HorsesAss.Org

Open Thread.

by — ,

KUOW had a very interesting story this morning about a sex education bill in the state Legislature. I wanted to do an open thread about it (pro, contact your legislators if it’s your thing). But I don’t see it on their website. This has happened a few times. I don’t know how quickly they turn around stories, but it’s kind of frustrating.

Comments

  1. 1

    Majority of Floridians opposed to Trump reelection: poll
    “Wednesday’s poll found Trump’s approval rating in Florida is consistent with his national approval rating. Forty-three percent of those surveyed said they have a favorable view of the president, compared to 52 percent who have an unfavorable view.”

  2. 2

    Trump promised to shrink the trade deficit. Instead, it exploded.
    “The Commerce Department said Wednesday that — despite more than two years of President Trump’s “America First” policies — the United States last year posted a $891.2 billion merchandise trade deficit, the largest in the nation’s 243-year history.
    Economists say the trade deficit is swelling because of broad economic forces, including a chronic shortfall in national savings that was exacerbated by last year’s $1.5 trillion corporate and personal income tax cut..”

    “If you want to lower the trade deficit, have a recession,”

    “Those Trump/Ryan tax cuts are working exactly as planned!” – Goldie

    And yet, the trumpers blindly support him. We have to bring back the Fairness Doctrine.

  3. 3

    I bet if KUOW would replace its story transcriptionists with speech-recognition software those stories would be posted online quickly enough to please Carl.

  5. 5

    @ 1

    Florida (+Clinton): No new polls in Florida, but five polls slightly favoring Trump “age out”. This shifts Clinton’s chances from 43% to 53%. Florida is still a toss-up, but now Clinton has a tiny edge.

    http://horsesass.org/poll-anal.....ttle-more/

    If I can’t be confident in a poll of polls subjected to Monte Carlo analysis two days before the election I’m sure as shit not gonna care what people think 20 months before the election, Red.

    But you go ahead and suck that poll pacifier. Suck on it for all it’s worth.

  7. 7

    Who cares about some rando polls in FLA when you are WINNING! across the board! High paying coal jobs are at an all time high. The economy is booming throughout the American heartland. North Korea and China are our bitches. Warming relations with great Mother Russia. Lots of surplus farm products for everyone. WALL is being built faster and better than ever. And great prices on Papa John’s Pizza!

    MAGA!

  10. 10

    Meanwhile, Trump’s DOJ is letting a corrupt GOP ex-congressman facing 24 felony counts off the hook if he repays the money he stole and the taxes he didn’t pay.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/06/politics/aaron-schock-charges-dropped/index.html

    Looks an awful lot like what Trump criticized Eric Holder for, but we already know Republican hypocrisy is boundless. So is the bounty that politics lavishes on corrupt Republicans, meaning all Republicans in elective offices.

  13. 13

    @7 “Warming relations with great Mother Russia.”

    That’s nothing, you oughta see the warming relations with Mother Earth.

  15. 15

    @7 “Warming relations with great Mother Russia”.

    Don’t forget warming relations with greater Mother Earth. Toto! Toto! Where is my Toto!

  17. 17

    Fuck him. He’s half right, people don’t want handouts, they want decent jobs paying decent wages with decent benefits, which are disappearing because people like him have stacked the political deck in order to turn the rest of us into cheap third-world labor.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/billionaire-sam-zell-ocasio-cortez-wealth-redistribution-wont-work.html

    Unless, of course, you’re a successful capitalist like PI.

    Thirty-two point two-seven percent in a 62-week period when the market indexes were all but flat! He must be using leverage you normally see only at racetracks.

  19. 19

    Share buybacks are a complicated topic.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/06/buybacks-under-attack-as-a-senator-proposes-restricting-insider-sales.html

    Buybacks are often described as “returning capital to shareholders,” but that’s not really true, as shareholders get no cash or stock from buybacks, and if the buybacks are poorly timed they merely destroy shareholder equity. And the history of buybacks shows that few managements are any better at timing buybacks than dart-throwing monkeys.

    In recent years, corporations have spent more than twice as much on buybacks as dividends. This gap started to narrow a little in 2015, but buybacks still vastly exceed dividend payments. Why are buybacks so popular with managements?

    1. They increase EPS (earnings per share) even when profits are stagnant or falling, masking poor management performance.

