I’m in the new place, and I think it will be fine, although right now it’s all boxes and chaos. But now I have wifi! I’m in business!
The most intriguing thing in the news today is that Jack Smith’s documents case grand jury is expected to meet this week after a hiatus. Are they getting close to deciding indictments?
Chuck Todd is leaving Meet the Press. Best comment so far:
I’d ask a follow up question about why Chuck Todd is leaving Meet the Press, but in his honor, I won’t. #ChuckTodd https://t.co/HlmcVnLjEH pic.twitter.com/ErWT1rheuO
— Damon ?????? (@DamonMast) June 4, 2023
He’ll be replaced by Kristen Welker. I don’t recall watching her enough to know if she’ll be an improvement or just another squish.
Speaking of lame journalism, do see the article by Tim Alberta at The Atlantic, Inside the Meltdown at CNN. There’s a paywall, but they let you read a freebie every so often. Then read Nicholas Carlson at Yahoo News, ‘It’s like watching a snuff film’: Media elites shocked by The Atlantic’s surgical dismantling of CNN boss Chris Licht. The Atlantic’s portrayal of Licht was brutal, and it’s being speculated he’ll be replaced soon. From the Yahoo article, my favorite quote it this:
“Let’s get real. The problem isn’t Licht, it’s his paymasters. The American billionaire class has convinced themselves that the way to save journalism is to make it as bland and as both-sidesy as possible. They chose Licht as their latest champion of harmless vanilla inoffensiveness. The problem is, no one wants vanilla. Not even a tasting spoon of it.”
Bland, both-sidesy, harmless vanilla inoffensiveness, thy name also is Chuck Todd. And see also Could Jeff Zucker Fix CNN? He Seems to Think So. (no paywall) at the New York Times. Zucker’s approach wasn’t exactly what journalism needs either, of course.
In other news: There’s also a paywall at The Telegraph that’s keeping me from reading Anglo-Saxons aren’t real, Cambridge tells students in effort to fight ‘nationalism’. And I really wish I could read it, because it has mightily pissed off the crew at Breitbart. They are “erasing the English”! Breitbart says. But I covered all this a couple of years ago in The Truth About Anglo-Saxons. There really were no Anglo-Saxons, exactly. The term “Anglo-Saxon” didn’t become common until long after the Angles and Saxons, who were two separate tribes, had been displaced by the Normans in 1066. And most of the cultural and political attributes we think of as “English” come from the Normans, not the Angles or Saxons.
The Breitbart article only mentions the Normans once:
It comes amid a wider movement in academia to link the historical group of Germanic Angles, Jutes, and Saxon peoples who arrived after the end of Roman controlled Britain and the conquest of the Normans with alleged racism, which many claim has been fostered in America.
I read that about six times. Is it saying that the Germanic Angles and Saxons arrived after the “conquest” of the Normans, who in fact conquered the Angles and Saxons? It may just be sloppy writing, or it may mean that the writer honestly didn’t know the Anglo-Saxons got their asses whupped and lost control of their territory on the island of Britain almost a thousand years ago. They were shupped by Norman invaders from France. And the “Anglo-Saxons” didn’t become romanticized as the epitome of civilized white people until the 1700s, when British imperialists were trying to normalize the colonization of many brown people by their own white selves. And of course the construction “Anglo-Saxon” came to be adopted here across the pond as a synonym for the higher grade of white people who are not Irish, Italian or Polish. This also is a construction that a Swedish friend of mind finds weird; I had to explain it to him.
So now white racists in England are thumping their chests and saying “We English exist”! Yes, and thank the Normans for that. But to the nutjob who complained that denigrating the Anglo-Saxons is like “saying the same thing about, say, Aboriginal Australians, Maoris or Native Americans” — um, the Celts would like a word.
Nice piece of writing.
Especially after a hectic and exhausting move!
That's why we love you, maha:
'Grace under pressure.'
Back OT.
Ok, Brexitards, which is it?
"Anglo-Saxson Lives Matter?"
"English Lives Matter?"
"We English Exist!?"
"We are here… We are here…"
Whoops!
Sorry.
That last one was the Whos of Whoville.
Nice piece of writing.
Especially after a hectic and exhausting move!
That's why we love you, maha:
'Grace under pressure.'
