EASTER GREETINGS FROM THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SCUMBAG

 

HOWARD TULLMAN AND LISA DENT TALK TECHNOLOGY ON WGN RADIO

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Stool Sale

 

Here’s What It Would Look Like to Remove Judge Cannon

 

Here’s What It Would Look Like to Remove Judge Cannon

Plus: The actions she could take if she were determined to kill off the classified documents case against Donald Trump.

 

PHILIP ROTNER

MAR 28, 2024

THE JUDGE PRESIDING OVER Donald Trump’s classified documents prosecution just gave Special Counsel Jack Smith a gift that he desperately needed: a fresh opening to seek her removal from the case.

Last week, Judge Aileen Cannon ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors to propose jury instructions based on two scenarios, “each of which badly misstates the law and facts of the case,” as the Washington Post explained.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that the Presidential Records Act gives Trump the right to determine that highly classified documents relating to national defense are “personal” records. Both of the “competing” jury instructions Cannon ordered the parties to submit take that preposterous argument seriously: one would flat-out adopt it and the other would let the jury decide. In the words of former federal judge Nancy Gertner, Cannon “is giving credence to arguments that are on their face absurd.”

Cannon’s order last week was only the most recent in a series of bizarre, legally inexplicable pro-Trump orders she has entered in the case.

Speculation as to why Judge Cannon acts this way—whether she’s a fallible “rookie jurist who caught a tough case” or a cynical MAGA loyalist looking to advance her career by ingratiating herself to Trump—doesn’t change the underlying facts: Whatever her motivation, “Cannon’s rulings are essentially the same as if she were a MAGA judge in the tank for Trump.”

Smith can’t climb into Judge Cannon’s head in the hope that understanding her motivation might enable him to predict her future actions. But her pattern of erroneous, one-sided rulings consistently favoring Trump has to send chills down Smith’s spine. He doesn’t need to know what she will do, only what she can do: She can kill his case with the stroke of a pen.

If Smith wants to save his case, he has little choice. He must seek Cannon’s removal.

---

DISQUALIFYING A FEDERAL district judge from a case is not easy, but it can be done. The standard for disqualification—a judge can be removed in “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”—sounds broad, but the first obstacle is that the motion to remove Judge Cannon generally would have to be made initially to Judge Cannon herself. A second obstacle is that if Judge Cannon were to deny the motion, as is likely, her decision normally could not be appealed immediately, only after a final determination of the case.

Why all the weasel words—“initially,” “generally,” “normally”? Therein lies Smith’s chance.

While a motion to remove a judge generally has to be filed initially with the judge herself, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals—the appellate court that has jurisdiction over Judge Cannon’s court—has “the authority to order reassignment of a criminal case to another district judge as part of our supervisory authority over the district courts in this Circuit”:

If a district judge’s continued participation in a case presents a significant risk of undermining this public confidence, this Court has the authority and the duty to order the case reassigned to a different district judge. Reassignment may be appropriate, for example, if a judge conducts a trial in a manner that creates the appearance that he is or may be unable to perform his role in an unbiased manner. [Emphasis added.]

In U.S. v. Torkington, the 1989 case linked above, the Eleventh Circuit did just that, ordering that the case be reassigned to a different district judge “to preserve in the public mind the image of absolute impartiality and fairness of the judiciary,” citing a pattern of rulings and statements that created “the appearance of a lack of neutrality.”

And while a district judge’s denial of a recusal motion normally can be appealed only after the case is over, if Smith can show that he has no other remedy to address a serious flaw in Judge Cannon’s decision-making process, he can seek a writ of “mandamus” to remove her—or the Eleventh Circuit could remove her on its own, while reviewing some other order issued in the case.

In short, Smith has a path to remove Cannon from the case, albeit not an easy one. If he’s going to take that path, he has to act soon. It’s too risky for him to wait for Judge Cannon’s next oddball order.

The risk that Smith might fail in his attempt to remove Cannon from the case, thus incurring her wrath, is greatly overrated. If she’s already in the bag for Trump, it wouldn’t matter—she’ll find a way to kill the case anyway. And in the event that she’s just a sincere, poorly staffed, misunderstood jurist trying to do the right thing, a failed attempt to remove her from the case is unlikely to convert her into to a politically compromised stooge hellbent on revenge.

The risk of not removing her, by contrast, is massive. Do the math:

• Will she kill Smith’s case? Probably.
• Can she do it? Yes.
• Can she do it regardless of whether Trump wins or loses the 2024 presidential election? Yes.
• Can she do it without issuing any more orders that could get her reversed on appeal and removed from the case? Yes, if she’s smart about it.

