Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“Alexa, change the president.”

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Innocent people do not delay justice.

I really should read my own blog.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Sundown, Sinking Slowly Into the Sea…

Open Thread: Sundown, Sinking Slowly Into the Sea…

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There’s a lot of important news out there, and I’m hoping we’ll get to discuss some of it this weekend, while the Mar-A-Lago cabal is busy readjusting the meds for Monday’s appearance…


Reader Interactions

116Comments

  1. 1.

    Scout211

    APPEALS COURT  DENIES REQUEST TO HALT HUSH MONEY CASE

    An appeals court judge has once again denied a request by Donald Trump’s attorneys to halt his criminal hush money trial as they seek to have the case moved outside of Manhattan.

    Justice Marsha Michael issued the ruling on Friday just minutes after a brief hearing. The arguments in the midlevel appeals court came only hours after the jury selection process concluded in Trump’s criminal trial, which is currently taking place roughly 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) south.

    The ruling allows opening statements to take place as soon as Monday in Trump’s criminal trial.

    Yes, this was yet another appeal and it was also denied.

  2. 2.

    Brachiator

    Former President Trump appears to be sleeping in court again… right as we get underway with potential jurors. He is leaning back, still for long periods, eyes appear to be closed, head occasionally nodding. Pretty good consensus in the overflow reporter room.

    Defense mechanism. He cannot accept that he is being tried. And even though he sleeps, or pretends to, he comes out and spews his standard nonsense about how unfairly he is being treated.

    Glower, sleep, rage and spew. It’s like an idiot production of King Lear.

  6. 6.

    Nelle

    @Brachiator: Aactually, I willed myself to sleep once when I was terrified but had no control over the situation.  I had caught a flight from the North Slope down to Fairbanks with a private pilot.  On the way south, he decided to scout out places to hunt Dall sheep.  He would fly straight towards the craggy mountainsides, then whirl away at the last minute.   I willed myself to sleep and only woke when we were landing in Fairbanks.

    So yes, I believe he’s escaping being powerless.

  7. 7.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Baud: ​ 

    Pfffftt, good luck with that!

    New York AG asks for the judge in Trump’s civil fraud case to REJECT the Knight surety and declare the bond to be “without effect.”

    It doesn’t meet the “requirements of trustworthiness and competence,” the AG says.

  12. 12.

    Mai Naem mobile

    I do wonder if Empty G’s motion to vacate is to distract from TFG’s trial. We know how the DC media loved the McCarthy/McHenry/Johnson runs for the Speaker. Thomas Massie might even propose a duel with Chip Roy and Dan Crenshaw.

  15. 15.

    Mike in NC

    The jurors will be subjected to lots of MAGA hate over the weekend because Fat Bastard will fart and whine until they turn out for him.

  17. 17.

    bk

    That of course was not Harlem, nor would his motorcade go through Harlem on its way from Trump Tower to the courthouse downtown.

  18. 18.

    coin operated

    @HumboldtBlue: That was a fun brief to read. Tish brings up all the times Hankey has been fined by NYS for some of his nastier business practices.

  20. 20.

    lgerard

    As someone on the internets pointed out concerning his flatulence

    That may explain why so many approach him with tears in their eyes

  23. 23.

    bbleh

    @HumboldtBlue: that “bond” was so fishy it could only last a few days in the open air before it stank everything up. I hope she moves on Seven Springs forthwith. Hell, she didn’t have to wait at all!

  24. 24.

    dr. bloor

    Boy, someone sure is snippy about what the jury pool has been saying about him all week.

    On another note, Dick Nixon’s approval ratings are a useful reminder that America’s political judgment has always been pretty horrible.  A republic if you can keep it, indeed.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    Associated Press
    Once praised, settlement to help sickened BP oil spill workers leaves most with nearly nothing

    TRAVIS LOLLER and MICHAEL PHILLIS
    Updated Fri, April 19, 2024 at 9:07 AM PDT·14 min read

    When a deadly explosion destroyed BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 134 million gallons of crude erupted into the sea over the next three months — and tens of thousands of ordinary people were hired to help clean up environmental devastation from the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

    These workers were exposed to crude oil and the chemical dispersant Corexit while picking up tar balls along the shoreline, laying booms from fishing boats to soak up slicks and rescuing oil-covered birds.

    Recognizing that some members of cleanup crews had likely become sick, BP agreed to a medical claims settlement two years after the 2010 disaster. Experts hailed it as “an extraordinary achievement” that would compensate workers fairly with little hassle.

