Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Thursday, January 13, 2022
·
99 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
In my 35 years of construction I have seen a few heavy machinery messes, but I never saw anything that even comes close to this: The Worst Excavator Recovery Of My Career
Haysoos F’n Crispo.
Florida republican found out.
Link for previous comment
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/485132-john-kuczwanski-killed-in-road-rage-incident/
@BugManDan: An armed society is a polite society.
@BugManDan: There is something wrong with a society that convicts someone of threatening someone with a gun but then allows them to keep carrying one. It should be one strike: commit a crime with a gun, you cannot own one.
@MarkedMan: If one is convicted of a felony, one is barred from ever owning (and iirc, possessing) a firearm again.* So either he plea bargained down to a misdemeanor (not the way I read it) or he was breaking the law by having a firearm. Not that that ever stopped a 2nd Amendment absolutist.
*It is possible there are legal avenues for having one’s gun rights restored, but short of a pardon I don’t know of any.
Carrying this piece from yesterday’s thread over. @Jax posted it later in the day.
Republicans stung by a change they made on judicial picks
Durbin and Whitehouse are exactly right here:
Absolutely unreal that Senate Republicans are demanding that what THEY did be undone when it bites THEM in the @ss. Unreal.
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t care if it’s a felony or a misdemeanor. I can’t think of a clearer reason to take someone’s gun away than pointing it at someone because of a traffic incident.
My bile rises as I’m asked to move my dying cancer patient out of ICU to make room for an unvaccinated man with Covid
@MarkedMan: You’re preaching to the choir. I am just explaining the law as I know it and that “this wonderful, kind, loving man who would do anything for anyone” was almost certainly breaking the law. That in his mind this “quiet fellow,” for whom “family was everything,” thought the law plain and simply did not apply to him.
In other words, he was a piece of shit who was playing with fire and got burned. And seeing as his wife was well aware of this lawless behavior, I have no sympathy for her at all.
Ronnie Spector has died. RIP.
“Be my little baby…”
@BugManDan: @MarkedMan: @OzarkHillbilly:
As you are all saying:
http://www.thebulwark.com/this-aint-about-freedom/
@OzarkHillbilly:
Last winter, my wife and I went out to Peterborough NH, for lunch, takeout eaten in the car. The municipal parking lot is next to the Contoocook River. The state is involved in a multi year project to rebuild the bridge over the river into downtown and upgrade the retaining walls for the road that runs along the base of the river bluff.
The afternoon we were there, our lunch entertainment was watching a pile driver to its thing. In the early spring, a couple of friends went there for lunch. The pile driver was still there, but now upside down (the operator wasn’t injured). Apparently physics intervened and a combination of the weight of the pylon that was being moved into place and the steepness of the river bank, led to a problem of stability. A couple of months later the inverted pile driver was still there, awaiting the arrival of a crane large enough to lift it out. I suspect the recovery bill was substantial.
@CSK:
Ronnie is a very sad story with Phil Spector, abuse worse than the Ike/Tina Turner abuse. There is a piece on this over at LGM.
@OzarkHillbilly: I would guess he got it reduced, pled to lesser charge, or was allowed anger management treatment for lesser charge. My guess is just based on that he is openly entering a contest for a gun on Twitter.
@BugManDan: That scares the shite out of me. My sister and brother-in-law live just a short distance from there. We go by it every time we visit Tallahassee. I’m beginning to wonder if I should carry heat in my car when I’m there.
@Sleeping Dog: Yeah things tip over on a not too infrequent basis. Crane operators have to be especially aware. I was working a job once where a guy was installing 2nd story windows from a snorkel. The back yard of the building had a slope and he was working along it trusting the emergency tilt shut off to do it’s job if things started to get too steep. What he didn’t know was that somebody had disabled it. It rolled while he had the boom at near full extension. It was a miracle he wasn’t killed. He got fired a week later because somebody had to take the blame for destroying a $100,000 machine.
Thankfully, I never worked a pile driving job. One gets covered in oil and the noise is un-f’n-believable.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s a sight worse than the time I got an FLT stuck just off the edge of a loading yard concrete apron.
Needed a crane to get it unstuck.
*blushes*
@BugManDan: I’ve never heard of a misdemeanor assault charge, but IANAL. As far as “openly entering a contest for a gun,” I know of any number of people who are barred from owning a firearm who openly bragged about their latest “purchase.” Not only do they think the law does not apply to them, they don’t think it is a threat to their straw buyer.