That adds up to big trouble for Smith. If Judge Cannon is determined to kill his case, her game plan would be neither complicated nor difficult to pull off:

1.   Delay the trial date until after the 2024 presidential election. By now, pretty much everybody expects her to do this. As a federal judge Cannon has more than enough discretion to find reasons not to schedule a trial before November. One lever she has already pulled is to issue pretrial orders that force Jack Smith to appeal, thus building delay into the process. But doing too much of that can be risky because if the orders are too crazy, or too obviously biased, or too numerous, she may find herself removed from the case. It’s also unnecessary. If Cannon is savvy, she will avoid issuing orders that give Smith yet more grounds to seek her removal, and will instead simply slow-walk the case.

2.   If Trump wins the election, Cannon won’t have to do anything. Trump will get rid of the case himself. He will either fire Smith, order the DOJ to dismiss the case, pardon himself, or otherwise abuse his presidential authority. And even if he doesn’t do any of those things, he can just wait it out—he won’t be prosecuted while he’s in office, and he’s not going to lose any sleep worrying that he might . . . maybe . . . theoretically . . . face justice somewhere, sometime four years down the road.

3.   If Trump loses the election, Cannon starts the trial, empanels and swears a jury, avoids making any blatantly erroneous rulings, and waits until Smith closes the prosecution’s case.

4.   As soon as the prosecution rests, Trump files a motion asking Cannon to enter a judgment of acquittal on the ground that the evidence presented during the prosecution’s case is insufficient to support a conviction.

5.   Cannon grants the motion and enters a judgment acquitting Trump of all charges. Trump walks away, above the law, protected by the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against double jeopardy.

In case you’re wondering, yes, Judge Cannon has the power to acquit Trump all by herself, without submitting the case to the jury, or even requiring Trump to put on a defense.

After the close of the prosecution’s case, a criminal defendant can file a motion asking the judge to enter a judgment of acquittal. Under Rule 29 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the court “must enter a judgment of acquittal of any offense for which the evidence is insufficient to sustain a conviction.”

In other words, the trial judge alone, without any input from the jury, can decide whether the evidence is sufficient to support a conviction. If she concludes that it is not, she not only can, but must enter a judgment of acquittal.

If Cannon were to enter the order after a jury has been empaneled and sworn but before it has delivered a verdict, Smith would have no remedy. The double jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment prohibits trying a person twice for the same crime. Since jeopardy attaches as soon as a jury is empaneled and sworn, Smith would not be allowed to appeal the order of acquittal, no matter how egregiously wrong that order might be.

Cannon could even enter an order of acquittal after the jury delivers a guilty verdict. Rule 29 authorizes a judge to set aside a jury verdict of guilty and enter an order of acquittal. Waiting until after the jury delivers a verdict would allow Cannon to hedge her bet: If the jury acquits Trump, then she wouldn’t have to do anything, but if the jury returns a guilty verdict, she can still enter an order of acquittal.

But waiting to acquit until after the jury delivers a guilty verdict would mean the acquittal would be subject to appeal and reversal. A reversal on appeal would not subject Trump to double jeopardy because it would not create a second trial on the same crime, it would only reinstate the jury’s guilty verdict in the first trial. In other words, waiting until after the jury reaches a verdict could put Trump beyond Cannon’s help.

Had enough law school yet? Here’s the bottom line: The mounting evidence suggests that if Cannon isn’t removed from the case, Smith won’t win.

That makes any debate over whether Smith has strong enough grounds to get her removed almost entirely academic. I get it—Smith might not be able to convince the court of appeals that he has enough on Cannon to get her off the case. But it may be now or never. Waiting until she gives him another oddball decision is risky. If she doesn’t, he could miss his shot.

Smith should go for it—and soon. Otherwise, it increasingly looks like he will lose his case.

 

SCUM

 

WHAT A CROOK, CLOWN AND LOSER THIS GUY IS....COMER PILE OF CRAP

 

He’s A Crook and A Pig

 

Brokahontas

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE ARTICLE FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Can an American Startup Help End Starvation in Gaza?

The U.S. plan to build a temporary pier to deliver food to Palestinians is a case of fighting the last war. We need to employ new thinking and new technologies to reduce human suffering.

