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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 8:49:56 GMT -8
Church Bulletin Bloopers Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered. Beware the Ides Plus Ten of MarchThe first criminal trial against a former president in U.S. history will begin on March 25 with jury selection in the Manhattan district attorney's case against Donald Trump, a New York judge ruled Thursday, denying Trump's bid to dismiss the charges against him. It's Judgement Day! Financial Judgement Day.Judge Engoron's ruling will come on the heels of a federal jury ordering Trump to pay $83.3 million to columnist E. Jean Carroll for defamation. Engoron could apply the maximum penalty of $370 million and strip Trump’s ability to do real estate business in New York. Trump faces a $370m fine in New York fraud trial. How would he pay it? |
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 8:51:17 GMT -8
Least Surprising News of the Day
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has died at the Arctic prison colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, Russia’s federal penitentiary service says in a statement.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 8:57:11 GMT -8
Of Course He is Going to Take the Money. It's His Nature
Journalist Marc Caputo told The New Republic's Greg Sargent on his podcast this week that Trump's takeover of the Republican National Committee could cause friction if he uses it to pay his legal bills at the expense of down-ballot races in the 2024 election cycle.
In particular, Caputo said the prospects of a worsening legal landscape for Trump could have a cascading effect on party finances.
"There's concern that that could happen and this could drain party resources," said Caputo.
"You think?" Sargent replied jokingly.
He Will Screw Over the Rest of the QOP.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 8:58:29 GMT -8
Previous Guy's Worst Nightmare. A Strong Black Woman.
MSNBC's Joyce Vance argued on Friday that the first day of hearings into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis turned up no evidence that should force her off the Georgia election interference case.
The prosecutor strongly denied that she and special investigator Nathan Wade had begun their relationship before his hiring or lived together, and she insisted she had repaid him in cash for travel purchased on her behalf, and Vance told "Morning Joe" she didn't hear anything that should disqualify her from pursuing her case against Donald Trump.
"It may have changed the public impression of the hearing but this is whether the defendant could prove a conflict of interest existed under law that warranted disqualification for Fani Willis," Vance said. "At least, based on what we heard yesterday, maybe they'll have more today, but they came up short. They were short in Wade's testimony. The friend who took the stand was impeached. This is the thing you don't want to have happen, but it turns out this witness resigned in lieu of being fired from the district attorney's office. That proved her testimony about the timeline of the relationship went into doubt."
"Ultimately, at the the end of the day yesterday, it was just a big nothing burger," Vance added. "There was nothing to show that Fani Willis and Nathan Wade had the financial conflict of interest that Georgia law recognizes, something akin to a prosecutor who only gets paid if they win a case. That's the classic case in Georgia law where there is a conflict that results in disqualification. That wasn't there yesterday in the courtroom."
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:01:34 GMT -8
How to Live Rent Free in New YorkFor five years, a New York City man managed to live rent-free in a landmark Manhattan hotel by exploiting an obscure local housing law. But prosecutors this week said Mickey Barreto went too far when he filed paperwork claiming ownership of the entire New Yorker Hotel building — and tried to charge another tenant rent. On Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with filing false property records. But Barreto, 48, says he was surprised when police showed up at his boyfriend’s apartment with guns and bullet-proof shields. As far as he is concerned, it should be a civil case, not a criminal one. “I said ’Oh, I thought you were doing something for Valentine’s Day to spice up the relationship until I saw the female officers,’” Barreto recalled telling his boyfriend. Barreto’s indictment on fraud and criminal contempt charges is just the latest chapter in the years-long legal saga that began when he and his boyfriend paid about $200 to rent one of the more than 1,000 rooms in the towering Art Deco structure built in 1930. Barreto says he had just moved to New York from Los Angeles when his boyfriend told him about a loophole that allows occupants of single rooms in buildings constructed before 1969 to demand a six-month lease. Barreto claimed that because he’d paid for a night in the hotel, he counted as a tenant. He asked for a lease and the hotel promptly kicked him out. “So I went to court the next day. The judge denied. I appealed to the (state) Supreme Court and I won the appeal,” Barreto said, adding that at a crucial point in the case, lawyers for the building’s owners didn’t show up, allowing him to win by default. The judge ordered the hotel to give Baretto a key. He said he lived there until July 2023 without paying any rent because the building’s owners never wanted to negotiate a lease with him, but they couldn’t kick him out. A loophole got New York City man a free hotel stay for five years until he claimed to own the building
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:02:48 GMT -8
This Donation was Taylor-Made
A GoFundMe page set up for the family of Lisa Lopez-Galvan, the woman killed in a mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory parade, has caught the attention of Taylor Swift, who made donations on the page totaling $100,000 early Friday morning.
