Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Just as with Rudy Giuliani's civil trial last month, the judge in E. Jean Carroll's civil defamation case against Donald Trump has also reached a liability ruling finding the defendant liable for damages.

 

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Donald Trump is civilly liable for defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019 when she went public with claims he had raped her decades earlier.

Judge Lewis Kaplan, as part of that ruling, said the upcoming trial for Carroll’s lawsuit against Trump will only deal with the question of how much the former president should pay her in monetary damages for defaming her.

Normally, a jury would determine at trial whether a defendant is liable for civil damages claimed by a plaintiff.

But Kaplan found that Carroll was entitled to a partial summary judgment on the question of Trump’s liability in the case.

He cited the fact that jurors at a trial in a separate but related lawsuit in May found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a New York department store in the mid-1990s, and defamed her in statements he made when he denied her allegation last fall.

Carroll’s lawyers argued, and Kaplan agreed, that the jury’s verdict in that case effectively settled the legal question of whether Trump had defamed her in similar comments he made about Carroll in 2019.

“The truth or falsity of Mr. Trump’s 2019 statements therefore depends — like the truth or falsity of his 2022 statement — on whether Ms. Carroll lied about Mr. Trump sexually assaulting her,” Kaplan wrote in his 25-page decision in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

“The jury’s finding that she did not therefore is binding in this case and precludes Mr. Trump from contesting the falsity of his 2019 statements,” Kaplan wrote.

The ruling is the latest in a series of big losses for Trump in lawsuits filed by Carroll.

At the trial that ended in May, Trump was ordered to pay Carroll $5 million in damages for the comments he made after he was president. Trump is appealing the verdict and damages in that case.

The suit that was the subject of Kaplan’s ruling Wednesday relates to statements about Carroll that Trump made when he was president as he denied her claim of rape.

Trial in that case is set to begin Jan. 15, just as the Republican presidential nomination contest is set to heat up with primaries and caucuses. Trump is the front-runner in the contest for the 2024 GOP nomination.

 

2024 is going to be packed with Trump trials, and he's going to lose most of them. Keep that in mind when Democrats insist Joe Biden can't beat him again.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Former Proud Boys leader and convicted seditious terrorist Enrique Tarrio got 22 years in federal prison for his role leading the insurrection on January 6th, 2001.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio to 22 years in prison -- the longest sentence to date handed down for any individual charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Prosecutors had sought 33 years in prison for Tarrio, their harshest recommendation yet for someone charged in the Justice Department's sweeping investigation into the Capitol assault -- despite the fact that Tarrio wasn't present in Washington the day of the attack.

In their sentencing recommendation, prosecutors described Tarrio as a "naturally charismatic leader" and "a savvy propagandist" who used his influence over hundreds of followers to orchestrate an assault on democracy -- for which he was convicted of seditious conspiracy and several other felonies.

"This defendant, and his co-conspirators targeted our entire system of government," assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe said during Tuesday's hearing. "This offense involved calculation and deliberation. We need to make sure that the consequences are abundantly clear to anyone who might be unhappy with the results in 2024, 2028, 2032 or any future election for as long as this case is remembered."

Prosecutors argued Tarrio helped rally members of the far-right group to come to Washington in advance of Jan. 6 with the goal of stopping the peaceful transition of power, that he monitored their movements and egged them on as they attacked the Capitol, and continued to celebrate their actions in the days after the insurrection.

They also pointed to a nine-page strategic plan to "storm" government buildings in Washington on Jan. 6 that was found in Tarrio's possession after the riot, as well as violent rhetoric he routinely used in messages with other members of the group about what they would do if Congress moved forward in certifying President Joe Biden's election win.

Tarrio's attorneys contended that the government overstated his intentions with respect to Jan. 6, and that his real goal rallying members of the group to Washington, D.C., was to confront protesters from the far-left Antifa movement. They also argued he never directed any of his followers' movements during the riot itself and that he otherwise had no ability to control members who became violent during the riot.

"My client is no terrorist. My client is a misguided patriot, that's what my client is," Tarrio's attorney Sabino Jauregui said. "He was trying to protect this country, as misguided as he was."

Tarrio also spoke at the hearing, apologizing profusely for his actions and heaping praise on members of law enforcement who he said have been unfairly mistreated and maligned after the Jan. 6 attack -- which he called a "national embarrassment."

"I will have to live with that shame and disappointment for the rest of my life," Tarrio said. "We invoked 1776 and the Constitution of the United States and that was so wrong to do. That was a perversion. The events of Jan. 6 is something that should never be celebrated."

He's really sorry he organized a terrorist attack with the intent to kill Democratic members of Congress and to serve as pretense for a coup to overthrow the rightfully elected President.  

Of course, the real terrorist leader here is one Donald J. Trump, and 22 years is the least he should get for maybe a fraction of the dozens of charges he's facing.

And yet it's a coin flip if the country actually puts him back in power or not.

Jesus wept, took the wheel and crashed the Winnebago.

Phantasma Santos, Con't

"George Santos" is not working on a plea deal with the feds on campaign finance fraud charges says consummate professional liar and con artist, "George Santos".

 

The U.S. attorney prosecuting the case against freshman Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) has indicated they are involved in discussions on how to resolve the case. However, in a series of texts to TPM, Santos insisted those talks have nothing to do with a potential plea deal on charges related to his campaign finances and false statements he made in official filings.

