cdarwin

cdarwin, 11 days ago to random

Wall Street Billionaires Are Rushing to Back Trump, Verdict Be Damned

A growing number of financial elites are throwing their weight behind Trump, who was found guilty in the first criminal trial of a former US president

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-31/billionaires-back-trump-despite-guilty-verdict-in-hush-money-trial

cdarwin, 11 days ago to random

Right wing pundits' cries for revenge

The Federalist’s Sean Davis has some thoughts on how Trump might respond to his conviction: “In 2016, the presidential race was decided based on candidates releasing lists of potential Supreme Court nominees,” he tweeted. “In 2024, I want to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison. This is what happens when you cross the Rubicon.”

Davis went on: “Biden and Garland should be indicted in Texas tomorrow for their ongoing criminal human trafficking conspiracy across the border and into the state of Texas, in direct contravention of state law.”

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh was thinking on a similar track: “Donald Trump should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office. First on the list should be Joe Biden. Second should be Joe’s crackhead son.”

Or here was lawyer Mike Davis, a pro-Trump attack dog whom Donald Trump Jr. has floated as a possible pick for attorney general in a second Trump term: “Dear Republicans: If your response to Biden’s Republic-ending lawfare against Trump is:

1. We must respect the process and/or 2. We are too principled to retaliate, please do two things: 1. Fuck off 2. Leave the party. You are too weak, stupid, and dangerous to keep around.”

“Import the Third World, become the Third World,” tweeted Tucker Carlson. “That’s what we just saw. This won’t stop Trump. He’ll win the election if he’s not killed first. But it does mark the end of the fairest justice system in the world. Anyone who defends this verdict is a danger to you and your family.”
Elected

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/i-want-to-see-lists-of-which-democrats

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

For the good of the country, Donald Trump should drop out the 2024 presidential race.
A president should be of decent character. A president should be entrusted to faithfully execute the law. The trial made clear that 💥Trump is not of decent character and has no fealty to the law. 💥
He is a man who had an extramarital affair while his wife was pregnant. He is a man who used a tabloid newspaper to falsely smear his rivals, skirting campaign contribution laws. He is a man who didn’t think twice about falsifying records to cover up his transgressions.
Quibbling about the severity of the crime—falsifying business records in the first degree is not as grave as conspiracy to defraud the United States, to mention just one of Trump’s outstanding indictments—obscures the fact that Trump committed a crime, and did so in a self-serving pursuit of political power.
We know that the Constitution allows a convicted felon to serve as President, but it also decrees that a president “shall be removed” upon “Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
A felony is literally a high crime.
💥Trump would be subject to impeachment and conviction the second after his inauguration. 💥
A two-thirds Senate vote for conviction is extremely unlikely, but to have a president who unquestionably qualifies for impeachment and conviction would wrack America with divisions more intense than we suffered in the last Trump presidency, perhaps more intense than any since the Civil War.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/30/donald-trump-should-drop-out/

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

The world has enough fossil fuel projects planned to meet global energy demand forecasts to 2050
Governments should stop issuing new oil, gas and coal licences, according to a large study aimed at political leaders.

If governments deliver the changes promised in order to keep the world from breaching its climate targets
💥no new fossil fuel projects will be needed,💥researchers at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) said on Thursday.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/no-need-for-countries-to-issue-new-oil-gas-or-coal-licences-study-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

Republican candidates in all eight of the country’s most competitive Senate races
have changed their approach on the issue of abortion,
You softening their rhetoric, shifting their positions and,
in at least one case, embracing policies championed by Democrats.

From Michigan to Maryland, Republicans are trying to
repackage their views to defang an issue that has hurt their party at the ballot box since the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights.

While the pivot is endemic across races in swing states,
the most striking shifts have come from candidates who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate just two years ago in their home states, with abortion views that sounded very different.

When Bernie Moreno, a Republican businessman, ran for a Senate seat in Ohio in 2022, he described his views as “absolute pro-life, no exceptions.”
“Life begins at conception” and “abortion is the murder of an innocent baby,” he said on social media.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/us/politics/republican-senate-races-abortion.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

Sentencing is set for July 11 at 10 a.m.

