Ingesting lead can and will kill you, and it will impair your cognitive functioning in the meantime. Lead was banned from automobile gasoline in 1975, but it was too late. There are small amounts of lead in the air and water, almost everywhere, that will remain for centuries and that were not there before cars,

The insurrection took place on January 6, 2021, which was three years ago.

Over 700 people have plead guilty or been convicted for crimes they committed at the capitol that day. Others have not yet been apprehended or gone to trial, and some others have not been identified. https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-jan-6-criminal-cases-anniversary-bf436efe760751b1356f937e55bedaa5

Trump has also been charged for his actions three years ago, but has delayed the trial with repeated appeals all the way up to SCOTUS. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4468789-trump-special-counsel-jack-smith-supreme-court-jan-6-trial/

I don’t know what Brazil has to do with January 6. In the United States – as in many countries with “decent legal system” – a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Anything less than proving Trump guilty beyond a reasonable doubt will be taken as a complete victory for him, and very possibly catapult him to re-election in November.

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Russian emails? Are you thinking of the Wikileaks stuff, with the hacked data from Clinton’s campaign staffers? I am pretty sure those are different and separate from the emails that Comey was investigating for the FBI.

There are two “Hilary’s emails” stories. It is easy to confuse the two – Republicans worked very hard throughout 2016 to make it easy to confuse the two – yet they are two different series of events and almost totally unrelated to one another.

The original “Buttery Males” story: Comey and the FBI investigated emails that were stored on a private server owned by the Clinton Foundation, a server that Hilary had used for official business while serving as Secretary of State. In July of 2016, Comey announced that while they did find a small number of documents marked “classified” stored on the server, this violation was obviously inadvertent and should not be prosecuted. “Sloppy but not criminal,” or something like that. Then later in October (after taking a few months of heat from his fellow Republicans for not going after Clinton harder) Comey announced that there may be files on a laptop owned by Hilary’s assistant, Huma Abedin, that the FBI had not yet had a chance to review. Comey announced this privately to a congressional committee and it was leaked almost instantly, about a week before election day.

The “From Russia with Love” email story: Meanwhile, Russian hackers infiltrated Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and stole thousands of personal emails and other data from her staffers and people they’d communicated with. None of these emails were classified and the FBI never investigated the Clinton campaign in this case (except as the victims of a crime). Wikileaks and Julian Assange got in on the action and built up lots of hype. That’s when, in the middle of a campaign speech, Trump made his famous on-stage plea: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Trump was clever, mendaciously associating the original “classified documents on your private server” controversy with the “Russia stole your data and is about to release it on Wikileaks” controversy, but the two stories don’t really have anything to do with one another, at all, and they never really did.

It may even be to their advantage, as the new candidate receives Trumps blessing and gives Trump clemency.

I also have been wondering what the race will look like in six months, when all this speculation about Trump’s trials (and potential prison time?) will be upon us for real.

Legally (so far at least) they say Trump can run from prison. If he were to win, as POTUS he’d have many options available to clear his name, dismiss his accusers, and attack his opponents.

I don’t think Trump will give another candidate his endorsement, even from prison. If he does, it won’t be without that other candidate publicly swearing fealty and promising to grant clemency, as you say. The way I see it, any candidate who’d be willing to do that will look weak and subservient, and probably look worse than Trump’s going to look, even from prison, by the time they get to the general election.

I think the only way another candidate wins the GOP nomination is by taking it from Trump – not by Trump lending it out to them.

As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.

I’m pretty sure he tried, but institutions held and the military didn’t let him get away with it.

I think Gen. Mark Milley was on-guard against Trump’s antics (especially after he got tricked into appearing in uniform with Trump for that upside-down Bible photo-op) and that through the end of Trump’s term, Milley stood firmly against use of the military against civilians or for political purposes.

But if Trump really were to be elected again, who will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under his new administration?

Jack Smith does not want to remove Cannon. Or he shouldn’t at least. Not at this point, anyway.

By far, the best possible outcome is still for Jack Smith to convict Donald Trump in Aileen Cannon’s Florida courtroom. As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.

This morning’s (11/07/'23) headlines are all about how Trump verbally attacked the judge in his fraud trial in New York yesterday. Trump has repeatedly accused Judge Engoron of being partisan and biased, to the press and now in his sworn testimony. MAGA eats that shit up. The more Trump looks like a victim to them, the more riled up they get in his defense.

It seems to me that “The Case of the Stolen Nuclear Secrets” is going to be much simpler and easier for people to understand than “The Case of Strategically Shifting the Valuation of Heavily Leveraged Real Estate Properties for Various Tax and Loan Purposes.” Considering even just the evidence that has already been made public in this case (photos of boxes of classified documents haphazardly stacked in a spare bathroom; audio recordings of Trump bragging that he shouldn’t be sharing a classified brief he’d illegally kept) the chances of a conviction are strong.

If Trump gets convicted by a jury in a Florida courtroom run by so seemingly biased a judge as Cannon, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to claim it’s all rigged against him by the Democrats. It’s going to be a whole lot harder to work that conviction into the whole victimhood narrative that Trump is currently thriving on.

