That was Wednesday. Friday he posted this:
I have a sneaking suspicion those flattering photos aren’t exactly on the up and up.
Considering the grotesque comments he makes about other people, he deserves to be criticized for his looks. Personally, I don’t think his weight is a big deal. But the near-blackface and the full Flock of Seagulls hairdo is worth mentioning. Doesn’t anyone notice how fucking weird that is?
Trump is going to restrict abortion even more if he becomes president. We’ve heard he is thinking about endorsing a 16 week abortion ban to keep his evangelicals happy. (He likes the 16 week as opposed to the 15 week ban because it’s an even number. I kid you not…)
Anyway the following isn’t really news since it’s been out there for a while. I’ve written about it as have others. But the NY Times publishing it can make it real for a lot of people:
Behind the scenes, specific anti-abortion plans being proposed by Mr. Trump’s allies are sweeping and legally sophisticated. Some of their proposals would rely on enforcing the Comstock Act, a long-dormant law from 1873, to criminalize the shipping of any materials used in an abortion — including abortion pills, which account for the majority of abortions in America.
“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” said Jonathan F. Mitchell, the legal force behind a 2021 Texas law that found a way to effectively ban abortion in the state before Roe v. Wade was overturned. “There’s a smorgasbord of options.”
Mr. Mitchell, who represented Mr. Trump in arguments before the Supreme Court over whether the former president could appear on the ballot in Colorado, indicated that anti-abortion strategists had purposefully been quiet about their more advanced plans, given the political liability the issue has become for Republicans.
“I hope he doesn’t know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” Mr. Mitchell said of Mr. Trump. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”
[…]
Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the F.D.A. and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation’s largest provider of women’s health care, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era.
The organizations and advocates crafting these proposals are not simply outside groups expressing wish lists of what they hope Mr. Trump would do in a second administration. They are people who have spent much of their professional careers fighting abortion rights, including some who were in powerful positions during Mr. Trump’s administration.
In his first term, Mr. Trump largely outsourced abortion policy to socially conservative lawyers and aides. Since he left office, some of those people have remained in Mr. Trump’s orbit, defending him in court, suggesting policy plans well beyond issues like abortion and attending events at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
These zealots are woven so tightly into MAGA world that it is impossible to separate them from the political opportunists and the grifters at this point. They will get what they want.
Tucker Carlson apparently thinks so too:
He did say, “sorry” afterwards. Now he’s backtracking:
Tucker Carlson has turned on Vladimir Putin in the wake of the shocking death of Alexei Navalny, just days after releasing a softball interview with the Russian president and a series of ‘tourism board style’ videos about the country’s clean train stations and cheap groceries.
In an exclusive statement to DailyMail.com, Carlson said: ‘It’s horrifying what happened to Navalny. The whole thing is barbaric and awful. No decent person would defend it.’
The former Fox News host told DailyMail.com that he was on a plane traveling from Dubai when Navalny’s death was announced.
‘I didn’t even know it happened till I saw the Daily Mail story,’ Carlson explained.
The conservative pundit has faced backlash over his bizarre sit-down with Putin last week after critics say he failed to challenge the Russian president.
When quizzed about the limitations of his interview at the World Government Summit on Monday, days before Navalny’s tragic death, Carlson made the comment: ‘every leader kills people, leadership requires killing people.’
He told DailyMail.com Friday: ‘It had zero to do with Navalny. I wasn’t referring to him, which is obvious in context, and I certainly wasn’t making excuses for killing people. I’m totally opposed to killing as I said.’
Of course he was. How ridiculous. He didn’t say he was opposed to it. He said “Leadership requires killing people, that’s why I don’t want to be a leader” clearly indicating that he thinks it’s a necessary thing but he just doesn’t want to be the one doing it. And he said it in the context of a question in which Navalny was specifically mentioned. Please.
Meanwhile, Ivanka’s husband is still defending the murderous MBS:
That’s nothing of course. Trump himself loves Kim Jong Un, murderous dictator, Xi Jinping, murderous dictator, Rodrigo Duterte, former murderous dictator etc. And we know how he feels about Vlad.
This is who they are:
The irony of Trump using those words is just too much.
This is from 2016, no one cared, and it’s been memory holed. The man is a chiseler and always has been:
During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah’s at Trump Plaza.
The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.
Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will “protect your job.” But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.
At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.
Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.
In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.
The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.
Trump and his daughter Ivanka, in an interview with USA TODAY, shrugged off the lawsuits and other claims of non-payment. If a company or worker he hires isn’t paid fully, the Trumps said, it’s because The Trump Organization was unhappy with the work.
“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely,” Trump said. “That’s what the country should be doing.”
To be sure, Trump and his companies have prevailed in many legal disputes over missing payments, or reached settlements that cloud the terms reached by the parties.
