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US Politics: The Copper, Silver, and Peach hangover


Ormond

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6 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

sigh, Frisch conceded to Boebert, despite the fact that there will be a recount. 

He's down by more than 500 votes.  I believe the largest swing ever seen in a house race from a recount was ~350 votes, and this would have to be half again more than that.  I can understand the desire to just be done with it - hanging on for the 0.0001% chance that something crazy happens just isn't worth it. 

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If McCarthy can't find the votes, then the next step will be nominating some far right lunatic and see if the moderates have the stomach to vote him down.  If they do, then there's really no path for any Republican to be speaker without Democratic votes. 

So then the question becomes whether speaker McCarthy starts to sound more appealing to the far right than speaker Fitzpatrick (or someone like him that dems might find acceptable).  I expect eventually the freedom caucus (or the moderates) fold before that happens.

In addition, McCarthy isn't sunk just yet.  We'll see if he can threaten/cajole/bribe any holdouts.

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There is no shortage of political pundits and legal scholars voicing opinions on Attorney General Merrick Garland‘s decision to appoint a special counsel to continue the criminal investigations into Donald Trump. Most have given the Attorney General a pass out of respect, even after several this week urged him to not hand off the investigation to a third party.

The Nation’s Justice correspondent, Elie Mystal, in an interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber Friday evening, however, did not hold back his fury over the appointment...

DOJ prosecutors have always investigated and prosecuted elected officials. For example, they are currently investigating Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, and did so during the midterms....

“There’s not a single argument that I have heard in defense of Merrick Garland’s self-serving pearl-clutching press conference that he gave this morning that answers the critical question,” Mystal told Melber, “if he was going to do this, if you believe that this is in the public interest, then why didn’t he believe that it was in the public interest 18 months ago, when he easily could have done the exact same thing?” (...)

“All the facts that he laid out today are things that were known quantities 18 months ago. People will say, ‘Oh, but Donald Trump wasn’t running for president 18 months ago.’ Wasn’t he? As far as I can tell, Trump still thinks he is the president. So this idea that Trump was going to be a candidate for office is not a new development in the case. Nor is the idea of quite frankly, that Joe Biden was going to be a candidate, is a new development in the case.” (...)

And then he blasted all the reason why the DOJ says Trump can’t be prosecuted at any given point in time.

“We have been told by this Department of Justice that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. We have been told by this Department of Justice that a person now running for the office of President can’t be prosecuted. We’ve been told by the Department of Justice that a person who isn’t actually running in the midterm elections also can’t be prosecuted...

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2022/11/elie-mystal-explodes-on-idiot-merrick-garland-with-3-basic-facts-attacking-self-serving-special-counsel-appointment/#.Y3gp-COprXg.twitter

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Not too surprised he punted to a special counsel after Trump announced.  While I understand the frustration, it's really stupid and lazy to just map how long the Mueller investigation took and extrapolate from there.  I don't expect much if any prosecution on January 6 - particularly regarding Trump specifically - but that would have been the case regardless.  On the documents case I don't think this will change much other than Garland covering his ass. 

Also, the obvious benefit is if you think Garland is reticent to prosecute Trump (which I pretty much agree with), this is a good thing.  Garland can still overrule Smith, but if Smith recommends charges that will be made public and put more pressure on Garland to do so.

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4 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

The non MAGA American public: is Donald Trump's going to answer for anything?

Merrick Garland: Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

Well make that 'Mr. Smith hobbles to Washington,' considering he's recovering from an accident and surgery. In the Netherlands.

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2 hours ago, LongRider said:

Ladies and Gentlemen, THE SUPREMES:

I don't have access to the NYT so haven't read the article.

Get access! Worth it for the article alone.  As others have pointed out the real story in the article, confusingly buried, is that the Supreme Court justices were subjected to a sophisticated lobbying operation by evangelists looking to overturn Roe and generally push the law in a Christianist direction.  They succeeded.  

The evidence that Alito and/or his wife leaked the Hobby Lobby decision also seems incontrovertible.  Alito's on the record denial may be technically accurate (or may be a lie) but he may have hinted, forecasted, or winked at the outcome over dinner.  Alito has always been the biggest scumbag on the Court, but this has also exposed him as the biggest hypocrite in light of his angry remarks over Dobbs.  See e.g., here (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2022/09/29/as-trust-in-scotus-drops-alito-spars-with-kagan-00059428)

If the Senate Dems had balls, they would require him to testify before the Judiciary committee.  His integrity should be questioned, and he should be exposed for the partisan hack he has always been. 

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20 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Get access! Worth it for the article alone.  As others have pointed out the real story in the article, confusingly buried, is that the Supreme Court justices were subjected to a sophisticated lobbying operation by evangelists looking to overturn Roe and generally push the law in a Christianist direction.  They succeeded.  

Thank you.  :cheers:

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Stupidly, I remain fuddled by the court, which has members who have behaved and are behaving, at best, unethically, complaining that the public dares to look into what They do, protest and inform the rest of the public, and thus the public doesn't trust them. :dunce:

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Quote

If the Senate Dems had balls, they would require him to testify before the Judiciary committee.  His integrity should be questioned, and he should be exposed for the partisan hack he has always been. 

I think he proved this early on when he interrupted Obama's speech. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that it was political in nature. Possibly he's just a huge racist.

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So, Nebraska has, like Wisconsin, just barely avoided having a legislature that could pass some of the worst right-wing bills.

The day after the election I think I reported here that the Democrats had managed to prevent the Republicans from having a filibuster-proof majority in the Nebraska unicameral legistlature. It turned out that was premature -- two of the districts were so close the outcome was really unknown, and in one of them, District 20 in southwestern Omaha, the Republican actually led in the count for several days.

Well, final votes are in, and the Democrats did just barely pull it off. The Democrat, John Fredrickson, won the seat by 82 votes. Nebraska's automatic recount law says that such a recount will occur if the difference between the candidates is less than 1% of the winning candidate's vote total, and Fredrickson's total vote was 8139, which means if he had only been 81 votes ahead there would have been an automatic recount. Talk about close!  

Fredrickson is not only a registered Democrat but will be the first openly gay man in the Nebraska legislature. As I've said before, the official ballots for legislature in Nebraska are non-partisan, with the parties of the candidates not listed on the ballot, but since we do have voter registration by party it is easy for the media to find out what party candidates are registered under and that's usually included in news reports. Though because of the nonpartisan ballot the Republicans in our legislature are a bit less crazy than those in many other states, it is still really important for them not to have a filibuster-proof majority for several issues. The two main ones at the moment would include abortion -- though I don't think the Republicans in Nebraska would pass a total ban, they certainly would at least reduce the present law from banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy to 12 weeks. And politically, if they had a filibuster proof majority they would certainly get rid of the dividing electoral votes by congressional district law we have and return Nebraska to a complete winner-take-all system. So with Fredrickson winning his seat, we have probably saved the possibility of Omaha once again giving a "blue dot" electoral vote to the Democratic candidate in 2024. 

https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/last-ballots-show-fredrickson-winning-omahas-district-20-legislative-seat-by-a-squeaker/article_069a8bac-676c-11ed-82f7-ab0f7be447d6.html

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