Is it open season again so soon? “Road rage incidents are on the rise nationally and right here in San Diego, according to the California Highway Patrol,” reports NBC 7 San Diego: “Somebody who is driving aggressively is driving in and out of traffic, slamming on brakes, making unsafe lane changes, following too closely, that type of stuff,” CHP Sgt. Brian Pennings said. “It escalates into offending or upsetting another driver.” Offending someone else isn’t always intentional, but once it happens, road rage is a common response. This can and has escalated into the road rager threatening gun violence. In recent months, the San Diego City Attorney has secured five road-rage-related gun violence restraining orders for alleged road rage drivers. These civil orders stop someone from buying, possessing or using a gun and can stay in effect for up to five years. Sgt. Pennings has seen his share of road rage incidents, including one that turned deadly for a driver at a stop light. “He looked over and there was a driver of the vehicle who was a female,” Pennings remembered. “She looked over at him, smiled, and he smiled back.
Uncategorized
He’s all at sixes and sevens… The Washington Post reports: Tucker Carlson — who was fired by Fox News last week at the height of his popularity and influence in right-wing punditry — has aspirations of moving into a larger role that doesn’t limit him to a single medium, according to people familiar with his thinking. And he is willing to walk away from some of the millions that Fox is contractually obligated to pay him, if that would give him the flexibility to have a prominent voice in the 2024 election cycle. Most ambitiously, Carlson wants to moderate his own GOP candidate forum, outside of the usual strictures of the Republican National Committee debate system. The idea, which he has discussed with Donald Trump, the front-runner for the party nomination, would test his vaunted sway over conservative politics. And it would take a jab at his former employer — Fox is hosting the first official primary debate, which Trump has threatened not to attend — if he can manage to make his grandest plan happen.
And it’s even more dangerous than before Read this thread by Emptywheel and you’ll see what I’m talking about: WaPo’s 1800-word, 4 reporter story on the upcoming decision on whether to charge Hunter or not says it matters bc it’ll affect Biden’s campaign. Here's WaPo's front page, with the Hunter story on it. Can someone point me to where the story on the rape trial, the one in which TRUMP, not his son, is a defendant? How about the news that Trump's long-time digial media guru spent all day before Jack Smith's grand jury yesterday (on a Tuesday)? Now check out story. It's not until ¶¶10 & 11 that WaPo tells you that EVEN IF Hunter is indicted, it's not the stuff that right wing has been drooling abt non-stop for 5 years, it's a charge that Trump's campaign manager, personal lawyer, and OWN CORPORATION were convicted of. HOW FUCKING STUPID DO YOU HAVE TO BE to say that a Hunter Biden prosecution on tax charges would hurt Biden's reelection campaign, w/o mentioning Trump Org's conviction on tax charges? Trump is mentioned ~11 times.
I’m reminded of this interview with Graham after he lost. He’s lying. He just thinks Trump is the best chance for Republican power and he doesn’t care how he does it: Sen. Lindsey Graham told “Axios on HBO” that Donald Trump has a “dark side” but he tries to “harness the magic” because he succeeded where Republican candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney failed. Why it matters: The South Carolina Republican gyrates between support and criticism of the former president, even after Trump harshly criticized McCain — Graham’s longtime friend — and helped spark the Capitol insurrection. “What I’m tryin’ to do is just harness the magic,” Graham told Axios’ Jonathan Swan. “To me, Donald Trump is sort of a cross between Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan and P.T. Barnum.” “He could make the Republican Party something that nobody else I know can make it. He can make it bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse. And he also could destroy it,” Graham said.
His lawyer says he’s not actually going to do that. Here’s a report on his deposition testimony. I don’t think it helped him. He should probably shut his piehole: Before his infamous “grab them by the p—-” remark in the “Access Hollywood” tape, then-candidate Donald Trump told Billy Bush: “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” Trump doubled-down on those lines during his deposition on E. Jean Carroll’s rape allegations. “Historically, that’s true, with stars,” Trump testified. “Well what’s what if you look over the last million years, I guess that’s been largely true not always but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately.” Originally recorded in October 2022, the video deposition was shown to a jury on Thursday. The jury will only hear Trump on video, as he is not planning to appear in person. In a brief passage, Trump sat expressionless as the “Access Hollywood” tape roles in the corner of the frame, marking the second time the jury saw it played.