Trump did not win all 50 states in the GOP primaries. In 2016. Cruz won Texas and a handful of other Midwestern and non-coastal western states; Kasich won his home state of Ohio, and Marco Rubio won in Minnesota.

In 2020, in some states, the GOP didn’t even bother holding primaries or caucuses. States like Kansas, Nevada, SC, cancelled public voting in primaries and caucuses after the RNC pledged its undivided support to Trump in back February of that year. So Trump didn’t really “win” primaries in “all 50 states” in 2020 either, because primaries were not held in all 50 states.

There have been rumors about this for months now. We already know Meadows has met with Jack Smith, and that Meadows’ testimony about his book was used in making the DoJ’s federal cases against Trump.

So why is this story breaking now? Why are the rumors about Meadows’ immunity suddenly newsworthy?

I think it’s because Meadows is getting ready to flip in the Georgia case, too. His immunity deal with the DoJ doesn’t help him at all if he gets convicted in Georgia.

Meadows was unable to move the RICO case to a federal court. Now Hall, Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis have all taken deals in Georgia. Those who flip first get the best deals, and I bet Meadows is looking to be looking to be number 5 out of 19.

There will be no going back from this for him, though. The next flip in the Georgia case will be just as public as the last four have been. It will be Meadows’ Michael Cohen moment. The point of no return.

It sounds like this Scott Graham Hall guy flipped on Sidney. So now who’s Sidney going to flip on?

She was in a lot of meetings with a lot of people, including Trump and Giuliani. I bet she has a lot to say about that.

How can Tuberville hold up all these nominations, all by himself? I had to look it up. The way Senate rules work, they figure out nomination approvals in committee and then pass them on the floor with votes of “unanimous consent.” By withholding his consent, Tuberville forces all the committee work to be done on the floor of the Senate.

That is to say, he is hijacking the nomination approval process. This process has developed and become institutionalized in the Senate over many decades. Tuberville is hijacking this process for a largely unpopular, far-right political purpose that is, at best, only tangentially related to the services with vacant leadership positions, and that is in no way related to the actual nominations in question.

Ironically, perhaps, the reason this glitch in the Senate rules allows one person to hold up all the nominations for everyone is itself just another institution. Senate “holds” have been around for decades as well. It wasn’t until 2011 the that a bi-partisan group of Senators voted to change the rules to disallow “secret holds.”

So Tuberville is exploiting one Senate institution in order to shut down another Senate institution, just to generate propaganda for his federally mandated forced-birth agenda.

It’s like an echo of Gingrich in the '90s: It’s like he’s saying, “The interests of the people who elected me are more righteous than the interests of the people who elected all the rest of you all, so there will be no compromise from me on anything. We will run things my way or I’ll use my position to shut it all down.”

The only difference is that Gingrich shut down all the post offices for a few weeks. This asshole Tuberville is trying to shut down our military.

EDIT:

Maybe this could be McConnell’s saving-grace swan song, before he gives up his GOP leadership position in the Senate. As the leader of Tuberville’s party, I’m pretty sure rules allow him to end the hold that Tuberville requested.

Doing so would go against precedent and it would go against the spirit of the institution. But Mitch McConnell is no stranger to going against precedent and disregarding institutions when he thinks it serves his purpose.

It wouldn’t earn him much forgiveness from people like me, but it would make him look a little better on his way out.

Michael Steele used to be Republican Lt. Gov in Maryland, then was the chair of the GOP campaign in 2008 when John McCain and Sarah Palin were on the ticket.

After he lost his reelection bid for party chair, he went to work for MSNBC as a commentator, and he’s been on there all the time ever since.

EDIT to clarify: Steele was not a fan of the proto-MAGA movement represented by Palin on the 2008 ticket and he has been a never-Trumper Republican from the start

Since the rise of Trump in the party, not sure if Steele still a registered Republican.

There are many reasons that George H.W. Bush chose to nominate Thomas, but one of them is almost surely that Thomas is black. The seat Thomas was nominated to fill was the one left by Thurgood Marshall, who retired in declining health.

Justice Thurgood Marshall was a consistent liberal vote and a strong proponent of civil rights protections. Before becoming a Justice himself, Marshall argued dozens of civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including Brown v. Board of Education. Marshall’s “sliding-scale” situation-informed style would seem to be in direct conflict with Thomas’s unyielding “textual originalism.”

I was in my early 20s that summer when the Clarence Thomas confirmation, and Anita Hill’s testimony, were everywhere on the news. I even remember it in an episode of the sitcom Designing Women, albeit in a plausibly deniable “bothsides” kind of way. The story raged because of its high stakes and titillating content, but it also prompted some frank. worthwhile discussion about some uncomfortable topics.

And then Thomas publicly complained that the sexual harassment complaints against him amounted to a “high-tech lynching.” And then, slowly but surely, we all came to understand it was pretty much over.

“He played the race card,” his detractors complained. But his supporters answered, weren’t those detractors playing the race card too? What if the real racist is the person who automatically assumes the word “lynching” was intended to be taken in a race-related context in the first place?