And all too often it isn’t. This country has lost it’s collective mind when it comes to firearms.
@charon:
I know. I read Ronnie’s memoir when it was first published. It’s an awful story. She was lucky to escape alive.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh. Hell. NO. How dare you ask someone to sacrifice their patient like that?
And that’s what this is all about: the rest of us are being expected to sacrifice and possible die because these idiots are suffering the natural consequences of their actions. After all, it’s only a crisis of space for this patient because others like them made the same selfish decision and the leopard’s here to eat their face as a result. Peds beds are now holding stupid adults and innocent people are dying to try and save those who thought they could dare death. If *ANYONE* tried to remove a family or friend from their sick room because an anti-vaxxer “needed it more”…. well, it would be a moot point shortly, let’s put it that way.
Let them go – after all, the anti-vaxxer is going to die anyways so the logic that the “incurable” cancer patient is doomed is flimsy. When the COVID patient dies, it’s not like the cancer patient gets the room back – it goes to the next moron so really all it’s doing it helping along two deaths. We really need to stop sacrificing the rest of the country to keep saving these people…..
@JohnSF: My cousin almost got killed when he rolled a fork and made the mistake of jumping out of it. The cage caught him across the abdomen. Cut one kidney in half and a third off the other one. He was in ICU for a long time but got a bragging rights scar out of the ordeal.
I got a scissor lift stuck once while trying to avoid a possible tilt situation, Caught all kinds of shit from the idiot supervisor but got it unstuck all by myself in about 30 mins or so.
@OzarkHillbilly:
“This wonderful, kind, loving man who would do anything for anyone” caused the accident, rammed the Prius again in the parking lot when the owner called the cops, then drew on the victim and fired a shot. That is *definitely* an attempt on your life and not something a kind, loving man would do. That’s the actions of a violent loon who’s already had an incident at that same intersection so this has happened before. That his wife is using the word “assassinated” goes to show she knows her talking points: blame the victim and act like it’s obscene that the conservative with the gun *must* be the hero of the story without question.
His criminal ass probably assumed Prius = liberal = no gun and were fatally mistaken. A lot of conservatives will be if they ever try their little 2A fantasies.
@KM: They all seem to think their guns make them immune to 2nd Amendment solutions.
No goggles required: ‘Tearless’ onions go on sale in UK supermarkets
This is an offense against nature!
Hmmm. How is it “unfortunate” if the system worked as it should?!
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43859/mysterious-faa-order-to-halt-flights-was-prompted-by-incoming-north-korean-missile-warning
@CSK: TBH, I have to wonder where he’s been the last few decades. This idiocy has been growing since at least the ’80s, when the NRA began it’s transformation from a gun owners organization to a lobbyist for the firearms manufacturing sector. In closing he says,
The vast majority of gun owners vehemently disagree, Ryan. They think they are just getting started on setting things aright. I know I am not the only gun owner who is not afraid of the whole pantheon of evil, freedom stealing, gun control laws, but it sure does feel like it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sounds like it might lack a bit of punch:
Sounds OK for salads, but you need pungency for a proper French onion soup, or a curry base, or in a stew.
I think I’ll put up with a few tears for more taste.
Rule #1: use a sharp knife.
We have learned over the last couple days that Republicans in at least seven states sent in FORGED Electoral College slates after the 2020 election.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rachel-maddow-unearths-five-fake-state-documents-declaring-trump-victory-in-2020-election
So as of today it is pretty clear that there was a conspiracy that started in the White House and extended both into the Congressional GOP Caucus AND into the GOP of at least seven states.
Imagine – just for a minute – that the DOJ and Garland had the balls to do their jobs and defend Democracy. By all rights we should be seeing the equivalent of an old school Organized Crime Sweep. Just think about what that would look like, and the ramifications for our political system.
But riddle me this…who exactly, in a position today to do so, has the balls it would take to pull this off?
I’ll wait.
Yes! It’s true! The Covid vaccine has killed millions of people, including Betty White and Bob Saget! Just ask Candace Owens:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/candace-owens-pushes-unhinged-vax-conspiracy-about-bob-sagets-death?ref=home
@Daryl and his brother Darryl: I’m honestly surprised that this hasn’t been a bigger story.
Forging a state document–including the raised seals–is against the law. These people should be in jail for trying this nonsense.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, better late than never, I suppose.
