Waking up this Father’s Day [Thanks, Dad, for 1) being such a terrific, selfless father 2) for continuing to be an inspiration, a role model and a guide during my highs and lows (like now), and everything in-between 3) for loving my wonderful mom and showing it so brilliantly to everyone, especially her, without interruption for almost sixty years; 4) for somehow saving so much money on a modest salary to hand over to my sister, me, and the three grandchildren through sacrifice and smart investing, because without it I would be living in a cardboard box right now, and 5) for surviving the Battle of the Bulge] to the near certainty that my son (who informed me last week that he would like me to refer to him/her/they as my daughter, Samantha. OK! ), is almost certain to ignore this rather contrived holiday (which is fine with me), a mystery in my yard in which someone or something keeps pulling the 15-foot-long heavy plastic, 7″ diameter tubing, installed to send runoff from the gutters into the garden rather than into my home’s foundation, off the down spout and dragging it into my neighbor’s yard, and another fight with a customer service rep, who, I swear, spoke exactly like Andy Kaufmann’s character on “Taxi” but faster than an auctioneer—yes, this IS a long sentence!—I sat down with Spuds to talk myself out of seppuku, drink a cup of coffee, and check what nonsense the various news networks were spouting.
Big mistake.
- On MSNBC, I immediately was treated to a PAC’s plea for donations to “keep the Constitutional right for a woman to control her own body.” Doesn’t the self-evident deceit, not to mention idiocy and legal nonsense, of that statement bother, well, everyone who hears it? Who gives cash to a groups that announces something like that? Women have the right, through the Declaration of Independence, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which includes the right to control their own bodies, unless they want their bodies to commit crimes or harm other bodies. They do have the right to, for example, if they don’t want to be burdened with motherhood, not to have sex. Or to have sex all they want, but to make sure that sex doesn’t create another human being. Or, if by some sequence of events they are party to creating another human being, using their body to handle the resulting situation responsibly and with concern for the welfare of that second human being, whose rights are also included in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution. Is this organization seeking a Constitutional amendment? That’s a fraudulent appeal: such an amendment is as impossible as fling to Jupiter on a kite. The statement that there is a Constitutional right to having abortions without limitations is simply false: the Supreme Court said so, and also said that its previous ruling saying otherwise was wrong, unsupportable, an abuse of power, and a mistake—which it was. What that ad is advocating is abortion without having the honesty, courage or integrity to mention the word abortion even once. How can anyone trust people or organizations who do this?
After that ad was complete, MSNBC brought on someone, with a caption underneath stating “Trump’s anti-immigration claims,” who argued that illegal immigrants—like her parents—are good for the country because of all the taxes they pay. Of course, she never said “illegal.” That word is like “abortion.” The only way to stay in the debate is by ignoring the subject.
- Over at Fox News, they were showing Donald Trump speaking before a group in Michigan. I haven’t watched Trump speak in campaign mode in a long time, because he drives me crazy. But wow, he’s improved a lot. When Trump ran in 2016, he was a novice, and public speaking, especially public speaking in politics, takes practice. The contrast between Trump’s Michigan speech and, say, Biden’s mumbling and shuffling in Normandy is stark and undeniable. How in the world can Democrats (and Jill Biden) be taken seriously, or trusted, when they claim that since Trump is nearly as old as Biden, Biden’s age shouldn’t be an issue? Trump was also telling auto workers in the Michigan speech that he would bring back the auto industry “stronger than ever” if elected, but if Biden was allowed to continue, his forced electric car mandate would put them out of work. This is the “bloodbath” for the automobile manufacturing industry that Trump referred to earlier this year, and that Democrats and dishonest pundits—and President Biden! (Did you know Trump lies all the time?)— keep misquoting as if he was talking about the equivalent of the French Revolution. Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business then appeared to say that the Democrats were panicked, hysterical, out-of-their-minds desperate.
- On Jake Tapper’s CNN show, his panel proved that Maria was right. The one semi-conservative on Jake’s panel dived into the age issue, with Jill Biden’s “it’s just a number” mantra as the starting point. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, never mind numbers. Voters have eyes and ears. They can see and hear what Joe Biden’s age means, and they have every reason to wonder if he’s up to the job as well as to be able to see through Democrat absurd claims that Joe is fit and sharp as a hat pin as virtual gaslighting. A black female Democratic operative then weighed in, saying, and I’m not kidding, that what matters is that Biden has appointed the most diverse cabinet in history and has also put so many female and of-color judges on the bench. That was the first thing out of her mouth! I expected men in white coats and butterfly nets to run in from the wings. Then she said that the polls were obviously wrong. Another Democratic operative, also of-color (the conservative was a white man, and you know what they are like) tried the latest DNC framing trope, that the election wasn’t about Biden at all, but was “the people” against Donald Trump, who is a 34 time convicted felon. Jake, and any responsible journalist, is obligated to follow-up that trick by asking such speakers to explain exactly what crimes those 34 counts represent, because they can’t do it.
