The Conversation -- November 25, 2024
⭐Alan Feuer, et al., of the New York Times: "The special counsel Jack Smith asked two courts on Monday to effectively shut down the federal criminal cases he brought against ... Donald J. Trump last year, bowing to a Justice Department policy that says it is unconstitutional to pursue prosecutions against sitting presidents. The twin requests ... were an acknowledgment that Mr. Trump will re-enter the White House in January unburdened by federal efforts to hold him accountable through charges of plotting to subvert the last presidential election and holding on to a trove of highly classified material following his first term in office.... In both of the court submissions, Mr. Smith made clear that his moves to end the charges against Mr. Trump were a necessity imposed on him by legal norms, rather than a decision made on the merits of the cases or because of problems with the evidence....
"While Mr. Smith sought to end the criminal cases before Mr. Trump was inaugurated, he did not definitively close the door on the possibility of the prosecutions one day being revived. In both filings, his requests were for dismissals 'without prejudice,' leaving open the possibility that the charges might be refiled after Mr. Trump leaves office for the second time.... Hours after Mr. Smith submitted his requests, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case in Washington, issued a brief order dismissing the proceeding." The reporters do not indicate whether Judge Chutkan dismissed the case with or without prejudice. ~~~
~~~ Politico's story, by Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein, is here. ~~~
~~~ Smith's Motion to Dismiss in the insurrection/election interference case is here. His Motion to Dismiss the Appeal as to Trump in the stolen classified documents case is here.
~~~ Marie: And the bright side for me -- the side that makes me regret I have not appreciated Donald Trump more -- is that he has given me something that few others could -- you see, he has almost made me shed all reason and succomb at long last to a deep belief in an eternal afterlife where I might live in perfect unison with the Lord and the Cosmos. And how has Trump brought me to this near-epiphany? Because he has proved, once and for all time, that there is not, that there cannot be -- any fucking justice in this life on Earth. ~~~
~~~ Oh, and a Monty Python Galaxy shoutout to Trump's poorly-educated MAGA droolers, too:
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth ~~~
"Special Relationship" No Longer So Special. Matt Honeycombe-Foster of Politico: "Elon Musk fired the latest shots in his war with the British government over the weekend, branding the U.K. a 'tyrannical police state,' boosting a petition calling for a fresh general election, and sharing a documentary by a jailed far-right activist to his millions of X followers. The X owner and adviser to ... Donald Trump has spent much of the year feuding with Britain's new center-left Labour government. In his latest attack, Musk responded to a post about a viral online petition calling for an immediate general election in the U.K., which only went to the polls in July and returned Labour in a landslide.... Over the summer..., [Musk] leaped on the killing of three schoolgirls in the seaside town of Southport to offer his thoughts on policing in the U.K., spread inaccurate claims about the government's response, and accuse [Prime Minister Keir] Starmer of running a 'two-tier' justice system that treats white people more harshly.... Pressed on the string of comments Monday, Starmer's official spokesperson said the prime minister 'looks forward to working with President Trump and .. his whole team, including Elon Musk' to develop 'the special U.K.-U.S. relationship." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I find this astonishing. This is not how someone who holds an informal but influential position in a government-in-waiting treats the nation's closest ally. So I guess we have to assume international alliances will be changing. Drastically. A real president-elect would tell Musk his services were no longer required. But Trump doesn't know how to be a real president, and Musk doesn't know how to behave. And neither of these arrogant little brats thinks he has to learn.
Ana Marie Cox in the New Republic, republished by Yahoo! News: "For the members of this new [Trump] administration, favor-trading is their most obvious skill and slick morals the defining character trait. In a normal situation, these things would be blots on a résumé In the Trump world, consequence-free bad behavior is the résumé. Hell, given the propensity of Trump administrations to become a snakepit, it's also a survival skill.... Hegseth appears to believe that male sexual aggression is ... to be celebrated. Writing about Trump's refusal to back down from the 'grab her by the pussy' footage, he lauded Trump for 'not playing by the rules of a game that was stacked against him -- and against all patriotic Americans.'... Seizing what others would deny you or say you don't deserve is the whole point of Trumpism."