 

EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1

MAR 26, 2024

 

Watching and reading about the very modest U.S. airdrops of MRE food bundles into destroyed parts of Gaza which will, of course, largely be stolen at gunpoint by Hamas terrorists, I was really struck by how these performative airborne gestures are so trivial and inconsequential even if the food eventually were to reach the right people. Sadly, in the category of "no good deed goes unpunished," the Israeli Defense Force has had the impossible task of trying to protect the truck deliveries from both Hamas and the starving, desperate population, which storms every shipment as soon as it appears.

Apparently, our own military has decided that flyovers are less risky even if they don't remotely address the volumes of food and other material that are actually required. (Sixty-six MRE bundles contain roughly 38,000 meals, which is so insignificant that it's almost worse than doing nothing, especially when we could readily do so much more.) The present estimate is that around six million meals a day are required. While logistics are always going to be challenging in debacles like this, the real problem - as is almost always the case with the military - is that the planners are stuck in the past. They're fighting the last war.

They need to look ahead-- there are startups that might be in a position to help.

The lessons of the Berlin airlift of 1948 aren't going to teach us anything about how to solve today's or tomorrow's crises. And, as historic and massive as our successful efforts were in Kabul, where more than 120,000 people were evacuated in roughly two weeks, we're looking at a population of more than 20 times that size which has no desire to leave. Nor do the dozen neighboring Arab nations have the slightest interest in receiving any more Palestinian evacuees, even if they were interested in leaving Gaza.

The latest brainstorm - a temporary pier in the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza coast for deliveries-- is vaguely reminiscent of the World War II Seabees and may actually be a slower delivery system than the trucks. It will take at least two months to be installed and activated after adequate security provisions are made. And even the Orange Monster recognizes that the new pier won't address the fact that the Hamas murderers will steal inbound food from civilians.

Every credible report from Gaza suggests that hundreds of truckloads of foodstuffs are required daily to address even the most basic requirements of the civilian population. It's nice to see that the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress are trying to do something to provide further aid and help stave off starvation, but it's embarrassing and insulting to any rational person's intelligence to think that these cosmetic demonstrations are going to do any real good. Never mind that the repugnant MAGA Republicans continue to refuse to support any legislation that would provide such assistance.

There's a lot of frustration watching our government and military using ancient approaches and solutions in an age when the tools and technology exist to act at scale in far more effective and impactful ways. Sending huge, heavy bags of raw preparation materials may look effective, but given the lack of the other essential resources, it's like tossing an anvil to a drowning man. There's a cleaner, quicker and much more efficient solution.

To stem malnutrition and starvation in Gaza there needs to be large-scale and easily distributable solutions that supply the necessary proteins, carbohydrates, lipids and other nutrients to the target population. The form of the food (the delivery vehicle) doesn't drive the results; it's the functional nutritional content that the food delivers. Given the food processing technologies that we now have, we can pack far more immediate benefit, carbs, and calories into a tiny one-inch square gummy cube than you'll find in a T-bone steak or a slice of salmon.

In a word, for today's most pressing issues, MealCubes, and not MREs, are one available and compelling alternative answer. MealCubes are the product of Meepo, a venture backed startup that is producing of miniature, candy-like, jells that can be customized to individual nutritional requirements. Each cube packet provides the nutritional and dietary equivalents of a real meal.  Each cube provides 420 calories, 25 grams of protein, 28 grams of healthy fat, 23 grams of complex carbs, and 35 vitamins and minerals.

Even more importantly, MealCubes are 1/10^th the weight of MREs and take up 1/16^th of the storage space. MealCubes can be consumed immediately, anywhere, while MREs require 15-to-30 minutes to set up, heat and eat. Needless to say, in the stressful and dangerous context of providing meals in Gaza, all of these considerations take on particular importance in terms of volume, speed, effectiveness and cost.

Interestingly enough, SpaceX is one of Meepo's larger initial customers and various military groups are actively evaluating the products as well. I think of this as a further step in the Tang beverage evolution, which began in the 1960s when the U.S. space program provided powdered orange juice for the Gemini astronauts.  NASA needed a space-age approach to nutrition and in 1962 Tang went into Earth orbit with John Glenn. Tang was basically a sugary base to which water was added to make "orange" juice that was about as attractive and healthy looking as Trump's spray on complexion. It was all about speed, ease, and space - certainly not taste.

Tang is still around -- sadly, much like the Orange Monster.  And, amazingly, it's one of the most popular drinks during Ramadan, according to Mondelez International, the food corporation that now owns the brand.  

With so many lives on the line, you'd hope and even imagine that the government is actively seeking the best available solutions, but it appears that the only response to date has been to do it the way that these things have always been done. Innovative solutions and technologies can save lives, but only if they are applied by interested and knowledgeable entrepreneurs rather than ignored or blocked by bloated bureaucrats and lazy procurement personnel.