Of course, Jake didn’t ask.
Ethics Alarms 
Ann Althouse does a consistently good job of commenting upon what an effective, entertaining, engaging public speaker Donald Trump can be. He’s more than a bit of an ironist and satirist and humorist. The Dems then take his quotes and remove the irony and satire and humor as they are all three aimed squarely at them. Presto changeo! They have a completely fabricated talking point! Tah dah!
Very nice Father’s Day piece. With lots of TV trivia thrown in as a bonus.
Father Hunger Fuels The Persistence Of Father’s Day (thefederalist.com)
The 34 counts are for separate times he falsified business records. Everyone knows this.
Stop doing that. Just yesterday Debbie Dingle was asked on camera what the crimes were, and had no answer. Very few people can answer that question, and the 34 counts are really a single crime, and a misdemeanor bootstrapped into a felony. The 34 counts are an unethical prosecutorial device, common but despicable.
AND Tom is banned. Same as David. Life’s too short to waste time arguing with single-minded assholes.
(David has been banned on another thread. Same reason. They may have been the same person)
Honest question here: since when is using an NDA to keep embarrassing information from going public a crime?
Never, unless its tampering with evidence or witness testimony.
Hehe, I was too slow in posting this response. But I think I’ll repost it because I think it is a useful bit of information. This was originally in response to the response about Jack saying the 34 counts were an unethical device.
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Interesting that of all the issues discussed in this post, this is the one you choose to focus on. Telling.
If the felony conviction is the hill you choose to die on, what will you do when it is overturned on appeal?
“The 34 counts are an unethical prosecutorial device, common but despicable.”
If you read that sentence, Jack is referring to prosecutorial overcharging, a tactic that many DA’s use to make it seem that what a defendant did was much worse than common sense would indicate.
The act he is charging Trump with is a single act of characterizing these payments as legal expenses rather than something else. He’s taken that act and charged Trump for each check that was written. The act itself, assuming it is a crime, is a misdemeanor whose statute of limitations has expired.
One of the reasons this case is going to be overturned is that Bragg did not charge Trump in the indictment what the second crime was, nor was this revealed to the jury until after the defense had finished their closing arguments. Due process requires that a defendant be permitted to know what the charges against them are and to have the opportunity to respond to them.
I’m not a lawyer but there are plenty on this blog, and they can weigh in on whether I am totally off base or not.
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I am pretty sure we’ve discussed this a couple times already, but it may bear repeating.
Sure it does, and there have been many essays by legal experts far more astute than I regarding this device.
David just signed off on a now-spammed comment calling me a fascist, nicely validating my assessment of him. I’m sorry I wasted so much time and effort trying to discuss these issues rationally with the jerk.
From my limited understanding, the New York law they used doesn’t require the defendant to have been convicted or even accused of the second crime in order for the crime to be escalated up to a felony.
How in the world is this even real? Take the 3 strike rule–wouldn’t the equivalence being a judge just say “this defendant has only been convicted of one felony, but you can imagine another felony that he has committed, such as jaywalking or eating steak with ketchup and that’s enough to put him away for life under this law”?
And the judge suggested that tax law may have been one of the broken laws, yet his treatment of the falsified records would have INCREASED the taxable income of Michael Cohen, not decreased. I cannot believe tax law could prosecute someone for overpaying taxes. Maybe there legitimately is a law that could prosecute someone for falsifying records in order to increase their tax burden, but I’ve never heard of such a thing. If I had a business but decided to treat it as a hobby, thereby reducing my ability to claim expenses, I do not believe that’s breaking a tax law. Even if it were, it generally requires flagrant or repeated offenses for such things to be prosecuted, rather than just flagged and fined.
Not even touching the fact that one third of the felonies were related to invoices that were generated by Michael Cohen, not Trump’s organization.
To be fair, judges have often used crimes for which the defendant was acquitted to nontheless change their sentencing. https://reason.com/2024/04/18/u-s-sentencing-commission-restricts-federal-judges-ability-to-use-acquitted-conduct-at-sentencing/ It seems a small step to decline to prove the related crime. I mean, both should be obviously wrong to anyone capable of rational thought, but I have doubts about some judges’ performance compared to trained monkeys.
Another case of “this is a guy I don’t like, so anything done to him is OK.” A truly ethical person should be consistent about what they think should be a felony or election fraud. A truly ethical person should also be concerned that any charge can become a felony if there is any hint of it related to a “crime” that hasn’t been proven or even tried in court (who cares about innocent until proven guilty). A truly ethical person understands that courts and juries don’t always get it right and sometimes are even travesties of justice. Prosecutorial overreach should be a concern by everyone. Throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks against political opponents (some could even say trying to unduly influence the election) should concern everyone. Wrong is wrong, even if you think the recipient “deserved it” or “was a bad person.”
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