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace filed a letter to the presiding judge in the case requesting to move a planned status conference from Thursday to Oct. 27. Peace said he was making the request jointly with Santos and his attorneys while they reviewed the evidence and engaged in further discussions.

“Defense counsel has indicated that he will need additional time to review that material as well. Further, the parties have continued to discuss possible paths forward in this matter,” Peace wrote. “The parties wish to have additional time to continue those discussions.”

Requests such as these are often an indication of ongoing plea negotiations. However, in a series of texts to TPM, Santos called the suggestion the prosecutor is working on a plea agreement with his counsel “wildly inaccurate” and angrily suggested they are finding another “path forward.”

“You’re a real hack of a reporter,” Santos wrote. “Please do not contact me any longer or I will deem your unsolicited communication as harassment.”

Santos’ election last November prompted a cascade of headlines about fabrications in his personal story and resume as well as investigations into irregularities with his campaign finances. TPM has reported extensively on Santos’ unusual campaign finances, questions about his claims of an immense personal fortune, the mounting concerns from outside groups, regulators, and even former members of his team, donors who claim they were bilked, and his ties to a mysterious network of shell companies and an alleged ponzi scheme.

 

The real problem with "George Santos" is that he's not Donald Trump. 

And yet this clown remains in the House because the criminal Republican party needs him in order to maintain control of the lower chamber, or Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy may not have enough clown shoes to stay in charge.

Again, this is why they are screaming about the "Biden crime family" nonsense when the real issue is Republicans keep getting indicted on federal charges.

Last Call For Georgia On My Mind, Con't

Fani Willis may be going after Donald Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, but state GOP AG Chris Carr is going after protesters who were arrested over Atlanta's "Cop City" training facility, and the same Trump grand jury also leveled RICO charges against dozens of protesters in indictments unsealed on Tuesday.

More than five dozen activists were indicted on RICO charges last week over the ongoing efforts to halt construction of the city of Atlanta’s planned public safety training center in DeKalb County.

The sweeping indictment, handed up last Tuesday in Fulton County, is being prosecuted by the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.

A total of 61 protestors have been charged with violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act. Some face additional charges of domestic terrorism and money laundering. Most are not from Georgia.

There has been numerous acts of violence and arrests over the past year and half at the training center site.

Arrests began back in May 2022, when protestors were taken into custody at the training center site and accused of throwing Molotov cocktails towards officers and causing a small fire as police officers tried to clear the site.

In December, five protestors were charged with domestic terrorism and other offenses after officials alleged they “threw rocks at police cars and attacked EMTs outside the neighboring fire stations with rocks and bottles.”

Protests turned violent in Downtown Atlanta in January, when protestors set a police car on fire and broke businesses windows. Five people were arrested that night and are the only co-defendants in the recent indictment that face domestic terrorism and arson in the first degree charges, in addition to the RICO charge.

The January protest were in response to the death of Manuel “Tortugita” Teran, who was shot and killed by Georgia State Patrol troopers during a “clearing operation” on Jan. 18. Officials allege Teran shot at officers first. The GBI turned over the case file to the Mountain Circuit District Attorney’s Office in April.

The bulk of the defendants named in the indictment involves protestors arrested on March 5 at the training center site. Twenty-three protestors were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism after allegedly throwing large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at police officers at the site. All 23 only face one count of RICO in the indictment.

Three people accused of handing out flyers in April identifying one of the troopers involved in the Teran’s death were also indicted. The flyers were distributed in Bartow County, which is the area where the trooper is believe to live, according to The Intercept.

The indictment also names bail fund organizers, Marlon Scott Kautz, Adele Maclean and Savannah Patterson, who were arrested in May 2023 during a raid at a home on Mayson Avenue for alleged actions taken as executives with the nonprofit Network for Strong Communities, which supported the nonprofit Defend the Atlanta Forest. All three face one count of RICO and 15 counts of money laundering in the indictment.

In June, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced that she would withdraw her office from prosecuting cases relating to the training center, citing differences in “prosecutorial philosophy” with the AG’s Office.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was originally assigned to the case but an order of recusal was filed by McAfee on Tuesday. According to the order, McAfee regularly collaborated with the Prosecution Division of the Attorney General’s Office during his time at the Georgia Office of the Inspector General, and discussed aspects of the investigation that led to the indictment.

The case has been reassigned to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Adams.

The Cop City Vote Coalition, a group of organizers aiming at putting the training center on the ballot, released a statement condemning the indictments and accusing Attorney General Chris Carr of seeking to “intimidate protestors, legal observers, and bail funds alike, and send the chilling message that any dissent to Cop City will be punished with the full power and violence of the government.”

 

The state that can make a criminal conspiracy out of a plot to defraud the state's presidential election can also make one out of handing out flyers to inform citizens of a paramilitary training camp for Atlanta Metro cops. 

Georgia's still a fascist red state, even if they are prosecuting Trump.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Last night I had much to say about Republicans refusing to redraw Voting Rights Act-compliant congressional districts that didn't disenfranchise Black voters in multiple states, and that SCOTUS had all but eliminated any enforcement power to remedy it.

Today, a three-judge federal panel unanimously found Alabama's GOP was violating the VRA and ordered a court-drawn map.

A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s latest version of its congressional map, saying the state’s Republican-led legislature did not follow a court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act when it last redrew districts in July.

The judges have directed a special master and cartographer to create a remedial map.

“We do not take lightly federal intrusion into a process ordinarily reserved for the State Legislature. But we have now said twice that this Voting Rights Act case is not close,” the judges wrote in the order. “And we are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires.”

