Friday Open Thread

15 thoughts on “Friday Open Thread”

1. Re primary ballot.

   I’m confused.  Since Trump is getting a SCOTUS appeal, he can stay on the CO ballot. And indeed the ballots have been mailed.

   What’s the processes if he loses his appeal?

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   1. If he’s disqualified, votes for him simply won’t be counted.

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      1. If he is disqualified before March 5 at 7:00 pm, the votes would not be counted.  Quite possibly, the disqualification could come as late as 27-March-2024, the "Last day to complete the canvass and submit official abstract of votes cast for the March 5th Presidential Primary Election to the Secretary of State."

         SCOTUSBlog has its view of the likely outcome:

         The Supreme Court on Thursday appeared ready to hold that Colorado cannot exclude former President Donald Trump from the ballot based on his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. During an oral argument that lasted for more than two hours, justices of all ideological stripes questioned the wisdom of allowing a state to make its own decisions about whether a candidate should appear on the ballot, both because of the effect that such decisions would have on the rest of the country and because of the hurdles that courts would face in reviewing those decisions.

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2. As the illegal immigration crisis boils over in sanctuary city Denver and Mayor Mike Johnson proclaims Denver is at a "breaking point", he blames Trump and Republicans, whereas the economic and humanitarian crisis facing Denver and other cities as well are the direct result of the insane open border policies of the Biden administration.

   I had high hopes for Johnson and his professed determination to aggressively tackle the Denver homeless problem, but it turns out he's just another feckless politician willing to scapegoat others for his own failures. We have the worst housing and homeless crisis just not just in Denver but in the nation and letting 10 million undocumented, unvetted, unvaccinated illegal immigrants in who have no place to live simply pours gasoline on the fire.

   The term "shit for brains" doesn't do justice here.

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   1. Umm… Refugees are not illegal. 

      What's your solution? (aside from sitting behind a keyboard and criticizing). C'mon. Show us your solution, including the work you did to come up with it.

      I'll get you started:

      Texas Governor sends 40,000 Venezuelan refugees to Northern Cities. Allyn Cooper gets a bat-signal from Mike Johnston, jumps in his bat-mobile and now he's on the Case. 

      [crickets] [crickets]

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3. Finally, hard news coverage from an award-winning American news outlet:

   MOSCOW—Saying the passing of his best buddies never got easier, Russian President Vladimir Putin was reportedly distraught Friday over the loss of friends who kept dying under mysterious circumstances. “It just breaks my heart to go to all these funerals of people I loved who have suddenly and suspiciously left this world,” said a teary-eyed Putin, observing how painful it had been to watch as his closest confidants died from radioactive poisonings and plane crashes before their time. “When so many of your friends have gone, it really puts into perspective how fleeting life is, because you realize how easy it is for someone to up and die one day from an unconvincing suicide that is never fully investigated. It just seems so unfair that it only seems to happen to people close to me.” At press time, Putin claimed he wouldn’t know what to do if anything ever happened to his good friend Alexei Navalny.

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4. Expect a desperate fundraising plea to go out to MAGA World tonight ….

   Trump Ordered to Pay Over $350 Million in NY Civil Fraud Trial Ruling – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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   1. And he and his spawn can't do business in New York State for three years. Sweet.

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      1. Even better, having a court-appointed overseer will give Trump a financial wedgie of a lifetime 🙂

         Trump has incurred $76 million in legal costs over the past two years stemming from the wide array of criminal and civil prosecutions he faces. More than $27 million of the money raised in the last six months of 2023 to support his presidential campaign has instead been used to cover his legal costs, according to campaign-finance filings.

         A report by Bloomberg earlier this week suggested that Trump may face a cash crunch caused by his ballooning legal costs as early as this summer, just as the presidential race will be heating up.

         Trump has vowed to appeal the verdicts and denied raping Carroll, but in order to appeal, he will be required to put up bonds for the full award amounts. That means he would need to either get a bank to back him or to pledge collateral – like a real estate asset – to secure the bond.

         But without full control of his real-estate empire, Trump will likely find it harder to line up financing or use his assets as freely as before.

         Under the terms of Engoron's ruling, Trump will no longer be able to make any moves involving assets held by the Trump Organization without the approval of the court-appointed monitor.

         Even pledging his assets as collateral for the bond that he would be required to post in order to file an appeal would be complicated by the imposition of a monitor.

         "When you lose control of your company, you lose control of who is going to be paid and how much they will be paid. All the money will, first and foremost, be used to operate the business, and how much goes to Trump and his children becomes a secondary concern," Zelin said.

         With the court-appointed monitor part of the equation, it might now be more difficult for Trump to secure new debt in order to refinance those buildings, and that could even technically trigger defaults, depending on how the loan covenants were written.

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         1. Such a delicious shit sandwich for Donnie. Couldn't happen to a better guy.

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   3. Only $354,988,371 to go!

      

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      1. Unbelievable. It completely blows the myth of his enormous wealth. I loved the mock-up photo of Trump Tower as a Spirit Halloween pop-up from the Lincoln Project

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5. From a Never-Trumper political cartoonist:

   

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6. Just found out from Wyze (I use some of their home security devices) that Friday's outage was again due to our friends at Amazon Web Services (AWS).  I took a quick look at Amazon's uptime dashboard but couldn't find any indication of a failure last Friday morning.  Odd that they aren't self-reporting the apparent failure of their services.  This is not the first time this has taken down ColoradoPols.

   On Friday morning, we had a service outage that led to a security incident. Your account and over 99.75% of all Wyze accounts were not affected by the security event, but we wanted to make you aware of the incident and let you know what we are doing to make sure it doesn't happen again.

    

   The outage originated from our partner AWS and took down Wyze devices for several hours early Friday morning. If you tried to view live cameras or Events during that time, you likely weren’t able to. We’re very sorry for the frustration and confusion this caused.

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