    2. Executive stock options are often tied to EPS, so buybacks allow execs to collect bonuses they didn’t earn by creating an illusion of rising profits.

    3. It’s much easier to eliminate buybacks without shareholder backlash than to cut dividends.

    4. One of the main arguments in favor of buybacks is they “return capital to shareholders” without incurring a tax liability. But as noted above, buybacks often fail to increase the stock’s market price, in which case there’s nothing to tax. And any tax advantage to shareholders has been lessened by the tax rate cuts in Trump’s tax cuts.

    Managements like buybacks because they benefit from them, personally, directly, financially. Period. If buybacks also benefit the shareholders, that’s incidental and accidental. As a shareholder, I would rather get dividend cash every time.

    So if the Democrats want to discourage buybacks, that’s fine with me.

  20. 20

    @16 “We think too much alike.”

    That’s not strange, considering Republicans think on a first-grade level and the appropriate responses to their idiocy are simple and obvious.

  23. 23

    Is Zuck finally realizing most people don’t want their personal information shared with marketers so he can profit? (I’m skeptical; there’s gotta be a trick behind this, because that’s who he is.)

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/mark-zuckerberg-says-future-facebook-messaging-not-social-media-n980146

    (Full disclosure: Roger Rabbit has never had a Facebook account and never will. Fuck him and his business model, which is nothing more than an ingenious way of monetizing stalking.)

  25. 25

    The great weakness of crooked schemes is they fall apart when the crooks get greedy and steal from each other.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/homeless-man-n-j-woman-accused-gofundme-scam-plead-guilty-n980166

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: The Mafia figured out the solution for this generations ago. They whack skimmers. That eliminates the problem, keeps the survivors honest, and ensures that every crook in the organization receives fair compensation for his thievery.

  26. 26

    Mr. Safety School Esq. visited the hill again today. Brought with him a giant trove of documents he claims corroborate his testimony. Media reports are saying the documents show various revisions to Mr. Safety School Esq.‘s fraudulent testimony to HSCI last year made by President Draft Dodger’s criminal lawyers, including specific changes made by Jay Sekulow.

    Mr. Safety School Esq. is a giant liar. Also Mr. Safety School Esq. is a remarkably shitty lawyer. So it’s worth keeping that in mind as we evaluate the kinds of statements he makes to lazy access journalists groveling for clicks and shares. He might not know what an incriminating document looks like. Or he might have prepared so many of them he can no longer tell. Also, liar. So there’s that.

    Point is, best to wait for the folks on the committee to review the documents before deciding to believe Mr. Safety School Esq.. Even if you really, really, really, ridiculously want it to be true. Nobody is going in front of a GJ based on the testimony of Mr. Safety School Esq. alone.

  27. 27

    If Mr. Safety School Esq.‘s documents show that President Draft Dodger’s lawyers reviewed and approved changes to his false testimony to Congress, and if it can be shown that those lawyers knew that testimony to be false at that time, that would probably be sufficient evidence of crime/fraud to compel testimony from the lawyers. Also might break down the JDA, to the extent that it remains intact.

    Protecting privilege relies on the premise that President Draft Dodger’s lawyers would be freelancing on this. Seems unlikely. And they could certainly be asked to respond to that narrowly. But proving coordination and/or approval may not be possible. Still, these people have not failed yet to surprise me with their immense stupidity about protecting themselves

    Even if these idiots escape indictment in all this, they are going to be lying awake at night sweating for two more years at least.

    And yes, this too is another GOP #owngoal

  28. 28

    Remember when candidates would drop out of races when it was revealed they had undocumented staff?

    In all, The Post has interviewed 33 immigrants who have worked for the president’s clubs without legal status.

    How many undocumented workers can one hire before it stops being ‘an oversight’ and become willful criminality? But it isn’t limited to the golf clubs. Seems some private properties enjoyed by the Trump clan directly are involved.

    ‘Oh we had no idea and these were people we never dealt with it’s just an HR issue.’ (Leave it to The Dumbest Trump to screw up that defense…)

    Quintero said he met with Eric Trump to discuss his job duties and shared copies of text messages sent from a number matching that of Trump’s personal cellphone — saved in his contacts under the name “Erik Boss.”

    The exchanges show that Eric Trump closely tracked Quintero’s work.