THE PHANTOM OF THE MAGA

 

COULD THIS CLOWN BE ANY MORE EMBARRASSING?

 

Bail Bonds

 

Crooked Judge Cannon

 

THIS CROOKED CLOWN IS A TRAITOR, A PIG AND A LIAR.

 

The bloodbath Trump promised has already begun

 

The bloodbath Trump promised has already begun

 

By Dana Milbank

Columnist|

March 22, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. EDT

 

 

Until this week, I had no idea I was a self-hating Jew.

 

I light candles and say blessings on Shabbat. I saw my kids through their b’nai mitzvah and took them to Israel. I volunteer with my synagogue.

 

But — who knew? — I actually hate my religion. What’s more, the 70 percent of American Jews who vote Democratic also hate Judaism.

 

So says that noted Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Donald J. Trump.

 

“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion,” he ordained this week. “They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves.”

 

Good to know.

 

These have been difficult times for American Jews, facing a wave of antisemitism from the far left because of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

 

And now, in one of Trump’s first acts since clinching the Republican presidential nomination, he has decided to attack American Jews from the right. Dayenu!

 

Compounding the insult was where Trump made it: On the podcast of his former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, who went to a Trump inaugural ball wearing the medal of Vitezi Rend, a far-right Hungarian nationalist group with Nazi roots. Gorka said he wore the decoration to honor his late father and isn’t a member of the hateful group; its officials have said otherwise.

 

“Right,” Gorka said as Trump went on with his rant. “Yeah … yeah.”

 

Trump disparaged millions of American Jews in the service of propping up his fellow aspiring autocrat Benjamin Netanyahu, the deeply unpopular Israeli prime minister.

 

Netanyahu is clearly prolonging the war in Gaza because when the fighting there ends he will likely be voted out of power and held to account for the government failures that led to Oct. 7.

 

Because American Jews (like many Israeli Jews) want to end the Netanyahu nightmare, they hate their religion and the Jewish State? The chutzpah.

 

 

Now that Trump has locked up the nomination, we’re in for seven months of this ugliness before the election — and potentially four more years of it if that election goes badly. But fear not, dear reader: I will watch Trump so you don’t have to.

 

In the torrent of crazy and dangerous utterances coming from the man, we tend to bounce from one to the next. I will attempt to pause at week’s end to build a record of his greatest (or, rather, worst) hits so there will be no doubt about what Trump would do if returned to the White House. His apologists once said that Trump should be taken seriously but not literally. From experience, we now know to take him literally: He is going to do, or at least try to do, what he says.

 

So what did he say over the last week?

·        He said that certain immigrants are “not people” but are in fact “animals” and “snakes.” He affirmed his view, seemingly lifted from “Mein Kampf,” that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He said his plan for mass deportations, modeled after “Operation Wetback” of the 1950s, “will be very evident” and “will go very quickly.”

·        He saluted those who have been duly convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, who those “patriots” wanted to kill on Jan. 6, called that language “unacceptable” and told CBS News that he “cannot in good conscience” support Trump. In that principled refusal Pence is joined by GOP Sens. Todd Young (Ind.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah).

·        Trump suggested that he would support a nationwide abortion ban. “The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that,” he told WABC radio.

·        Trump said his former adviser Peter Navarro, who reported to prison this week after being convicted of contempt of Congress, was “treated very badly” by the legal system. And he said his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, convicted of bank and tax fraud related to his work for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, is “another person that was treated badly, and he was a patriot.” The Post’s Josh Dawsey reports that Manafort will likely return as a Trump adviser this year.

·        Trump went on a show hosted by the anti-immigrant British politician Nigel Farage, where he threatened to expel the Australian ambassador to the United States and said he might deport Prince Harry. But asked whether Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is a person he could negotiate with, Trump replied: “Yeah, I think he is.”

·        Oh, and he said this at a rally in Ohio: “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” He was speaking in the context of automobile imports. But given his history of provoking actual bloodshed, this was small reassurance.

 

As the general election campaign begins, Trump isn’t doing much campaigning.

 

While President Biden has been barnstorming the country, Trump has visited only one battleground state since Super Tuesday, instead playing golf, making voluntary court appearances and granting interviews to friendly outlets from his Mar-a-Lago residence.

 

This might be because he’s broke.