The “Elizabeth Lopez-Galvan Memorial” page was set up Thursday afternoon, with a goal of raising $75,000 for the family of the victim, who was a popular radio DJ and figure in the city’s Hispanic community and beyond. Around 1,300 people had made donations when Swift pushed the total beyond the goal Friday morning, first making a donation of $50,000 and then making a second donation in the same amount eight minutes later.
“Sending my deepest sympathies and condolences in the wake of your devastating loss. With love, Taylor Swift,” wrote the singer.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:04:53 GMT -8
At Least He Wasn't Handing them Out on HalloweenThe chief medical officer for Customs and Border Protection pressured his staff to order fentanyl lollipops for him to take to the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York in September, according to a whistleblower report sent to Congress on Friday. The whistleblowers said Dr. Alexander Eastman’s staff raised questions about why he would need to order fentanyl lollipops to take with him, and he answered that it was part of his duties to make sure that any injured CBP operators were cared for, making the argument that the lollipops would be necessary for pain management should an emergency occur. “Eastman spent copious hours of his and Office of the Chief Medical Officer staff time directing the OCMO staff to urgently help him procure fentanyl lollipops, a Schedule II narcotic, so that he could bring them on the CBP Air and Marine Operations helicopter on which he would be a passenger in New York City,” the whistleblowers said in the report. “Dr. Eastman claims that his possession of fentanyl lollipops was necessary in case a CBP operator might be injured, or in case the CBP Air and Marine Operations team encountered a patient in need.” The top doctor for CBP tried to order fentanyl lollipops for a helicopter mission in New York, whistleblowers say
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:05:51 GMT -8
Not Breaking Non-News: Comer Was Wrong
Remember the ‘Biden bribe’ allegation? DOJ now says it was made up.
It is hard to overstate how much energy Republicans and their allies in the right-wing media invested in the idea that this was credible. When he announced the launch of an impeachment probe of Biden in September, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) invoked the Smirnov allegation…
Fox News has mentioned Biden in the context of “bribe” or “bribery” more than 2,600 times over the past 12 months. A Media Matters review of host Sean Hannity’s efforts to bolster the Republican impeachment effort tallied at least 85 segments focused on the allegation and the FBI form that documented it — despite the complete dearth of evidence supporting the idea.
On Sept. 7, Comer was asked by a Fox Business host about the lack of movement on the bribery allegation. Comer suggested there had been a “coverup” by the government.
It appears that Comer was wrong.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:07:30 GMT -8
MAGA Mike's Bad Week
THE DISASTER THAT IS HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP
Just this week, @speakerjohnson has:
→ Seen Democrats win a special election in New York, narrowing the already minuscule GOP majority to two votes.
→ Lost a sixth rule vote on the House floor — a measure that would’ve allowed an increase in the state-and-local tax (SALT) deduction — when 18 Republicans bucked their own leadership and voted no. This Republican majority has lost more rule votes than any other majority in five decades, a stunning sign of weakness.
→ Abruptly pulled a bill to overhaul FISA due to Republican infighting. The GOP leadership said the House would vote on the bill before locking down the votes, despite some senior Republicans raising internal objections. This is the second time Johnson had to pull a FISA bill this Congress.