Jason Wilson of the Guardian: "Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for secretary of defense, has attacked several key US alliances such as Nato, allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the United Nations in two recent books, as well as saying US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions. At the same time, the man who would head America's gigantic military has tied US foreign policy almost entirely to the priority of Israel.... Elsewhere, Hegseth appears to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions and any international laws governing the conduct of war, and instead 'unleash them' to become a 'ruthless', ncompromising' and 'overwhelmingly lethal' force geared to 'winning our wars according to our own rules'."
Leah Douglas & Ted Hesson of Reuters: "U.S. farm industry groups want ... Donald Trump to spare their sector from his promise of mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain heavily dependent on immigrants in the United States illegally. So far Trump officials have not committed to any exemptions, according to interviews with farm and worker groups and Trump's incoming 'border czar' Tom Homan. Nearly half of the nation's approximately 2 million farm workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor and Agriculture...." MB: Better start turning the soil for a nice little victory garden, because -- as Forrest M. & others have been discussing -- there will be hardly anybody willing to pick your lettuce and corn, and you won't be able to afford what-all does get harvested.
Miriam Elder, in a New York Times op-ed, remembers the "internal emigration" that occurred when many Russians abandoned political activism for apolitical domestic pursuits when Putin returned to power in 2012. "Aliona Doletskaya, a former editor in chief of Russian Vogue..., [created] her own 'internal Copenhagen' to shut out the horrors outside." Elder urges Americans not to emulate the Russians who gave up. "... something binds these men who seek power with no controls -- the creation of internal enemies, the constant shock moves to keep people on their toes, their viselike grip on the information environment, as well as the anger and exhaustion they provoke in their critics.... A new approach is necessary if America is to avoid the fate that befell so many Russians." ~~~
~~~ Marie: As for me, I don't want an "internal Copenhagen." I want to move to Copenhagen! I want to be there, to sit in the Glyptotek gardens, surrounded by nice, reasonable Danish people. Alas, that's not really possible, so I'm stuck living amidst dumb, selfish slackers, a population with the mentality and morality of 13-year-old juvenile delinquents.
~~~~~~~~~~
Joel Gray, star of the Broadway musical and film "Cabaret," which premiered in 1966, in a New York Times op-ed: "The parallels between the rise of fascism in 1930s Berlin as depicted in the show and the mounting tensions of the 1960s in America were both obvious and ominous.... The 1960s were a time of social upheaval, but also a time of hope.... Now, in 2024, we find ourselves in a different, far more precarious moment. The recent election of Donald Trump to a second term has left many Americans, particularly those who fought so hard against the forces of authoritarianism and hate, feeling drained and disillusioned.... The democratic election of an authoritarian figure, the normalization of bigotry, the complicity of the frightened masses -- none of these are new themes.... The democratic election of an authoritarian figure, the normalization of bigotry, the complicity of the frightened masses -- none of these are new themes."
Alex Woodward & Oliver O'Connell of the Independent: Donald Trump "is reportedly preparing to issue an order following his inauguration on January 20 that would effectively ban trans people serving in the military -- and then medically discharge the thousands of currently serving trans service members in the armed forces. In his first term in office, Trump declared that the US would no longer 'accept or allow' trans people in the military, citing 'tremendous medical costs and disruption,' he wrote in 2017. The ban took effect in 2019. President Joe Biden reversed that policy, which was the subject of several lawsuits. Now, Trump is expected to immediately rescind Biden's order and go further by ejecting currently-serving trans troops, according to The Times, citing sources familiar with the president-elect's plans." See related Advocate story, linked below.
