Talking Feds (while Glenn is on vacation) – Fani Willis Reveals DETAILS of Plan for Sweeping MAGA Indictments
Farron Balanced – National Archives Has Evidence That Could Guarantee A Trump Conviction
Waldorf Nation – School BANS Parents For Not Being Hateful To LGBTQIA+ People
Puppet Regime – Surprise party for Putin
Cat Falls In Love With Stray Cat Who Shows Up Outside
Beau – Let’s talk about expanding confidence in SCOTUS….
Glenn Kirschner – One lawyer quits team Trump, while another says evidence “will lead to a conviction & prison time”
Thom Hartmann – The Election That Destroyed Democracy
MSNBC – GOP tries to prop up Durham report dud with attack on Adam Schiff
Armageddon Update – DEMOCRATS vs REPUBLICANS! Let’s Compare & Contrast
Tiny Rescue Chicken Follows Mom Everywhere
Beau – Let’s talk about polling on why people are leaving….
Glenn Kirschner – Interview w/comedian Buddy Winston (part 2): writing for Jay Leno & appearing on … Bill O’Reilly?
The Lincoln Project – Brand Unsafe
Robert Reich – The First Step to Fixing the Electoral College
Parody Project – The Normalization Song
Mama Dog Who Lost Her Puppies Was Heartbroken Until She Got Kittens
Beau – Let’s talk about the Durham report….
Yesterday, I got 8 out of 8 correct in the Conversation’s weekly quiz for the second week in a row. I can’t possibly keep this up. This week, most of the credit goes to the quiz author. The wrong answers were mostly so off the wall that it wasn’t really difficult. The only one I actually had to guess was the one about Karl Lagerfeld, and that was a true-false, so the odds were better than when there are four answers. and, yes, Virgil called to say Happy Anniversary. You knew he would (I certainly did.)
Cartoon – My Everyday Erinyes (#369) is up here:
Short Takes –
Letters from an American – May 4, 2023
Quote – Weirdly, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) at a Senate Budget Committee hearing today blamed Democrats for not raising the debt ceiling themselves last year without help from the Republicans. Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo broke down this argument. If the Democrats had raised the debt ceiling through reconciliation, without Republican votes, Republicans would have insisted that it was the Democrats, not them, who had burdened the country with debt when, in fact, the Republicans added almost $8 trillion to the debt under Trump. Romney’s complaint amounts to berating the responsible Democrats for not protecting the country against the Republicans, who are willing to burn down the country. As Riga put it: “Darn you Democrats for not taking care of the debt ceiling then, because you knew we’d refuse to raise the limit unless you conceded to our demands, and look what a sticky spot we’re in now.”
Click though for much more (Click “continue reading”). They used to say “Seinfeld” was a show about nothing. This, on the other hand, is a letter about everything.
Crooks & Liars – Texas Bill Would Allow State To Overturn Harris County Elections
Quote – The measures call for the “abolition” of election administrators in counties with populations larger than 1,000,000—a metric that only applies to Harris County, which Republican state lawmakers have taken a keen interest in in the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections…. Since then, the Harris County Elections Office report concluded that they couldn’t determine if potential voters were pushed away because of the issues at polling centers.
CLick through for story. This is so blatant that even now I can hardly imagine it succeeding though the courts. Even the courts we have now. But there is always a possibility. Clearly they think they are on to something.
Food For Thought
Yesterday, the forecast predicted snow after 8:00 pm. Not unexpected in April ( or even in May), but for most of last week snow had been in the prediction for yesterday, and then for a couple of days it wasn’t predicted, and them it came back at the last minute. Also, within 6 days – next Monday – we’re supposed to expect a high of 80°F. Again, not entirely unexpected in April. As a person who grew up on the San Francisco Peninsula, the weather here continues to surprise me. One of the reasons I wanted to live in Colorado was that I wanted to experience four seasons. I just didn’t expect them to be all in the same week.
