FROM TEFLON TO FELON: Trump Found Guilty on 34 Felony Counts

Teflon to Felon
Washington Post: A Manhattan jury on Thursday found former president Donald Trump guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records. The crimes are felonies because the jury found Trump falsified the records to try to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election, which he narrowly won over Hillary Clinton.

election with significantly more force. Even if the guilty candidate weren’t shoved to the side after being indicted, a guilty verdict would surely have made them persona non grata. There would be inquests about how to avoid nominating them or how to remove them from the ballot.

But this is the Trump-era GOP. The former president spent years inoculating himself with his base from a moment like this by casting any scrutiny of him as a “witch hunt.” Republican lawmakers have almost universally toed Trump’s line of decrying the Manhattan proceedings and urging people to disregard the verdict.

So the question today is not whether the vast majority of Trump supporters will stand by him (they will) but whether the small percentage of them who might balk — combined with undecided voters who might be turned off — will ultimately matter.

Aerial Photo Calls into Question Trump Campaign Claims about Crowd Size at Bronx Rally

The Trump campaign claims there 25,000 people at his rally in the Bronx. This is an aerial shot.

Newsweek: The rally had a permit for 3,500 people, according to the New York Times which cited the Police Department. However, some said many more attended the event. Steven Cheung, spokesperson for Trump, told Newsweek in an email after the event that 25,000 people attended.

Fun Fact: Mother of Misogynist Footballer Harrison Butker Is a Medical Physicist

Another baby step toward Gilead

Elizabeth Butker and Harrison Butker
Elizabeth Butker and Harrison Butker

The Handmaid’s Tale-style campaign to push American women out of the public sphere comes from every direction. It recently erupted during a commencement speech at a college in Kansas. The misogynist propagandist was Harrison Butker, a professional football player.

Here’s what Butker said in his commencement address to Benedictine College in Kansas:

The 28-year-old kicker came under fire recently for telling female graduates at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, that they “have had the most diabolical lies told to you.”

He continued: “How many of you are sitting here now, about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career?” he asked.

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

So Harrison Butker must owe his success to his stay-at-home mother, who was known for her quiet devotion to her family and a contented life having babies and preparing meals, right?

Wrong:
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MAGA NC Senate to State Residents: Wear a Mask, Go to Jail

The South Carolina-ification of North Carolina rolls on

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)

During the Covid pandemic, Republican politicians desperately tried to downplay and disparage the crisis in order to protect Pres. Trump from political damage over his dangerously incompetent handling of the crisis. It appears that their political malfeasance backfired, however, because Covid killed many more Republicans – who bought into the GOP’s anti-mask and anti-medical science campaign – than Democrats who followed doctors’ advice and wore masks and took other precautions.

Post-pandemic analyses found that Republicans died in greater numbers across the country, and researchers at Yale University who studied Covid mortality in two ruby red states, Florida and Ohio, found that “the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43 percent higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters. The gap in excess death rates between Republican and Democratic voters was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates…”

It was puzzling then that the GOP was systematically killing off older party members, it’s most reliable voters. Party leaders addressed this tragic disparity back then, predictably, by first lying about and then by ignoring it.

Now the North Carolina Senate has decided that when the next pandemic comes, no one in the state will survive, irrespective of party. In a ham-fisted and short-sighted attempt to prevent protesters from wearing Covid masks to hide their identities, the Senate has voted to ban wearing masks in public for any reason, from disease prevention to, let’s assume, trick or treating at Halloween. How this law will be enforced in the nation’s ninth largest state remains to be seen. The Hill reports that:
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