A Pence-ive Response

Former VP and Trump chewing toy Mike Pence was in here in Cincy yesterday addressing a right-wing "Christian" advocacy group when news of Trump, sexual abuser broke and Pence immediately dismissed it as nothing that voters would care about.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence subtly defended former President Donald Trump in an interview Tuesday, hours after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

“I would tell you, in my 4½ years serving alongside the president, I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature,” he said.

Pence was in Cincinnati to speak at a gala for the Center for Christian Virtue.

The decision to avoid criticizing Trump was stark at a moment when Pence is weighing whether to challenge his former boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

But Pence sidestepped the question of whether the jury’s verdict affects his view of Trump’s fitness for the presidency.

“I think that’s a question for the American people,” Pence said. “I’m sure the president will defend himself in that matter.”

He added his prediction that those very voters would pay little attention to what he cast as a distraction from their daily lives.

“It’s just one more instance where — at a time when American families are struggling, when our economy is hurting, when the world seems to become a more dangerous place almost every day — [there's] just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think is where the American people are focused.”

 

Mike Pence supplicating himself to a man that tried to have him killed when he refused to help steal an election for him, a man now found liable for sexual assault, in front of a Christian virtue group and dismissing it as not "where the American people are focused" is the best example yet of the Republican party's absolute corruption and ownership of everyone in it by Donald Trump.

 

And remember, Mike Pence is supposedly deciding whether or not he's running against Trump in the GOP primaries still.

Not one of them will stand up and say "enough is enough".

All of them work for Trump.

 

BREAKING: "George Santos" Arrested On Federal Charges

New York Republican Congressman "George Santos" turned himself into custody this morning, facing 13 counts of federal charges stemming from his fraudulent 2022 campaign.

 

Embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., turned himself in to federal authorities Wednesday morning as it was revealed he faces 13 criminal charges including wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and false statements, officials said.

Santos was charged with:

• Seven counts of wire fraud
• Three counts of money laundering
• One count of theft of public funds
• Two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York confirmed Santos was in custody at the federal courthouse. The 20-page, 13-count indictment against Santos was unsealed shortly after he surrendered.

The indictment alleges that while Santos was paid an annual salary of $120,000 at a Florida-based investment firm in 2020, he applied for unemployment benefits in New York, receiving more that $24,000.

It also accuses Santos of soliciting donations to a company that he said would help his election to Congress, before using that money on personal purchases, including designer clothing.

And he's charged with making false statements on his Financial Disclosure Statement that he filed with the House of Representatives before his election.

Santos has faced bipartisan calls to resign after it was revealed that he lied about parts of his resume while running for Congress last year. Santos fabricated details about his education, career, ancestry, and charity work during his campaign.

Last month, he announced that he's running for reelection in 2024.

 

This should be the immediate end of his career and expulsion from the House, but Clown Master Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy is already saying "Santos" should be considered innocent until proven guilty and that McCarthy would not call for his resignation until then.

So no, nothing's going to happen to "Santos" anytime soon, and while he'll probably face a trial before facing voters again in November 2024, I can't imaging New York Republicans aren't already looking for another crook they can run.

Last Call For Crafting A Disaster In Kentucky

The GOP primary for governor is next Tuesday here in Kentucky, and while I definitely have my problems with Turtle High Priest Daniel Cameron, the even worse alternative is definitely form Trump regime UN Ambassador Kelly Craft, trying to buy the seat with her millions so she can purge state schools of trans folk.

 

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft made sweeping, explicit anti-transgender remarks at a virtual town hall on Monday, escalating her transphobic rhetoric in the lead-up to the primary election.

Craft, a former ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, said Kentucky would “not have transgenders in our school system” if she were elected governor, according to a transcript of the town hall reported by the Lexington Herald Leader.

Weston Loyd, communications director for Craft’s campaign, said Craft was referring to “ideologies.”

“Of course Kelly [Craft] was referring to the woke ideologies being pushed in our schools,” Loyd said. “She has been advocating for the best for all children this entire campaign.”

But Craft’s statement that transgender students should not exist in Kentucky schools goes beyond even her previous anti-trans stances throughout her campaign, such as her opposition to trans athletes competing in women’s sports and support of a sweeping new law, sponsored by her running mate, that bans gender affirming medical care for minors.

Chris Hartman, executive director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, said he wasn’t surprised by Craft’s comments in light of her previous anti-trans remarks and legislative agendas.

