One big lesson from Trump's presidency was that many of the rules we thought constrained politicians were only "Gentlemen's Agreements." They held up because everyone agreed to abide by them. When Trump walked in, refused to abide by them, and wasn't immediately struck by the political equivalent to lightning from heaven, all the politicians on the right decided that they could toss those pesky rules aside also.
I'd call it a "flawed democracy." The ideals behind it were sound, but the execution left much to be improved upon. And we've made many improvements (though we still have a ways to go).
Still, even a flawed democracy is preferable to Dictator Trump.
I want to say "Well, the military won't comply with those commands" and maybe they wouldn't, but if we even get into that position we're in deep trouble.
Hey, we can't let kids know what words mean!
Bans the dictionary
The lying bit is where he claims that he'll only be a dictator for one day. How many dictators have given themselves ultimate power and then gave it up willingly after a single day?
If Trump regains office, he'll assert dictatorial powers. Maybe we can survive this via a mass uprising, but it's unlikely. It would be like needing to survive open heart surgery, chemotherapy, and five organ transplants all at once. Could a patient survive this? Maybe, but the prognosis wouldn't be good and even if they did, they'd be in horrible shape for quite a long time.
The best way of surviving Trump is to make sure he never gets close to the White House (or any other position of power) ever again. And, while we're at it, vote against any Republican who kisses up to Trump. (So, basically, all of them.)
"I'd totally murder people, but that evil federal government would lock me up for murder? Can you believe the audacity?!!! I really want to murder these people, but they won't let me. Total government overreach! Whatever happened to states' rights?"
Big strong men come up to him, with tears in their eyes, saying "how do you do it, sir? How do you lose so many lawsuits?!!!"
Jail time in such a contempt is usually issued as "suspended" meaning that it's ordered, but if the person doesn't fuck up for a period, and obeys the final order, then they don't actually have to go to jail.
So all Trump would need to do would be good and not act up?
He's going to prison!
My guess (also not a lawyer) is to render the verdict as appeal proof as possible. If he wasn't allowed to speak, he would have claimed that his rights were violated and if he had been allowed to give the closing remarks himself, he would have been found totally Innocent.
Engoron let him talk relatively briefly, cut him off when it was clear he wasn't staying on topic, and closed off this appeal argument.
In many of the cases that Republicans refuse abortions for, there is no baby at the end. If a woman is at risk of dying and the fetus has such severe abnormalities that it will breathe twice and die, then what's the argument against an abortion? It could save the woman's life and wouldn't "kill a baby" (even if I accepted that abortion killed a baby - which I don't).
But the Republican line seems to be that a woman needs to be actively dying before they'll even start to consider allowing her to have a life saving medical procedure.
Also, it is easy to say "I'm not voting for Biden, I want someone else" right now. There aren't any consequences.
But come November and suddenly the consequences become more immediate. Many more people say they will vote third party than actually do it once in the voting booth.
I knew I recognized that expression.
"Are you pooping?"
"Nnnnnnoooo?"
"You're pooping aren't you?"
"Not anymore!"
I long for the day when someone mentions Trump and I respond: "Oh yeah. That guy. Last I heard he was sent to prison. That was years ago. Anyway, changes subject away from Trump..."
As I posted it, I wondered if I had missed it happening. There's so much that it's easy for one to slip by.
To steal a line from Trump: They aren't sending their best!
The only way I'd vote for Trump would be if I was on a jury and the judge asked "Who deserves prison time?" Then, I'd vote for Trump so quickly that big, strong men would have tears in their eyes!
How long until a "protect the kids from groomers" member of Moms For Liberty is busted for grooming kids?
It's because half of the Republicans don't want democracy anymore. Democracy means that the other side might have power if the right's views aren't popular enough. That's unacceptable to Republicans. They want a system where they are always in charge and nothing so minor as "our policies are highly unpopular" can stop them. They want a dictatorship with them in charge.
At best, maybe they're willing to have a "democracy" where you have the choice of which Republican you want leading you. (It would sort of be as if the Republican primaries were really determining who would be President - not who would be the Republicans' candidate for President.)
And before that, one of the Democrats (I forget which one) pointed out that the chair of the committee said that Hunter could choose to testify in public or private as long as he testified. Hunter chose in public. The chair disputed this and the Democratic Representative said "I really don't want to play the video, but I have your exact words here."