Elizabeth Dwoskin, et al., of the Washington Post: "Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are interviewing job candidates and seeking advice from experts in Washington and Silicon Valley -- pushing a sweeping vision for the 'Department of Government Efficiency' past the realm of memes and viral posts into potential real-world disruption.... Top Musk surrogates from his business empire ... are involved in planning..., along with a coterie of Musk friends and Silicon Valley leaders.... Richard J. Pierce, a George Washington University professor who specializes in administrative law, said the Wall Street Journal piece [Musk & Ramaswamy wrote touting their plan] shows Musk and Ramaswamy are 'utterly ignorant' of the realities of federal law, which mandates strict [and costly] procedures for repealing existing regulations.... Said Tobin Marcus, an Obama administration advisor, 'Their "move fast and break things" ethos suggests they'll do something sweeping. But ... creating multiple years of legal limbo for many industries is not a great recipe for driving business investment.'" ~~~
~~~ Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy have huge ambitions and no humility about ... [their planned] wholesale attack on federal agencies[, which is] designed to eliminate thousands of regulations, reduce the federal workforce by an order of magnitude that could cripple the delivery of vital services, and effect cost savings that would amount to nearly one-third of the federal budget, or the entire discretionary part of the budget and then some.... Trump's motivation is more about punishment and retribution.... He is prepared to fire the team that worked with special counsel Jack Smith on two indictments.... The [Musk-Ramaswamy] plan is premised, in part, on recent Supreme Court rulings that limit the power of the agencies to write and impose regulations and that Musk and Ramaswamy say give the president considerable latitude to make big changes." ~~~
~~~ Marie: You will notice how Balz normalizes the plan by comparing it with earlier failed efforts to cut government spending and by inviting a well-meaning "expert" to comment, sometimes favorably, on the Muskaswamy endeavor.
Tony Romm of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are weighing vast changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, seeking to limit the powers and funding of a federal watchdog agency formed in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis. The early discussions align the GOP with banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders and other large financial institutions, which have chafed at the CFPB under Democratic leadership and sought to invalidate many of its recent regulations, including its efforts to spare consumers from what the Biden administration calls 'junk fees.' By design, the CFPB has a broad mandate to protect Americans from unfair, deceptive or predatory financial practices. Its current Democratic leader, Rohit Chopra, has been aggressive, pursuing a host of rules to shield people from medical debt, make it easier for them to switch banks, and limit the fees they face from overdrawing their checking accounts."
Marie: Again, this whole game plan is so fascistic it would be laughable if not so horrible. Donald and his "Domestic Efficiency" buddies are following fascist SOP by starting with banning a group that is already marginalized (so relatively helpless): trans people. Why, I don't even personally know a trans person. (Well, I don't think I do.) So, what, me worry? Then they're going for bureaucrats. I mean, who likes having to go beg some bureaucrat to let us put an addition on the house or collect an earned benefit? Sure, maybe I know some schoolteachers or a neighbor who's a fireman, but they're not like Washington bureaucrats, are they? So another relatively unpopular group. Then it will be "woke" "liberal elites": college professors, overpaid celebrities, left-wing press, well-to-do urbanites who live in highrises & have season tickets to the opera -- in other words, people whom "normal Americans" can't relate to. And sooner or later, it's everybody who doesn't fit into and comply with the fascist ideology.
But, Hey, So Far Everybody's Happy. Anthony Salvanto, et al., of CBS News: "Donald Trump's incoming administration starts off with mostly good will from the public: a majority of Americans overall are either happy or at least satisfied that he won and are either excited or optimistic about what he'll do as president. Trump's handling of his presidential transition gets approval from most Americans overall and brings near-universal approval from his voters, along with a net-positive response about his selections for Cabinet posts, in particular, Sen. Marco Rubio, who is Trump's pick to be secretary of state. After inflation and the economy so dominated the election, Americans are more inclined to think his administration will bring down prices for food and groceries rather than raise them, and his voters overwhelmingly say that."
Trudy Ring of the Advocate: "U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, has introduced a bill to deny transgender identity. Marshall Wednesday introduced the Defining Male and Female Act of 2024, which a press release from his office calls 'a bill to codify legal definitions of male, female, and sex to ensure they are based on biology rather than ideology.' It would write a binary definition of sex into federal law. 'In human beings, there are two -- and only two -- sexes: male and female, which refer to the two body structures (phenotypes) that, in normal development, correspond to one or the other gamete -- sperm for males and ova for females,' the legislation says.... Marshall pointed to his experience as a medical doctor as justification for the bill."