“You cannot force or legislate trans kids out of existence. You can’t push them back into the closet,” Hartman said. “Trans kids exist. They will always exist, and they will always be in Kentucky schools, no matter what Kelly Craft and Max Wise have to say about it.”

GOP state Sen. Max Wise, Craft's running mate, sponsored Senate Bill 150, one of the strictest anti-trans laws in the country, which passed in the Kentucky Legislature this year. It bans gender-affirming medical care for transgender kids and imposes rules on public schools that negatively affect trans students.

The ACLU of Kentucky filed a lawsuit last week challenging parts of SB 150 that ban trans kids from receiving gender affirming care like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill, though the GOP-led legislature easily overrode him. In his veto message, Beshear wrote that SB 150 “allows too much government interference in personal healthcare issues and rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children.”

Hartman said anti-trans rhetoric is taking a toll on trans kids’ mental health – and it’s coming from politicians and legislatures across the country, not just from Craft. The ACLU identified nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States in just the 2023 legislative session.

“I don’t believe that kids are hearing Kelly Craft’s words any louder than they are hearing the state legislatures all across the United States, and the coordinated national efforts to eradicate transgender kids for the cheapest political points,” Hartman said.

 

Understand that Republicans like Craft will not stop at getting rid of trans kids -- trying to make their existence illegal felonies -- and as horrific as that is,  they will do the same to all trans folk in Kentucky and in multiple other states.

I'd say this is the 1939 playbook from Germany only with trans folks, but Republicans hate Jews too, so there you are.

 

Needless to say, a second term for Andy Beshear may be the only force that halts a slide towards actual genocide here.

BREAKING: Orange Judgment

The jury in E. Jean Carroll's civil case versus Donald Trump didn't even take a full afternoon to find him liable for sexual assault and defamation and to award her a total of $5 million in damages.

 

A New York jury on Tuesday found former President Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, but not liable for her alleged rape.

The jury awarded her $5 million in damages for her battery and defamation claims.

Asked on their verdict sheet if Carroll, 79, had proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that “Mr. Trump raped Ms. Carroll,” the nine-person jury checked the box that said “no.” Asked if Carroll had proven “by a preponderance of the evidence” that “Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll,” the jury checked the box that said “yes.” Both allegations were elements of Carroll’s battery claim.

The six men and three women also found Trump had defamed her by calling her claims a “hoax” and “a con job.”

Trump, a 2024 presidential candidate, has consistently denied Carroll’s claims. The jury verdict carries no criminal implications.

The legal standard for liability in the civil case — the preponderance of the evidence — was not as high as in criminal cases. The civil benchmark is that it’s more likely than not that something occurred, while the standard for convictions in criminal cases is proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Carroll sued Trump accusing him of battery and defamation in Manhattan federal court last year, alleging he raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman department store near his Fifth Avenue home in 1995 or 1996. She first went public with the claim in 2019 in her book, “What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.”

Trump, first as president and then as a private citizen, called her account a fiction that she concocted to boost book sales, and has said the writer is “not my type.” He did not testify in the case, but portions of his videotaped deposition from October were played for the jury.

The verdict was required to be unanimous.

Carroll was her own star witness at the trial, which began April 25. “I’m here because Trump raped me,” she told jurors during her three days on the witness stand.

 

Oh, and Trump is scheduled to appear on CNN in a town hall segment tomorrow. Another good call by network head Chris Licht.

Orange Meltdown, Peach State Edition, Con't

We've now officially reached the "I was only following orders" stage of Georgia Republican party flunkies turning evidence against Trump as Fulton County DA Fani Willis lines up her evidence for later this summer.

 

Lawyers representing David Shafer, the embattled chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, are arguing their client should not be charged with any crimes for his actions following the 2020 election because he was following advice provided by attorneys working for former President Donald Trump, according to a letter sent to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last week.

Specifically, Shafer’s attorneys say their client was relying on “repeated and detailed advice of legal counsel” when he organized a group of “contingent” electors from Georgia and served as one himself, thus “eliminating any possibility of criminal intent or liability,” according to a copy of the May 5 letter.

The letter, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, comes as Willis and her team of prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia are planning to make an announcement on possible charges against Trump or his allies later this summer.

Shafer, who sources previously told CNN could be among those indicted when Willis makes her charging announcements, has come under scrutiny for his role in the effort to put forward alternate slates of electors to block the certification of the 2020 presidential vote.