    “Hi Juan. How is the planting coming along? Did you ever get to the small fields — the two off of the rifle range and the soy bean plot?” Trump wrote nine days after first texting the caretaker about the fields.

    The collective freak out by the white folk who voted on the primary issue of ‘Illegals’ will start…..

  29. 29

    Hey Donald, before you tell the nation that ‘Jewish” groups are calling for Rep Ilhan’s and resignation you should do a google search. (So Much Winning!)

    Signatories include two organizations classified as anti-Muslim hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Both have ties to the Trump administration: ACT for America and the Center for Security Policy.
    …
    ACT bills itself as a “grassroots national security organization,” but the SPLC argues the group conflates national security with the denigration of Muslims.
    …
    Beirich pointed to a series of rallies the group planned in 2017 under the banner “March Against Sharia” attended by white nationalists.

    Longtime neo-Nazi Billy Roper organized the Arkansas event for (ACT for America), according to the SPLC. Roper once served as the state leader of the National Alliance, a now defunct neo-Nazi group that agitated for Jewish genocide. ACT subsequently disavowed Roper.

    There are surely some fine people who also signed the letter.

  31. 31

    Trump has revoke an Obama EO requiring the CIA to report civilian casualties caused by its drone strikes.

    https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/03/06/trump-revokes-obama-order-on-reporting-civilian-deaths-in-drone-strikes/23686165/

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Given that Trump hates and distrusts the CIA, why is he giving them a license to kill innocent foreigners in their villages? If somebody did that to us, we’d consider it an act of war, and retaliate by knocking down a building or two.

  32. 32

    @28 These fuckers are so stupid they tanked the market for their own soybeans. I wonder if Eric applied for soybean farmer bailout funding?

  38. 38

    I’m sure it was Trump’s admiration for the CIA that motivated him to revoke Brennan’s security clearance.

    And explains why he religiously reads their intelligence assessments.

    And why he believes MBS killed Kashoggi.

    And why he endorses the Steele dossier.

    And so on, etc., etc., etc.

    “‘People risk their lives for the intelligence he just tosses aside on Twitter,’ Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said of Mr. Trump ….”

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/us/politics/trump-intelligence.html

    Like I said, not just FBI but CIA too, dumbfuck.

  39. 39

    Demorat Pornstar Party Of Pussywhipped Punks News, Demorat Dingbat Awards–First place, hysterical Demorat dingbat tries to strangle student with flag;
    ——————————-
    A teacher in Yorktown, Virginia, was suspended after a video surfaced of her wrapping a student’s Trump Flag around his neck and calling the President a “racist and sexist.” She attempted to shove the flag down the student’s shirt and take his phone.
    According to the student who sent us the video, Mrs Brinkley was suspended and numerous conservative parents in the town were upset enough that they are working to take steps to prevent this from happening again.
    https://conservativefiringline.com/yorktown-virginia-teacher-suspended-after-wrapping-trump-flag-around-students-neck/
    Second place, hysterical Demorat dingbat Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-PMS) demands vote for 16 year olds;
    ————————————————–
    Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley on Tuesday evening introduced legislation to lower the federal voting age from 18 to 16.
    Pressley cited teen activists pushing for gun control as a reason for giving 16-year-olds the right to vote, which the congresswoman compared to having a driver’s license.
    Two other Democratic congresswomen, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and New York Rep. Grace Meng, offered their support for Pressley’s legislation.
    https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/06/dem-congresswomen-change-voting-age/

  41. 41

    PorkSauce is in da house!

    With absolutely positively no comment so far about the Trump family still actively importing dangerous criminal pervert aliens into his community to do their scary rapey Meskin crimes on him and all the innocent little children. Shocking!

    Because… you know…
    IOKIYAR Baby!

  44. 44

    Replies to @39:

    (1) Give us her address so we can send her a medal.

    (2) If you’re old enough to get shot, you’re old enough to vote.

  45. 45

    “Three leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination defended Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) Wednesday as she faces heat — including from members of her own party — over comments she made about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American foreign policy.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-ilhan-omar-anti-semitism-statement_n_5c80385be4b0e62f69e98739

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: I’m not necessarily endorsing Omar’s views, but the Party of Steve King is in no position to criticize her.
    Of course, this doesn’t apply to Democrats, as you’re prohibited from criticizing a member of your own party only if you’re a Republican.