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Reader Comments (12)
Nuked and Paved.
My attempt to avoid unnecessary political podcasts (impossible to avoid print reports) so as not to make walking the dog an experience miserable enough to consider flinging oneself into oncoming traffic, the giant, roaring pickup trucks that zoom past us covered in Trump paraphernalia, has not been entirely successful, extrapolation and association being what they are.
Granted, listening to a podcast about the death (murder) of Karen Silkwood carries with it the possibility (realized soon enough) of hearing the voice of one Tricky Dick, who although back then we considered an avatar of dark forces in the world, looks like fucking George Washington compared to the absolute source of dark forces setting up shop in that worthy’s namesake city, but extrapolation makes it worse.
The story of corporate corruption and greed that brought Karen Silkwood to a violent end as she drove to meet a reporter from the New York Times looking to expose (rather than Both Sides) such a story, is not unfamiliar, and we are watching such corruption turbocharged in real time today. But here’s the storyline that jumped out at me. Silkwood’s employer (and likely killer) the oil, gas, and nuclear power giant, Kerr-McGee, seeking to maximize profits and minimize problems, put its workforce on round the clock shifts of twelve hours each. As more experienced workers departed, the company took to hiring kids just out of high school with zero experience, zero knowledge of the dangers of working with plutonium in an unsafe plant, and practically no training. This was the situation that increased Silkwood’s anxiety tenfold.
In addition to discovering that Kerr-McGee had been passing off poorly manufactured plutonium fuel rods as safe, she was now witnessing dumbass kids off the farm playing “hot room” with fucking nuclear material, seeing how much they could screw around before plutonium particles triggered alarms.
So, passing off bad nuclear fuel rods manufactured by Beevis and Butthead ran the very real possibility of a meltdown at the nuclear plants using those materials. Very dangerous.
Our situation is worse.
As the Fat Fascist and his evil, scheming horde plan to fire tens of thousands of experienced civil servants and replace them with their own ignorant buttheads, the danger of implosion goes far beyond local power plants, extending to wherever government services impact the everyday lives of all Americans. Pretty much everywhere and everyone.
And not only do we run the risk of MAGA buttheads playing footsie with dangerous materials, we will now have “management” encouraging the worst outcomes.
Kerr-McGee killed Karen Silkwood and exposed dozens of their workers to dangerous, cancer causing substances.
Trump and his band of crooks, grifters, and brigands are looking to kill thousands, maybe, as Trump did first time around, a million or more.
Gotta go back to the Car Talk guys on my walks. It’ll take more work to extrapolate universally horrible stuff from stories of radial tire wear and bent truss rods.
Deny transgender identity exists? No problem. That's only three million people in the United States. Passing a law will make them disappear.
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-percentage-of-the-us-population-is-transgender/#:~:text=Approximately%
I'm so happy that getting those transgender people out of the
military will solve all the countries problems on day one. He's
gonna be really busy on day one, what with climate change to deny,
all those round ups of anyone darker than white and all those
lawsuits against the media (except Fox News).
I sure hope none of those MAGA voters will be affected, especially
the ones living from payday to payday who will be shocked at the
new tariffs that will raise the price of their beer and stuff by
twenty to fifty percent if not brewed in the USA.
We need to change the TRANSportation Dept. to Straightportation
Dept.
Senator Marshall's Binary Gender bill may be a blessing in disguise, although I'm sure he doesn't mean it that way.
Science has for centuries recognized hermaphrodites. They have characteristics of both sexes. Although I am no expert on the subject, I suspect that many people who classify themselves as "non-binary" may be hermaphroditic. However that is defined. Legislating them away would be hard, like when an Indiana legislator tried to legislate redefining "pi" over a humdred years ago. (Hey, let's be rational here.)
More interesting ... within the past two decades, advances in genomic knowledge and manipulation, allowing observation in humans and experimentation with animals, indicates that gene expression of sexual characteristics indicates the existence of a spectrum of gender. Infrafemale (machomachoman) on one end, ultrafemale (vavavavoom) on the other end of the scale. The scale is female because all mammals start female and become male if Y chromosomes develop to express maleness.