In their letter to Willis’s office, Shafer’s lawyers say he was “given very direct, detailed legal advice on the procedure he should follow, and he followed those instructions to the letter.”

“I believe that any fair-minded person, with possession of all the facts, would conclude that Mr. Shafer and the other presidential elector nominees acted lawfully and appropriately,” the letter adds.

The district attorney’s office declined to comment.

 

Again, this is the chair of the Georgia Republican party saying Donald Trump ordered him to break the law, and when you've reached this point of your defense where the capos and consiglieres are turning on The Don here, it's all over but the paperwork. Willis is going to have a field day.

And maybe, just maybe, Trump gets what he deserves.

Last Call The Worst Little Pervert In Texas

Facing an all but guaranteed expulsion vote from the Texas House, Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton has resigned rather than face the music over his inappropriate relationship with one of his staff members.

 

Rep. Bryan Slaton resigned from the Texas House on Monday after an investigation determined that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 19-year-old woman on his staff, providing her with enough alcohol before their encounter that she felt dizzy and had double vision.

Pressure had mounted on the Royse City Republican to resign since Saturday, when the House General Investigative Committee released a 16-page report finding Slaton, who is 45 and married, had engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with his aide. The committee of three Republicans and two Democrats recommended that Slaton be the first state representative expelled from the body since 1927.

Slaton's resignation, however, may not stop a planned Tuesday vote on a House resolution expelling him from office.

Rep. Andrew Murr, a Junction Republican who leads the investigative committee, said Monday that he still plans to call up the resolution that he drafted and filed on Saturday.

“Though Representative Slaton has submitted his resignation from office, under Texas law he is considered to be an officer of this state until a successor is elected and takes the oath of office to represent Texas House District 2,” Murr wrote on Facebook.

Slaton did not address the inappropriate relationship that led to his downfall in his resignation letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, saying instead that he looked forward to spending more time with his young family. He was not on the House floor Monday.

State Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, blasted Slaton for not apologizing in the letter, calling it “inconceivable.”

“His resignation gave no apology to the young woman he violated, his wife whom he betrayed or his district that he failed,” Toth said on social media. “No remorse. No acceptance of responsibility. He’s the victim that rides off in to the sunset. That was the resignation of a narcissist.”

In a statement, Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi commended the House for responding swiftly to “the reprehensible actions of Representative Slaton,” which were first reported in early April. He said the misconduct detailed in the report “should never be tolerated and is proper grounds for expulsion.”

“These actions have betrayed the trust that the people of Representative Slaton’s district put in him as an elected official, and he has rightly resigned,” Rinaldi said. “We are encouraged that this investigation signals that the House has entered a new era of accountability where all members will be held to the same fair and high standards.”

 

Remember, Slaton didn't resign because of the relationship, he resigned because he was caught in the relationship.  And yes, this is the same Bryan Slaton who loudly and repeatedly raged against Democrats as "groomers".

It's always projection with these assholes.

Read All About It

The annual Trust in Media survey from polling outfit YouGov is out, and it shows vast differences in where Democrats and Republicans trust to get information from.

 

The divide between Democrats and Republicans on which news sources are trustworthy remains stark.

Last year, The Economist / YouGov published the results of a poll asking Americans where they get their news from and how much they trusted 22 prominent media organizations. YouGov revisited the topic this year by asking Americans to share how much trust they place in even more broadcast, digital, print, and social media outlets: 56 in total.

In this year's trust in media poll — conducted from April 3 - 9, 2023 — YouGov asked Americans to say whether they trust, distrust, or neither trust nor distrust the media organizations. From the results, it is possible to determine each outlet's net trust score – that is, how much more likely Americans are to say the outlet is trustworthy or very trustworthy than untrustworthy or very untrustworthy.

Even with the additions to the group of outlets polled about, The Weather Channel remains the most trusted news source among Americans overall. Americans are 53 points more likely to call The Weather Channel trustworthy as they are to call it untrustworthy. It's also the only outlet that YouGov asked about that more Democrats (+64) and Republicans (+47) trust than the shares who distrust it. The Weather Channel is just one of two outlets polled about that a majority of Republicans trust; the other one is Fox News (56% of Republicans trust it, with a net trust score among them of +41).

