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Post by mhbruin on Sept 30, 2023 8:00:55 GMT -8
It's hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally.
Have the Sun Devils Been Out in the Sun Too Long?
Donors and alumni are outraged that Arizona State University is defending failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in a defamation lawsuit.
The Republican Senate hopeful, who claims she's the state's "lawful governor" despite her election loss, has been sued by Maricopa County recorder Stephen Richer over her allegedly false election claims, and the university's First Amendment Clinic filed a motion to dismiss the case, reported the Washington Post.
“I'm upset that my school is involved in helping her out, but that's a personal thing," said Tom Ryan, an ASU law school alum. "More importantly, why is this legal clinic being involved with somebody who has way more than enough money, has way more than enough attorneys, on an issue where they’re more likely than not to get their butts kicked?”
The clinic joined Lake for America and the Save America Fund in fling a motion for Arizona Superior Court judge Jay Adleman to dismiss Richer's suit, and Gregg Leslie, a longtime media lawyer and the clinic's executive director, said the case gave law students a chance to work on a possibly precedent-setting legal matter and test the parameters of the state's law against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 30, 2023 8:03:38 GMT -8
Some Folks Say We Need to Understand MAGAs. We Need to Understand This??
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 30, 2023 8:04:54 GMT -8
Soon There Will Be More Flipping than a Tiddley Winks Tournament
That brings us to today and Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was facing seven charges in the Fulton County case, including a RICO violation and conspiring to steal sensitive election data in Coffee County. This afternoon, with little advance notice, Hall pled guilty to five misdemeanors, will serve five years of probation, pay a $5,000 fine, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. It’s the sort of deal that is so beneficial to a defendant that it suggests prosecutors believe his cooperation is valuable enough to merit the bargain.
So what might Hall be able to do? It’s not clear how important of a role he played in the overall scheme, and who he might have had direct communications with. But Hall was in the thick of things with Sidney Powell when she went to Coffee County, Georgia on January 7, the day after the insurrection, to carry out her scheme to illegally access voting machines. Hall’s cooperation is a bad sign for Powell. And Powell, in turn, had conversations about pursuing the Big Lie with others in the group and was in the room with Trump during some of the key conversations.
Sidney Powell isn't the only Trump co-defendant who should be concerned by Hall’s plea deal. Hall reportedly had an hour long call with Jeff Clark on January 2nd. That’s a long time for the Georgia bail bondsman to have been on the line with the Attorney General-wannabe who wanted to push states Biden won to call those results into question based on untrue allegations of fraud to try and swing the electoral vote call to Trump. It’s unlikely the call was just an hour of pleasantries. Precisely what was said and how good Hall’s recollection is—and whether or not he has contemporaneous notes or other verification of what took place during the call—remains to be seen.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 30, 2023 8:07:13 GMT -8
This is Unbearable
A looming government shutdown threatens to claw its way into a crowd-pleasing Alaska tradition: Fat Bear Week.
Alaska's most-watched popularity contest, Fat Bear Week involves residents picking their favorite fat brown bear who's been stocking up for winter by noshing on salmon in Katmai National Park & Preserve. Viewers of the bears online vote in tournament-style brackets for those they want to advance to the next round until a champion is crowned in the weeklong contest.
More than 1 million votes were cast last year.
Problem is, national park employees count and release those votes — and a shutdown won't allow them to do so because it would trigger a ban on using the park's official social media accounts for as long as the government is closed.
“Should a lapse happen, we will need to postpone Fat Bear Week,” Cynthia Hernandez, a park spokesperson, said in an email to The Associated Press.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 30, 2023 8:09:03 GMT -8
Biting the Hands That Feed Them. Of Course, Congress Keeps Getting Paid.
They’re so familiar on Capitol Hill, they almost blend into the woodwork. In the background at everything from weekly party lunches that generate headlines to low-profile state congressional delegation receptions, members of the U.S. Capitol’s catering staff have perfected the art of being present without being seen.
And if the government shuts down, they’ll be without a paycheck.
“Me and my co-workers, we basically live check by check,” Paulo Pizarro, a 17-year veteran of the Senate-side catering, told HuffPost.
A shutdown, which looks increasingly likely as House Republicans are in a standoff against the White House and most of the Senate over a stopgap spending bill, would send a huge swath of government workers home temporarily.
Some of those will be within the Capitol itself, a sort of self-contained city where the grandeur of being a temple of democracy is only made possible by the behind-the-scenes efforts of an army of cooks, security and maintenance staffers.
But unlike many of the workers in the Capitol, the caterers work for food service contractors. While federal employees are guaranteed to be made whole with back pay once a shutdown ends, the same is not true of government contractors.
“This is going to impact us very badly because we don’t know if we’re going to have a job for two, three weeks, four weeks, a month. We don’t know how long a government shutdown is going to be,” Pizarro said.
He Don't Care!
With the Republican-forced government shutdown approaching on Saturday, at midnight, Republican Rep. Brandon Williamson of New York was interviewed on C-SPAN. Williamson is a former Wall Street banker and tech entrepreneur who eked out a victory in 2022 in a district President Joe Biden won by a sizable margin in 2020. Before C-SPAN had callers ask questions, the New York representative had managed most of the interview offering up standard (and saccharine) tighten-the-belt talking points while equivocating on what was actually being done by his majority party to avert a shutdown.
Then one Kentucky caller asked two questions: whether or not Williamson would forgo his congressional paycheck if a government shutdown occurred, and for him to explain why Donald Trump remained the “standard bearer” of the Republican Party. Williamson failed spectacularly at the first question. He didn’t do so hot with the second question either.
After being told that he technically still gets paid even if he and his caucus can’t get their act together, Williamson responded that he would take the paycheck. Don’t you worry, Williamson wasn’t done, grabbing a metaphorical shovel so he could dig his ditch even deeper. “Our job does not end in a shutdown. We don't get to stay home. We stay there and make it work,” he said, clearly forgetting that many others in the government who won’t get paid will do that as well. He then added, “I am not independently wealthy, and we are like any other family. We want to stay focused on the job and not be manipulated by our own financial circumstances to do what's right for America.”
The Steve Bannon-endorsed MAGA New York Republican, whose previous investment banking job gave way to an entrepreneurial tech career and whose estimated wealth is between $3.1 and $8 million, very quickly felt the blowback as clips from the interview went viral.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 30, 2023 8:11:00 GMT -8
The Potato Heads Who Banned Abortion Never Considered This.
If you’re pregnant in Bonner County, Idaho, you’ll likely spend a lot of time on Route 95.
Bonner General Health, a 25-bed hospital, discontinued obstetrics, labor and delivery services this year. So for residents, Route 95 is the way to the closest in-state hospital with obstetrics care, which is at least an hour’s drive south — or longer in the snowy winter.
The hospital, which staffed the county’s only OB-GYNs, cited the state’s “legal and political climate” as one of the reasons it shuttered the department. Abortion has been banned in Idaho, with few exceptions, since August 2022.
The four OB-GYNs who previously worked at Bonner General, meanwhile, have left Idaho to practice in states where abortion is legal. All four told NBC News that the state’s ban contributed to their decisions to move.
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