  46. 46

    45,
    I think Steve King just took Omar off AIPAC’s hook.

    A trove of IMs was leaked today showing King has been working directly with Identity Evropa for the last couple of years and had the group helping with his 2018 campaign.

  47. 47

    @46 Maybe it’s time for the Democratic House majority to do what GOP leaders and Iowa voters wouldn’t do: Expel him from Congress.

  52. 52

    Wall Street having a bit of a sad so far this morning, maybe it will turn around after The Hump says how great he and China are sucking each other’s cocks.

    Bob being quite about it, and PI is buying up a storm, and making 39% today.

    Don’t get me wrong it will reach 27,000 and beyond one day, or we all mine as well start investing in hot dog carts all competing with each other to get us all to be unhealthy fat fuck people (Americans). – #MAGA!

  53. 53

    @52 That’s been going on for a couple weeks and I’ve been buying it. This might be a good time to pick up more Walgreen, which could crack its 52-week low any day now. Probably Amazon again.

  56. 56

    “The woman also reportedly asked for a refund before driving off.”

    (From previous link)

    Add attempted armed robbery to the charges she’ll face when she’s caught.

  58. 58

    Socialism is paying workers for their work. Paying them $15 an hour, $7.25 an hour, or $2.00 an hour is socialist. There should be no wages at all. All fruits of capitalism belong to capitalists. Paying for labor is un-American and takes us down the road of Venezuela.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-does-socialism-mean-and-how-is-it-shaping-2020/

    The above is satire mocking Doctor Dumbfuck and other cheap labor conservatives like him. Just thought I should clarify that for any visitors to this blog. For more information about cheap labor conservatives, see

    http://sideshow.me.uk/annex/de.....inutes.htm

  59. 59

    53,
    AMZN? Are you sure? What about the dick pics?
    What about “Bezos has lost his marbles”?

    That sure has worked out beeyootifully for the House of Saud and their little media stenographers. Of course The Kingdom can afford to have shorted AMZN at 1500 at the end of the year. But not little shit stains like David Pecker. Their little scheme might have been about global geo-politics. But you know those geniuses made a play on the stock price.
    More #winning

  60. 60

    @59 Walgreen’s stock periodically tanks on unjustified fears that Amazon will put traditional pharmacies out of business. This is another one of those seesaws. WBA was $82 a couple weeks ago and now you can get it for $60, although that’s still double what I paid for my first batch of Walgreen shares 6 years ago. I’m buying anyway. Any stock that doubles every 6 years is good enough for me.

  62. 62

    @61 Hitler needed only a third of the electorate behind him to seize total control. It’s not hard when you can drown out everyone else, as Trump is seeking to do. I find comments by conservatives on other boards who literally say CNN and MSNBC should be shut down. By. The. Government. My God, where did these people come from? Are we being invaded by Russians? Are we waking up to a “Red Dawn”?

  63. 63

    A well-regulated militia is holding its perimeter against a swarm of admirality officers in Rockford, Illinois, after deactivating a federal marshal on a warrant detail.

  64. 64

    61,
    Perhaps the greater irony lies in the similar calls from the alt-right for government intervention in the policies of private media companies.

    Turns out when you switch from racist/sexist/xenophobic dog whistles and coded language to openly marching with torches and rioting in the streets it definitely ramps up the customer enthusiasm and merchandising potential. The problem is that you can’t exploit any of it if you can’t reach those customers or convert their clicks into cash
    .
    Boo, fucking hoo. Facebook and @jack have no obligation to provide fora to nihilistic child molesters and violent hate groups. And companies like PayPal have no obligation to help the monetize their hate.

  66. 66

    Brown has called his recent campaign activities “The Dignity of Work Tour” and said,

    “Connie and I have spent the last few months traveling around the country to make dignity of work a centerpiece of Democrats’ 2020 campaign, and we are so grateful to everyone who has welcomed us into their communities and into their lives,” he said, referring to his wife, Connie Schultz. “We’ve seen candidates begin taking up the dignity of work fight, and we have seen voters across the country demanding it — because dignity of work is a value that unites all of us. It is how we beat Trump, and it is how we should govern.”