The order also says the judges were “disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”

The U.S. Supreme Court had issued a decision in June upholding the panel’s earlier ruling, which found that the Alabama legislature drew congressional districts that unlawfully diluted the political power of Black residents in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The three-judge panel had ordered the state to produce a new congressional map that included either an additional majority-Black district or a second district in which Black voters otherwise would have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

The redrawn map was approved by the Republican-controlled Alabama legislature in July. It had apportioned the state’s 7th Congressional District to include a population that is 50.65 percent Black and its 2nd Congressional District to have a population that’s 40 percent Black. The Alabama Senate voted 24-6 to pass the new plan, and the House approved the map 75-28.

Challengers argued that lowering the percentage of Black voters in the map’s sole majority-Black district and allocating a 40 percent Black voting population to another district did not meet the court’s requirement to produce a district that is “something quite close to” a Black majority.

In Tuesday’s order, the panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Southern Division, took particular issue with the legislature’s failure to comply with a federal court order.

“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The 2023 Plan plainly fails to do so.”

 

But as I said last night, "What difference does it make?" 

We know this will be appealed to the 11th circuit and overturned, or if upheld, will go to SCOTUS, and that's if Alabama Republicans don't gum up the works with another map on an appeal.

The point is, the odds of this ruling actually being carried out are nil. I've been wrong before and I hope I'm wrong here. Alabama Republicans and Republicans in a number of other states deserve to be made examples of.

We'll see how far this goes, but I'm expecting the case to be dragged out for months until the courts rule that, as with Ohio, the unconstitutional districts have to remain lest the entire state be disenfranchised.

The First Lady Goes Viral

In a non-so-gentle reminder that the Covid era isn't over, despite everyone pretending that millions of Americans somehow won't contract the disease and thousands will die this fall and winter, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden has tested positive for the virus.

 

First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House said. President Joe Biden has tested negative.

The diagnosis has upended the first lady’s plans to begin teaching the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College on Tuesday. She is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute,” Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said.

Dr. Biden, who remains at the family’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, typically teaches on Tuesday and Thursdays.

An administration official told CNN Monday that there are no changes to White House Covid protocols or to the president’s schedule at this time.

The diagnosis of the first lady, 72, comes amid a busy week for Joe Biden, who delivered a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia earlier in the day. The president is scheduled to present the Medal of Honor to an Army captain in a White House ceremony Tuesday before departing for the G20 Summit in India on Thursday.

CNN has asked for more details on both the president and first lady’s regular Covid testing cadence and if Joe Biden was with his wife when she began exhibiting Covid symptoms.

Last summer, the first lady tested positive for Covid-19 while vacationing in South Carolina in August. President Biden tested positive last July. Both experienced rebound cases shortly after being treated with Paxlovid.

 

Needless to say, Covid is still a very real threat to the Bidens, and to millions of Americans, and while vaccination continues to increase, new variants also continue to emerge. The battle is far from over.

 

Get the jab.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

A federal judge has determined that Florida's congressional redistricting by Republicans is unconstitutional and that it disenfranchises Black voters in particular.

 

A Florida redistricting plan pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the state constitution and is prohibited from being used for any future U.S. congressional elections since it diminishes the ability of Black voters in north Florida to pick a representative of their choice, a state judge ruled Saturday.

Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh sent the plan back to the Florida Legislature with instructions that lawmakers should draw a new congressional map that complies with the Florida Constitution.

The voting rights groups that challenged the plan in court "have shown that the enacted plan results in the diminishment of Black voters' ability to elect their candidate of choice in violation of the Florida Constitution," Marsh wrote.

The decision was the latest to strike down new congressional maps in Southern states over concerns that they diluted Black voting power.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Republican-drawn map in Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting the effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law. Not long after that, the Supreme Court lifted its hold on a Louisiana political remap case, increasing the likelihood that the Republican-dominated state will have to redraw boundary lines to create a second mostly Black congressional district.

In each of the cases, Republicans have either appealed or vowed to appeal the decisions since they could benefit Democratic congressional candidates facing 2024 races under redrawn maps. The Florida case likely will end up before the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Anyone who has been paying attention to these states knows what I'm going to be asking next: 

 

What difference does it make? 

Ohio Republicans already ran out the clock once on redistricting after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled against their redistricting plan multiple times, and the right-wing Trumpists on the federal courts basically ruled that flawed or not, Ohio had to use those unconstitutional districts or else risk disenfranchising the entire state without representation, and Republicans in the Buckeye State have made no efforts to fix the problem since.

 

Ohio Republicans are so corrupt that former state House GOP Speaker Larry Householder was convicted on bribery charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he's serving out his sentence in a low-security federal prison in Elkton, Ohio.

 

There's a plan to get yet another redistricting amendment on the state ballot in 2024 that would abolish all lobbyists and politicians from the commission that would handle the new process, but even if that passes, there's no reason to believe the process would be fixed for 2026.

In Alabama, Republicans in the state legislature are openly ignoring a Supreme Court order to redraw the lines and are almost certainly going to get away with it.

 

Although Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided the fifth vote against Alabama’s maps in Milligan, he also wrote a brief and cryptic concurring opinion that seemed to suggest that the results test must have a sunset date. “Even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under §2 for some period of time,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

The Alabama GOP’s open defiance of the Court’s decision in Milligan suggests that it thinks it has a real shot of picking up Kavanaugh’s vote if this case goes up to the Supreme Court a second time. And this Court has shown such hostility toward the Voting Rights Act in the past that there is a decent chance that Alabama’s second attempt to gerrymander the state could prevail.

