And making the same mess he always makes I’ll just leave this here: Six questions for Joe Lieberman. Lieberman, the former Democratic senator from Connecticut who later became an independent, is a co-chair of No Labels, a centrist group that is working to secure ballot access for a potential third-party “unity ticket” in next year’s presidential race. The group describes the effort as an “insurance policy” to prevent President Biden, former president Donald Trump or any other candidate who doesn’t embrace its agenda from being elected if the group sees a path to victory. Lieberman will appear in New Hampshire on Monday with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who’s mulled running for president next year as an independent. We talked with him about whether he wants Manchin to run and how he deals with Democrats who fear that No Labels’ efforts will hand the election to Trump. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. The Early: What’s the message No Labels will be trying to deliver in New Hampshire?
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He still had no legal right to overturn the election Raw Story caught legal expert Ryan Goodman on CNN last night making a very important point: One of the most important elements for special counsel Jack Smith to establish in order to charge former President Donald Trump in connection with the plots to overturn the 2020 presidential election, is to establish his intent — something he is attempting to do with his new interviews with Hope Hicks and Jared Kushner. But crucially, New York University law professor and former Pentagon special counsel Ryan Goodman told a CNN panel on Thursday, that does not mean Smith has to prove Trump didn’t truly believe that the election was stolen from him. “The best possible evidence they can get — and we don’t know exactly whether Jared Kushner or Hope Hicks gave them this — is Donald Trump acknowledging that he knows he lost,” said former federal prosecutor Elie Honig. “It’s one thing to be told by certain people that he lost, because there were other people telling him he did not lose.
Oh Gov. DeSantis? While you are conducting a “war on woke” your state has a serious problem: In places like California, Louisiana and Florida, insurers are balking at covering problems made worse by the climate crisis. The problem got worse for the Sunshine State this week, as Farmers Insurance Group served notice it would no longer be in the business of home, auto or umbrella coverage there, per the Orlando Sentinel’s Jeffrey Schweers. This affects 100,000 Florida homeowners. Ten other companies had already left “in the midst of the state’s relentless insurance crisis, which has caused premiums to skyrocket by 100% or more in some cases. Property owners are bracing for a 40% increase this year,” Schweers reported. California, at least, is doing everything it can to deal with climate change.
SAG-AFTRA and the WGA’s strike is happening in LA and NY and it does my heart good to see that all the showbiz unions are showing solidarity on the picket lines today. And it’s not just IATSE and the others, it’s also the Teamsters and the Teachers unions picketing with them. We need more of this. As we await the impending UPS strike which could happen any time now (and severely impact the economy) maybe the Big Money Boyz on Wall Street and the rest of the 1% should take stock and recognize that the pay structure in America’s business is fucked up. In a time of big profits and full employment, workers are going to flex their muscles and it’s long overdue. If business and industry are smart they’ll recognize that they are going to have to share the wealth — these massive CEO salaries are a disgrace. Everyone knows that the world is changing with new technology and nobody is quite sure where it’s going. But that’s no excuse for these rich assholes to pocket vast sums of money in the meantime while crying poor to the people who produce their product. Workers are getting fed up with that kind of bad faith.
They want to help airlines hide the true cost of their tickets again. This is just stupid: Price transparency on airline tickets could be a thing of the past, as House Republicans push to roll back Obama-era rules that prohibit airlines from advertising anything but their all-in prices, including all required taxes and fees. But Democrats and consumer watchdogs are sounding alarms, saying the change would be a gift to airlines, who could hide the true cost of airfare behind links or fine print — and increase their profits by getting consumers to spend more. “This is a bad idea,” said John Breyault, vice president of public policy, telecommunications and fraud at the National Consumers League. “Price transparency makes it easier for consumers to comparison shop. … We don’t want to have to do algebra and advanced trigonometry to figure out what it costs.” The Republican provision was tucked into a huge Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization package, one of the few bills considered a must-pass this Congress, by members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
As crews continue to search for an aggressive sea otter that’s been caught on video stealing surfboards, the Monterey Bay Aquarium speaks out on its “interesting history.” “This otter was born in captivity up at UC Santa Cruz. It was not bred in captivity, but its mother was in the wild and had to be re-captured. And when they captured the mother, she was pregnant,” said Kevin Connor with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Subsequently, the sea otter pup — tagged 841 — and its mother were taken to the aquarium to be examined and cared for. The pup was released in June 2020 after it was found to be healthy and old enough to survive in the wild. “We have certain standards for release. They need to be a certain weight. They need to demonstrate they can feed themselves and that they can survive in the wild. Certainly, if an otter is displaying behavior when it’s with us, that says release may not be the best option that would get evaluated by Department of Fish and Wildlife,” said Connor. The mother was determined to be unfit to stay in the wild and was taken to another aquarium.
There was a time when that statement would have sounded totally nuts. It’s not that far-fetched today…
That’s right. Trump just called Biden a crackhead. Anyway: A Secret Service probe into who left a small bag of cocaine in the White House earlier this month has concluded without a suspect being identified—reigniting right-wing conspiracy theories about sham probes and Hunter Biden. “At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence,” the Secret Service conceded in a press release on Thursday. […] Outrage ensued from Republican lawmakers, who remain hell-bent on continuing the probe despite the Secret Service’s admission there are no leads left to chase. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) reportedly stormed out of a Secret Service briefing for lawmakers just moments after it began. Outside, he called the probe’s conclusion “bogus” and the investigation a “complete failure.” “Y’all know you can’t go in [the White House] without giving your Social Security number anyway, and to say that it’s just some weekend visitor, that’s bogus,” Burchett said.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson dons an apron “No one should be too poor to live in one of the richest cities — Chicago — in one of the richest countries — America — at the richest time in the history of the world,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, the opening keynote speaker, told the Netroots Nation 23 conference on Thursday. “There is literally more than enough for everybody. Everybody. No one should lose at the expense of someone else winning.” “Now, the soul of Chicago was on full display tonight because you see, and you can feel it in the air,” said Johnson, 47, a former public schoolteacher. “This multicultural intergenerational movement that has propelled us into this moment where we don’t have to shrink and we don’t have to hide from our values. We can actually run on our principles and values and win.” After the speech, Johnson and other officials spent an hour serving food and drinks to several thousand attendees as part of his effort to promote new legislation that would raise pay for tipped workers in the city.
The nose knows ‘The judge said it best in one word: Wow,” tweeted Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse this morning. Michael Ponzer, a senior judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts comments on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ethics stink. “What has gone wrong with the Supreme Court’s sense of smell?” Ponzer asks in the New York Times. He has had to abide by a written code of conduct since 1984, before any of the sitting justices were on the bench. In those years, he’s had a few complaints filed against him, but so far none found to have merit. Ponzer’s colleagues know not just to stay inside the ethical lines, but well inside them. But the Roberts court? The recent descriptions of the behavior of some of our justices and particularly their attempts to defend their conduct have not just raised my eyebrows; they’ve raised the whole top of my head. Lavish, no-cost vacations? Hypertechnical arguments about how a free private airplane flight is a kind of facility?