    But it hasn’t turned out that way.

    https://news.yahoo.com/once-praised-settlement-help-sickened-133428373.html

  28. 28.

    Harrison Wesley

    Apparently it’s good news for Trump – I’m hearing that he has the wind at his back.

  29. 29.

    dr. bloor

    @bk: Was he at Trump Tower last night or Bedminster?

    Kind of irrelevant anyways, as Trump is hated all over Manhattan with the exception of radar blips on the Upper East.

  32. 32.

    Scout211

    So if Trump was really taking one of the semaglutide weight loss medications, that could be a reason that he is stinking up the courtroom. There are patient complaints all over the internet that the medication causes gas, farting and even sudden diarrhea.

    But if he was taking one of those drugs, wouldn’t he have lost more weight than he has? Most people lose a lot of weight and quickly.  I’m not sure he has that excuse.

    But that’s enough of my energy spent on Trump’s stinky farts.😉

  33. 33.

    Miss Bianca

    @HumboldtBlue: OMG…”Mr Snyder”?

    Who promptly handed Marge’s ample white ass back to her with a “here, ma’am, you appear to have dropped this”.

  38. 38.

    West of the Rockies

    @Scout211:

    I think it’s his shit diet.  Probably more fast food than is advisable at his age,  charred meat, two scoops of ice cream (everyone recall the two scoops story?), and whatever self-indulgent trash he crams down his pie hole.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @eclare: @Miss Bianca:

    Meh.  Lots of people think that MDs are the only “real” doctors.  Maybe she’s one of those types.

    With exceptions that prove the rule (Kissinger).

    [spit!]

    One of my former bosses (jokingly?) told me that he thought MDs weren’t “real” doctors because they didn’t have to defend a dissertation.

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  45. 45.

    dr. bloor

    @Another Scott: Jokingly, but not out of thin air. Doctoral degrees preceded MDs by a couple of centuries, if I recall correctly.  The medical profession appropriated the title in an effort to confer legitimacy on the profession.

  49. 49.

    Wag

    @Another Scott:   Don’t have to defend a dissertation?  Technically correct, however in two years of clinical rotations in medical school and between three and seven years of residency, a trainee will write hundreds, if not thousands of notes that are carefully scrutinized by their attending physicians, all while making the same number of brief oral presentations to defend their clinical decision making.  I think that counts as defending for a doctorate degree.

  50. 50.

    TS

    Wapo has an article  discussing What we know about the jurors (no link, I haven’t read it)

    Most of the comments are of the style The post should stop immediately sharing any and all details about the jurors.

    So comments are now closed.

  51. 51.

    jayne

    Personally, I’m still annoyed that most of the press are still focused on “Trump paid off a sex worker!!11!” angle, and not the “and tried to write it off as a business expense” part. Because 1) I guarantee that half the people in this country think he’s on trial for the first bit, when it’s the second bit that’s actually illegal and 2) the segment of the population who think Trump’s cool for having an illicit affair with a porn star is probably larger than the segment who think it’s cool that he thinks it should be tax deductible.

  53. 53.

    Fake Irishman

     

     

    @lowtechcyclist:

    As a PhD researcher , I’ll say the insult is the only way we have to salve our wounds about how much more MDs make than we do. Tho granted, as I married an MD researcher, I’m more than happy to let her foot the mortgage and daycare bills.

  55. 55.

    dr. bloor

    @Wag:

    if not thousands of notes that are carefully scrutinized by their attending physicians,

    Narrator: They were not, in fact, carefully scrutinized by their attending physicians.

    As a PhD who spent a fair bit of time in medical settings, my own very general observation is that to obtain an MD, you have to be smart, but not particularly thoughtful.  The same is equally true for Ph.D.s.

    Edit:  As for the weight of defending decisions during morning rounds (however many times) v. defending a dissertation, I would respectfully disagree. Offering a diagnostic formulation on the fly doesn’t approach the all-or-nothing, five-years-of-work-being-judged-in-two-hours-by-my-role-model-and-nemeses stress of a dissertation defense.

  58. 58.

    MagdaInBlack

    @West of the Rockies: One of his assistants ( handlers) from the Apprentice, Noel Casler, was on Meidas Touch  3 years ago talking about how trump wore diapers way back during the early 2000’s. Has to do with his drug use over the years

    Eta: in other words, he shits himself all the time.

  61. 61.

    wjca

    @Jackie: as long as you don’t circulate the “air” towards the prosecutors.   Circulating it towards the jury might be considered prejudicial….

  63. 63.

    dr. bloor

    @wjca: That will certainly ensue if the ambient heat in the room is actually raised by a few degrees.  As requested by the defense.