But it does enrage and disturb me when I hear someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene coyly lamenting to Sebastian Gorka that us patriots might have to use Second Amendment solutions when confronted with “Democrat tyranny.”
http://www.newsweek.com/haley-stevens-says-capitol-police-must-address-marjorie-taylor-greenes-dangerous-threats-1668854
@JohnSF: I always buy the strongest onion I can find.
Note: this is mostly for Mu Yixiao and concerns UKCA marking.
Mu, late yesterday in the sidebar about UKCA vs. CE marking you said that it had not come up in your company and “if” it was a thing, it would cause problems. It’s definitely a thing. From the link:
There is literally no useful reason for this, as near as I can tell, all the self-declared vs. certified body distinctions are the same, and all the standards referenced are harmonized with the CE mark ones. And of course, the UK probably had more input on the CE mark than any other country. But it would make Boris Johnson’s penis smaller if the UK didn’t get their own sticker.
Given that, the easiest thing would have been for the UK to issue guidance to the effect that if you product had a CE mark in 2021 you could automatically apply the UKCA, but any future products had to be checked for differences. But that would have also made that already tiny penis smaller still.
And, of course, it’s a formality to equate the two, but a time consuming one. If and auditor pulls a product at random and says, “show me your UKCA technical file,” it has to be there. Since we are going to claim equivalence, you have to show that the appropriate people met and ananlyzed it and recorded meeting minutes and took action items and followed up, and then amend the files for every single product you have that you will sell in the UK.
@CSK: I am glad to have Ryan aboard, but if he thinks there is a majority of gun owners who feel the same as he and I, he is going to be disappointed.
@KM: It’s worse than I thought. The site of the shooting was a Circle K. On the way to my sister’s house on Christmas Eve, we stopped and filled up our car at that location. Proof there are no safe spaces anymore, not with gun-toting yahoos on the loose.
The Ringer published their NFL tournament predictions.
Of the nine writers offering predictions, six landed on Green Bay-Kansas City as the Super Bowl pairing. Four of those six have the Packers winning.*
If there is one thing NFL reality hates, it’s pre-playoff consensus. If you are inclined toward sports betting, I suggest looking elsewhere.**
*only one of the writers chose a match up that didn’t include one of those two teams. That person chose TB’s TB team defeating the Central Valley’s finest QB, Josh Allen.
**Caveat: one of those writers is Ben Solak, who seems to do little other than grind All-22 film.
@MarkedMan:
I actually read that page this morning 🙂
The “if it’s a thing” comment was more “If this applies to us”–which I’m certain it does, since we make electric/electronic equipment. I know we’re UL certified on everything, but don’t know how CE is applied (I’m not knowledgeable about that part of the business).
If we have to recertify all of our products, that’s going to be a significant pain in the ass.
@MarkedMan:
Look on the bright side: the gun nut managed to take himself out without killing anyone else.
Good article in the Atlantic about how hospitals are holding up (or not) under Omicron.
Honestly, at some point we’re just going to have to say “you’re unvaccinated of your own will and you caught Covid? Sorry, you’re on your own. We have no room for you.”
Last December I sent my car to the dealership for routine service, and they couldn’t get it done in time. I wound up using Uber to go to and from work the next day.
Some issues were found, which could 1) wait a few weeks and 2) would be outrageously expensive if done in the dealership. So yesterday a coworker kindly took it to an independent shop. Again, they were unable to finish it the same day and more Uber was needed.
The thing is the car still runs. After 11 years, it still hasn’t broken down once.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s a pretty common charge in most states. I’ve talked with a number of folks who have been living with one. Sometimes there are multiple levels of it.
The RNC will *require* GOP presidential candidates to skip the traditional presidential commission debates.
@Kathy: unfortunately, he didn’t take himself out. He opened fire on a stranger, who was forced to draw his own weapon and kill him. That poor basted is going to have that on his mind the rest of his life.
SpaceX just keeps on making it look easy. They launched and landed this morning’s booster for the tenth time. The landing looks like a CGI special effect. This was the second Falcon 9 launch of the month, with a third scheduled for Jan 27. Over the course of the year, they have three crewed missions and five Falcon Heavy launches scheduled. United Launch Alliance ought to be sweating.
This has been puzzling me for a while: If, as the Trumpkins maintain, all the Capitol Hill rioters on Jan. 6, 2021 were Antifa, BLM, and FBI plants, why are they so anguished about the fate of those rioters still in jail? I mean, don’t those people deserve what they get, seeing as how they’re all Communist scum????
