|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 7:48:39 GMT -8
These are things people actually said in court.
============================================
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
Hoist By His Own Attorney
Donald Trump's lawyer told the former president he could not hold onto classified materials after he was ordered to hand them over, and federal prosecutors have proof.
Attorney Evan Corcoran found about 40 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago last June but told the Justice Department that no further materials were at the private residence, which later was shown to be false after the FBI returned in August with a warrant and seized 101 classified documents, reported The Guardian.
Corcoran preserved that warning in his contemporaneous notes, which prosecutors showed to a grand jury after an appeals court allowed attorney-client privilege to be pierced because they found Trump might have used his attorney's advice to commit a crime.
Prosecutors have zeroed in on Trump valet Walt Nauta, who told investigators the former president told him to move boxes from the storage room before and after the subpoena was issued for the documents' return, and surveillance video shows him doing just that, although there are some gaps in the footage.
IN OTHER NEWS: Former Republican congressman explains why he no longer wants to raise his family in Florida
The notes show that Corcoran told the valet about the subpoena before he started looking for the classified documents because the attorney needed him to unlock the storage room, and they also show that Nauta offered to help him look through the boxes.
Corcoran declined and told the valet to remain outside the storage room, but his search lasted several days -- much longer than expected.
The notes also suggest the storage room might have been left unattended for some periods while the search was conducted while Corcoran took breaks to walk to the nearby pool area.
Corcoran described Trump's facial expressions and other reactions when they discussed the subpoena, and Trump reportedly was irritated by the high level of detail in his attorney's notes, which he only learned about after they were subpoenaed by prosecutors.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:00:47 GMT -8
If You Think the Worst Thing SCOTUS Can Do is Overturn Roe, You are SERIOUSLY Underestimating the Risk.SCOtuS is undermining the ability of Federal agencies to regulate business. If they continue to do this: - The EPA would no longer be able to stop factories and mines from polluting
- The FDA would no longer be able to regulate drugs for safety and effectiveness
- The FDA would no longer be able to try to keep food safe. (Before the FDA, lead and formaldehyde were common in foods
- The Dept of Transportation would no longer be able to set standards for auto, train, and air safety, let alone fuel efficiency standards.
- OSHA could do nothing to insure safety in the workplace.
- And so on
In short, we would go back to to the 1800's, when there were no constraints on business, and not protection for the public.
This is not an accident. This is what billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife and Charles Koch have been working toward. Capitalist paradise and hell for everyone else.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:02:18 GMT -8
In the Deep Depths of Internet Hell
Right-wing podcast host Stephen Crowder and his co-hosts mocked the NAACP's Florida travel advisory in a broadcast Monday.
In a statement over the weekend, the organization said that the state has been "openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ individuals" under Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
On Monday, Crowder laughed about the advisory.
"They're issuing a warning, right, a warning for Black people to go to Florida because they're claiming that Ron DeSantis and some of his educational legislation is racism and is going to foment hatred and is going to create more hate crimes," Crowder explained.
"A travel advisory!" co-host Gerald Morgan exclaimed. "Usually, that's when war has broken out in the country."
"Or like a bad weather pattern," Crowder laughed. "Careful! There's a 60% chance of white."
"It's a whiteout," guest host Nick DiPaolo agreed.
ADVERTISEMENT
"Maybe they had a travel advisory because of the humidity," Crowder joked. "I know that it gets frizzy."
"There's a gust of honky," DiPaolo remarked.
"After the advisory went up, 49 governors called the NAACP asking if they could be added to the list," Crowder said.
"Some people say, good, stay the hell away," DiPaolo quipped. "It's the sunshine state. You guys obviously don't need any more sunshine."
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:04:04 GMT -8
Today's Safety Tip: Don't Pull the Pin
An Indiana man was killed and his two children injured after a hand grenade found in a grandfather's belongings exploded, say police.
The blast happened on Saturday evening in Lake of the Four Seasons, a community about 140 miles (225km) north-west of Indianapolis.
Police believe someone pulled the pin on the device.
The father died and his 14-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter suffered shrapnel wounds.
While deaths from unexploded ordnance are extremely rare in the US, they are not unheard of.
In 2020, a 12-year-old boy in Virginia was killed when a Second World War hand grenade bought at a local flea market exploded.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:07:12 GMT -8
You Can Add Me to the List, Vlad. I Make Fun of Previous Guy.
There’s a new list of 500 Americans Vladimir Putin has banned from traveling to or having business in Russia, and it’s a who’s who of Donald Trump’s enemies. Putin is using American sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine as an excuse for the travel bans, but his real reason seems clear: to strengthen his alliance with Trump and MAGA Republicans.
From Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who refused to find those 11,780 votes for Trump in 2020, to Letitia James, the state attorney general of New York who is currently prosecuting Trump, and late-night variety show hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers, who ridicule Trump on a nightly basis. Oh, and former President Barack Obama.
It sounds like Trump wrote the talking points, as the list cites “those in government and law enforcement agencies who are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called storming of the Capitol,” including special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump’s hoarding of classified documents and his efforts to steal the 2020 election, and Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:08:25 GMT -8
Bingo!
Meanwhile ...
