November 4, 2022

Mr. Garland, please indict FG before 11-14

The day he supposedly will announce his 2024 candidacy that he inexplicably thinks he deserves.

Sorry to the 140,000 humans who died of Covid due to his proven neglect and purposeful withholding of PPE to doctors and nurses.

Thank you

November 3, 2022

An interesting take on Twitter, unrolled

https://balloon-juice.com/2022/11/03/late-night-open-thread-but-seriously-financing-elons-ego/

Prof Paul Bernal
@PaulbernalUK

Anyway, my tuppence worth on Musk and Twitter. He’s in for a rocky ride, and the question for me is whether his ego is going to make him destroy Twitter. Right now, what’s pretty clear is that he doesn’t understand what makes Twitter work. 1/10
2:58 AM · Nov 1, 2022

There are three things he doesn’t seem to grasp. Firstly, he seems to think he’s bought a tech company (‘not enough coders, too many managers’) when what he’s really bought is a community of users. 2/10

What makes Twitter work, what makes it potentially valuable, isn’t the tech (which isn’t that special) but the community that uses it – that, in particular, it’s become the medium of choice of journalists and politicians. 3/10

That’s the value, right there. Every journalist worth their salt uses Twitter – and most use it a lot. Ditto pretty much every politician. They’re the user base he should care about, not the right-wing-nut-job community. But he doesn’t even understand *them* 4/10

Right-wing-nut-jobs don’t just want a place where they can rant, abuse and say whatever words they want. If they did, they’d be quite content with Gab, Parler, Truth Social, some bits of 4Chan, Reddit etc. See, they’ve got plenty of spaces. 5/10

No, what they want is a place where they can rant *at the libs*, at the MSM, at the people they hate. If those people aren’t there (and they aren’t on Gab, Parler, Truth Social etc), the ranting isn’t nearly as fun. So if Musk manages to drive the libs away, that’s ruined. 6/10

If the libs are driven off, the right-wing will be jubilant for a while, but then bored. And then Twitter dies. So Musk has to keep the libs on board. Oh, and the advertisers too, because they’ll run like hell if Twitter’s just a hate-speech hell-site. 7/10

And that means moderation. It means keeping the Nazis off the site. It means keeping control of abuse and hate speech. It means cutting down the misinformation. All things Musk doesn’t want to do. If he turns Twitter into a hell-site, he kills it. 8/10.

So what can he do? It’s not easy. There’s no simple solution, no magic wand. Free speech is bloody difficult. I’d suggest he read Habermas, but of course he won’t. So it’ll be messy, and I suspect he’ll just get bored eventually, but who knows? 9/10

That’s the thing. Handing over Twitter to a massive-ego, massive-wealth, unpredictable billionaire is kind of a metaphor for the whole way we’ve dealt with the internet. It’s a mess. We just have to do what we can. 10/10

November 3, 2022

DeSantis won't run in 2024 if trump does?

GOP INSIDERS ARE STARTING TO DOUBT RON DESANTIS WOULD ACTUALLY TAKE ON TRUMP
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/ron-desantis-donald-trump-2024

November 3, 2022

BTW, People v Trump Org delayed due to witness having covid

But did manage to throw Weisselberg under bus..

https://twitter.com/SWinstonWolkoff/status/1587849531860914178?s=20&t=l5wt7XAWrVGyv5b2VV1ILA

October 24, 2022

FWIW NYY tied with Houston - last shot:(

October 19, 2022

Are we driven by hate of trump?

Close trumper family member told me that my husband and I were.

So had to stop and think, am I? Are we?

I'd like to think and know that we are not, but why are we only half a country? Can you blame it all on the media? When his egregious, immoral, and criminal actions seem so crystal clear to us?

Anyone else going through this family dilemma? I want it all to be over!

October 17, 2022

File this in that big folder of stuff FG gets away with

https://nl.nytimes.com/f/newsletter/o8HjxJEkwPuV0-xa2D4RFw~~/AAAAAQA~/RgRlMA1ZP0T1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnl0aW1lcy5jb20vMjAyMi8xMC8xNy91cy9wb2xpdGljcy90cnVtcC1ob3RlbHMtc2VjcmV0LXNlcnZpY2UuaHRtbD9jYW1wYWlnbl9pZD0xOTAmZW1jPWVkaXRfdWZuXzIwMjIxMDE3Jmluc3RhbmNlX2lkPTc0ODg0Jm5sPXVwZGF0ZXMtZnJvbS10aGUtbmV3c3Jvb20mcmVnaV9pZD04MDg1MDcxNyZzZWdtZW50X2lkPTExMDI0OSZ0ZT0xJnVzZXJfaWQ9OTkyNzE5NWM2ZTBjZDFhMDZlYWNmNzQzMTFmMmMyMjJXA255dEIKY0VZiE1jxKydJFISa2dhcnRtYW5AeWFob28uY29tWAQAAAAA

Trump Hotels Charged Secret Service Exorbitant Rates, House Inquiry Finds
Records obtained by the House Oversight Committee showed the former president’s properties charged more than $1.4 million to agents protecting him and his family.