When it comes to the national rankings, The Weather Channel is followed by national public broadcaster PBS (+30), the U.K. news outlet BBC (+29), and The Wall Street Journal (+24) in national trust. This year's poll has the same group in the top four as last year's poll — even with the additions to this year's poll.

There also are more people who trust than distrust Forbes (+23), the Associated Press (+22), ABC (+21), USA Today (+21), CBS (+20), and Reuters (+20). Only a handful of outlets from the list are viewed by more Americans as untrustworthy than the share who view it as trustworthy: Infowars (-16), the Daily Caller (-4), Breitbart News (-3), and Daily Kos (-1).

In this poll, the three broadcast networks had similar levels of trust, while there was a slightly lower level of trust in each of the three cable networks: 44% say they trust ABC, 43% trust CBS, 42% trust NBC, 40% trust CNN, 38% trust Fox News, and 36% trust MSNBC.

 

Observations:

 

• This is already out of date I'd think, before Fox News fired Tucker Carlson. I'd dare say Republican trust in Fox is significantly lower today than it was a month ago.
• Everyone loves the Weather Channel, nobody trusts Infowars.
• Republicans trust a handful of outlets, and with Fox News increasingly out of the picture, expect to see that number shrink, not grow.
• Democrats trust several right-wing news sites more than Republicans do, namely National Review, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, and two Murdoch papers, Wall Street Journal and the NY Post. This also includes Village insider baseball politics sites like Politico, Axios, The Hill, and Business Insider.
• More Dems trust Fox News than Republicans trust ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, or MSNBC if you're still wondering about the massive lurch to the right in those networks in the last year.

 

The media has a long way to go to stop being broken, but the bigger issue is they keep chasing Republicans who will never like them, and Democrats who actually believe the bad actors.

Border Line Insanity, Con't

At least eight people are dead after an SUV plowed into a group of migrant workers waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, and indications are the act could very well have been deliberate.

 

Brownsville police investigator Martin Sandoval said the crash happened about 8:30 a.m. local time. The driver, Sandoval said, is a Hispanic male who was hospitalized for treatment of injuries before being taken in to police custody on charges of reckless driving. More charges are expected soon, he said.

Sandoval said the cause of the crash has not been determined, but that police are awaiting results from a blood sample taken from the driver to see if he was under the influence. The driver, apparently injured when his silver Range Rover overturned in the crash, is not cooperating with officers and had not yet been identified, he said.

The death toll climbed by one Sunday after a victim succumbed to their injuries at the hospital, Mayor Trey Mendez said Sunday evening in a statement. “We have had one more casualty as one of the injured tragically passed away from their injuries at the hospital,” Mendez said. “The total lives lost is currently 8 and several more remain critical.”

Luis Herrera, who was among those hit by the SUV, said in an interview that many of the victims already had tickets out of Brownsville, some to reunite with their families. Herrera, 33, who suffered a broken arm and was released from the hospital Sunday afternoon, said the driver was taunting people standing at the bus stop, driving past them and yelling insults.

“He crossed the street and he hit the gas and he drove by my legs, and hurt my arm,” he said in Spanish. “The others, he killed almost all of them.”

He recalled the driver yelling: “You’re invading my property!”

Sandoval said the driver allegedly ran a red light and plowed into a group of people standing at a local bus stop in this border city in southeastern Texas. The victims were standing outside the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center, a migrant and homeless shelter in the border town.

Those injured were taken to hospitals, Sandoval said, including one who was airlifted.

“He just hit the people,” he said.

Police were still trying to confirm the names and ages of the victims. Sandoval said some were migrants from Venezuela who recently crossed the border. The bus stop serves migrants and U.S. citizens in this city of 190,000 residents.

“This is a public bus stop,” he said. “So we don’t know if some residents of ours were there.”

Police are awaiting help from the U.S. Border Patrol to identify the victims, since some may have been recently processed at the border. “Definitely, there were some migrants there,” Sandoval said.

The homeless shelter had been housing several recent border crossers. Brownsville is one of the areas receiving large numbers of migrants as the federal government prepares to lift pandemic travel restrictions Thursday and reopen the border to asylum seekers.

Video obtained by The Washington Post showed the driver running the red light about 100 feet away from where the victims were waiting for a bus.

Witnesses said the driver tried to run away afterward, Victor Maldonado, director of the Ozanam center, told The Post. But the witnesses stopped him from leaving the scene, Maldonado added. Some witnesses said he appeared to be driving under the influence, Maldonado said.