  64. 64.

    Martin

    @dr. bloor:

    As a PhD who spent a fair bit of time in medical settings, my own very general observation is that to obtain an MD, you have to be smart, but not particularly thoughtful.  The same is equally true for Ph.D.s.

    I agree. The main qualification for achieving these titles is having a narrow, driving motivation to get these titles. I’d put most PhDs as having a very narrow passion for a given discipline and set of questions and outside of that no more or less curiosity than anyone else, and only marginally better ability to not chase their own biases. That said, I’d say that PhDs collectively are more likely to have broad critical thinkers than non-PhDs. That doesn’t mean some aren’t dumb as bricks outside of their discipline, or aren’t racists assholes, etc.

    Having built pre-med programs, I don’t see any reason why MDs are any different. I think architects of medical programs aspire to better – I think they genuinely want MDs that are particularly thoughtful and diverse in thought, but I don’t think the mechanics to achieve that exist. I actually think the very high standards for medical school weed out the more thoughtful potential physicians in favor of more disciplined ones. That’s not inherently bad, but that’s the trade-off.

  65. 65.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Brachiator: Solipsist coping mechanism from the God-Emperor Of Dung: If I don’t see it or hear it, it’s not real, it isn’t happening.

  67. 67.

    Citizen Alan

    @Scout211:

    There are patient complaints all over the internet that the medication causes gas, farting and even sudden diarrhea.

    It does. TMI, probably, but I told my doctor I wouldn’t take it anymore after the second time I woke up in the middle of the night and had to change the sheets on my bed due to diarrhea while I was sleeping.

  71. 71.

    Jackie

    @dr. bloor: Gotta wonder if TIFG’s ripping a MAGA or two would qualify as disrupting the court, and allow Judge Merchan to demand TIFG be escorted from the room, for reasons…!

  72. 72.

    lowtechcyclist

    @dr. bloor:

    As for the weight of defending decisions during morning rounds (however many times) v. defending a dissertation, I would respectfully disagree. Offering a diagnostic formulation on the fly doesn’t approach the all-or-nothing, five-years-of-work-being-judged-in-two-hours-by-my-role-model-and-nemeses stress of a dissertation defense.

    First thought: I’m sure glad I wasn’t in your graduate program. IME, the dissertation defense was basically a formality: my advisor had had most of a year to review my results, and the other members of the committee had had them for months. There were really two meta-questions being asked: had I successfully proved the results I claimed to have proven, and were those results, taken together, worthy of a Ph.D.?

    They’d had plenty of time to reach their own conclusions about the latter (and send me back to the drawing board if that had been their opinion), and if there’d been a flaw in any of my proofs, they were a lot less likely to see it in a two-hour chalk-and-talk defense than in a more careful reading of my logic, alone in their respective offices with my printed proof in front of them.  So the defense was a done deal before I walked in the door, just a formality I needed to attend to.

    But that gets me to the real difference between an M.D. and a Ph.D. The latter involves adding to the body of knowledge in a field.  If you aren’t able to break new intellectual ground, you stop at a master’s or an A.B.D. (For nonacademics, that stands for ‘all but dissertation.’ It’s not an actual degree, it’s just a commonly used term for a point where a lot of people get no further than.)  The training for an M.D. is all about being able to utilize the existing body of medical knowledge, and learning to be able to do it on the fly.  Regardless of which one you regard as more valuable, these are two essentially different things.

  74. 74.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @Another Scott:

    One of my former bosses (jokingly?) told me that he thought MDs weren’t “real” doctors because they didn’t have to defend a dissertation.

    For what it’s worth, the original Latin meaning of doctor is “teacher”. It was later applied to scholars and learned professionals. The medical profession, a learned profession younger than law or the clergy, appropriated the word.

  76. 76.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @Brachiator:

    Glower, sleep, rage and spew. It’s like an idiot production of King Lear.

    “A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That’s a good description of one of TIFG’s courthouse “press conferences”.

  77. 77.

    Ken

    Question for the legal minds among us. Can you appeal a verdict on the grounds that the jury was biased against you?

    Followup: What if they weren’t biased when the trial started, but your behavior during the trial, both in and out of the courtroom, caused them to hate your guts?

  78. 78.

    Tony G

    @eclare: Marge’s real audience — the white-supremacist morons in Georgia who voted for her — have no idea who Dr. Snyder is, and couldn’t care less if they did know.  Facts and logic mean nothing to her constiuents.

  79. 79.

    LAO

    @Ken: short answer No.