 

Wisconsin's GOP gerrymander is so bad that Republicans there are planning to fire the head of the state's non-partisan redistricting commission and then impeach the liberal state supreme court justice elected earlier this year, leaving the court deadlocked at 3-3 with no way forward and no way to continue with redistricting.

With a new supermajority, Republicans in the state Senate are moving to fire Meagan Wolfe, the administrator of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission who continues to be the target of false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Democrats say Republicans don’t have the power to remove Wolfe. Their battle could land in state courts – where the GOP is considering an unprecedented power grab and further partisan battles are brewing.

Just months after liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz won a 10-year Wisconsin Supreme Court term in a race that focused largely on abortion rights and gerrymandering, handing liberals a 4-3 majority on the bench after 15 years of conservative control, state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and other influential Republicans have floated the prospect of impeaching Protasiewicz. It would be a move that has only happened once in Wisconsin history – in 1853, when the Assembly voted to impeach a state judge accused of corruption, who was later acquitted by the Senate.

Further complicating the situation: Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, a Republican, has said the chamber would not consider acting on Protasiewicz. If the Assembly votes to impeach the justice and the Senate were to convict and remove her from office, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would appoint her replacement. But if the Senate takes no action at all, she would be suspended from all official duties – leaving the court deadlocked, 3-3.

Canon described that potential course of action as “an even more diabolical twist.”

“This is actually a more potent tool to dismantle the liberal majority by having an impeachment vote in the Assembly, which is just a majority vote, and then having the Senate do nothing. She basically is removed from office and can’t rule on any cases,” he said.

Meanwhile, the justices themselves are ensnared in a bitter, public feud – playing out before Protasiewicz has even ruled on a case. The conservative chief justice, Annette Ziegler, accused the liberal majority of a “coup” after the court’s four liberal members voted to weaken the chief justice’s powers and fire the conservative director of state courts.

 

Wisconsin is so gerrymandered that Republicans have a two-thirds supermajority in the state House and Senate while only getting 51% of the vote in November 2020, and it only got worse in 2022.

 

There's no reason whatsoever to believe Florida Republicans won't get away with this in 2024 and beyond. 

Labor Daze In Milwaukee

As Americans across the country celebrate Labor Day today, President Biden makes his case for Bidenomics in Wisconsin in an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

 

Three weeks ago, at a clean energy factory in Milwaukee, I met an IBEW electrician who builds and repairs America’s growing fleet of wind turbine generators. He said, “In America, with hard work and a little faith, anything is possible.”

He embodies the spirit of Labor Day, which honors the dignity of the American worker and recognizes that Wall Street didn’t build America, the middle class built America, and unions built the middle class.

We’ve seen that spirit throughout our history, especially over the last three years as we’ve been rebuilding our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not from the top down. Our plan, called Bidenomics, is working.

I’m proud of the historic laws I’ve signed that are leading our recovery and resurgence. More than 13 million jobs, including 800,000 in manufacturing. Unemployment below 4 percent for the longest stretch in 50 years. More working-age Americans are employed than at any time in the past 20 years. Inflation is near its lowest point in over two years. Wages and job satisfaction are up. Restoring the pensions of millions of retired union workers – the biggest step of its kind in the past fifty years.

But the real hero of our story is the American worker. It's nurses and homecare workers who put on protective gear and cared for our loved ones. It's truck drivers and grocery workers who get up every day to keep our shelves stocked. It's bricklayers, steelworkers and machinists who are restoring American leadership in the industries of the future.

We’ve attracted over $500 billion in private investment to make clean energy technology, semiconductors and other innovations here at home – creating good-paying jobs that don’t require a four-year degree. Under decades of trickle-down economics, we let jobs and factories go overseas, and China started to dominate manufacturing. Not anymore because we’ve investing in America. Those jobs are coming home and factories are being built here.

But there’s more to do. Here’s what else we are doing for America’s workers.

The Department of Labor is proposing a rule that would extend overtime pay to as many as 3.6 million workers. An honest day’s work should get a fair day’s of pay. A mom in Wisconsin who makes 37,500 a year and has sometimes worked 60-hour weeks could now be eligible to earn time and a half for all the time she works in a week over 40 hours. She can support her daughter and family.

While Congressional Republicans block increasing the minimum wage and attack unions, I will continue to make progress where I can. Last year, I signed an executive order requiring contractors who are doing business with the federal government to pay a minimum $15 an hour for hundreds of thousands of workers. This summer, we updated what’s called Davis-Bacon prevailing wages for the first time in 40 years. That means all those jobs we’re creating with federal investments will pay a prevailing wage you can raise a family on. I continue to call on Congress to pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, to make it easier for workers to organize and join a union and bargain collectively for better pay, benefits, and conditions.

Additionally, a new report from the Treasury Department this week provides the most comprehensive look ever at how unions are good for America. It definitively concludes that unions help raise incomes; increase homeownership and retirement savings; and reduce inequality, all of which strengthen our economy.

 

And all these things are true, and yet more Americans believe the economy is worse now than it was under Trump in the depths of his pandemic economic collapse that put 20 million Americans out of work. 

Recency bias works both ways. In politics, it's always "But what have you done for me today?" Biden makes that case here, but he's largely going to be ignored as three-quarters of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, say Biden is too old to even be running in 2024.