 

Maybe the driver was drunk, maybe he wasn't, but eight people are dead, several of them migrant workers. We still have a gun problem for sure, but yeah, there are other ways to commit mass killings in America.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

Another day in Gunmerica Saturday as an armed man with an AR-15 killed eight and injured seven more at a Dallas-area outlet mall before a police officer arrived to "neutralize" the shooter.

 

Authorities responded to the Allen Premium Outlets to investigate a shooting Saturday afternoon that killed eight victims and sent others to hospitals, with a victim as young as 5 years old.

The Allen Police Department said one of its officers responded to the outlet mall for an unrelated call, when they heard gunshots just after 3:30 p.m.

That officer "engaged the suspect and neutralized the threat," police said.

There were nine people who died, including the shooter. Seven were pronounced dead on scene, while two others died at the hospital.

The Allen Fire Department transported nine victims, but others may have been transported by other agencies or driven to a hospital by friends or family.

Police said there are three victims in critical condition and four in stable condition.

A spokesperson for Medical City Healthcare said eight victims ranging from 5 to 61 years old are being treated at their facilities.

There were multiple agencies that responded to secure the scene, including the Allen Police Department, Collin County Sheriff's Office, FBI, and ATF.

Police said there is no active threat at this time, and they believe the shooter acted alone.

"We were outside the Converse store and we just heard all this popping," said Elaine Penicaro, who was shopping with her daughter. "We kind of all just stopped, and then a second later, just 'Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,' and there were sparks flying like it was right in front of us."

 

A five-year-old victim, and we will do nothing. If anything, the message in permitless, open carry Texas is the victims who died did so because they didn't exercise their own 2nd Amendment rights in a building where guns were prohibited.

That's surely what people who witnessed the massacre will be told by police, friends, and family. "Maybe if you were armed and trained that five-year-old would still be alive today. Maybe you need to be the person who acts next time. You need to be the good guy with the gun from now on."

Just another day in Gunmerica. Texas Republicans have done nothing but offer thoughts and prayers and that's all they'll ever do the next time a massacre happens.

 

For his part, President Biden wants Congress to send him an assault rifle ban, but this will never happen as long as Republicans keep being elected, and voters decide to change that.

Sunday Long Read: The Woman Who Won

More than 35 years ago in 1986, a woman named Barbara Lowe became a five-time winner on Jeopardy! and then she vanished from the program's massive archives. The episodes were considered lost until recently as our Sunday Long Read from Claire McNear at the Ringer details, and the story of Lowe is a byzantine tale of quiz show drama. Well, partially.

 

For decades, whispers have circulated among game show aficionados about a mysterious Jeopardy! contestant from 1986. She went by Barbara Lowe and won five games in a row, which at the time—in just the second season of the reboot hosted by Alex Trebek—was the upper limit for returning champions. Later that year, when the show aired its Tournament of Champions contest with the best recent players, for which five-day champs automatically qualified, Lowe was nowhere to be found. Then, bizarrely, her episodes seemed to be wiped from the face of the earth.

In the 1990s, Game Show Network re-aired Season 2 of Jeopardy!; eagle-eyed fans noticed that the five episodes featuring Lowe were unceremoniously skipped. When the show launched a 24-hour streaming radio program and a Pluto TV channel that broadcast old episodes, Lowe’s episodes still failed to appear. In markets where affiliate stations play reruns on the weekends, Lowe’s episodes are omitted, again and again.

But the why of that matter, and what exactly happened during those games to incur the enduring wrath of the nation’s foremost quiz show, has long proved elusive. This is particularly bedeviling to Jeopardy! superfans, for whom detailed knowledge of operas, world capitals, and even television ephemera looms large. There are few corners of pop culture where facts and certainty are as celebrated as they are on Jeopardy! Yet one day in 1986, something happened—and nearly 40 years later, no one could say what. For the show’s most devoted fans, hunting for clues about Lowe—Jeopardy!’s biggest mystery and, some claimed, its greatest villain—became a calling unto itself.

Now, for the first time, Lowe is ready to open up about what happened, having caught wind of her place in Jeopardy! lore when one of those superfans tracked her down to see whether maybe, just maybe, she might have recordings of her games. She says she didn’t have the heart to tell him that when she’d moved a couple of years earlier, she’d thrown out a stack of VHS tapes that included her Jeopardy! appearances.