October 14, 2022

If you missed it - MAL diet coke goffer who ratted trump out..

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/key-mar-a-lago-witness-said-to-be-former-white-house-employee/ar-AA12W6eV


Walt Nauta is the witness in question, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. The 39-year-old worked as a valet for Trump in the Oval Office suite, according to former White House staffers, and served as a personal aide at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence and private club in Florida.

Snip

When FBI agents first interviewed Nauta, he denied any role in moving boxes or sensitive documents, the people familiar with the situation said in interviews before Nauta’s name became public. But as investigators gathered more evidence, they questioned him a second time and he told a starkly different story — that Trump instructed him to move the boxes, these people said.


Snip

Nauta is originally from Guam, according to public records. He enlisted in the Navy and eventually became a cook in the White House mess, a small dining facility run by the Navy in the basement of the West Wing. In 2013, he entered a military culinary competition, part of a team representing “presidential food service.”

Not long after Trump took office, Nauta left the mess to become one of Trump’s valets, spending some of his workday in a small passageway that connects the West Wing to a private dining room. From there, he had access to a small refrigerator stocked with Diet Cokes, which he brought to the president in the Oval Office when Trump pressed a call button on his desk, said a former White House staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss activities inside the White House.

Snip

The former staffer described Nauta as friendly and pleasant to Oval Office visitors. In September 2020, Nauta was promoted to senior chief petty officer, a significant career advancement. When Trump left the White House, Nauta decided to join him at Mar-a-Lago. Campaign finance records show that Nauta was placed on the payroll of a Trump political action committee, Save America, in 2021. He was on payroll as recently as August, making $5,227.81 a paycheck, or about $135,000 a year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

October 14, 2022

Morning Laugh - trump LIEberry status

Official records

No NARA temporary location has been identified to store Trump's Presidential records until he builds his own Presidential Library. Currently, the NARA is storing Trumps Presidential records at current NARA government locations.

The NARA library is established by the Presidential Records Act and is independent of possible plans for a physical building under the Presidential Libraries Act.[2] All current content has been previously available to the public, including websites such as Melania Trump's Be Best, photographs, and social media accounts including @POTUS and @FLOTUS, though Trump's personal, permanently suspended Twitter account @realDonaldTrump is not immediately available. Other private records will be subject to access requests under the Freedom of Information Act from January 2026.[3][4][5]

While most records will be open to FOIA requests by 2026, records could be withheld from public access on the basis of executive privilege for up to twelve years.[6]

On the day before leaving office, President Trump designated Mark Meadows, Pat Cipollone, John Eisenberg, Patrick Philbin, Scott Gast, Michael Purpura, and Steven Engel as his presidential records representatives to potentially act on his behalf should he be incapacitated and unable to exercise executive privilege with respect to access to his administration's records.[7][6]

Building plans

As with other presidential libraries, a building for Trump would need to be privately financed and organized before the possible involvement of the NARA.[8] During Trump's presidency, it had been speculated that floors in Trump Tower may be dedicated for use to a future presidential library. The Washington Post reported in the final week of his presidency that two sources close to Trump said he plans to build a library and museum in Florida run by Dan Scavino, funded by raising $2 billion from grassroots supporters.[9]

October 5, 2022

Salon: Mar-a-Lago documents inadvertently published online -- and undercut Trump's privilege claims

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/05/mar-a-lago-documents-inadvertently-published-online--and-undercut-trumps-privilege-claims/

Justice Department's detailed lists of seized materials from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence were inadvertently published online on Tuesday.

A judge ordered that the logs stay under seal, but they appeared to be inadvertently posted to the public court docket, according to Bloomberg, which first reported on the documents. The filing, which is no longer publicly visible, included a combination of government, business and personal documents. Some of these records included analysis of who should get a pardon, retainer agreements for lawyers and accountants as well as legal bills.

A "Privilege Review Team" followed specific "search procedures and filter protocols while executing the warrant" to search Mar-a-Lago and divided potentially privileged material into two categories, according to the filing. The filter team found 520 pages that needed a closer look but later determined few of those documents fell under any legal privileges.

The first set of 137 documents included government records, public documents and communications with outside parties. A 39-page document, in which a "majority of pages are titled 'The President's Calls' and include the Presidential Seal" contain handwritten names, numbers and notes that appear to be messages and notes.

The other list included documents that the team identified should be returned to Trump, including a "medical letter" from a doctor, legal complaints and information about legal fees to lawyers.

More at link