Back OT.
Ok, Brexitards, which is it?
"Anglo-Saxson Lives Matter?"
"English Lives Matter?"
"We English Exist!?"
"We are here… We are here…"
Whoops!
Sorry.
That last one was the Whos of Whoville.
"the jutes will not replace us! the jutes will not replace us!"
Glad to hear you are in the new digs. Keep score of how many times you say (or think) "That's where that was!" as you empty boxes into a semblance of liveable. The only people who really know how to move are family of career military.
One of the legal talking heads recently suggested a "watch" status for Mir a lago charges re the documents. He's a former prosecutor and he thinks it's close. I'm not sure if Jack Smith has to get the green light from Merrick Garland or not. If the answer is "not", we may be weeks or less from charges. We "know" charges will happen in GA in August.
A talking head last week suggested the DOJ waited too long. (Never mind that Trump is the chief cause of delays.) An indictment now is too plate to be prosecuted because the trial would almost certainly bump up against the 90-day window of DOJ policy not to do anything that would affect a national election. I think that's wrong. A prosecution brought now is 17 months from the Nov. 24 election. The trial date might easily fall in the quarter before the election but the date of the trial is set by the judge – not the DOJ. I know of no restriction on the judiciary on avoiding elections. The clown who made the assertion must be on somebody's payroll. He also extended the claim to include the Georgia trial, as if a state trial was or would be bound by DOJ rules that don't apply to setting a trial date anyway. Again. the push by the GOP surrogates is that a trial before the election infringes on Trump's 1st Amendment free speech rights related to the campaign he'd have to leave to attend the trial(s). It will be interesting (if a lawyer makes the argument in a motion for Trump) because a few hundred million people will want to see the evidence before the election. They have to make a crucial decision about who to vote for. FACTS will be (for many) an essential guide in the '24 election. Do they have no rights?
I will never be a fan of Todd but a couple of times this year, he actually displayed some unusual anatomy – a brain and a spine. Not all the time, not consistently but it did happen. I have no idea if that factor made him replaceable.
Now you are back in (or near) The Big Apple. I hope that, in some cosmic way, the move brings the world back into balance/
So happy you are in and systems are up.
Both-sidesy they write in the Atlantic, yet the spell checker rebels. I rebel at the expression itself. It implies there are two and only two valid sides to any issue. Many issues are controversial but rare indeed do opposing sides have equal validity to be considered. As to the side that complains about not being represented, well one of them almost never reads or buys a subscription to anything respectable. What should a publication do if "their side" is an apparent delusion? Is that a real side? Do the editors need to exclude it? As for what the billionaires want, I would contend that is a very speculative statement that is impossible to verify. Perhaps it was an editorial error to include it.
I do contend that some billionaires have a history of taking a side that is in their apparent interest and not the best apparent interest of the public. Some a history of more indicative of an apparent active social conscience. As to which view is more valid? I would say there may be even more views than that to consider. Things are rarely simple, and reality is an elusive ideal only for some of us. I do think it is a value of merit and appreciate the fact that so many people work so hard in pursuit of the truth. Rarely are they both-sidesy in my experience.
Well, clearly the problem is that without Anglo-Saxon legitimacy, how can you have WASPs?
"Bland, both-sidesy, harmless vanilla inoffensiveness"
Maybe 35 years ago both sides meant something? The problem is now one side advocates for the end of democracy, the end of Public Education, the end of the American judicial system, the end of the IRS and in fact the end to governmental systems all together, while the other side (our side) hasn't really changed that much since the 80's. So today drawing a line between both sides means you are essentially advocating for Authoritarian Fascism! CNN actually has a unique opportunity to stand out as the only major cable channel to just report the news straight, the problem they see is that telling the truth ends up being perceived as liberal somehow, that is how far Murdoch et-al has pulled the entire industry into the shit!
I think the you-know-what hit the fan today. What's been reported is that Trump's lawyers visited DOJ this morning.
"The three lawyers – Lindsey Halligan, John Rowley and James Trusty – declined to answer questions as they left the building in Washington." Reuters
According to Glenn Kirshner, a former federal prosecutor, it's not unusual for DOJ to meet with the lawyers of the target of an investigation at the end, just before an indictment. The purpose of such a meeting is to let the defense make an argument and present exculpatory evidence. Both sides wind up showing a few cards – the defense in a last-ditch effort to talk DOJ out of it (which means the defense has to present any legitimate argument that might work with a jury) and the prosecution has to say, "Yep, we think we got him and here's why." So the most powerful charges are laid out.