“He said that my episode is regarded as the holy grail of episodes,” Lowe tells The Ringer. “I was absolutely hysterical about it. I thought, ‘That’s insane.’”

And yet Lowe’s episodes were finally found late last year. The discovery of the lost tapes and Lowe’s first interview addressing her experience answer some questions and raise a host of new ones for the people who spent decades looking for the footage. Why were her games shrouded in secrecy for almost four decades? Was there really bad blood between the show and the five-time champ? What transpired during her time on set? And how did this saga come to take on a life of its own?

 

This one's not quite as mysterious as people make it out to be, but it's still a good story.

Last Call For Thrill Of The Hunter

For once, Jonathan Lemire and Team WIN THE MORNING actually are correct about Republicans looking desperately to get the news cycle off of abortion, mass shootings, holding the country hostage with the debt ceiling, and Donald Trump's multiple legal defenses. They want the focus to turn to Hunter Biden, and it doesn't matter if he's actually indicted or not, they're going to call it the biggest corruption scandal in American presidential history anyway.

The White House is bracing for the political fallout from the charging decision in the Hunter Biden case.

And they’ve concluded that Republicans will attack them over it whether President Joe Biden’s son is criminally indicted or not.

In conversations, Democrats and senior West Wing aides are downplaying the potential impact, arguing Hunter Biden was a factor in the 2020 election and voters elected his father anyway. They point out the president’s top rival, Donald Trump, was just indicted himself.

But people close to Biden still worry about the personal toll it will take on a father who has already felt anguish about a son’s struggles amid a long history of family tragedy. And they wonder how long he can compartmentalize personal anger with the attacks on Hunter and the political calculation that he’s better off not responding to it. Biden has long agonized over the fate of his surviving son, expressing that worry in phone calls with longtime friends and to Hunter himself.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden met at Justice Department headquarters in Washington last week to discuss the tax- and gun-related case with prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. Often a signal that an investigation is concluding, such meetings are used by defense lawyers to urge prosecutors to refrain from seeking an indictment or to consider reduced charges. The probe has centered on whether Biden failed to report all of his income and whether he lied on a form for buying a gun. His attorneys declined comment.

“Obviously, the Biden team would hope that this investigation does not result in an indictment for a multitude of reasons,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who served as President Barack Obama’s communications director. “But the Republicans have failed — both in the 2020 campaign and in their 2023 congressional hearings — to have questions about Hunter Biden impact public opinion and I don’t think they will succeed now, regardless of what DOJ decides.”

 

I was afraid that the Biden camp would try to play this as nobly as possible, and not admit that every Republican in view of a microphone wouldn't be calling for his immediate resignation regardless of the decision by the DoJ.  They are not wearing blinders, thankfully. 

They understand that this is going to be used as leverage in the debt ceiling too. They know there's a very good chance that, whatever the decision to charge Hunter Biden or not ends up being, it will be used as a pretext to trash negotiations and to let the country default on its debt, triggering a near immediate recession.

Democrats are thankfully well aware of this, and are looking for a way out.

Time, of course, is running out too, we're maybe 4-6 weeks from the economy throwing a rod and ripping a huge chunk of the engine driving the country out and tossing it through a nearby building full of puppies.

Rest assured though that the Republican response will be entirely predictable and awful.

Tales Of The Shattered Rainbow, Con't

The GOP anti-trans agenda is working as intended in red states, and is gaining substantial support across America under the guise of "protecting women and kids".

Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care.

Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ.

And some Americans have become more conservative on these questions as Republicans have seized the issue and worked to promote new restrictions. The Pew Research Center found 60 percent last year saying one’s gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, up from 54 percent in 2017. Even among young adults, who are the most accepting of trans identity, about half said in the Post-KFF poll that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth.

Alyssa Wells, 29, a behavior therapist in Daytona Beach, Fla., who participated in the Post-KFF survey, said her views have changed on this issue in recent years as she has learned more, chiefly from Christian podcasts.

“At first I was on the side of acceptance, like using the pronouns and stuff, because I want people to be kind to each other. I don’t want people fighting all the time,” she said. But she has come to see things differently. “My concern with transgender is mostly with the children.”

“We can’t vote until we’re a certain age, we can’t smoke, drink or whatever, but we can change our bodies’ anatomy and how it works?” she said. “It just doesn’t seem like that’s okay to me.” Treatments for trans youth sometimes include hormone therapies, but not genital surgery, which guidelines generally say doctors should not provide until patients are 18.