Tarrio’s going away along with his cohorts: Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and three other members of the far-right extremist group were convicted Thursday of a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol in a desperate bid to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 presidential election. A jury in Washington, D.C., found Tarrio guilty of seditious conspiracy after hearing from dozens of witnesses over more than three months in one of the most serious cases brought in the stunning attack that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, as the world watched on live TV. It’s a significant milestone for the Justice Department, which has now secured seditious conspiracy convictions against the leaders of two major extremist groups prosecutors say were intent on keeping Democratic President Joe Biden out of the White House at all costs. The charge carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Tarrio, behind bars since his March 2022 arrest, didn’t appear to show any emotion as the verdict was read. He hugged one of his lawyers and shook the hand of the other before leaving the courtroom.
This one is a long time right wing operative as well: Federal prosecutors have charged a former F.B.I. agent with illegally entering the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot and said he had called police officers Nazis as he encouraged a mob of Trump loyalists to kill them. The former agent, Jared L. Wise, was arrested on Monday and faces four misdemeanor counts, including disrupting the orderly conduct of government and trespassing, after agents received a tip in January 2022 that he had been inside the Capitol, according to a criminal complaint. Mr. Wise, 50, told the police they were like the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s feared secret police, the complaint said. When violence erupted, he shouted in the direction of rioters attacking the law enforcement officers, “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!” Mr. Wise raised his arms in celebration after breaching the Capitol in a face mask, and he escaped through a window, the complaint added. ‘ He seems nice. This is an interesting trajectory. I have to wonder how many people like him opted to stay in the FBI. More than we think, I’d guess. From 2004 to 2017, Mr.
Memories… President Donald Trump on Friday extolled the debt ceiling as “a sacred element of our country” that should never be wielded as a bargaining chip in budget talks — despite urging Republican lawmakers to do just that 6½ years ago. “That’s a very, very sacred thing in our country, debt ceiling. We can never play with it. So I would have to assume we’re in great shape,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. The president’s remarks come as White House officials, led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, home in on a two-year budget agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that would raise the national debt limit. “When I first came into office,” Trump said, “I asked about the debt ceiling. … And I said, I remember to Sen. Schumer and to Nancy Pelosi, ‘Would anybody ever use that to negotiate with?’ They said, ‘Absolutely not.’” The president added: “That’s a sacred element of our country.
He killed that man. This is the sort of rhetoric I see on Next Door frequently. But I haven’t seen anyone suggest that the mentally ill should be ground up as dog food. Yet. It doesn’t sound like the man was threatening anyone. The 24-year-old passenger stepped in after the vagrant, identified by sources as Jordan Neely, 30, began going on an aggressive rant on a northbound F train Monday afternoon, according to police and a witness who took the video. “He starts to make a speech,” freelance journalist Juan Alberto Vazquez said in Spanish during an interview Tuesday, referring to the disturbed man. “He started screaming in an aggressive manner,” Vazquez told The Post. “He said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired and doesn’t care if he goes to jail. He started screaming all these things, took off his jacket, a black jacket that he had, and threw it on the ground.” That’s when he said the straphanger came up behind Neely and took him to the ground in a chokehold — keeping him there for some 15 minutes, Vazquez said.
Charlie Sykes had a good column today about the astonishing fact that the GOP front runner is on trail for rape and there is a legion of other women who have credibly accused him of assault: By the latest count, 26 (!) women have accused Trump of sexual assault or misconduct. Here’s the full list. […] Now we hear that Trump plans to skip the Carroll trial, passing up a chance to testify, or to deny the charges under oath. Let’s try to put this into some context: It is hard impossible to imagine that someone with more than two dozen accusations of sexual assault would be able to survive in any other realm of American society: business, entertainment, sports, the military, even politics. We save our lowest standards for the presidency. As we now know, the charges of assault — and rape — are not disqualifying for the GOP; since the release of the Access Hollywood tape, the charges have barely been a factor. Now, they hardly even register. In the right-wing media, the women have been thoroughly memory-holed. Philip Bump notes: Seven times. But, to be fair, it’s not just Fox News.