@CSK:
Is something wrong with your dooublethinking skills? next you’ll be dismissing cultish behavior as a cult.
Have you forgotten the Cheeto white house made no effort to secure future elections, then the Benito campaign and assorted surrogates claimed foreign governments staged the massive, invisible, intangible fraud that stole the election from its rightful King?
@Kathy:
That’s funny. I always thought Trump lost in 2020 because 81 million people couldn’t stand the thought of another four years of him in the White House.
@BugManDan: @OzarkHillbilly:
Apparently, not quite everything.
So, Senator Sinema is against reforming the filibuster.
Sure, water is wet, and fire is hot. But she also said about voting rights bills: “While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country.”
Fair enough. That’s very reasonable.
One would then ask Sinema, when is the Senator going to get together with her Republican colleagues to craft a compromise bill that can be voted on without need to disturb the precious filibuster?
@OzarkHillbilly: If I were a patient dying of cancer, anything that would shorten the trip (including being smothered with a pillow while unconscious) would be fine with me. Also, it’s an easy choice for me to make as I have no immediate family.
Having said that, my one exception would be giving up my bed for an unvaxed Covid-19 sufferer. Palliate that person instead. If that makes me a bad person, so be it. I’ve been one before.
Oathkeeper Leader Stewart Rhodes has been arrested by the FBI, becoming the first person charged with seditious conspiracy for 1/6:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/13/leader-of-far-right-extremist-group-oath-keepers-arrested-for-january-6-riot-conspiracy-reports-say.html
Leader of the Oath Keepers just arrested in TX.
Seditious Conspiracy.
IANAL but I gather this is a rare, and difficult to prove, charge.
Background – there are a bunch of pictures of the Oath Keepers hanging out with Roger Stone outside the war rooms located at the Willard Hotel in the days leading up to and on January 6th.
These wingnuts are also accused of stockpiling weapons outside of DC leading up to January 6th.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/07/oath-keepers-january-6-capitol-insurrection-michael-simmons-person-ten/
@Jen:
They know Trump’s increasing senility is becoming more obvious, they are afraid of the exposure.
@Stormy Dragon:
In the days following January 6, Rhodes was messaging people around the country, instructing them to form militias to oppose the Biden administration.
@OzarkHillbilly: Tearless chopping of onions is easy as 3.14. Unless one is amazingly sensitive the tearing comes from cutting the root end off the onion before starting to chop it. What I do is cut the onion in half, cut however many slices from top to bottom without cutting completely to the root, make my cross cuts, watching the slices fall in to whatever size chop I chose to make, cut the final little bits from the root end (because I’m frugal), and throw the intact root, with the chemical that makes you cry still mostly untouched, away.
The other thing that I’ve found to work is chopping refrigerated onions, but some people say I’m wrong about that.
When Amherst rejects green energy, arresting global warming won’t happen. NIMBYism runs a muck.
Oh for the good old days and this R party
@Sleeping Dog:
I lived there for a few years and couldn’t stand the place. A more self-satisfied, smug, parochial crew I never met.
@Sleeping Dog:
Autres temps, autres moeurs.
@CSK: Clearly you don’t see the big picture. The problem is that the wrong people got arrested. The Antifas and BLMs got away, and the ones being arrested are the patriots who stormed the barricades to defend the hapless Capitol Police Force.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Okay, but why would the Capitol police bust the patriots who were trying to save them?
@Sleeping Dog: Wait… wasn’t this also the era of the “Country Club Republicans?” My social studies teachers (well except for THAT ONE) always told us that the Democrats were the party of the working classes. We could have had TWO working class parties? WA! Did we blow it, or what?
@CSK: They weren’t the real Capitol Police; they were Deep State, BLM, Antifa infiltrators sent in to trap the patriots. And it worked, too. And now, even you have fallen for it.
The nation is doomed. 🙁
@Just nutha ignint cracker: (And yes, I DO get these plots from old Batman comics and Republic serialized movies. The classics matter!)
@CSK:
I think it’s more that Trump was upset the debate moderators were neutral and treated the other candidates as his equal instead of letting him just talk over them whenever he wanted because it’s supposed to be all about him.
They asked him questions other than “why are you so wonderful?” too.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I see. And the prison where the patriots are being held is actually a Deep State concentration camp?
@Stormy Dragon:
I think you intended to reply to either Jen or Charon, but no harm done.