However, the consistent circumstances laid out in those lawsuits and other non-payment claims raise questions about Trump’s judgment as a businessman, and as a potential commander- in- chief. The number of companies and others alleging he hasn’t paid suggests that either his companies have a poor track record hiring workers and assessing contractors, or that Trump businesses renege on contracts, refuse to pay, or consistently attempt to change payment terms after work is complete as is alleged in dozens of court cases.
People who defend this grotesque mobster’s fraud as “just doing business” are chiselers too.
And, by the way, I watched this is real time and was stunned that no one answered that the people who were hurt by Trump’s fraud were all the honest people who didn’t lie and had to pay higher interest rates! That’s why you punish fraudsters like Trump — it’s on behalf of the people who play by the rules.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) visited Ukraine this month and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who she describes as “clear-eyed and clear-voiced.” But he’s faced with a “make or break moment” in his country’s fight to remain a free country. Donald Trump wanted (and failed) to build a wall on our southern border. Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Iron Curtain.
Spanberger shared her thoughts with Jennifer Rubin (Washington Post):
Spanberger is candid about the Biden administration refusing the initial request from Ukraine for critical equipment, waiting for Europeans to act and then, finally, acceding. “Initially, I was willing to concede they were being careful,” she said. The risk of elevating the war to a major-power war is not zero. However, “we have demonstrated that Ukraine is abiding by the parameters” we set, she argued. The rigmarole leaves us consistently at least “a few months behind” Ukraine’s urgent requests.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) pledged to Zelensky that the aid bill would “get done.” Just how to pass it over MAGA Republican objections is the question.
MAGA Republicans’ indifference to Ukraine — evidenced by their shrug at Trump’s recent invitation for Russia to invade Europe — incensed Spanberger. “What are they missing? We saved the world from fascism. We ended the Holocaust. We freed Europe. That was us,” she said, her voice rising with emotion. Now, these Republicans “want to remove America from the world,” she says. Russian President Vladimir Putin, she continued, “is on the precipice of destroying the world order we put in place through the deaths of thousands of Americans.” And, yet, it seems, they cannot be bothered to “explain this to their constituents or fend off a primary challenge” to defend our vital interests, she declared. Instead, they meekly follow their isolationist cult leader.
She recalled that the day after 9/11, our NATO allies invoked Article 5 for the first time. “They went to war for 2o years for us. For our war.” In a word, she said, she finds Republicans’ disregard of America’s vital interests “shameful.”
Spanberger’s being diplomatic.
Ah, remember the days when the Bushies told us we needed to invade Iraq? How they fed us a flood of raw (and bogus) intelligence about it? Iraq was a clear and present danger to our national security? We needed to fight them over there so we didn’t have to fight them over here?
Ukraine’s ask is not even that. We’re being asked to supply Ukraine with weapons to sustain their fight so We don’t end up in WWIII over there. France supplied the Colonies with weapons in their fight against the British, so it’s a kind of pay-freedom-forward ask, and a damn sight cheaper and cleaner (for us) than a war between NATO and Russia. Not to mention a jobs program for American arms manufacturers. You’d think the party of big business would consider it a sound investment with a yuge ROI.
But that was before the Christian right’s crush on Putin, and before white nationalists discovered Russia as their “beacon of salvation” in a diversifying West. Because Russia-so-white, Christian, and anti-gay. The extremist’s ditching freedom and all that predates Trump’s flowering bromance with Putin. Almost makes one miss Cold War Republicans.
Re: Spanberger. My last Democratic congressperson was a Blue Dog. We’ve had a string of rather notorious Republicans since January 2013, including Mark Meadows and Madison Cawthorn. So while others may give side-eye to centrist Democrats, my view of Spanberger is tempered by that experience.
Spanberger has chosen not to return to Congress so she can run for Virginia governor in 2025 instead. So I wish former former CIA agent, former Blue Dog, and current Problem Solver Caucus member bon courage.
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@pete.dominick Here are my comments at our last school board meeting where a few bad faith actors have tried to create a controversy in our schools with no regard to the students safety or best interest. We have a generally welcoming student body when it comes to LGBT issues. I would dare to say the kids are all right – it’s the parents who are the problem. John Lewis asked us to make good trouble. And Dr. King told us not to be silent. #LGBT #transgender #trans #BOE #humanrights #schoolboardmeetings #transrights #boardofeducation #turningpointusa #momsforliberty ♬ original sound – Pete Dominick
@pete.dominick Here are my comments at our last school board meeting where a few bad faith actors have tried to create a controversy in our schools with no regard to the students safety or best interest. We have a generally welcoming student body when it comes to LGBT issues. I would dare to say the kids are all right – it’s the parents who are the problem. John Lewis asked us to make good trouble. And Dr. King told us not to be silent. #LGBT #transgender #trans #BOE #humanrights #schoolboardmeetings #transrights #boardofeducation #turningpointusa #momsforliberty ♬ original sound – Pete Dominick
What is there to add?