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/surprise-announcement-sherrod-brown-says-he-won-t-run-2020-n980606

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: He’s right, of course. Workers deserve respect. But it shouldn’t even be necessary to talk about this. Respecting workers is something everyone should get behind. It should be bipartisan, it should enjoy 100% support.

    But we are talking about it. Or, I should say, Democrats are talking about it. I say that because you won’t hear either of the words “dignity” or “respect” in relation to workers from a Republican.

    Republicans have no respect for workers, and strip away not only their pay, health insurance, and pensions, but also their dignity and self-respect every chance they get. They even go after their Social Security and Medicare.

    Why do Republicans hate workers? Probably for two reasons, one pragmatic, the other ideological. First, every dollar paid to a worker is a dollar that doesn’t go into a capitalist’s pocket, and they really hate that. Second, they think slaves are beneath dignity and respect, and they view workers as slaves or at least as people they should be allowed to treat as slaves. They’d probably repeal the 13th Amendment if they could. (They don’t like the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th Amendments, either; about the only Amendment they do like is the 2nd Amendment.)

    So that’s why Democrats are talking about the dignity of work, and respect for workers. It’s because Republicans won’t give them any.

  67. 67

    66,
    Republican voters only started hating workers when women, and people with dark colored skin began to access the same worker’s rights as white men. Seeing “those people” out picketing employers, holding union votes, and advocating for better working conditions infuriates them to the point of self destruction.

    Just ask that idiot sporting goods owner who bankrupted his business because the sight of talented African American men demanding their rights as workers made him destroy the business he worked his whole life to build.

    Nothing particularly pragmatic about that.
    And yes. This really is “the status quo” of Republicans now.

  69. 69

    “Don’t get me wrong it will reach 27,000 and beyond one day”

    And if it ever gets past 50,000, Doctor Dumbfuck will be able to crow that his orange moron finally matched the DOW’s performance under the Kenyan.

  70. 70

    @67 “Just ask that idiot sporting goods owner who bankrupted his business because …”

    It’s just a matter of what their priorities are.

    But I gotta say, when they prioritize racism ahead of profit, it may be time to worry about what they might be capable of …

  71. 71

    @69 It probably will someday, but not on the orange moron’s watch. Investors may have to wait for a couple more Democratic presidents to get there.

  72. 72

    Dow gain in Obama’s first 2 years: 3,628 points (starting from 7,949), +45.6%

    Dow gain in Trump’s first 2 years: 3,500 points (starting from 19,827), +17.7%

    Speaks for itself, no comment necessary.

  73. 73

    @57.

    This might come as a shocker no surprise but I agree with them if that is thier “choice”, if not public funding. I can understand how it would be difficult to teach their teachings about one asshole prude and one bitch. But I really don’t understand how they can call themselves Catholics.

    But I don’t agree with a business denying goods and employment in the civilian world, regardless of the individuals beliefs. And I asked what them fucks would think if a gay person said, “sorry you are straight and I ain’t baking the one jackass one bitch cake, in areas that don’t have sexual orientation as a form of non discrimination.

    Glad the 1000 let their voices be heard, let the church or that church sit on an island, where Puffy might be.

  74. 74

    Trollin’ Trollin!

    Apple CEO Tim Cook changed his Twitter handle today to @TimApple

  75. 75

    @73 The fact they have a right to do it, doesn’t make doing it right.

    It isn’t against the law to be an asshole, but that doesn’t mean they should be an assholes, and it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t criticize assholery when we see it.

    Or, putting it another way, I don’t need to explain why I’ve never been a Catholic. My ancestors left the Church over four centuries ago. Don’t know if bishops were raping kids then, too, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I know they burned people at the stake for refusing to be Catholics.

  76. 76

    Manafort gets sentenced today. Looks like the judge is fixing to throw the book at him. Said Manafort won’t get credit for accepting responsibility for his crimes. That’s probably because he didn’t. He likely won’t get credit for his cooperation with Mueller, either. Because the prosecutor told the judge everything Manafort told Mueller was a pack of lies. So many lies it took Mueller’s investigators 50 hours of interviews with Manafort to untangle them all. Manafort still has over $4 million of assets. He probably can kiss goodbye to those, too, but he doesn’t need them where he’s going. He can get canteen money by working in the kitchen or laundry. Trump pardon? Nah. Why waste political capital on someone who can’t help you anymore? Just ask Doctor Dumbfuck, that’s like performing surgery on a corpse.

