques

    March 18, 2024 at 9:10 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    What does in limine mean?

    Literally it means on the threshold. The almost always involve evidentiary issues. A movant wants the court to order before the trial starts that certain evidence will or will not be permitted (most often the latter) and if the latter, that such evidence not even be mentioned. The phrase is, can’t unring the bell.

  46. 46.

    Elizabelle

    March 18, 2024 at 9:15 pm

    @NotMax:  Thanks for finding that.  Reading up on all of this.

  47. 47.

    Kristine

    March 18, 2024 at 9:27 pm

    @twbrandt: Thanks for posting that. Great story.

  48. 48.

    karen marie

    March 18, 2024 at 9:55 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:  That was the most delicious read!  OMG, I was screaming with laughter and rolling on the floor with glee.

  49. 49.

    vigilhorn

    March 19, 2024 at 8:54 am

    @HumboldtBlue: We went to Vegas to see them in Jan ’21 but the show was cancelled by (guess what) …Covid.

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