The guy was trying to change the offer after the fact from "public or private, your choice" to "you can testify publicly, but only after you testify in private."
What are Republicans scared of that they don't want Hunter to testify in public? Of course, we all know the answer. They're afraid that their imagined giant conspiracy theory will be revealed to be based on nothing. (Well, revealed even more than it currently is.) They're also afraid that they can't misquote Hunter if his actual quotes are on public video. It's a lot easier to say "Hunter replied 'my dad used his influence to get me a job'" when there's no video showing that his answer was actually "at no point did my dad use his influence to get me a job."
Or they'll split among horrible people with MAGA Group A fighting against MAGA groups B, C, and D. Their political relevance would wane, but they might get even more violent.
Even the border situation falls into this pattern. Republicans love to complain about how horrible the border is, but when Democrats propose more money for the border or fixing our immigration system, the Republicans balk. They'd rather give border agents no equipment and then blame Democrats for undocumented immigrants flooding over the border.
Four Seasons
I think my Four Seasons LEGO build is done. Only one problem: I likely won't be able to build this beyond this BrickLink Studio render. I uploaded it to BrickLink to price out the build. It would cost $96 to buy all the parts (and that's before shipping). This definitely isn't in my budget. ☹️
Maybe I could one of the sections and just swap out the season pieces. That would be more like $25 plus shipping. Still pricey, but closer to my budget.
Rotating MOC
I like to design biomes for my minifigures. For example, the Orc and Rocking Horse girl from a recent CMF series share a build. The Orc, having come through a portal to the little girl's room, is playing on the rocking horse. Meanwhile, the little girl has taken the orc's cloak, sword, and shield to head through the portal.
I'm now working on what might be my most ambitious MOC. I have 3 minifigures that I realized represent seasons: Watermelon Guy (summer), Turkey Guy (Fall), and Snowman (Winter). If I get a Spring, I have all 4 seasons.
My first thought was to build 4 similar MOCs that would vary due to the seasons. It turned out that this would be too costly, though.
That's when I came up with a better idea. Each figure would be standing near a big tree. Each side would represent a season and you'd be able to rotate the tree to see the different seasons.
One problem: How do you build a MOC that can rotate? I don't need it to automatically rotate or use gears or anything. Just plain "push on the MOC to rotate it" works.
Any ideas?
How to handle the erasure of your 'digital legacy'?
I've been struggling with something for a while now and ironically a sitcom from the 80's finally helped me pinpoint the problem. My TV was on for background noise and I noticed that it was an episode of Family Ties. In the episode, Elyse Keaton was having a problem. A prominent building that she designed was being torn down and replaced by a cookie cutter mini-mall. She was struggling with her "legacy" - her mark on the world - disappearing. After the building was gone, what evidence would there be that Elyse Keaton was there?
I'm facing a similar issue. I don't like getting into my day job too much online (for various reasons), but suffice it to say that applications that I developed for decades are being sunset/replaced. I've developed quite a lot over the decades, but eventually it would all be replaced. Once it is, what will I have as "proof that TechyDad was here"?
How do you handle the existential crisis of our works being digital and transient versus having an actual, physical product?
A long-time assistant to former President Trump told investigators that Trump wrote to-do lists for her on documents that were marked classified, sources say.
One of former President Donald Trump's long-time assistants told federal investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with her statements.
As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that -- more than once -- she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials -- with visible classification markings -- used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.
The notecards with classification markings were at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022 -- but the materials were not taken by the FBI, according to sources familiar with what Michael told investigators.
When Michael, who was not present for the search, returned to Mar-a-Lago the next day to clean up her office space, she found the documents underneath a drawer organizer and helped transfer them to the FBI that same day, sources told ABC News.
The sources said Michael also told federal investigators that last year she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in boxes at Mar-a-Lago -- and she felt that Trump's claims about it at the time would be easy to disprove, according to the sources.
Sources said that after Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told her, "You don't know anything about the boxes."
It's unclear exactly what he meant by that.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation's defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government's efforts to get the documents back. Trump has denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.
As ABC News previously reported, Michael is believed to be the person identified in special counsel Jack Smith's indictment as "Trump Employee 2," described in the indictment as someone who handled many of Trump's White House-era boxes at Mar-a-Lago and who provided Trump with photos of those boxes that were then included in the indictment.