    Longer answer: certain allegations of juror misconduct can be the basis of a reversal, which would require a retrial. However, it’s an issue that is rarely raised on direct appeal because it necessarily includes facts that are outside the trial record. So it’s often raised in a collateral proceeding, for example in NY state, an article 440 motion to vacate judgment.

  82. 82.

    Jackie

    @LAO: We’re going to need your legal expertise these next few months to *“‘essplay thins”! Hopefully you’ll be around and available!

    *horrible Ricky Ricardo impersonation.

  84. 84.

    Eyeroller

    @lowtechcyclist: In most countries, medicine is an undergraduate degree, or increasingly one of those six-year bachelor’s-master’s combos. If we adhere to the idea that attained degrees are listed after one’s name in ascending order of “prestige,” a master’s actually outranks an M.D. The US is one of the few countries that basically forces physicians to do undergrad twice.  In my observations, residents map to graduate students and fellows to postdocs.  You have to complete a residency to qualify as a doctor but a fellowship is only required for certain specializations.

  85. 85.

    eclare

    @Tony G:

    I realize that, I was referring to her blatant condescension to a witness in Congress.  With a placard in front of him that said Dr. Snyder.

  87. 87.

    LAO

    Aw shucks, you guys. Thanks. And yes, I’ll be around more through the trial. And I have time since I decided to semi-retire from practicing law.

  90. 90.

    Ken

    @LAO: Thanks for the info. I was checking some legal bloggers and bluesky accounts, but most of them (looking at you, Ken White) were making unkind remarks about “executive time”, or noting that this is probably the first time in his life when Trump has actually had to put in eight hours a day.

  92. 92.

    Martin

    @Eyeroller: You aren’t required to have an undergraduate degree to go to medical school – just the approximately 1.5 years of required subjects plus the exams.

  93. 93.

    Jackie

    @Ken: You disagree?

    After TIFG’s dozed off everyday he’s been in court, you don’t consider nap time as executive time? 😂

  94. 94.

    LAO

    Re: the Trump trial, there’s one little insider info I’ve shared with my non-lawyer friends that I’ll share with you jackals: Susan Necheles is a real criminal defense attorney. If she makes a motion or an argument, it’s a legitimate issue. She may not win but she’s no MAGA sycophant.

  95. 95.

    Fake Irishman

    So off topic, but huge, important good news:

    The UAW just won at Chattanooga. VW. This is the biggest win in the South since 1946 and the first foreign plant to go union. Unit is about 4,600 workers. The UAW is targeting auto plants with 150,000 workers all across the south. Next up to vote is a 5,000 person Mercedes Factory in Alabama.

    This is an extraordinary day. Erik Loomis (yes, yes I know) at LGM has been birddogging this all week.

  99. 99.

    Ken

    @Jackie: No, I agree completely; I just meant that they were being snarky, when I was hoping for discussion of the legal proceedings. I can do snark myself.

    (And it was definitely snark; after what happened in court this week, any mention of Trump’s “executive time” can’t be anything else.)

  100. 100.

    HumboldtBlue

    @LAO:

    Susan Necheles is a real criminal defense attorney.

    I came across a blurb about her expertise but didn’t follow up with a full read. Everyone deserves a competent attorney, even in those situations when we plebes tossing peanut shells from the cheap seats demand Trump be thrown into the arena immediately to fight wabid, wild animals.

  103. 103.

    Baud

    The governor of Tennessee has issued a statement: I felt a great disturbance in the State, as if thousands notice of voices suddenly cried out in joy and were suddenly unionized.

  107. 107.

    smith

    @LAO: Susan Necheles is a real criminal defense attorney.

    I’ve seen this comment from other lawyers online, who’ve also noticed that she’s not been adding her signature to the more frivolous motions that that have been made.

  111. 111.

    wjca

    @smith: other lawyers online, who’ve also noticed that she’s not been adding her signature to the more frivolous motions that that have been made.

    Makes it easy for the judge.  If she didn’t sign off on it, just reject it out of hand.

  113. 113.

    Yutsano

    @Fake Irishman: ​Oh good. This will mean that one of the union reps will be invited to sit on the board, as just about every union that Volkswagen works with in Germany has a seat.

  114. 114.

    Librarian

    If Volkswagen is unionized in Germany, then it should have no problem with a union in Tennessee. Right? (rhetorical question)

  116. 116.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Librarian: VW has been desperately trying to get the union in, because German law requires workers to be given a say in the affairs of the business.
    Their locally-hired supervisors & managers aren’t very enthusiastic (or weren’t) about the union but VW higher-ups aren’t too troubled.

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