Glenn Kirschner – Trump supporter arrested for threatening judge presiding over Trump’s DC trial for elections crimes
The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party – August 15, 2023
The Ring of Fire – Trump’s Rivals Refuse To Call Out His Biggest Weakness
Trae Crowder for ATTN – The South is So Gay
Kitten Shows Up On Couple’s Boat And Stays Forever
Beau – Let’s talk about Hawaii and theories….
Glenn Kirschner – Rudy Giuliani, now both an indicted AND un-indicted Trump co-conspirator, would make a POOR witness
The Lincoln Project – Uh Oh, Donald (Georgia Remix)
Farron Balanced – Tommy Tuberville May Be Serving In The Senate ILLEGALLY
Scared Ketchup – AI MAGA’s NEW Health Supplement: “Trump’s Tiny White Balls”
Matted Dog Who Lived On The Street For Years Gets Her First Haircut
Beau – Let’s talk about Fulton County, Trump, and warming up….
Glenn Kirschner – Trump is indicted in Georgia for RICO conspiracy for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election
Thom Hartmann – God Wants Immigrants To Suffer & Die Says GOP
Robert Reich – 5 Facts About Trump’s Indictments
[There’s more after the VPN commercial]
Liberal Redneck – Ohio and the Future of Democracy
Wild Child Kitten Grows Up Looking After Rescue Puppies
[I chose this basically for one sentence – near the end – you’ll recognie it – it’s the one that ends “and it’s never failed me yet.”
Beau – Let’s talk about Texas, Paxton, the feds, and assumptions….
Talking Feds – Team Trump’s SINISTER MOVE in Georgia has Backfired Massively
The Lincoln Project – Back To School With The GOP
[Long and rambling – but they had just got the indictment ab=nd were thinking aloud a lot
MSNBC – BREAKING: Donald Trump indicted in Georgia election case
[Scared Ketchup’s motto is “Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to combat genuine stupidity.”]
Scared Ketchup – AI Republicans Make Laxative Ad {NSFW}
Rescue Dog Loves Riding On Mopeds
[And this is why SoSes are very quiet about taking him off of any ballots. And he has a point.]
Beau – Let’s talk about Trump vs Federalist Society members….
Yesterday, Talking Points Memo’s Morning Memo, naturally, was all about Monday’s late night Georgia indictment. It was handed down at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, and released to the reporters “a few minutes before 11:00.” The Axios alert reached me at 9:17 p.m. Mountain, which was about 20 minutes after its public release. Not bad – but bare bones. But the Talking Points Memo morning memo is filled with information, pictures, quotes, tweets, plans, and names. It’s also very compact – it reads fast. Well worth clicking “Continue reading” for.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The Daily Beast – Trump’s Bid to Sink the Manhattan DA’s Case Has Already Made It Stronger
Quote – For months, critics of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr.’s case have called it weak because the case criminally charges Trump with faking business records—a lowly misdemeanor only bumped up to a felony on a technicality. Except that Trump’s ploy to move the case to federal court gave a judge there the opportunity to take the first swing. And he used that opportunity to make it clear that the case against Trump is far more serious than it otherwise seems—and that the burden for proving that Trump’s alleged falsification of business records are felonies is low.
Click through for story. It appears Karma is on the case.
NBC News – Parents can’t challenge Maryland school’s gender identity policy, court rules
Quote – The policy, which the Montgomery County Board of Education adopted for the 2020-2021 school year, permitted schools to develop gender support plans for students to ensure they “feel comfortable expressing their gender identity.” The policy directs school personnel to help transgender and gender-nonconforming students create a plan that addresses their preferred pronouns, names and bathrooms, and bars staff from informing parents of those plans without a student’s consent. Lawsuits are pending challenging similar policies in other states. The Maryland case was the first to be argued before a federal appeals court.
Click through for details… This is a good thing because the school’s policy is the right one and the parents in the case are Christofascist. I can see how the headline could be read the other way, though. And I could wish it had been decided on privacy rights rather than on standing to sue.
Food For Thought
[They could conceivablly be fighting over his corpus – consider the Andrew Weiss statement quoted in yesterday’s open thread intro.]
Glenn Kirschner – Trump tells a witness ‘not to testify’ in Georgia grand jury. Time to detain Trump pending trial.
MSNBC – Jack Smith uses Trump lawyer John Lauro’s words against him in court
Farron Balanced – Trump’s Lawyer Keeps Admitting His Client Committed Crimes
Parody Project – Corruption: Parody of Truckin’ (This really is unfair to Democrats, both in the White House and Congress, who are working so hard to keep democracy.)
Pretty Leopard Gets Stuck In Tight Spot
Beau – Let’s talk about 2 things falling in Russia….
Yesterday, it was still cool – a high of 73F. It’s supposed to be warmer today, but still only in the high 80s. Also yesterday, Andrew Weissman said this on MSNBC: “The exact words because this is the provision that the court has to find to release someone on bail in Georgia, is that the defendant poses no risk of intimidating witnesses.” The reference is to the specific lehal language used in the Georgia criminal code. Federally and in most states, the burden of proof is on the government, but Georgia is different. I can tell you this caused a virtual party at Democratic Underground, with a plethora of jokes of various degreess of taste. And also yesterday – last night, really – after 9 p.m. my time – an alert came in that Trump** and 18 others had been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia. (I had heard earlier that they didn’t keep a 5:00 quitting time, but sent everyone to dinner and then re-convened into the night.) The alert didn’t name the 18 others, nor were they listed in the linked story at the time, but Axios usually develops these stories, so they may (or may not) be there now.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
CNN – Exclusive: Georgia prosecutors have messages showing Trump’s team is behind voting system breach
Quote – Investigators in the Georgia criminal probe have long suspected the breach was not an organic effort sprung from sympathetic Trump supporters in rural and heavily Republican Coffee County – a county Trump won by nearly 70% of the vote. They have gathered evidence indicating it was a top-down push by Trump’s team to access sensitive voting software, according to people familiar with the situation. Trump allies attempted to access voting systems after the 2020 election as part of the broader push to produce evidence that could back up the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud.
Click through for details. The nitty-gritty details of evidence are almost never anywhere near as much fun as the sweeping descriptions of the crime. But in order to prove stuff- prosecutors must dig through them.
Daily Kos (MargaretPOA) – Of Course Republicans are Angry. They Have Been Out Gamed… AGAIN.
Quote – As usual, Republicans acted on the assumption that Democrats would behave as dishonestly and unethically as they, themselves and so would never in a million years appoint a Special Counsel, even though the Democrats are as aware as anybody else that there is no evidence of wrongdoing because there was no wrongdoing. Republicans thought that they were safe to loudly and publicly demand a Special Counsel because they would never get one because they, themselves would never grant that if their positions were flipped. The fact that Republicans have long used a partisan DOJ to do their dirty work means that they can’t imagine an independent DOJ.
Click through for all the reasons – the quote is the first one. I like it because we all know it’s so, but it’s said so concisely and still in enough detail to be satisfying.
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – Federal judge tells Trump she WILL NOT ALLOW his political campaign to interfere w/orderly justice
The Lincoln Project – Inside Dark Brandon
Thom Hartmann – Welcome to the DeSantis Nazi Fantasy Camp Indoctrination Centers…aka Florida Public Schools?!
Brent Terhune – Montgomery Boat Brawl
Coyote Waits Patiently For Guy To Free Him From Fence
Beau – Let’s talk about Senator Tuberville’s Ukraine analogy….