I’m sure you’re right. Can you imagine what it must have been like to try to prep Trump for a debate? Impossible.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ve never gotten the common complaint people have about onions making them cry. How are these people chopping up their onions? Because in the 45 seconds it takes to dice one up it shouldn’t be releasing enough chemicals to be causing you problems an armlength away.
@CSK:
I’d actually think debate prep is pretty easy when your strategy is to just make stuff up on the fly.
@Stormy Dragon:
Well, it wouldn’t be easy for the people trying to do the prep.
For Trump, it would be no problem at all, since it just entails going om stage and babbling about whatever he feels like babbling about.
@Kathy:
Sinema is providing more evidence for the conspiracy theory that the Green Party is really just a Republican Catspaw.
@Stormy Dragon:
One onion usually isn’t a problem. But sometimes…. I cook with a lot of onions. 🙂
Though, that’s not as bad as the few times I was doing stir-fry and accidentally created aerosolized capsaicin. OUCH!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yes, and it was also the ascendancy of corporate socialism, you remember those benefits, companies would actually train workers, provide defined pension plans, medical benefits and while hourly workers would be laid off during a recession, they’d be called back when business picked up.
It was a different America then.
@Matt Bernius: I thought the lowest assault charge was 3rd degree which was still a felony. IANAL tho so what do I know?
Not much.
@Jen: Rachel has overstated a thing or 3 in the past. Might be other news organizations are waiting to confirm it themselves.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
@Stormy Dragon:
Two things first:
1) Pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433…, and that’s not at all easy 🙂
2) I’ve never liked the expression or belief that onions make people cry. Crying is an emotional reaction or expression. Shedding excess tears due to eye irritation is not crying.
That said, I do get some irritation in the eyes when slicing or chopping onions, but no streams of tears. If it gets to be too much, I take a short break.
@Sleeping Dog: What a bunch of F’n Commies.
” If I were a patient dying of cancer, anything that would shorten the trip”
I understand the sentiment. We actively monitor our docs to make sure that no one is engaging in heroic care. That said, cancer pts do have brief, curable setbacks that if fixed can let them have weeks, months, years of quality life.
Steve
@Kathy:
Maybe immunity to onions is my superpower
So, the Supreme Court says the federal government has no power to try to protect vulnerable people from deadly diseases, nor use the most effective means available to stop a pandemic.
@OzarkHillbilly: You are probably right. I somehow missed the part about pleading no contest.
@OzarkHillbilly: A lot of news outlets are reporting that forged documents were sent, but the National Archives rejected them.
IANAL, but I think it’s the creating and sending that is a problem. Newsweek is reporting that legal action was taken against those who forged docs in AZ.
@JohnSF:
Onions that are heavily cooked can use a bit of punch, but for other uses the taste overwhelms everything else. An interesting case history is in Dana’s Two Years Before The Mast, in which they were all teetering on the brink of scurvy, and had a couple hands disabled already. They fortunately encountered a ship that had left port fairly recently and had bags of fresh onions aboard.
Here’s the interesting part: For those men, the taste of raw pungent onions was a joy. They refused to have them cooked and ate them raw, like apples. For the men who were already too far gone to chew, they squeezed out the juice and spoon fed them, and watched as they shuddered with pure joy at the taste and begged for more.
Funny how our body can heavily modify our sense of taste for things it really needs.
Btw, how’s Boris doing? The US news was filled with reports of how desperate his situation is last night. A politician getting in deep doo for telling whoppers? How quaint!
Glenn Beck has Covid….again….but don’t worry, folks! He’s all stocked up on Ivermectin. 😛
@Jax:
Do you remember back in the 80s when someone poisoned Tylenol capsules? I don’t know what made me think of that just now.
@Kathy:
The suspect in the poisonings moved into a condo next to my house in Cambridge. Small world.
@CSK: That question is beyond the scope of my story. All I know it that it has a secret entrance disguised as a copse of trees.
@Sleeping Dog: Yeah. And to think it was my generation that made America what it became.
And as I’ve said before–We failed. Spectacularly!
@OzarkHillbilly:
as the cancer patient, I commend this doctor for standing their ground. Unconscionable decisions prompted by people too stupid to be trusted with communal oxygen.
