Trump’s defense starts its case this week The Washington Post has an excellent write up today about where the Trump trial stands and what we can expect in the next couple of weeks: Former Trump Organization insider Michael Cohen testified in state court that his ex-boss Donald Trump instructed him to fudge numbers on annual financial statements so that they would show his desired net worth. Patrick Birney, a Trump Organization employee, said in court that a top executive told him Trump wanted a bigger bottom line on his annual statements, which were given to banks and insurance companies. An insurance underwriter, Claudia Mouradian, whose deposition was played at the trial, said she relied on the Trump Organization’s claim that a statement reporting roughly $6 billion in combined golf and real estate assets had beenverified by professional appraisers. These were among the assertionspresented during six weeks of trial and testimony in a lawsuit brought against Trump and his business by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
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Of, by, and for the most power-hungry Ed Walker blogs at emptywheel. His message this Veterans Day: “Is it too much to ask Republicans to accept majority rule?” Apparently, yes. Ohio Republicans wasted no time in announcing their defiance of the constitutional amendment passed Tuesday that secured reproductive freedoms. The amendment passed 57-43: COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Four Ohio Republican state lawmakers are seeking to strip judges of their power to interpret an abortion rights amendment after voters opted to enshrine those rights in the state’s constitution this week. Republican state Reps. Jennifer Gross, Bill Dean, Melanie Miller and Beth Lear said in a news release Thursday that they’ll push to have the Legislature, not the courts, make any decisions about the amendment passed Tuesday. “To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” said the mix of fairly new and veteran lawmakers who are all vice-chairs of various House committees.
I don’t think the media’s focusing on the right candidate This is what his people are hearing from him: In case you were wondering, it’s all lies. I post this stuff here because I know most people don’t look at what he’s saying because they have lives and they already know that Trump is a narcissistic monster. But it’s easy to forget just how deranged he really is and I think it’s important to have this stuff out there from time to time to remind ourselves of it.
Rep. Stefanik does some more dirty work for Dear Leader. It must be exhausting. Trump’s lawyers in his NY Fraud trial said they planned to call for a mistrial based upon evidence they saw on Breitbart.com that the judge and his clerk are biased and have broken the campaign finance laws. I’m not kidding. MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin filled us in on what happened: Indeed, a Breitbart story published a day earlier aired new allegations about Engoron’s principal law clerk, who has been the subject of multiple attacks by Donald Trump and his legal team that led Engoron to impose a gag order on all of them. Specifically, Breitbart alleged, based on a review of New York State campaign finance data, that the law clerk has made contributions to individual candidates, local Democratic clubs, PACs and the New York County Democrats in amounts and at times that would appear to violate the rule Kise cited.
It was everywhere at the January 6th insurrection You know by now that Mike Johnson is a far right theocrat who should not be let anywhere near power in our constitutional republic. His beliefs are way beyond the pale even for most evangelicals. But it gets worse. Keen eyes spotted a flag outside his office last week that tells a much more disturbing story: The flag — which Rolling Stone has confirmed hangs outside his district office in the Cannon House Office Building — is white with a simple evergreen tree in the center and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. Historically, this flag was a Revolutionary War banner, commissioned by George Washington as a naval flag for the colony turned state of Massachusetts. The quote “An Appeal to Heaven” was a slogan from that war, taken from a treatise by the philosopher John Locke. But in the past decade it has come to symbolize a die-hard vision of a hegemonically Christian America.
Voters gonna vote Brett Meiselas at Meidas Touch: As Republicans try to cope with their crushing losses suffered during Tuesday’s elections, multiple MAGA firebrands have taken aim at one particular target – Taylor Swift. But Swift’s fervent fanbase, known as Swifties, are ready to fight back. On Tuesday, the iconic superstar encouraged her fans to vote, writing on Instagram, “Voters gonna vote!” and sharing a link to Vote.org. Last month, following a similar call to action, Swift was reportedly responsible for registering more than 35,000 people to vote. That kind of muscular power-flexing by women seriously gets under the skin of pasty male misogynists (and worse). Right-wing extremist and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec seethed in an unhinged post on X about “THE CHILDLESS, UNMARRIED ABORTION ARMY MOBILIZED BY BARBIE, TAYLOR SWIFT, AND TIKTOK THAT IS CRUSHING REPUBLICANS AT THE BALLOT BOX.” In the words of Taylor Swift, you need to calm down.
I suspect it will when all is said and done. The union movement’s ascendance in the last couple of years is extremely important and I just hope that the union members who benefit from it will remember who their enemies are — and their friends.
Maybe, maybe not. I’m not happy about No Labels. for obvious reasons. First, they are nothing but a sabotage operation designed to stop the Democrats from winning the presidency in 2024. Joe Lieberman is one of their leaders. They aren’t trying to hide it. The question is whether or not it would turn out the way they think it will. Since Manchin is (nominally) a Democrat I think most of us assume it would hurt Biden. But Michael Tomasky has a different idea: Everybody is in a tizzy about Joe Manchin’s retirement announcement. And maybe they should be. The conventional wisdom for months, or even for a couple years, has been that a presidential candidacy by the West Virginia senator under the “centrist” No Labels banner would mean the end for Joe Biden, and that’s the take in most of the insta-analyses I’ve read over the last 24 hours. It’s also what I’ve always thought, and it stands to reason. Not because Manchin is a Democrat. But because it has been assumed that he splits the anti-Trump vote.
Johnny McEntee, the man in charge From Jonathan Karl’s new book: In his final days in the White House, President Donald Trump tried to launch a U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan — only he wasn’t exactly the person giving the orders, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl. In “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party,” excerpts of which were released in Vanity Fair on Friday, Karl reports that aide Johnny McEntee, known as Trump’s “body guy,” led a chaotic attempt to reshape the U.S. military posture abroad. The incident was first reported on by Jonathan Swan of Axios, but Karl provides significant new details.
Japan is filled with cute critters, but these pint-sized squirrels are at the top of the list. The Japanese dwarf flying squirrel and Siberian flying squirrel are known for their big eyes, small stature, and overall adorable appearance. In fact, they’re so popular in Japan that they’re even used as the design on Sapporo’s metro card. The Japanese dwarf flying squirrel (Pteromys momonga) is only found on Japan’s Honshu and Kyushu islands. Living in sub-alpine forests and boreal evergreen forests, these nocturnal animals blend into the trees with their coloring. With their body measuring up to 20 centimeters and their tail growing up to 14 centimeters, their small size can make them hard to spot. A family of Japanese dwarf flying squirrels pic.twitter.com/eh0hIhGd7S — Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) November 7, 2023 Though the name might confuse you, these squirrels don’t fly. Instead, they use a membrane called the patagium to glide from tree to tree. Feasting on seeds, fruit, tree leaves, buds, and bark, these squirrels forage at night and spend their days tucked into the holes of trees.