And there are cases of people whose physiology expresses one of the genders anatomically in all respects, but whose cellular genetics are definitely the opposite sex.
So this bill may be a blessing because, if it gets hearings and they are done properly, the public record of the recent discoveries in the complexity of gender expression could make for great stories. If the media recognizes the zowie factor in such stories, the general public could learn something.
Or, they could be like the Scopes Trial, and that would be fun too.
Forrest, tariffs will cause domestic beer prices to go up also. One effect of tariffs is a windfall profit to established domestic producers. If tariffs cause your St. Pauli to go from $1 to $1.25, your Leinenkugel can go from $1 to $1.20 without breaking a sweat. You pay more for either. That's how it works.
Another normalization, we have heard a lot about Trump's scams, but very little about him stepping away from the scams or his business this time around when gets into the Oval Office. The press doesn't even seem to bother to ask about pretending to put his business in his kids' hands this time. Conflicts of interest are baked in now. And the corruption and bribes are just accepted as Trump business as usual.
The "do no harm" pledge doesn't apply to Doctor Marshall because IOKIYAR.
Okay, okay…never think you’ve heard it all (I mean, who has the time?), and don’t even imagine you’ve sorta, kinda heard, if not ALL the cuckoo stuff, a fair share of goofiness.
But I admit I had never heard about the Indiana Pi Bill until I read Patrick’s comment this morning.
Now, you might think an effort to redefine a mathematical constant like pi—as essential to classical geometry as the concepts of points, lines, and equilateral triangles—by legislative fiat, would be horse whipped out of the building. But noooo…to paraphrase Sam Clemens, “Suppose you were a member of the Indiana House in 1897. Now suppose you were an idiot. But I repeat myself.” The House passed this thing unanimously.
The idea apparently had to do with the problem known as squaring the circle (spoiler alert: you can’t). Seems an amateur mathematician (accent on amateur) in the Hoosier State back then got pissed about this and decided it’d all work just fine if Pi was 3.2 and not 3.14159….etc., etc., etc.
Yeah! Brilliant idea. We’ll just presto-change-O-Pi-O, and everything works nice and neat.
Right. But now Pi doesn’t work anymore for anything else. In 1970, when Apollo 13 was trying to make it back to Earth and the return trip needed some geometric adjustments to the flight path, let’s say they used the Indiana Pi in their calculations. Those guys would be somewhere out past the Kuiper Belt by now: frozen solid.
Luckily the Indiana Senate was not composed of morons.
But this is exactly what Fat Hitler and his band of cutthroats do every day. Those J6 people aren’t dangerous insurrectionist thugs, they’re mild mannered patriots.
Trump isn’t a serial sexual predator and rapist, he loves women.
We’re not fascists. YOU guys are fascists…
And like that.
It’s a way for them to give the American public their own special Pi in the face. With a nice poison cream filling.
November 25th is International Day for the elimination of
violence against women:
Promoting respect and dignity for women, this vital movement
strives to create a world where every woman feels safe, valued,
and empowered.
Do we think November 25th, 2025 will be eliminated from the
calendar on day one of the inauguration?
This makes me sick (or maybe even sicker):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/25/trump-cases-motion-to-dismiss-jack-smith/
Leslie Jones at Thanksgiving.
For this year's cheaper family meal.
"Thanksgiving dinner will be a little cheaper this year
A typical Thanksgiving dinner for 10 will cost about $58 this year, a new report finds — down around 5% from last year but up nearly 20% in unadjusted dollars from 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic."
Grift Guitars
"Trump Guitars Owner Gets Cease and Desist for Scammy Guitars
It looks like another grift of Donald Trump's may be ending before it even starts. Today, Gibson Guitars sent a cease and desist letter to the owner of Trump Guitars, 16 Creative. While Donald Trump does not own Trump Guitars, he has publicly called on his supporters to purchase the guitars and the company dubs the guitars to be the only Trump-endorsed guitars on the internet."