GOP ratchets up debt ceiling demands
Congressional Republicans have not only rejected a new White House offer to essentially freeze domestic spending at FY2023 levels, they’re now demanding work requirements for SNAP recipients that are more rigid than those they originally proposed. They’re also insisting on adding new immigration provisions from the GOP’s recently passed border bill — which, mind you, Republicans didn’t include in their own debt ceiling bill.
The GOP’s dug-in position comes at the end of a week when both President JOE BIDEN and Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY acknowledged that a budget deal would have to be bipartisan. Vote-counters on the Hill believe that any eventual deal will need the backing of about 100 House Democrats since a number of conservatives will never support a compromise. Yet given what Republican negotiators are now countering, they’re far from that number.
The White House is not happy with the new GOP demands. This morning, Biden told reporters that the GOP needs to move off their “extreme positions.”
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:17:29 GMT -8
It May Not Be the Jolliest Place on Earth Much Longer
Florida-born and raised former Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) is thinking about leaving the Sunshine State with his family because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) authoritarian policies.
Jolly, who quit the GOP in 2018, on Sunday said DeSantis’ attacks on migrants, the LGBTQ community and African Americans leaves him feeling “unwelcome simply for my embrace of diversity of thought and as an ally” of those groups, even though he’s a “white, evangelical, straight male.”
“Why would I want to raise my kids in an environment in which they’re shamed for embracing diversity of thought and diverse cultures?” Jolly asked on MSNBC.
“I want my children to be exposed to as much diversity as possible, and at home my wife and I can orient our family around the value set that’s right for us and prepare our kids to make decisions that are ultimately right for them as adults,” he continued. “That’s not permissible in the state of Florida. You’re shamed for it, you’re unwelcome.”
“So yes, look, we consider every day whether to raise our kids in Florida. And I think it’s representative of thousands upon thousands of Floridians here in the Sunshine State,” Jolly added.
Jolly’s comments echoed those he made to Time magazine, in which he lamented the shift Florida has undergone under DeSantis.
“It’s in the air, it’s everywhere, it’s amazing,” he said of the proliferation of so-called culture wars in the state. “It’s between neighbors, it’s when you go to restaurants, when you go to schools. You’re on one side or the other, and people know it.”
Even DeathSentence is About to Announce He Wants to Leave Florida
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:19:39 GMT -8
Colorado Rocky Mountains May Be High, but the Colorado River Isn't
The Biden administration has reached a landmark deal with states dependent on the Colorado River to conserve water amid the decadeslong drought.
States will be required to conserve an unprecedented 3 million-acre-feet of water through 2026 in exchange for about $1 billion in federal funding, the White House announced in a press release Monday.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:24:04 GMT -8
TikTok is Educational. It Teaches Teens to Be CriminalsThousands of Kia and Hyundai owners across the country whose cars were stolen or damaged in the past two years. The sharp uptick has been linked to viral videos, posted to TikTok and other social media platforms, teaching people how to start the cars with USB cables and exploit a security vulnerability in some models sold in the U.S. without engine immobilizers, a standard feature on most cars since the 1990s preventing the engine from starting unless the key is present. But unlike some social media-driven trends that seemingly disappear just as police get a handle on them, the car thefts have continued. Hyundai has tried to work with TikTok and other platforms to remove the videos, but as new ones surface fresh waves of thefts occur, illustrating the lingering effects of dangerous content that gains traction with teens looking for ways to go viral. It’s a phenomenon known as performance crime. Police departments in a dozen cities have said it factors into an increase they’ve seen in juveniles arrested or charged with car thefts. Still, criminology experts caution that the role teens are playing in the theft increases — which began during the pandemic and aren't limited to Kia and Hyundai — may be artificially inflated because teenagers inexperienced at crime are more likely to be caught. TikTok and other social media trends are thrusting performance crimes into the US spotlight
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:26:09 GMT -8
The Fix Was In, and the Government Covered It UpUK and US regulators were told of a state-led drive to "rig" interest rates in the 2008 financial crisis, but covered it up, evidence indicates. Documents suggest lenders sharply dropped their interest rate estimates after pressure from central banks. Evidence was not shown to juries where bankers were jailed for smaller-scale interest rate "rigging". Regulators said they had followed disclosure rules, declined to comment or in one case rebutted the claims. At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, when bank lending had almost ground to a halt, central banks around the world urged calm. But behind the scenes, the investigation reveals evidence that they were pulling levers to restore calm artificially - measures which would later be ruled to be against the law in the UK. Those measures related to benchmark interest rates called Libor and Euribor, which track how much it costs banks to borrow money from each other. As such they are a big influence on the cost of mortgages and other loans. The more confidence investors had in the borrowing bank, the lower the rate. The higher the rate, the more doubts the market had about the viability of that bank. Interest rate 'rigging' evidence 'covered up' by banks
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:29:42 GMT -8
Russia is Trying to Capture the Rest of Bakhmut, While Ukraine Attacks on the Flanks. Haven't the Russians Heard of the Pincer Moverment. Germany Encircled Russian Armies in Both World Wars.
|
|
|
|
Post by mhbruin on May 22, 2023 8:30:56 GMT -8
Can You Tell Where the Counteroffensive Will Be?
Neither Can I
|
|