It's a Trump v. Biden race unless something fundamental gives in the next year, and that race is effectively tied despite Trump facing scores of federal and state felonies.

We're facing obliteration, and yet it's still the damn horse race.

Burnout, Paradise

Monsoon rains and flash flooding on Friday have turned this year's Burning Man Festival into a Quagmire Survival Hell, with police blocking people from trying otherwise impassible roads, and festival goers spending the weekend eking by on whatever food, water, and shelter they brought in for the weekend.

 

Tens of thousands of people attending the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert are being told to conserve food, water and fuel as they shelter in place in the Black Rock Desert after a heavy rainstorm pummeled the area, festival organizers said.

Attendees saw their campsites transformed by thick, ankle-deep mud and organizers halted vehicles from traveling in or out of the festival after heavy rains started saturating the area Friday evening. Some festival-goers hiked miles to reach main roads while others hoped storms forecast to hit the area overnight wouldn’t worsen conditions.

Hannah Burhorn, a first-time attendee at the festival, told CNN in a phone interview Saturday the desert sand has turned into thick clay and puddles and mud are everywhere. People are wrapping trash bags and Ziploc bags around their shoes to avoid getting stuck, while others are walking around barefoot.

“It’s unavoidable at this point,” she said. “It’s in the bed of the truck, inside the truck. People who have tried to bike through it and have gotten stuck because it’s about ankle deep.”

The gate and airport into Black Rock City, a remote area in northwest Nevada, remain closed and no driving is allowed into or out of the city except for emergency vehicles, the organizers said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“Do not travel to Black Rock City! Access to the city is closed for the remainder of the event, and you will be turned around,” one statement read.

More than 70,000 people attend the weeklong event annually, which this year is being held from August 28 to September 4. It’s unclear how many of those were stranded due to the weather.

The city is expecting more showers overnight on Saturday, organizers said in a weather forecast update. The National Weather Service said showers and thunderstorms are expected to return Saturday evening and continue throughout Sunday, with temperatures ranging from highs in the 70s to a low overnight of 49 degrees. Labor Day, on Monday when the event is scheduled to end, forecasts show the area will heat up and dry out with clear skis and a high of 75 degrees.

Rainfall reports from the National Weather Service suggest up to 0.8 inches of rain fell in the area from Friday morning through Saturday morning – approximately two to three months of rainfall for that location this time of year. Even small rainfall totals can lead to flooding in the dry Nevada desert.

Flood watches were in effect in northeast Nevada, to the east of Black Rock City. Those watches noted individual storms were producing up to one inch of rainfall, but higher totals — as much as 3 inches — would be possible through the weekend.

 

I think Burning Man, like SXSW, is a nice idea, but the practice is a disaster. Outdoor festivals and concerts are only going to get more dangerous as climate change gets worse. 

More and more, insurance for disasters like these are becoming impossible.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Actual swastika flag-carrying Nazis sure love GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's policies in Florida, especially the war against "woke" corporations like Disney, and they'll gladly tell you they're on his side as they openly march in public.

Members of white supremacist and antisemitic hate groups marched outside Orlando, Florida, on Saturday screaming invectives, raising the Nazi salute, and yelling “Heil Hitler” and “white power.”

“We are everywhere!” neo-Nazis can be heard shouting in a video shared by former Florida House of Representatives member Anna V. Eskamani. Later in the footage, they yelled, “Heil Hitler” while performing a Nazi salute.

Nazis in Altamonte Springs at Cranes Roost Park screaming “we are every where” — absolutely disgusting stuff and another example of the far right extremism growing in FL. pic.twitter.com/ixgKWcsJk6— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) September 2, 2023

 

Days before the march, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism warned it was coming. “Two extremist groups, the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and Blood Tribe (BT), are planning to gather in Florida in September 2023 for a joint, public demonstration(s) they are calling the ‘March of the Redshirts,'” the center said in a community advisory shared via email on Thursday.

The ADL describes the Goyim Defense League as “a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism” with an “overarching goal” to “expel Jews from America.” The organization characterizes Blood Tribe, led by white supremacist Christopher Pohlhaus, as “a growing neo-Nazi group that claims to have chapters across the United States and Canada.”

“Blood Tribe presents itself as a hardcore white supremacist group and rejects white supremacists who call for softer ‘optics,'” the ADL writes.

In video captured by News2Share’s Ford Fischer, the groups chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” and “Jews get the rope.”

Pohlhaus appeared to lead portions of the march. When Pohlhaus yelled, “Heil the führer!” others responded with, “Heil Hitler!”

Speaking to reporters, Pohlhaus said, “We just have to start a fire. We’re the kindling. Once we set the fire, we get the fire hot, then we get the rest of our brothers blazing.”

“This is just the beginning,” Pohlhaus added later.

When another reporter asked a marcher what they were marching for, he responded, “White power.”

Some of the marchers individually expressed their distaste for Donald Trump, saying they prefer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. When right-wing figure Laura Loomer appeared at the march, recording the Neo-Nazis with her cell phone, the crowd began to chant “faggot, faggot” in her direction. Loomer explained she was at the rally because she was getting her hair done nearby.

“We’re not voting Trump, Laura!” one marcher shouted at her. “We’re not voting for the right wing! It’s the kike wing.”

At this, another marcher shouted, “We’re all DeSantis supporters!”