Michael's statements to investigators, described to ABC News by sources, shed further light on the breadth of evidence that Smith has amassed to support his case against Trump.
A Trump spokesperson said that what ABC News was told -- through what the spokesperson called "illegal leaks" -- lacks "proper context and relevant information," and that "President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a proper manner, according to the law."
A representative for Michael declined to comment to ABC News. The FBI also declined to comment.
'Easily' disproven In 2018, Michael became Trump's executive assistant in the White House, and she continued to work for him when Trump left office. But she resigned last year, in the wake of Trump's alleged refusal to comply with the federal requests and the FBI's subsequent search of Mar-a-Lago.
Speaking to federal investigators, Michael recounted how, by late 2021, as many as 90 boxes of materials from Trump's time as president were moved into a basement storage room at Mar-a-Lago, and how -- as pressure from the National Archives mounted -- she and Trump aide Walt Nauta would bring boxes to Trump's residence for him to review.
Trump eventually agreed to turn over 15 boxes of materials, which Michael told investigators she viewed as a positive sign, sources told ABC News.
But then, according to what she told investigators, around the same time that the National Archives found nearly 200 classified documents in the 15 boxes and referred the matter to the FBI, Trump began to seem more reluctant to cooperate with the agency, and he asked Michael to help spread a message that no more boxes existed, sources said she recounted.
That's when Michael became concerned, knowing that scores more boxes were in the storage room, sources said. And as Trump continued to claim that there were no more boxes, Michael even pointed out to him that many people, including maintenance workers, knew otherwise because they had all seen that there were many more than 15 boxes, sources said she told investigators.
Smith's indictment against Trump alleges that Trump asked one of his attorneys at the time, "Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?"
Speaking later with investigators, Michael said she believed early on that claims of no more boxes from Trump were "easily" disproven, and she believed Trump knew they were false because he knew the contents of those boxes better than anyone else -- and because he had previously seen a photograph of the storage room with all 90 or so boxes in it, ABC News was told.
The Justice Department was apparently just as skeptical.
What the FBI didn't take
In May of last year, convinced that Trump was still holding onto a cache of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena to Trump demanding he return any and all classified documents.
According to the indictment, when Trump attorney Evan Corcoran then planned to search for any remaining classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago, Trump directed Nauta and another aide to remove dozens of boxes from the storage room before Corcoran got there "so that many boxes were not searched and many boxes responsive to the ... subpoena could not be found," the indictment said.
Corcoran found only 38 classified documents in the boxes left in the storage room, and he handed them over to the FBI, along with a certification -- allegedly endorsed by Trump -- that the former president had now fully complied with the subpoena.
But the FBI still believed Trump was holding onto even more classified documents, and when FBI agents conducted an unannounced search of Mar-a-Lago three months later, they found 102 more classified documents in Trump's office and elsewhere.
The next day, after the FBI search, Michael returned to work at Mar-a-Lago and found her desk in a bit of a mess, with drawers turned over, sources said. Buried underneath a drawer organizer were the to-do lists Trump had written for her on the backs of briefing notes with classification markings, Michael later recalled to investigators, according to sources.
When Michael discovered that the FBI hadn't taken those documents in their search of Mar-a-Lago, she helped make sure they were given to the FBI that same day, the sources told ABC News.
It's unclear if Michael notified Trump or others at Mar-a-Lago about her discovery, or if any of those notecards from White House briefings are among the 32 different classified documents that Trump is charged with unlawfully retaining.
The indictment also accuses Trump of trying "to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations" by, among other things, providing "just some of the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully."
In her statements to investigators, as described by sources to ABC News, Michael noted that when the FBI first contacted her for an interview as part of their investigation last year, she notified Trump about the request. In response, he told her, "You don't know anything about the boxes," she told investigators, according to the sources.
'Anything you need from us'
A Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, previously told ABC News that Trump "offered full cooperation with DOJ, and told [a] key DOJ official, in person, 'Anything you need from us, just let us know.'"
According to transcripts of contemporaneous voice notes made by Trump attorney Corcoran and reviewed by ABC News, Trump did make such a statement on June 3 of last year at Mar-a-Lago, when a senior Justice Department official and FBI agents came to retrieve the 38 classified documents that Corcoran found in the basement storage room.