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For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Beautiful kitties…
Snow leopard cub pestering his mom 🐆 pic.twitter.com/apawg9fVBM
— Apurv Anand (@apurv_anand) February 14, 2024
Snow lepoardpic.twitter.com/fpr9C0iwkD
— Vibrant Visuals (@veona_roamer) February 14, 2024
I’m not sure why he felt the need to tease this for the past year but it’s good that he finally pulled the plug on this nonsense. (Actually, I know why he did it. He’s a diva and he loves attention so he always preens and poses before he finally agrees to do the right thing.)
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced Friday that he is not running for president after spending months mulling a bid that would have shaken up the 2024 campaign.
“I will not be seeking a third-party run. I will not be involved in a presidential run,” Manchin said during a speech. “I will be involved in making sure that we secure a president that has the knowledge and has the passion and has the ability to bring this country together.”
Manchin said that a third party could be viable down the road, but that a bid this year would have been “very challenging.” He added that he didn’t want to be a “deal-breaker” or a “spoiler.”
“I just don’t think it’s the right time,” Manchin said. “We’re on a real teetering situation here that could go either way. Democracy is at stake right now.”
Waaaah.
A New York judge called out former President Trump and other Trump Organization executives Friday for their lack of remorse in a civil fraud case over the company’s business dealings.
Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to pay nearly $355 million in penalties following a months-long trial last year. Toward the end of his 92-page ruling, Engoron cited the defendants’ refusal to admit to any error.
“The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine.’ Defendants apparently are of a different mind,” Engoron wrote.
“After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (“inadvertent,” of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid. Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological,” he continued in his decision. “They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money. The documents prove this over and over again.”
“This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin. Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff,” he wrote. “Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.”
Engoron found Trump, the Trump Organization and several top executives, including his adult sons, liable for fraud before the trial began. The verdict is at the sole discretion of the judge because there was no jury at the trial.
The fine is some $16 million less than the $370 million New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office asked the judge to force Trump to pay. It also blocks the former president from participating in New York business for three years.
Trump’s adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were ordered to pay more than $4 million each, and were both barred from serving as officers or directors of any New York corporation or other legal entity for two years.
The former president repeatedly attacked Engoron as political and biased throughout the trial. He levied similar personal attacks against James, calling her a racist and a partisan who was out to get him.
Maybe that wasn’t such a hot idea.
This man’s con has been going his whole life. His companies declared bankruptcy 6 times. He’s settled numerous fraud trials before this one, notably the Trump University case. He and his spawn have already been barred from ever running another “charity” in New York after he defrauded little kids with cancer. All of his is well known.
He’s a con artist who is so narcissistic he thought he could become president and nobody would ever be able to stop him. But he lost 66 cases stemming from his bogus claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election. Two women, E. Jean Carroll and Leticia James have now obtained half a billion dollars in damages from his lies, defamation and fraud. Next month we will have the first of several criminal trials that may catch up with him as well.
He’s crying and whining about being persecuted. And his hardcore followers are all Trump sin-eaters who so identify with him that they cannot admit to error either. They voted for him, they supported him they cannot possibly be wrong.
But there must be a few people who are starting to see that they’ve been conned. I hope so anyway or e are living in a country with so many deluded,brainwashed people that even without Trump it’s hard to imagine this country can survive.
Good luck with this Trumpie. I sure hope someone can persuade the media to hammer him with questions about this over and over again. There has never been a better wedge issue than this one:
Former President Donald J. Trump has told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Trump’s deliberations.
Mr. Trump has studiously avoided taking a clear position on restrictions to abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the middle of 2022, galvanizing Democrats ahead of the midterm elections that year. He has said in private that he wants to wait until the Republican presidential primary contest is over to publicly discuss his views, because he doesn’t want to risk alienating social conservatives before he has secured the nomination, the two people said.
Mr. Trump has approached abortion transactionally since becoming a candidate in 2015, and his current private discussions reflect that same approach.
One thing Mr. Trump likes about a 16-week federal ban on abortions is that it’s a round number. “Know what I like about 16?” Mr. Trump told one of these people, who was given anonymity to describe a private conversation. “It’s even. It’s four months.”
When discussing prospective vice-presidential candidates, Mr. Trump often asks whether they are “OK on abortion.” He is instantly dismissive when he hears that a Republican doesn’t support “the three exceptions.” He tells advisers that Republicans will keep losing elections with that position.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, Mr. Trump told advisers that he believed the decision was going to be harmful to Republicans. Since then, he has formed the view that the abortion issue is overwhelmingly responsible for a string of Republican losses in congressional races.
And he is acutely aware of his own vulnerability: He appointed the three justices who enabled that decision, a fact he has publicly claimed credit for in several settings. Those statements have already been included in ads, and Democrats plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remind voters of that fact.
I hope so.
The smarter play is to simply say that he believes in states’ rights and that that’s what the Supremes did. It’s not great but it’s a little bit better than endorsing a national ban. But he can’t. The evangelical wingnuts won’t let him.