It went back and forth like that for a while, as the public spotlight on the story faded out. But we weren’t talking about Anita Hill’s testimony anymore. We weren’t even talking about Thomas’s suitability as a Supreme Court Justice anymore. It was pretty much all “race card” stuff from there on out.

There are many, many reasons that GHWB nominated Thomas. At least one of them is that Thomas is black, and that it would have been a bad look (politically and otherwise) to nominate someone who was not black to replace Marshall.

Thomas is black. That gives him the right to “play the race card,” as far as I’m concerned. But fair play calls for laying your cards on the table, for everyone to see. Thomas has always cared more about the cards he keeps up his sleeve.

I agree with others here who point out that merely having a PoA in place is not a reason that Feinstein should resign. As to whether she should resign for other reasons, I tend think she probably should. But then I think about all the reasons that she shouldn’t.

Feinstein is a high-ranking member of the senatorial judiciary committee. Back in April, she asked to be temporarily replaced in that position, but the Republicans blocked that from happening.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-block-temporary-replacement-for-sen-feinstein-on-judiciary-committee

The judiciary committee slot is important, because those are the guys who confirm all the federal judges. After sandbagging Obama’s appointees for _eight six years, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed a flurry of judges under Trump.

To try to catch up now, the currently Democrat-controlled (by the thinnest possible margin) Senate Judiciary Committee wants to confirm as many Biden-appointed judges as it can while it still can. A year-and-a-half from now, who knows who will control what?

Sure, Feinstein should step down, and I think even she probably knows that, but she also knows that when she does so, the Democrats lose their razor-thin Senate majority, at least until Newsom can appoint a replacement.

No matter how quickly Feinstein could be replaced, the transition would offer Republicans easy opportunities to further delay nominations and block legislation of the very sort that Feinstein was elected by the people of California to pass. Nominations and legislation we have every reason to believe that she fully comprehends, regardless of any PoAs in place, and even despite her recent display of other age-related lapses in focus.

Anyway though, maybe her tragic act of hubris in all this was running for another term way back in 2018. If she had resigned back then, instead of next year, we wouldn’t be here now. But now that we’re here, I don’t blame her for recognizing the no-win nature of the situation.

I think what they want is as many big-money donors as they can get, for which they require as many reliable Republican votes as they can get, for which they require Trump, for which they are required to give prima facia credence to whatever misinformation Trump is pushing on any given day.

It didn’t always used to be like this, but that was a long time ago.

Trump didn’t create his voter base – he stole it, from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Reilly, Glen Beck, Alex Jones, and all those other millionaires who spent decades feeding working-class conservatives daily servings hate for huge profit.

And in all of history, who has been the conservative pundits’ all-time number-one biggest and best favorite target for this hate? It has to be Barack Obama. (Our first Black president. Coincidence?)

Trump didn’t create his voter base, but he has owned it outright for going on a decade now, starting way back with his entirely bogus claims against President Obama’s citizenship. It didn’t matter that the claims were bogus – all that mattered is that they were against Obama, in an outright demeaning (and overtly racist) way. Dittoheads and O’Reilly fans ate that shit up.

Now here we are, eight or nine years later, and Trump still owns it. Only now, instead of feeding that voter base, and growing it with strongman posturing and punitive policy, he’s using it exclusively to try to save his own skin. And at this point, the only way Trump saves himself is in an alternate reality, with alternate facts.

Now Trump lies to save himself, and half of congress has to play along or risk losing their own reelections. Thanks Obama.

I agree they’ll do their best, but how? With what? Are they going to try to refute Trump’s crazy tweets with other crazy Trump tweets?

Among the most damning aspects of Trump’s public statements is their lack of consistency – the OP meme we’re discussing is an example. I don’t think this aspect will be refuted by his lawyer demonstrating even more inconsistency.

The only thing Trump has been consistent about on social media is lying about the 2020 election and personally attacking anyone who says anything against him. I don’t see how either of those behaviors are going to help his lawyers refute anything either.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

As a fellow fan of syndicated daytime television, I’m sure that Mr. Trump is as familiar as I am with this above quote by Detective Lenny Briscoe, N.Y.P.D. So a re-post from him like this is puzzling to me….

Trump will testify under oath or take the Fifth – he’ll be forced to do one or the other. My guess is that he will “exercise his right against self-incrimination” in all pending and yet-to-be-announced cases against him.

Without any live testimony given by the defendant, prosecutors will be free to present any part of any of Trump’s public statements and social media posts as testimony.

Prosecutors will be free to pick-and-choose whatever public comments they want, to show Trump in whatever light they want to show him in. Trump won’t be able say anything back about it, because he’ll’ve already invoked his constitutional right to not say anything at all.

Public comments (including endorsement by "re-truth"ing like this) are not made under oath, so they’re not legally binding, but they are still things that Trump said out loud and on purpose.

However much they gin up support from his base of voters, they also add to the threat of Trump’s own words being used against him later in a court of law. Used against him in the general election, too, if he somehow manages to make it that far.

Trump is all too familiar with the millions of Americans who love him for what he says, but I don’t think he has any true notion about the millions more American voters who have come to despise him for what he has done. I’m not sure he ever will.