Still, as the country engages in a national debate over public policy around gender identity, interviews and other poll findings suggest that many Americans hold complicated and sometimes contradictory views on the subject.

While a majority of Americans oppose access to puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children and teenagers, for instance, clear majorities also support laws prohibiting discrimination against trans people, including in K-12 schools.

“You have a big swath of the American public still trying to make sense of this issue,” said Patrick Egan, a scholar of American politics and public opinion at New York University. “This is a battle and a debate that is unfolding in real time before our eyes, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

 

I disagree completely with Mr. Egan there. History tells us exactly how this will turn out, and it's already happening. 

 

Anti-trans legislation targeting trans kids and their parents and families will be expanded to include prohibitions of gender-affirming care for trans adults as well, being regulated into impossibility the way hundreds of abortion clinics were shut down over the last five years. Pretty soon in half the states, birth certificate changes won't be recognized and trans folks will be legislated out of existence, forced into a miserable limbo where they have no rights, no legal recourse, and no hope.

There aren't "complicated and sometimes contradictory views", there is only "should trans folks be allowed to exist" and increasingly the answer is "not here." All it needs to work is otherwise good people ready to stand by and do nothing.

The poll's crosstabs make it clear there's a wide array of groups willing to sacrifice trans folks.

But hey, maybe red states will make special places for trans folks where they can exist.

You know, camps.

 

Where populations of these people can be concentrated.

History again, it's like we've never learned anything from it in America.

The New Chief Chief For The Commander-In-Chief

With current Joint Chief of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley expected to step down, his replacement is slated to be Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown, only the second Black JCS head after the late Colin Powell.

 

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force’s top officer and the first Black person to lead any branch of the military, to succeed Gen. Mark Milley as the next Joint Chiefs chair, two people familiar with the discussion said on Thursday.

If confirmed, Brown would become the second Black Joint Chiefs chair in the nation’s history, after the late Colin Powell.

Biden hasn’t given Brown the official stamp, and it’s unclear when he plans to make an announcement, said the people, a Democratic lawmaker and a congressional aide familiar with the White House’s planning, both of whom were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“When President Biden makes a final decision, he will inform the person selected and then announce it publicly,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said when asked for comment. “That hasn’t happened yet.”

Brown’s reputation and command experience in both the Pacific and the Middle East made him the odds-on favorite to be Milley’s heir apparent dating back to the Trump administration. But his appointment seemed less of a sure thing in recent months, as the White House seriously considered Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps commandant, for the top job.

He rose through the ranks as the sole Black pilot in classrooms filled with white men, an experience he spoke about in an emotional video after George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020.

Those who know Brown say he has the right experience to keep the military focused on its top priority: China. Brown’s most recent command experience was in the Pacific, as chief of Pacific Air Forces.

Brown also commanded troops in the Middle East, as head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, and was serving in Europe when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, as a director of operations for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at U.S. Air Forces in Europe. He was confirmed unanimously by the Senate for his current role as Air Force chief of staff in August, 2020.

 

So yeah, the Senate already unanimously confirmed him for the Air Force job, but who knows what te GOP will do.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

A certain Florida resident is about to have a bad, bad weekend with his staff, so you should at least kee them in your thoughts.

 

At least eight of the 16 Georgia Republicans who convened in December 2020 to declare Donald Trump the winner of the presidential contest despite his loss in the state have accepted immunity deals from Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating alleged election interference, according to a lawyer for the electors.

Prosecutors with the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) told the eight that they will not be charged with crimes if they testify truthfully in her sprawling investigation into efforts by Trump, his campaign and his allies to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, according to a brief filed Friday in Fulton County Superior Court by defense attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow.

Willis has said that the meeting of Trump’s electors on Dec. 14, 2020, despite Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s certification of Biden’s win, is a key target of her investigation, along with Trump’s phone calls to multiple state officials and his campaign’s potential involvement in an unauthorized breach of election equipment in rural Coffee County, Ga.