That will put sentencing four days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention, at which Trump is expected to receive the party’s presidential nomination.
-- Michael Gold Reporting on the Trump campaign

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

From now on, nobody will be able to see how much celebrities abuse the environment with their private jet-related CO2 emissions. And for that, we have Congress to thank.
An amendment in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill
—which was initially introduced last June and signed into law on May 16 by President Biden
—will make it extremely difficult, borderline impossible, to track private jet activity because private jet owners will now be able to make their registration information anonymous, Gizmodo reports.
Before the law was passed, anybody could look up celebrities and their private jet activity on the FAA civil registry.
Now, that registry will become private for those private jet owners who ask for their identifying information to be hidden, making it almost impossible for folks to intersect that data with radar mapping.
Ultimately, that has allowed committed planespotters to figure out where and when celebrities travel aboard their private CO2-emitting planes.
Among those planespotting enthusiasts is Jack Sweeney, the college student and planespotter whose Twitter profile is famous for tracking celebrity jet activity. Thanks to his efforts, Sweeney has been in the public eye for a while now, so much so that his activity has grabbed the attention of many private jet-abusing celebrities, including Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.
In 2020, Musk threatened to sue Sweeney after he created his since–famous Twitter profile and even proceeded to shadowban him and ban him after purchasing Twitter in 2022. However, Sweeney's planespotting profile has since been allowed back on X.
Swift, instead, famously served Sweeney with a cease-and-desist letter after he published a compilation video of Swift's private jet flights in 2023. According to that data, she flew 178,000 miles in that period, which is a lot, especially regarding CO2 emissions. We're talking 1,200 tons of it, as Sweeney reported.
With the new law passing, Sweeney likely isn't pleased right now. Don't worry—we asked him, and should he get back to us in a timely fashion, we'll let you know.
However, this doesn't mean that all hope's lost in determining which celebrities are most at fault because of their private jet usage.
As Thrillist just reported, a new study recently analyzed the private jet activity of celebrities between 2023 and 2024 and managed to rank them based on their CO2 emissions.
According to the study, Pitbull is the "winner," sitting at the top of the ranking with 4,549 metric tons of CO2 in 396 flights.
Travis Scott emitted 3,760 metric tons of CO2 in 203 flights,
while Kim Kardashian emitted 3,204 metric tons of CO2 in 210 flights.
Taylor Swift came in at number 13 with 1,055 metric tons of CO2 emitted in 133 flights.
You can read more about the worst celebrities for their private jet CO2 emissions here.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/tracking-celebrity-private-jet-flights-new-law

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

Chief Justice John Roberts and the other justices
should think very hard about their next steps
because their colleague, Justice Sam Alito,
has made it perfectly clear with this response
that he thinks the ethics rules are a joke
and that we are rubes for even thinking that he should be held to them.

Here’s a list of demeaning quotes from Alito’s letter responding to Sens. Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse’s letterfrom last week calling on his recusal:

1 “As I have stated publicly, I had nothing whatsoever to do with the flying of that flag. I was not even aware of the upside-down flag until it was called to my attention.”💥Alito, who served in the military, wants you to believe that he did not notice an upside-down flag flying in front of his home.
2 “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused.” 💥Come off it.
3 “My wife and I own our Virginia home jointly. She therefore has the legal right to use the property as she sees fit, and there were no additional steps that I could have taken to have the flag taken down more promptly.” 💥Is he describing a landlord-tenant relationship, or his family? Beyond that, this was a Supreme Court justice in January 2021, as the Twenty-Fifth Amendment was being discussed, impeachment was being pursued, and fences were being erected, but this man decided not to push whether there was an upside-down flag flying in front of his home? This honestly is as distressing an admission to me as anything Alito has said throughout this scandal. (Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern dig down on an aspect of this, Alito’s one-woman feminism.)
4 “[S]he was greatly distressed at the time due, in large part, to a very nasty neighborhood dispute in which I had no involvement. A house on the street displayed a sign attacking her personally, and a man who was living in the house at the time trailed her all the way down the street and berated her in my presence using foul language, including what I regard as the vilest epithet that can be addressed to a woman.” 💥First, see Jodi Kantor’s Tuesday report at The New York Times for more clarity on the disputed timeline of all of this. Then, return to this and realize that a Supreme Court justice is telling you that he thinks — even by his apparently inaccurate timeline — flying an upside-down flag is the appropriate, or at least an acceptable, response to a neighborhood political disagreement that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, has that gets personal.
5 “The second incident concerns a flag bearing the legend ‘An Appeal to Heaven’ that flew in the backyard of our vacation home in the summer of 2023. I recall that my wife did fly that flag for some period of time, but I do not remember how long it flew.“ 💥This time, Alito saw a flag with the word “appeal” on it flying from his vacation home and he — in his defense — is telling us that he, a Supreme Court justice, was absolutely incurious as to the meaning of such a flag flying on his public-facing property.
6 “[W]hat is most relevant here, I had no involvement in the decision to fly that flag.” 💥This was, of course, the flag up on his property long enough that Google Street View captured it. Notably, he doesn’t even give us the “I asked her to take it down” line here.
7 “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.” 💥He is mocking us.
8 “I was not familiar with the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag when my wife flew it. She may have mentioned that it dates back to the American Revolution, and I assumed she was flying it to express a religious and patriotic message. I was not aware of any connection between this historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement,’ and neither was my wife. She did not fly it to associate herself with that or any other group, and the use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily drain that flag of all other meanings.” 💥This is the most questionable part of his letter, because it makes statements of fact about his and his wife’s knowledge (or lack thereof), and, in so doing, makes (or does not make) a couple of other notable statements. He claims not to know why she flew it, saying only that she “may have mentioned” how old it is, but then also states absolutely that it was unrelated to the “Stop the Steal Movement.” First, it’s odd that he doesn’t say why she did fly it; he just states one thing she “may have” said and that it was not about “Stop the Steal.” Second, note that he made no similar disclaimer about the upside-down flag. [1/2]