  77. 77

    It really can’t go better for GOP….

    After their shock over a not Anti-Semitic comment took hold they got House Dems to float an anti-anti-semitism Bill to ‘rebuke’ Rep Omar.

    In the end Rep Omar votes yes, Anti-Semitism should not be tolerated and 23 GOP reps voted no, freedom to hate is too important a right. Steve King calls attention to himself by voting ‘Present’

    Good work everybody.

  78. 78

    @77 All of which flies over the heads of GOP voters whose reading skills consist of looking at the pictures.

    All they know is that Omar is a MOOZLIM. MOOOOOZZZZZ-LIMMM. That tells them everything they need to know.

  80. 80

    Manafort got off easy, only 47 months in prison on the bank fraud and tax evasion charges. Why? “Before his sentence was imposed, he gave a short statement in which he did not apologize and did not seem to express remorse.” Judge T. S. Ellis cited his “otherwise blameless life.” ?????

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/paul-manafort-trump-s-onetime-campaign-chairman-be-sentenced-fraud-n980496

    But he still faces sentencing on other charges by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, although sentences often run concurrently, so he’ll probably serve whichever is longest, rather than serve them sequentially.

    But Berman does have the option of imposing a consecutive sentence. And “Judge Jackson [has] agreed with investigators’ assessment that Manafort lied to them in order to protect a Russian conspirator. As such, the cooperation deal is off, and he could spend the rest of his life in prison.”

    So it’s not over for him yet.

  81. 81

    +30.39% for the period January 1, 2018 through March 7, 2019.

    Stock buybacks are generally considered good for investors owning shares in the companies concerned. Peter Lynch, the guy who ran Fidelity Magellan for years, said in one of his books that buybacks were “gifts” to shareholders because the shareholders then had the choice of selling for some capital gains or not. Since capital gains are generally taxed at a more favorable rate than ordinary income, those shareholders who sold got to keep more of the gain. Dividends, on the other hand, are taxed at ordinary income tax rates, which, for many investors, means a higher rate of tax than the capital gain taxes.

    I think buybacks are being used to bolster the value of CEO stock options, but that’s not so bad when one considers the choice those buybacks give to shareholders. The shareholder can choose to take the profit (capital gain) or not. With a dividend, the shareholder’s choice is to either sell before the ex-dividend date (hoping to sell at a profit) or to accrue the dividend and pay the ordinary income tax rate.

    Publicly traded companies exist for their shareholders, not for the benefit of non-owners or for government. I don’t fault any CEO for doing a stock buyback, even if it benefits him or her in the process. The important people in the situation are the shareholders and no one else.

  82. 82

    Manafucked let off easy in EDVA. Considering the things the SCO had to tell the court in advance of his sentencing today and the filings and pleadings in DC the SCO will probably argue for a consecutive sentence from ABJ.

    47 months is at the absolute utter bottom of the range.

  83. 83

    80,
    The guidelines allow ABJ to apply a substantial portion of her sentence to run consecutively.

  86. 86

    @85 Could be worse. Women in El Salvador get life for miscarriages. It’s a Catholic country run by anti-abortion zealots. Republicans want to turn America into an El Salvador.

  87. 87

    The hypocrisy is strong with this one:

    In 2018 Judge Ellis sentenced Frederick Turner, 37, to a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison for dealing methamphetamine: “I chafe a bit at that, but I follow the law. If I thought it was blatantly immoral, I’d have to resign. It’s wrong, but not immoral.”

    Judge Ellis today, federal sentencing guidelines called for 19-1/2 to 24 years in prison. “Clearly the guidelines were way out of whack on this,” Ellis said.

  88. 88

    87,
    Federal mandatory mins for drug crimes, bro.

    But for some totally strange reason a whole bunch of fairly wealthy white men in Congress just never saw any compelling reason to enact mandatory mins for tax crimes.

    Crazy, right?