Georgia was among seven states where the Trump campaign and local GOP officials arranged for alternate electors to convene with the stated purpose of preserving legal recourse while election challenges made their way through the courts. Among the questions both Willis and federal investigators have explored is whether the appointment of alternate electors and the creation of elector certificates broke the law. Another question is whether Trump campaign officials and allies initiated the strategy as part of a larger effort to overturn Biden’s overall victory during the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

The news that some — but likely not all — of the electors will not be charged raises new questions about the scope of Willis’s examination of the meeting of electors, all of whom she had previously identified as criminal targets in her investigation. The electors who accepted immunity did so without any promise that they would offer incriminating evidence in return, and they all have stated that they remain unified in their innocence and are not aware of any criminal activity among any of the electors, Debrow said.

“In telling the truth they continue to say they have done nothing wrong and they are not aware of anyone else doing anything wrong, much less criminal,” said an individual familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity to discuss the case.

Among the electors who appear to remain targets are David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party who presided over the gathering, and Shawn Still, a state senator who at the time was state finance chair for the party and who told congressional investigators he played a role confirming electors’ identities and admitting them into the room at the Georgia Capitol where they convened.

None of the electors responded to efforts by The Washington Post to reach them. Shafer has denied that convening to cast electoral votes for Trump was a crime, saying repeatedly — including during the gathering itself — that the electors were meeting on a contingency basis to preserve Trump’s legal remedy in the event that he prevailed in an ongoing lawsuit challenging the Georgia result.

 

As we saw earlier this week with the January 6th seditious conspiracy convictions, once you can prove there was a conspiracy, you can roll up everyone involved in the plot. If Fani Willis is being hand delivered testimony that proves the Georgia slate of fraudulent electors were conspiring against Georgia and the United States, well, a lot of heads can roll.

 

Maybe even a certain orange Floridian, too.

Supremely Corrupt Cads, Crooks, And Creeps, Con't

More corruption was revealed today involving Justice Clarence Thomas being bought like the puppet he is. First up, Right-wing billionaire and Nazi memorabilia enthusiast Harlan Crow paid for years of tuition for Thomas's grandnephew to attend a private boarding schools.

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at Randolph-Macon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate.

ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000, according to public records of tuition rates at the schools.

 

Crow's lawyer confirmed yesterday that this happened.

It was bad enough for Thomas yesterday morning, and then yesterday evening's corruption story dropped.

Conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo arranged for the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to be paid tens of thousands of dollars for consulting work just over a decade ago, specifying that her name be left off billing paperwork, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

In January 2012, Leo instructed the GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway to bill a nonprofit group called the Judicial Education Project and use that money to pay Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the documents show. The same year, the Judicial Education Project filed a brief to the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case.

Leo, an adviser to the Judicial Education Project and a key figure in a network of nonprofits that has worked to support the nominations of conservative judges, told Conway that he wanted her to “give” Ginni Thomas “another $25K,” the documents show. He emphasized that the paperwork should have “No mention of Ginni, of course.”

Conway’s firm, the Polling Company, sent the Judicial Education Project a $25,000 bill that day. Per Leo’s instructions, it listed the purpose as “Supplement for Constitution Polling and Opinion Consulting,” the documents show.

In all, according to the documents, the Polling Company paid Thomas’s firm, Liberty Consulting, $80,000 between June 2011 and June 2012, and it expected to pay $20,000 more before the end of 2012. The documents reviewed by The Post do not indicate the precise nature of any work Thomas did for the Judicial Education Project or the Polling Company.

The arrangement reveals that Leo, a longtime Federalist Society leader and friend of the Thomases, has functioned not only as an ideological ally of Clarence Thomas’s but also has worked to provide financial remuneration to his family. And it shows Leo arranging for the money to be drawn from a nonprofit that soon would have an interest before the court.

In response to questions from The Post, Leo issued a statement defending the Thomases. “It is no secret that Ginni Thomas has a long history of working on issues within the conservative movement, and part of that work has involved gauging public attitudes and sentiment. The work she did here did not involve anything connected with either the Court’s business or with other legal issues,” he wrote. “As an advisor to JEP I have long been supportive of its opinion research relating to limited government, and The Polling Company, along with Ginni Thomas’s help, has been an invaluable resource for gauging public attitudes.”

Of the effort to keep Thomas’s name off paperwork, Leo said: “Knowing how disrespectful, malicious and gossipy people can be, I have always tried to protect the privacy of Justice Thomas and Ginni.”

 

Again, if any other federal employee did a fraction of what Justice Clarence Thomas has copped to in the last few weeks, the Justice Department would have already opened the investigation, if not issued charges. 

At some point, the theory is, it'll be too much for Thomas to keep his job.

How much exactly "too much" is, well. We'll see.