Before the neo-Nazis gathered in Florida, News2Share reported on another smaller rally taking place outside California’s Disney World where approximately 10 people who identified as “Order of the Black Sun” destroyed a rainbow pride flag near the park’s entrance. One marcher carried a Ron DeSantis 2024 flag. Another held a sign that read, “Did you thank Hitler today?"

 

It should be the end of DeSantis's career. Sadly, it's only going to raise his poll numbers a bit among his fellow racist Republican domestic terrorists.

Sunday Long Read: Af-Gone-Istan Chronicles

Our Sunday Long Read is Franklin Foer's account of the Biden Administration's "withdrawal" from Afghanistan in The Atlantic, two years after the White House figured that leaving the country we had occupied for two decades was somehow going to go smoothly in any way, and not turn into one of the biggest clusterfuck codas in the history of US foreign policy.

 

August is the month when oppressive humidity causes the mass evacuation of official Washington. In 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki piled her family into the car for a week at the beach. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Hamptons to visit his elderly father. Their boss left for the leafy sanctuary of Camp David.

They knew that when they returned, their attention would shift to a date circled at the end of the month. On August 31, the United States would officially complete its withdrawal from Afghanistan, concluding the longest war in American history.

The State Department didn’t expect to solve Afghanistan’s problems by that date. But if everything went well, there was a chance to wheedle the two warring sides into some sort of agreement that would culminate in the nation’s president, Ashraf Ghani, resigning from office, beginning an orderly transfer of power to a governing coalition that included the Taliban. There was even discussion of Blinken flying out, most likely to Doha, Qatar, to preside over the signing of an accord.

It would be an ending, but not the end. Within the State Department there was a strongly held belief: Even after August 31, the embassy in Kabul would remain open. It wouldn’t be as robustly staffed, but some aid programs would continue; visas would still be issued. The United States—at least not the State Department—wasn’t going to abandon the country.

There were plans for catastrophic scenarios, which had been practiced in tabletop simulations, but no one anticipated that they would be needed. Intelligence assessments asserted that the Afghan military would be able to hold off the Taliban for months, though the number of months kept dwindling as the Taliban conquered terrain more quickly than the analysts had predicted. But as August began, the grim future of Afghanistan seemed to exist in the distance, beyond the end of the month, not on America’s watch.

That grim future arrived disastrously ahead of schedule. What follows is an intimate history of that excruciating month of withdrawal, as narrated by its participants, based on dozens of interviews conducted shortly after the fact, when memories were fresh and emotions raw. At times, as I spoke with these participants, I felt as if I was their confessor. Their failings were so apparent that they had a desperate need to explain themselves, but also an impulse to relive moments of drama and pain more intense than any they had experienced in their career.

During those fraught days, foreign policy, so often debated in the abstract, or conducted from the sanitized remove of the Situation Room, became horrifyingly vivid. President Joe Biden and his aides found themselves staring hard at the consequences of their decisions.

Even in the thick of the crisis, as the details of a mass evacuation swallowed them, the members of Biden’s inner circle could see that the legacy of the month would stalk them into the next election—and perhaps into their obituaries. Though it was a moment when their shortcomings were on obvious display, they also believed it evinced resilience and improvisational skill.

And amid the crisis, a crisis that taxed his character and managerial acumen, the president revealed himself. For a man long caricatured as a political weather vane, Biden exhibited determination, even stubbornness, despite furious criticism from the establishment figures whose approval he usually craved. For a man vaunted for his empathy, he could be detached, even icy, when confronted with the prospect of human suffering.

When it came to foreign policy, Joe Biden possessed a swaggering faith in himself. He liked to knock the diplomats and pundits who would pontificate at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Munich Security Conference. He called them risk-averse, beholden to institutions, lazy in their thinking. Listening to these complaints, a friend once posed the obvious question: If you have such negative things to say about these confabs, then why attend so many of them? Biden replied, “If I don’t go, they’re going to get stale as hell.”

From 12 years as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—and then eight years as the vice president—Biden had acquired a sense that he could scythe through conventional wisdom. He distrusted mandarins, even those he had hired for his staff. They were always muddying things with theories. One aide recalled that he would say, “You foreign-policy guys, you think this is all pretty complicated. But it’s just like family dynamics.” Foreign affairs was sometimes painful, often futile, but really it was emotional intelligence applied to people with names that were difficult to pronounce. Diplomacy, in Biden’s view, was akin to persuading a pain-in-the-ass uncle to stop drinking so much.

One subject seemed to provoke his contrarian side above all others: the war in Afghanistan. His strong opinions were grounded in experience. Soon after the United States invaded, in late 2001, Biden began visiting the country. He traveled with a sleeping bag; he stood in line alongside Marines, wrapped in a towel, waiting for his turn to shower.

On his first trip, in 2002, Biden met with Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni in his Kabul office, a shell of a building. Qanuni, an old mujahideen fighter, told him: We really appreciate that you have come here. But Americans have a long history of making promises and then breaking them. And if that happens again, the Afghan people are going to be disappointed.

Biden was jet-lagged and irritable. Qanuni’s comments set him off: Let me tell you, if you even think of threatening us … Biden’s aides struggled to calm him down.

In Biden’s moral code, ingratitude is a grievous sin. The United States had evicted the Taliban from power; it had sent young men to die in the nation’s mountains; it would give the new government billions in aid. But throughout the long conflict, Afghan officials kept telling him that the U.S. hadn’t done enough.

The frustration stuck with him, and it clarified his thinking. He began to draw unsentimental conclusions about the war. He could see that the Afghan government was a failed enterprise. He could see that a nation-building campaign of this scale was beyond American capacity.