Trump's lawyers and DOJ are not commenting at all. Though Trump's lawyers requested to talk to Robert Muller, the speculation is that the A/G did not attend but the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, probably did. Assuming Trump's lawyers called Trump right after the meeting, Trump's reaction gives a few clues.
"Reports are the Marxist Special Prosecutor, DOJ, & FBI, want to Indict me on the BOXES HOAX, despite all of the wrongdoing that they have done for SEVEN YEARS, including SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN," Trump wrote on Truth Social, repeating a debunked claim that the FBI spied on his campaign.
"Biden Crimes go unpunished, including that he had Boxes in Chinatown, in his garage by the 'Corvette,' & 1,850 Boxes in Delaware that he won't allow anyone to see. That is real OBSTRUCTION!"
From Salon
Read that last word, in all caps – "OBSTRUCTION". I suspect the bulk of the 2-hour meeting was on an Obstruction of Justice" charge – a crime Biden and Pence never came close to committing because they cooperated fully when they discovered what seems to be, for both, honest mistakes. Trump's rant tries to conflate his deliberate possession of top secret documents with their accidental possession of classified stuff. But the card Jack Smith may have laid on the table is absolute proof that Trump conspired to deceive the DOJ and retain documents by concealing them. Jack Smith has the notes and an audio tape from Trump's attorney. Transcripts have not been released but if Trump declared his intention to retain the documents by fraud to his lawyer, that's Obstruction – open and shut.
Again, citing Glenn Kirshner on the motive of a lawyer to document conversations with an untrustworthy client, if Trump loses the case he will throw his lawyer under the bus in the appeal. Under these circumstances, the interests of the Defense lawyer align with the DOJ prosecutor to show the trial WAS fair. The best weapon a defense lawyer has are detailed notes of what the client was told, what the client asked, what the client demanded from the lawyer, and exactly when. This makes perfect sense – and Trump's sleazy relationship with lawyers created the circumstances for DOJ to have detailed evidence of how Trump intended and attempted to commit Obstruction.
IMO, Trump rounded a corner today. Trump knows he will be charged, and (I'm guessing) that the cornerstone of the case is not possession of the classified documents (which Trump has tried to build his defense around) but Obstruction in the deliberate tricks Trump played to keep the documents. This is where the "everybody does it" defense fails. Biden didn't hide his mistake. Pence didn't hide his mistake. In Trump's case it was NEVER a mistake – it was a deliberate decision to do something Trump KNEW was a crime.
We're gonna see a test of an essential tenet of democracy. Is Trump above the law? He thinks he is because 1) he's wealthy, 2) because he's popular (as a cult leader), and 3) because being a former high-ranking member of the government, he's supposed to get a pass. At different times in history, any one of these conditions can be, has been, a get-out-of-jail-free card. (Not always – Denny Hastert served 15 months. Anybody higher than a former Speaker in modern history?)
It looks like the Obstruction charge, combined with other charges related to the Mir-a-lago documents is next up – then Georgia.
Kristen Welker is the Andrea Mitchell of Tim Russerts.
Then we are still screwed. How utterly surprising.
The Normans were Norse from scandavian countries that settled in the north of France that came to be called Normandy. Since the French liked to have a language that didn’t pronounce “ess” , Norseman was shortened to Norman.
The Vikings settled in Minnesota, but left soon after as they were not skilled in hunting lions and bears. They returned in the 20th century, and developed a culture revolving around packing toilet paper in boxes.
Source:plastered history (TM).
(1) Click on the Telegraph link and let the page load.
(2) Do not scroll, since when you scroll it brings up the paywall. Instead, temporarily disable WiFi or whatever you're using to get to the internet. It now can't phone home and ask when to bring up the paywall.
(3) Read the article.
(4) Turn your internet back on, and reassess your life choices for reading British newspapers supporting Conservatives.
The Angles and Saxons invaded from Germania(ish).
The Normans were originally from Norway (i.e., Vikings), but had conquered Gaul first.
Britain is all messed up…