But, according to the indictment, that's the same day Trump "caused a false certification to be submitted to the FBI" claiming there were no more classified documents. And before Trump spoke with the Justice Department official, many of his boxes were loaded onto his plane headed "north for the summer," according to the indictment.
In addition, after the Justice Department weeks later issued a second subpoena for security camera footage from inside Mar-a-Lago, Trump tried to have some of that footage deleted "to conceal information from the FBI and grand jury," the indictment alleged.
Alongside Trump, the indictment also charged Nauta and the other Trump aide, Carlos de Oliveira, for their alleged roles in the conspiracy to hide classified documents from the FBI.
They have each pleaded not guilty.
Donald Trump Wishes ‘Liberal Jews’ a Happy New Year by Accusing Them of Destroying America
The leading Republican presidential candidate took to Truth Social to joke that he is “the greatest Anti Semites of our time”
Donald Trump decided to take time during Rosh Hashanah — the start of the Jewish High Holy days and the celebration of the New Year — to blame “liberal Jews” for voting to destroy America and Israel.
“Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives!,” he wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, presumably referring to the American Jewish support for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward!”
The leading Republican presidential candidate then shared what appeared to be a flyer boasting of Trump’s record on Israel and pro-Jewish causes. “Wake Up Sheep. What Nazi / Anti Semite ever did this for the Jewish people or Israel?” the flyer reads. The flyer goes on to crow about moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (“no other president had the balls to do it”) and endorsing “Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights” and “over settlements in Judea & Samaria” — also known as the West Bank. The flyer also mentions Trump’s signing the “Never Again” Education Bill into law, which funds Holocaust awareness — which was praised by organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League. “Clearly, one of the Greatest Anti Semites of our time!” the flyer jokes.
Strangely, it neglects Trump’s notorious statement that neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia were “very fine people.” Or his speech in front of prominent Republican Jews, telling them that they were manipulative money-grubbers. Or his dinner with Kanye West after the rapper tweeted that he was “going death con3 on JEWISH people.”
The time in between Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, is when Jews are supposed to ask for forgiveness from those they may have hurt. Trump used this faithful, soul-searching time to make it about himself.
It’s unlikely to have much impact; American Jews have traditionally voted overwhelmingly for Democrats — and 2024 looks to be a continuation of the trend. According to a poll by the Jewish Electoral Institute, which found among 800 Jewish voters, Biden leads Trump by 72 percent.
Wizard Potion Shop
I got a Wizard minifigure from my LEGO store for free on my birthday and decided to do what I've been doing with all my minifigures - build him a biome.
This is what I have so far in BrickLink Studio. What do you think?
Java/Spring Boot vs .NET
Let's suppose that you didn't know either technology and were offered the chance to work with one or the other. Time for you to get up to speed on the technology was built into the project.
Which technology would you work with and why? Which would have more options in the future?
Yes, this is a real life situation I'm confronting. I'm deep in a Java training course but a .Net opportunity has come my way. Do I toss Java/Spring Boot aside for .Net? Or do I continue with Java/Spring Boot and decline the .Net opportunity?
A report from the Royal United Service Institute said Russian soldiers are likely being sent to "skirmish until killed' while on drugs.
Russia has taken to chemically lowering its soldiers' inhibitions to guarantee these ill-trained civilians and convicts continue to fight no matter the odds in the ongoing war in Ukraine, according to a UK defense think tank.
Dewey, letting his dad pet him at the vet
We took Dewey the Parakeet for his annual vet appointment. He was nervous during the car ride, but handled it well all things considered. (I tried to keep the ride as smooth as possible, but turns, stops, bumps, etc were inevitable.)
While waiting for the vet, he let his daddy (my son) scratch his face. There were a few loud dogs but Dewey took it in stride.
Dewey only really got nervous when we went in the room. I think he remembered last time in that room. Sure enough "towel lady" (the vet's assistant) grabbed him with a towel and held him still. This doesn't hurt him, but he was not amused.
The doctor checked him out and was very happy with his plumage and how healthy he looked. His nails didn't even need to be trimmed because apparently Dewey has learned how to keep them trim all on his own. Then, Dewey was weighed (which he really didn't like). He's no longer a 35 gram bird. Now he's a big boy at 43 grams! (All muscle, though. Not fat.)
After a quick trip home, Dewey relaxed and calmed down. Such a brave little guy!