As vice president, Biden also watched as the military pressured Barack Obama into sending thousands of additional troops to salvage a doomed cause. In his 2020 memoir, A Promised Land, Obama recalled that as he agonized over his Afghan policy, Biden pulled him aside and told him, “Listen to me, boss. Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.” He drew close and whispered, “Don’t let them jam you.”

Biden developed a theory of how he would succeed where Obama had failed. He wasn’t going to let anyone jam him.

 

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

I don't 100% blame Biden, he was dealing with two decades of US foreign policy fuckups and got enough cans kicked at him by Dubya, Obama and Trump that he could have opened a recycling plant.  But the hubris displayed here is shocking, even for someone who has documented almost daily the abundant US foreign policy disasters in 13 of those 20 years on this blog.

Frankly, this was never going to end any other way. "We never should have been there in the first place" is easy to say, and that's because it's 100% true.

The Passing Of Two Ambassadors

Two men who represented vastly different things, and yet were both ambassadors of worldwide renown, have passed. First, tropical rocker Jimmy Buffett, the Mayor of Margaritaville himself, has gone into his final sandy sunset. Buffett's fame was so pervasive that even President Biden noted his passing.

A poet of paradise, Jimmy Buffett was an American music icon who inspired generations to step back and find the joy in life and in one another.

His witty, wistful songs celebrate a uniquely American cast of characters and seaside folkways, weaving together an unforgettable musical mix of country, folk, rock, pop, and calypso into something uniquely his own.

We had the honor to meet and get to know Jimmy over the years, and he was in life as he was performing on stage – full of goodwill and joy, using his gift to bring people together.

Over more than 50 studio and live albums and thousands of performances to devoted Parrot Heads around the world, Jimmy reminded us how much the simple things in life matter – the people we love, the places we’re from, the hopes we have on the horizon.

A two-time Grammy nominee and winner of multiple country music awards, he was also a best-selling writer, businessman, pilot, and conservationist who championed the waters and Gulf Coast that he so loved.

Jill and I send our love to his wife of 46 years, Jane; to their children, Savannah, Sarah, and Cameron; to their grandchildren; and to the millions of fans who will continue to love him even as his ship now sails for new shores.

 

A second ambassador has also left us, former UN Ambassador and Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

Bill Richardson, a two-term Democratic governor of New Mexico and an American ambassador to the United Nations who also worked for years to secure the release of Americans detained by foreign adversaries, has died. He was 75.

The Richardson Center for Global Engagement, which he founded and led, said in a statement Saturday that he died in his sleep at his home in Chatham, Massachusetts.

“He lived his entire life in the service of others — including both his time in government and his subsequent career helping to free people held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” said Mickey Bergman, the center’s vice president. “There was no person that Gov. Richardson would not speak with if it held the promise of returning a person to freedom. The world has lost a champion for those held unjustly abroad and I have lost a mentor and a dear friend.”

Before his election in 2002 as governor, Richardson was the U.S. envoy to the United Nations and energy secretary under President Bill Clinton and served 14 years as a congressman representing northern New Mexico.

But he also forged an identity as an unofficial diplomatic troubleshooter. He traveled the globe negotiating the release of hostages and American servicemen from North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan and bargained with a who’s who of America’s adversaries, including Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It was a role that Richardson relished, once describing himself as “the informal undersecretary for thugs.”

“I plead guilty to photo-ops and getting human beings rescued and improving the lives of human beings,” he once told reporters.

He helped secure the 2021 release of American journalist Danny Fenster from a Myanmar prison and this year negotiated the freedom of Taylor Dudley, who crossed the border from Poland into Russia. He flew to Moscow for a meeting with Russian government officials in the months before the release last year of Marine veteran Trevor Reed in a prisoner swap and also worked on the cases of Brittney Griner, the WNBA star freed by Moscow last year, and Michael White, a Navy veteran freed by Iran in 2020.

 

Both men made the world a better place with their decades of work.

 

The Road From Gilead Is Being Watched In Texas

More and more local and county jurisdictions in Texas are passing home rule versions of the state's "abortion bounty bill", making it a crime to "traffic" those passing through county roads, lanes, highways and byways on the way to states like neighboring New Mexico to get an abortion procedure.

 

More than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, many conservatives have grown frustrated by the number of people able to circumvent antiabortion laws — with some advocates grasping for even stricter measures they hope will fully eradicate abortion nationwide.

That frustration is driving a new strategy in heavily conservative cities and counties across Texas. Designed by the architects of the state’s “heartbeat” ban that took effect months before Roe fell, ordinances like the one proposed in Llano — where some 80 percent of voters in the county backed President Donald Trump in 2020 — make it illegal to transport anyone to get an abortion on roads within the city or county limits. The laws allow any private citizen to sue a person or organization they suspect of violating the ordinance.

Antiabortion advocates behind the measure are targeting regions along interstates and in areas with airports, with the goal of blocking off the main arteries out of Texas and keeping pregnant women hemmed within the confines of their antiabortion state. These provisions have already passed in two counties and two cities, creating legal risk for those traveling on major highways including Interstate 20 and Route 84, which head toward New Mexico, where abortion remains legal and new clinics have opened to accommodate Texas women. Several more jurisdictions are expected to vote on the measure in the coming weeks.

“This really is building a wall to stop abortion trafficking,” said Mark Lee Dickson, the antiabortion activist behind the effort.