→ Seen another committee chair announce his resignation. @repmarkgreen, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, is leaving Congress after only six years. The 59-year-old Green — the fourth committee chair to retire — just led the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
→ Decided against putting a bill on the floor to provide billions of dollars in new aid to Israel without offsets. Just a week ago, Johnson allowed a vote on Israel aid that he knew was going to fail.
→ Provided absolutely no insight to rank-and-file lawmakers on how he’ll handle the Senate’s bipartisan $95 billion foreign aid package. Johnson said the bill isn’t a priority because the federal government is scheduled to shut down in a few weeks.
→ Witnessed the House Intelligence Committee chair issue a dire public warning about a “serious national security threat” to the country, only to have Senate Intelligence Committee leaders and the White House downplay the issue.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:09:38 GMT -8
Dobbs: The Gift the Keeps on Giving
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:12:40 GMT -8
Bigots Gonna Bigot
An influential conservative group this week launched a blatantly Islamophobic and misleading ad campaign targeting one of President Joe Biden’s Muslim judicial nominees, Adeel Mangi.
The Judicial Crisis Network, a right-wing judicial advocacy group known for its steady stream of anonymous funding and a previous multimillion-dollar campaign aimed at smearing then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, unveiled digital ads on Tuesday that attempt to pressure Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) to oppose Mangi’s confirmation. Both Democrats are up for reelection in November.
JCN’s attacks on Mangi, a 23-year civil litigator based in New Jersey who is on track to be the nation’s first Muslim appeals court judge, are as deceptive as they are ugly. The group’s ads accuse Mangi of being a “radical” and an “antisemite,” and of advising an organization that teaches students “to hate Israel, to hate America and to support global terrorism.”
The ads even use video footage of the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, overlaid with a headline about Mangi.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:14:42 GMT -8
Facts? Who Needs Facts? They've Got Fox.
A new peer-reviewed study published Thursday confirms what abortion rights advocates have long argued: Using a telehealth connection to terminate a pregnancy is as effective and safe as seeing a doctor in person.
The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, comes weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments over a lower court ruling that rolled back access to mifepristone, one of the pills used in a medication abortion, including being able to obtain it via a telehealth visit and by mail.
Researchers found that of the 6,034 uses of telehealth-prescribed mifepristone they observed across 20 states, 99.8% of the abortions “were not followed by serious adverse events” and 97.7% of the medication abortions were successful at terminating pregnancy.
“Telehealth medication abortion is effective, safe and comparable to published rates of in-person medication abortion care,” the researchers concluded.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:16:22 GMT -8
Putin's Puppet in Action
President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is releasing a new ad Friday blasting former President Donald Trump for his embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his “traitorous comments” attacking the NATO alliance.
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Post by mhbruin on Feb 16, 2024 9:18:27 GMT -8
Hugo Gernsback Must be Rolling Over in His Grave
Organizers of the Hugo Awards, one of the most prominent literary awards in science fiction, excluded multiple authors from shortlists last year over concerns their work or public comments could be offensive to China, leaked emails show.
Questions had been raised as to why writers including Neil Gaiman, R.F. Kuang, Xiran Jay Zhao and Paul Weimer had been deemed ineligible as finalists despite earning enough votes according to information published last month by awards organizers. Emails released this week revealed that they were concerned about how some authors might be perceived in China, where the Hugo Awards were held last year for the first time.
“As we are happening in China and the ‘laws’ we operate under are different… we need to highlight anything of sensitive political nature in the work,” Dave McCarty, the head of the 2023 awards jury, wrote in an email dated June 5.
Any work focusing on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other sensitive issues, he added, “needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot.”
McCarty, who resigned from his role in the awards last month, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement on Thursday, the organizers of the 2024 Hugo Awards, which are being held in Glasgow, said they were taking steps “to ensure transparency and to attempt to redress the grievous loss of trust in the administration of the Awards.”
Last year’s Hugo Awards, which unlike most literary prizes are run by fans, were held in October during the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, known as Worldcon, in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu. Scores of science fiction and fantasy writers had signed an open letter protesting the location, which was chosen by voting members of the convention, citing in an open letter allegations of abuses against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minority groups in China that Beijing denies.
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