  89. 89

    In the latest assault on women’s constitutional rights,

    “An Alabama judge has recognized the legal rights of an aborted fetus, allowing a man whose girlfriend ended her pregnancy at six weeks to sue the manufacturer of the pill she used and the clinic that gave it to her. The decree, issued by Madison County Probate Judge Frank Barger, explicitly states ‘Baby Roe’ is a person and allows plaintiff Ryan Magers to name the fetus as a co-plaintiff in the suit for ‘wrongful death.'”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2019/03/06/alabama-judge-allows-man-sue-clinic-behalf-aborted-fetus/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.effbe5c4013b

    Roger Rabbit Commentary: Let’s analyze this in detail. Big picture, it allows any man to sue any woman for aborting a fetus of which he’s the father. (The fetus sure isn’t going to get the money.) It also says a 6-week-old fetus is a “person” entitled to the full protection of the civil laws, which implies it’s also entitled to the full protection of the criminal laws, which makes a murderer of any woman who exercises her constitutional right to an abortion in Alabama.

    What is the jurisdiction of a county probate judge in Alabama? According to Ballotpedia, “These courts hear cases regarding wills, estates, guardianship of minors, partition of land and name changes.” And according to this article,

    https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2018/10/elected-without-experience-alabama-probate-judges.html

    Alabama probate judges “are also the chief election official of that county.” The article also notes “these judges are not required to be lawyers and there are no formal training requirements.”

    In the judicial hierarchy, these courts are somewhere down there alongside local traffic courts. The judge appears to be asserting jurisdiction under the pretense that the father is acting as a guardian and the fetus is a “minor.” This appears to be an application of an Alabama state constitutional amendment passed by voters last fall that makes it “state policy to ‘recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life’ and to state that no provisions of the constitution provide a right to an abortion or require funding of abortions.'”

    https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2018/10/elected-without-experience-alabama-probate-judges.html

    By the way, the father was 19 and the girl was only 16 when he impregnated her, so she may need a guardian herself.

    https://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/hotblast/hot-blast-alabama-s-personhood-law-is-put-to-the/article_bfc323a8-40f8-11e9-8734-cfdfb4afa2b2.html

    I don’t know whether that’s statutory rape in Alabama. Probably not; they screw ’em and marry ’em young there.

    In any case, this doesn’t appear to be the judge’s fault. When you’re as far removed from the state supreme court (think Chief Justice Roy Moore), you have to follow the state constitution, no matter what you personally think. The real culprit here is Alabama’s recently-passed “personhood” amendment.

    We’re all familiar with efforts by red states to close down abortion clinics by requiring abortion doctors to have hospital admitting privileges and other stratagems that have uniformly been struck down by federal courts. “Personhood” laws are the right’s latest tactic for denying, and they’re too new and few in numbers (enacted by 3 states so far) to have been court-tested, but it’s pretty obvious from even a cursory reading that Alabama’s “personhood” amendment directly conflicts with Roe v. Wade, which it no doubt was intended to do, and won’t survive federal court review unless Roe v. Wade itself is reversed, and only SCOTUS can do that.

    So, this ruling probably will be immediately challenged in federal court (I can’t see abortion defenders wasting their time on Alabama county and state courts on this one), and following Supreme Court precedent requires it must be struck down by any federal judge who isn’t a Supreme Court justice.

    Roy Moore may not be an Alabama judge anymore, but his spirit lives on there.

  90. 90

    @87 Don’t worry, Judge Jackson still gets a crack at him. An Obama appointee, she’s no Republican lapdog. And the charges against Manafort in her court could get him life.

  91. 91

    From the Seattle Times evening brief email:

    “Eyman pleads not guilty in office chair theft case. The anti-tax initiative promoter says he intended to pay for the chair, but received a call on his cellphone and became distracted.”

    Bullshit. Who takes merchandise out of a store before paying for it? There are two possibilities here. (A) A 106-year-old person who’s lost his mental faculties, or (B) a thief.

    If Eyman can’t concoct a better alibi than this, he should take the Fifth and keep his mouth shut.

  93. 93

    90,
    With Ellis I doubt it’s partisanship.

    He has a fairly well established resentment of federal mandatory minimums. And regards them as a Congressional encroachment on the constitutional authority of judges to impose sentence. More likely he imposed the downward departure as a way to demonstrate his power and send a message. And also just to be an asshole.

    We don’t need to engage with the assinine Republican paranoia about judicial partisanship to explain this.

  94. 94

    91,
    Please tell me he’s going pro se.
    My birthday is coming up and I’ve been very good this year.
    I deserve to see that.
    And no lawyer deserves that human stain as a client.

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