Conservative lawmakers started exploring ways to block interstate abortion travel long before Roe was overturned. A Missouri legislator introduced a law in early 2022 that would have allowed any private citizen to sue anyone who helped a Missouri resident secure an abortion, regardless of where the abortion occurred — an approach later discussed at length by several national antiabortion groups. In April, Idaho became the first state to impose criminal penalties on anyone who helps a minor leave the state for an abortion without parental consent.

But even in the most conservative corners of Texas, efforts to crack down on abortion travel are meeting some resistance — with some local officials, even those deeply supportive of Texas’s strict abortion laws, expressing concern that the “trafficking” efforts go too far and could harm their communities.

The pushback reflects a new point of tension in the post-Roe debate among antiabortion advocates over how aggressively to restrict the procedure, with some Republicans in other states fearing a backlash from voters who support abortion rights. In small-town Texas, the concerns are more practical than political.

Two weeks before the Llano vote, lawmakers in Chandler, Tex., held off passing the ordinance, citing concerns about legal ramifications for the town and how the measure might conflict with existing Texas laws.

“I believe we’re making a mistake if we do this,” said Chandler council member Janeice Lunsford, minutes before she and her colleagues agreed to push the vote to another time. She later told The Washington Post that she felt the state’s abortion ban already did enough to stop abortions in Texas.

Then came the Llano City Council meeting on Aug. 21. Speaking to the crowd, Almond was careful to emphasize her antiabortion beliefs.

“I hate abortion,” she said. “I’m a Jesus lover like all of you in here.”

Still, she said, she couldn’t help thinking about the time in college when she picked up a friend from an abortion clinic — and how someone might have tried to punish her under this law.

“It’s overreaching,” she said. “We’re talking about people here.”

 

She's so very close to getting it, isn't she?

I expect that the question of these illegal search and seizure attempts are going to end up in front of SCOTUS in the next year or two, because if you can be sued into civil court oblivion for tens of thousands of dollars in damages for driving someone to an abortion clinic out of state, your interstate travel can then be stopped for any reason states deem fit.

Down that road is fascism, very much so.

Last Call For The Revolutions Will Be Televised

In the last six weeks, Niger overthrew its western-friendly government causing EU to scramble for possible sanctions,  and now Gabon's five decade long Bongo dynasty has been deposed.

Military officers in Gabon said they were seizing power Wednesday, just minutes after President Ali Bongo was declared the winner of a controversial election marred by violence and allegations of vote rigging.

The officers who appeared on state television Wednesday announced the closure of borders and dissolved state institutions including the Senate, National Assembly and Constitutional Court. They said in a later statement that Bongo was under house arrest.

Bongo, who was seeking a third term in office, came to power following the death of his father, Omar Bongo, in 2009, after more than four decades in power. Both men were key allies of the oil-rich country’s former colonial power, France, and the family is believed to have amassed significant wealth — which is the subject of a judicial investigation in France.

Gabon is generally considered more stable than other countries that have experienced unrest in recent years, but it now appears set to join a growing list of junta-led states — including Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali and Sudan — that create a geographical belt of turmoil across sub-Saharan Africa.

Rebel soldiers in Niger deposed the country’s Western-allied president, Mohamed Bazoum, on July 26 amid political upheaval, a rise in Islamist extremism and growing Russian influence across the region.

Britain, France, Germany and the European Union announced the end of aid to Niger after the ouster, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States could follow suit. So far, President Biden has not labeled the situation a coup.

A key regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), said in August that it was prepared for military intervention and had decided on a “D-Day” for intervention — though it did not give a date and said diplomacy was still possible.

Coup supporters in Niger’s capital, Niamey, as well as in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, have been spotted waving Russian flags, and experts say uncertainty around the coup leaders’ motivation may hamper Western attempts to restore Bazoum through diplomacy.

The coup has also thrust the fate of Niger’s uranium to center stage as experts say European countries may have to grapple with the effects on the nuclear industry — especially in France, which evacuated European nationals from the country but has resisted an ultimatum from the coup leaders for its ambassador to leave.

 

The sub-Saharan belt of revolutions, coups, and juntas stretches coast-to-coast from Guinea in the West to Sudan in the east, to show you just how expansive this has been in the last two-plus years.

 

The world may be focused on Ukraine and Europe right now, but Africa is where the seeds of change are spreading like wildfire, and they are being watered by blood and tears.

The Revelation Will Be Televised

Fulton County, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee is confirming that like nearly all legal proceedings in the county, the case against Donald Trump will be televised and steamed on the internet.

 

A Fulton County judge on Thursday said that all court proceedings in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants will be live streamed and televised.

Judge Scott McAfee also said he is following the precedent set by fellow Fulton Judge Robert McBurney; all hearings and trials will be broadcast on the Fulton County Court YouTube channel.

In an order issued Thursday, McAfee said members of the media would be allowed to use computers and cellphones inside the courtroom for non-recording purposes during court proceedings. There will be pool coverage for television, radio and still photography.

The proceedings — especially those involving Trump himself — are expected to attract international attention.

The transparency in the county court stands in stark contrast to federal court. In Monday’s hearing on whether White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows should have his case transferred to U.S. District Court, journalists were barred from bringing cell phones, laptops and cameras into the Richard B. Russell federal building.

 

I think it's well within a national interest perspective to televise and stream Trump's federal cases too, but hey, I'm just a US citizen, what do I know.

 

But man, I can't wait to see Trump sweating at the defense table, knowing he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.