https://www.lawdork.com/p/sam-alito-believes-you-and-perhaps

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

In a statement, the Biden campaign’s Black media director, Jasmine Harris, accused Donald Trump of racism
after a former producer on The Apprentice accused him of using a racial slur on set:

"No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president,
reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man.

Anyone notice a pattern?
Donald Trump is exactly who Black voters know him to be:
a textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets,
and the most ignorant man to ever run for president.

It’s why Black voters kicked him out of the White House in 2020,
and it’s why they’ll make him a loser a second time this November."

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

Donald Trump recently said he’s “looking at” imposing restrictions on contraception if he is elected president,
and even promised a concrete policy.

Then he quickly walked it back.

But certain constituencies on the right have not given up
—far from it.

We chatted with Politico reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein, co-author of a great new piece detailing
the blueprint that Trump’s MAGA allies are developing for him to restrict birth control through executive action,
about how far this could get if he regains the White House.

It isn’t pretty.

https://newrepublic.com/article/182061/inside-secretive-trump-maga-plot-take-away-birth-control

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

Navient, a large owner of private student loan debt, has created, but not publicized, a program that allows borrowers to apply to have their loans forgiven. Some who succeeded have jubilantly shared their stories in chat groups and other forums.

“I cried, a lot,” said Danielle Maynard, who recently received notice from Navient that nearly $40,000 in private loans she owed for her studies at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass., would be wiped out.

Navient, (formerly Sallie Mae) has not publicized the discharge program that helped Ms. Maynard. Other borrowers have complained on social media about difficulties getting an application form.

When asked about the program and the criticisms, a company spokesman said, “Borrowers may contact us at any time, and our advocates can assist.”

A pressure campaign from lawmakers, federal regulators and lawyers representing borrowers prompted the company to create the “school misconduct discharge.”

Navient began sending a 12-page application form this year to some borrowers who complained about their private loans.

The document lists dozens of types of impropriety by schools
— such as inflating job placement rates and graduates’ earnings, or misrepresenting their educational programs
— and asks borrowers to choose which apply to their experience.

Applicants are required to submit documentation for their claims.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/navient-private-student-loan-debt.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

What’s behind the anti-Biden ‘wildfire’ among TikTok influencers

Trump content is generating about 500 million views a month on the site, compared with more than 300 million for Biden posts, as of late May.

And Trump videos are much more likely to be posted by allies than Biden videos, according to CredoIQ data.

That adds to a similar advantage Trump has on Facebook, which reaches an older audience.

Conservatives produced more than 70,000 posts about Biden in the first half of this year, compared with about 18,000 posts about Biden from liberals

The Facebook advantage is not new. Trump has been mining the platform since 2016, when he took advantage of the site’s propensity to elevate content that elicits outrage and anger.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-05-30/2024-election-tik-tok-influencers-biden-trump

cdarwin, 12 days ago to revenge

The jury is still out,
but Donald Trump’s campaign has already suggested that
the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will seek
#revenge against whoever was involved in his myriad legal trials.

Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt warned that
🔥people will “certainly… be held accountable for the crimes that have been committed over the last several years”
—that is, all the people who have attempted to prosecute Trump and give the former president the same legal treatment as they would any other private citizen.
"We’ve seen them lie, we’ve seen them abuse our justice system, we’ve seen Joe Biden target innocent Americans across this country such as the protesters on January 6,” Leavitt said.
🔥Insinuating that Trump’s followers do not expect to be held to the law if they commit a crime, Leavitt said:
“Yes, justice needs to be served for the good-hearted Americans across this country who want to see an equal application of the law,And this trial proves we don’t have that in America right now."
“They’ve thrown in the gulag in Washington, D.C. President Trump has said he will pardon those protesters on day one of his presidency,” she continued, referring to the Soviet Union-era work camps for criminals and political prisoners.

https://newrepublic.com/post/182071/trump-revenge-lawsuits-hush-money-january-6

cdarwin, 12 days ago to Energy

By increasing its use of #renewable #energy, the US has not only

♦️slashed its planet-warming emissions but also
♦️improved its air quality,

👍yielding hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits, a new report has found

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/29/renewable-energy-us-financial-benefits?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 12 days ago to random

Supreme court to release opinions with Trump immunity and abortion cases pending

🔸Clarence Thomas’s wife calledfor the 2020 election to be overturned.
🔸Samuel Alito had rightwing flags flying at two of his properties.