Last night NBC projected
Cartoon – 05 veto RTL + Passover
Short Takes –
Axios – Trump pleads not guilty to 34 counts in hush-money case
Quote – Former President Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in a Manhattan criminal court related to 2016 hush money payments…. The historic indictment of the only president to be impeached twice has unified the Republican Party around him. Nearly every Republican in elected office has defended Trump and decried the indictment as politically motivated — with only a few prominent GOP defectors…. While that message is playing well with GOP voters, a new CNN poll indicates that 60% of Americans approve of the indictment.
Click through for more information. Here it is – the story we’ve all been waiting for – and now we can take a deep breath and start waiting for the next thing – whatever that may be. There are many possibilities.
Mother Jones – This Race Could Decide the Fate of Democracy in Wisconsin—and the 2024 Election
Quote – [I]f Daniel Kelly, a former conservative justice who criticized Hagedorn as “supremely unreliable” and was defeated by a liberal justice in April 2020, had still been on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Trump’s effort to overturn the election in Wisconsin likely would have succeeded, plunging the state and the nation into a constitutional crisis. Now Kelly is running again for his old job against Janet Protasiewicz, a progressive judge in Milwaukee County[.]
Click through for details. I’ve written about this before. Yesterday was the day. Robert Reich and Mary Trump also weighed in (with similar views.)
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – w/Eric Swalwell on Lawrence – in lieu of February recap
Ring of Fire – Fox Host Humiliates Himself Trying To Find A Single DeSantis Supporter At Florida Diner
Channel 9 Denver – Colorado’s cold air helped create the perfect conditions for ‘light pillars’ (No, I’ve never seen one, and no, I don’t expect to.)
Patrick Fitzgerald – He’s Always a Moron
Pittie Is Foster Mom To Over 50 Kittens
Beau – Let’s talk about two GOP hurdles for 2024….
Yesterday, looking at the weather forecast (which I automatically do on my way to get the times of sunrise and sunset, but normally don’t pay a lot of attention), I had the thought that this could be am – intersting – week weatherwise. Fristly, they are taking about snow for tomorrow, starting tonight (we could possibly have a couple of inches by 7 pm.) It’s a bit clumsy to describe the graph, but it’s a broad strip covering ten days from left to right, with temperatiure aand sunlight at the top and precipitation at the bottom and everything else you can think of in between – pressure, wind speed, even wind direction, and more. You can move your cursor across it, and wherever you put it, you’ll see a top-to-bottom line of everything. If you want to know what the wind direction will be next Tuesday at noon, you can set a line at that day and time and it will tell you. In fact, it tells me way more than I want to know. The reason I bother with it is that it has thousands, mabe tens of thousands, of weaher stations, and you can select, not just the zip code, but the exact weather station you want to track. And in Colorado Springs, where uou can go through three seasons just driving from 80911 in the south to 80921 in the north, that is important to me. The weather station I use is maybe four blocks from my house. And while even with that kind of pin point data, though still not perfect, it’s amazing how close to reality it can be. But I digress – I was going to say that, after tomorow, we an expect several days of sun, and a weekend with highs in the 50’s, before getting hammered again a week from today. Not unusual. But it does feel unusual to have a good idea what to expect.
I also learned that at least soe classical musicians and commentatore, probably beginning at Juilliard, are no longer using the perk “accompanist.” Instead, they are saying “collaborativepianist.” Ilikethat. I’ve often thought accompanists do not get enough credit. I was fortunate enough to meet one once, Anne Epperson, who told me that her teachers all wanted her to become a concert pianist, but that she preferred making music in collaboration. If you are ever thinking of investing in a CD (or whatever format comes along) of a piece with a soloist and a pianist, and you have a choice, buy the one with Epperson. Also, apparently the State Department just issued a warning to any Americans in Russia to leave, and any not in Russia NOT to go there. While this is just common sense, I feel that bringing it up now probably means they know something we don’t.