Personally, I have a physician directive in my permanent file with the hospital. I also have a durable medical POA, living will, and have made certain that everyone knows my preferences. Maybe moot now that I’m in remission, but I’m keeping everything in place. OTOH, the last thing I want is to be shunted out the door to make room for someone who makes Forest Gump look like Einstein. Fortunately, it appears that I’ve avoided this issue — if SWMBO’d faced someone like this, Cracker would be shipping her food packages to the women’s prison (if an Oregon jury convicted her).
@dazedandconfused:
Johnson has problems but are they terminal?
Dunno.
All depends on how the Conservative MP’s decide where their best interests lie.
LOL, unintentional, but “lie” is Johnson’s modus, and what really dropped him in it this time. 🙂
There are a lot of political calculations going on at Westminster.
For the sake of the country, IMO it’s better that the charlatan begone.
OTOH from the POV of the Labour Party, better to have the unmasked toxic buffoon tied to the mast, to take the Tory ship down with him. (Mixed metaphor alert!)
Also the ERG are probaly keen to keep a damaged Johnson in place, on the basis they can pressure him to the Leaver/ToryLibertarian agenda (as opposed to the LeaverPopulists or the “mainstreamers”, the three main factions in the Cons IMO).
I suspect ERG underestimate the likely internal opposition, but who knows.
Anyway, the Met (Metropolitan Police) are balking at going anywhere near an investigation, so it’s down to Sue Grey’s investigation.
But given her terms of reference, I don’t think it’s going to be terminal in itself (a lot of people have not checked out the ToR of the investigation).
She cannot really, due to standing, state that Johnson contravened the Ministerial Code.
IIUC can only refer on possible criminal investigation to Met (and or DPP/CPS?) and Code breaches to Lord Geidt; who himself is a wimp IMO.
So, it all comes back to the Conservative MP’s, and to some extent the wider party.
I’m unsure that they are ready to stick the knife in.
75% that Johnson rides this out, 25% they do him in in the next few weeks; but he IS a dead man walking.
Personal bet: he staggers on to the May local elections, Conservatives get hammered, he gets booted then and the Tories hope for a “fresh face” boost.
And then worth a bet on an election in September, before the “bounce” (if any) wears off.
Big fight: who is the fresh face. But IMO none of the likely winners are up to the job.
Except maybe Gove.
A reptile, but a competent reptile.
But the whole upcoming political mess is toxic for the Tories: bad economic news, no Brexit dividend, marginal deliverables, culture war ploys not gaining traction outside the base (that base too small to win), Conservatives themselves in a faction fight Torybertarians vs Populists vs Mainstream.
“May you live in interesting times.” 🙁
You guys are just chock-full of intrigue over there. I’d never be able to keep up.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Maddow’s interview with the Michigan AG seems quite definitive on the matter. The MI AG has referred the matter to the US Attorney for the district to investigate if a multi-state conspiracy is at play.
But she (MI AG) seems to have decided that a felony occurred in MI. (She doesn’t have to investigate to discover who signed the documents)
I was talking to a couple of Navy neighbors about current deployments (one is a “rider” with special expertise that augments ships). The “rider” just flew back home, getting off a ship in Yokosuka Japan (near Tokyo). As they arrived the Government of Japan pretty much shut down liberty from the bases. These folks have all been under quarantine for 2 months. They can go to the McDonalds on base. Join the Navy, see the world’s Navy bases (little Americas). Longer than 6-month deployments because some ships fall out of the cycle due to Covid outbreaks.
@JohnSF:
Thanks, the reporting here implied Boris had no choice but to immediately resign. The clips of his colleagues shredding him in the chamber, and to his face, were very entertaining though. Wish to hell our system had something like PM Questions.
@Bob@Youngstown:
At the very least, sticking a stamp on it and putting it into the mail, which some of these people did, qualifies IMLO as mail fraud. Nevermind forgery of official documents, etc.
Forgot to add, can’t edit:
Taking it further, acting in concert to commit mail fraud, which these people clearly did, invokes RICO and exposes them to racketeering. Given the relatively low bar with respect to burden of proof (prosecutors need only prove the existence of a plan to defraud and the use of the mail (or FedEx, or UPS, etc.) in carrying it out. The potential penalties are severe. If DOJ would get off of their behinds and act, this one should be a slam dunk.
@HarvardLaw92: What’s your take on the “Seditious Conspiracy”? I assume DOJ wouldn’t have filed if they didn’t have a good case that they thought they could prove in court.
@Jax:
Difficult to prove. They’re swinging for the fences, but yeah, they wouldn’t have filed without some hope of prevailing.