Yet both conservative justices are set to rule on Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for his election meddling,
despite calls from Democrats that they step back from that and other cases because they are conflicted.

Democratic congressman #Jamie #Raskin, proposed ⭐️a novel way to force the two justices off the case:⭐️
"The US Department of Justice
– including the US attorney for the District of Columbia, an appointed US special counsel and the solicitor general,
– all of whom were involved in different ways in the criminal prosecutions underlying these cases and are opposing Mr Trump’s constitutional and statutory claims
– can ⭐️petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves ⭐️not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law.
The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland
can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion:
the Constitution of the United States, 🔹specifically the due process clause,
and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 🔹28 USC Section 455"

👉We’ll have to see if the justice department takes him up on this strategy.

Meanwhile, the Trump immunity case could be among those released at 10am ET, when the supreme court issues decisions.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/live/2024/may/30/supreme-court-trump-immunity-abortion-biden-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 13 days ago to random

Trump proceeded to have an imaginary conversation with himself and unnamed Toughest Business People
-- begging him to tell them how he puts his pants on.

“‘How do you get up in the morning and put your pants on?
Why do you put those pants on?’

‘I’ll explain it to you someday’

‘How do you do it? How do you get up? How?’”

https://newrepublic.com/post/181922/trump-brags-pants-bronx-rally

cdarwin, 13 days ago to random

Republican activist with ties to DeSantis and Rubio indicted over January 6

Barbara Balmaseda, 23, charged with five counts after FBI investigation identifies her at riot alongside Proud Boys

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/29/young-republican-jan-6-indictment?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

cdarwin, 13 days ago to random

Joe Biden is a good and successful American President.
The country is clearly better off.
And we have a very strong case for his re-election.
The Democratic Party is strong, winning elections across the country,
raising tons of money and is
building the most powerful political machine we’ve ever had.

And what does GOP have?
They have Trump,
the ugliest political thing any of us has ever seen,
leading a party far more a raging dumpster fire than a well-oiled machine.
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/id-much-rather-be-us-than-them-my

cdarwin, 13 days ago to random

Mother of Jan. 6 Capitol Police officer Michael Fanone
was swatted after he called Trump 'authoritarian'

Fanone was abducted by the mob on Jan. 6
and nearly killed when a MAGA-hatted rioter who believed Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election drove a stun gun into his neck.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/mother-jan-6-officer-michael-fanone-swatted-called-trump-authoritarian-rcna154467

angiebaby, 13 days ago to random

The Democratic Party is a moral corpse.

cdarwin, 13 days ago to random

As the American economy grows radically unequal it is holding back economic growth

The "elephant in the room"
is #extreme income #inequality.

How big is this elephant?

A staggering $50 trillion.

That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.

This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation.

According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation,
had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady,
🔸the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone.

🔸That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP
—enough to more than double median income
—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month.
— Every month.
— Every single year.

Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for 🔹our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality 🔹had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018.

At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year,
that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020.

That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant
—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy
—$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure.

As the RAND report [whose research was funded by the Fair Work Center which co-author David Rolf is a board member of] demonstrates,
💥a rising tide most definitely did not lift all boats.
💥It didn’t even lift most of them,
as nearly all of the benefits of growth these past 45 years were captured by those at the very top.

https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/

cdarwin, 14 days ago to random

Barbara Fields,
the first Black woman awarded tenure at Columbia University,
clearly identifies slavery as the foremost cause of the Civil War,
and is emphatic about the war’s devastating racial legacy.

In one of the film’s most powerful moments, Fields says,
🔸“The Civil War is still going on.
It’s still to be fought and, regrettably, it can still be lost.”🔸

https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2020/10/a-mistaken-form-of-trust-ken-burnss-the-civil-war-at-thirty/

cdarwin, 14 days ago to random

Trump makes sweeping promises to donors on audacious fundraising tour

By tying donation requests to pledges of tax cuts and other policies, Trump is testing the boundaries of federal campaign finance laws.

By frequently tying the fundraising requests within seconds of promises of tax cuts, oil project infrastructure approvals and other favorable policies
and asking for sums more than his campaign and the GOP can legally accept from an individual,
Trump is exceeding the boundaries of federal campaign finance laws.
In one recent meeting staged by his super PAC, Trump asked oil industry executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign
and said raising such a sum would be a “deal” given how much money they would save if he were reelected as president.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/28/trump-wealthy-donors-fundraising/