Cartoon – 14 Oregon_map RTL + Valentine
Short Takes –
Capitol Hill Seattle BLog – Video shows East Precinct officers back down after bystanders step in over heavy response to Capitol Hill ‘shots fired’ 911 calls
Quote – The quickly formed and instantly tense standoff is an example of how fast a police response to a 911 report involving a gun can escalate and also shows how perceptions of police in a standoff situation have shifted after repeated incidents like the killing of Tyre Nichols…. According to East Precinct radio updates, police had been dispatched to the area after a 911 caller reported a gunshot and a second caller reported two shots along with somebody yelling, “Everybody is going to die.” But people at the scene told police there was no shooting and no gun — only a young person in a yellow sweater upset and suffering a crisis.
Click through for details. This story is going on two weeks old now, but re-reading it, I am still struck at how new it is. And that it couldn’t have happened just anywhere. It needs more visibility – a LOT more visibility.
The Conversation – Diversity and moderation over tradition – why Democrats moved South Carolina to the start of the 2024 presidential campaign
Quote – As political scientists in South Carolina, we understand how important the state’s primary is to the Democratic Party. Working at the College of Charleston for over a decade, we have seen dozens of campaign visits and events by presidential hopefuls of both parties to our city and campus. Given our front-row seats, we wrote “First in South: Why South Carolina’s Presidential Primary Matters,” a book about South Carolina’s primary process. Published in 2020, it examines South Carolina’s demographic makeup, the state’s primary electorate and how it compares with each party’s typical national primary and caucus voter. What we learned was, on several key metrics, South Carolina voters are a better reflection of the demographic diversity and moderate stance on issues the party prioritizes than voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Click through for rationale. Some are questioning spending money here, in a state we are never going to win (as if we arent already doing that in Iowa.) But remember, this is a primary we are talking about. Democrats in South Carolina are going to be good, strong Democrats with a good sense of what the nation actually needs. If we learn those lessons, and don’t forget them, I’m thinking our money will not be ill spent.
Food For Thought
I put this into a comment on Nameless’s recent MTG srticle, but I thought it too good for anyone to miss:
Yesterday, They are tentatively predicting snow for tonight (for anyone who doesn’t use Weather Underground, the ten-day view is a graph. The temperature is a line {red}, but the chance of precipitation is a filled-in area – purple if it’s snow, blue for anything else.) It’s purple from around nine tonight to 4 am tomorrow. But, we’ll see. Farther down the page, they show a predicted accumulation, and those are in the single digit hundreths of an inch.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Conversation – Congress passes legislation that will close off presidential election mischief and help avoid another Jan. 6
Quote – Presidential elections are complicated. But in a move aimed at warding off future crises like the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the Senate and House have passed legislation to clarify ambiguous and trouble-prone aspects of the process…. [A] bipartisan group of congressional leaders aimed to pass reforms to the 1887 law governing this process, the Electoral Count Act, before the end of 2022. As an election law scholar, I have suggested that Congress focus its reforms on a few crucial areas that could have wide bipartisan support. Now, it has done just that, and the omnibus government funding legislation that includes the Electoral Count Act reform passed the House on Dec. 23 and heads to the White House for President Joe Biden’s expected signature…. With these simple bipartisan solutions, Congress has instilled confidence in future presidential elections.
Click through fpr details. Before you say “It’s not enough,” let me assure you that you are correct. But it does address the main avenues used by Tyrannosaurus Ex and his mob on and up to (and since) January 6th. Of course, in anything run by humans, there will be people with the desire and drive to cheat.
What with Time magazine selecting Volodomyr Zelenskyy as “Person of the Year,” and pretty much everyone except MAGAts being in agreement, I hope I can be forgiven for writing a bit like a fangirl. I’m putting three sources together for this short take. First is a Zelenskyy origin story – I’ve seen it before, but without sourcing, and it seemed too good to be true. But now that I can trace it to Zelenskyy himself, in a video speech, on his own official page, I feel confident to share it. Next, there is the Crooks & Liars announcement of a Crookie Hero Award. Finally, and I warn this is a 45 minute video,here is a link to a documentary based on Dave Letterman interviewing Zelenskyy. Letterman does speak with other people, and gives some of his own impressions of the nation and the war (including the fact that one village he visitied gave him the honor of certifying his beard as the best in the village.) It really is worth every minute, even if you may have to save it for later.
Food For Thought