 

His campaign is struggling to raise both small- and large-dollar contributions, and donations have been diverted to cover his legal bills. Last Saturday’s rally had been planned for Arizona, but Trump’s campaign moved it to Ohio, where a group affiliated with Senate candidate Bernie Moreno agreed to foot the bill. Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, said this week that he doesn’t have enough cash to post a bond for the $464 million judgment against him for business fraud, after asking about 30 insurance companies to underwrite the bond.

 

If Trump, for all his self-proclaimed business acumen, isn’t a good risk for 30 different insurers, how could he possibly be a good risk for the country?

 

 

On Wednesday, while Biden was at an event in Phoenix, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung issued a statement saying the president was “wandering” off the stage, “distracted by a mother and her baby. He isn’t all there, folks!”

 

This is the best the Trump campaign can come up with? Biden loves babies: Impeach!

 

“Well, folks, I have to tell you straight up,” Biden explained to the crowd. “I like you all, but I couldn’t resist that little baby.”

 

Trump routinely criticizes Biden for allegedly having a light schedule and declining mental faculties, but the presumptive Republican nominee struggled mightily at his only campaign event of the week.

 

“We want to have a rock-solid majority in the Senate,” he told the crowd. “We want to take over the House,” he added, apparently forgetting that the Republicans already control the House.

 

Trump used to boast that “I don’t use teleprompters,” even arguing that “if you run for president, you shouldn’t be allowed to use teleprompters.”

 

But when he suffered a teleprompter malfunction because of windy weather outside Dayton, he was lost.

“It’s good when you don’t have to use a teleprompter, because I can’t read a word and they’re moving around,” he complained.

 

Thirteen minutes later, he repeated that “we have no teleprompters.”

 

Seventeen minutes after that, he protested: “I can’t read this damn teleprompter. This sucker is moving around. … Don’t pay the teleprompter company!”

 

The unscripted Trump reminded America just how presidential he could be. He said he was asked not to bad-mouth his primary competitors, but “I don’t give a sh--.” He said the first name of Georgia prosecutor Fani T. Willis “is spelled ‘Fani’, like your a--.” He called California Gov. Gavin Newsom “New-scum” and “a bullsh-- artist.” He said Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who like Trump is overweight, is just “too busy eating.” He invoked “Barack Hussein Obama” and called Biden a “dumb son of a ...” and a “Manchurian candidate.” He complained about the removal of names of Confederate generals from military bases and he objected to the Cleveland baseball team dropping the name “Indians.”

 

He tried to clean up one of the previous week’s messes, when he said “there is a lot you can do … in terms of cutting” Social Security and Medicare: “We won’t be cutting it.”

 

But the most disturbing part of the performance was thoroughly scripted. “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated Jan. 6 hostages,” the announcer intoned as Trump came in. The campaign then screened a recording of Jan. 6 prisoners singing the national anthem, as Trump saluted.

 

In a Fox News interview with Trump that aired the next day, host Howard Kurtz asked Trump why he used “words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’” for immigrants and opponents, even knowing that it would be compared to the language of Hitler and Mussolini.

 

“Because our country is being poisoned,” Trump replied. He claimed that foreign “insane asylums are being emptied into the United States,” likening the incoming migrants to Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

 

In the same interview, Trump declined Kurtz’s invitation to “stop calling national news organizations ‘the enemy of the people’,” a Stalinist phrase, and, strangely, he said he had attacked host Jimmy Kimmel of ABC during the Oscars because he wanted to get even with “George Slopanopoulos.” Trump was angered that ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos had said two juries found Trump “liable for rape” — and Trump later in the week filed a defamation suit against the network. (A jury found that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll, while the judge in the case said the rape claim against Trump was “substantially true.”)

 

Trump has filed many defamation suits over the years, almost all without success. That’s not surprising, because he’s usually the one doing the defaming. This week, when he wasn’t defaming migrants, he was defaming millions of Jews, starting with the highest ranking Jewish official in the United States.

 

 

Trump concluded that any Jew who votes Democratic “hates their religion” after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a balanced and nuanced speech on the Senate floor on March 14 about the fighting in Gaza. Schumer condemned the spreading antisemitism on the left, seen in the demand for the “right to statehood for every group but the Jews.” He cited the “central role” Hamas plays in the bloodshed and said he was troubled by protesters who “decry the loss of Palestinian life but never condemn this perfidy or the loss of Israeli lives.”

 

But Schumer also said “Israel has a moral obligation to do better” and that Netanyahu, who rejects a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, “has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”

 

Schumer called for the ouster of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and declared it “unacceptable” for Hamas to retain any “meaningful power.” But he also urged the removal of extremist Israeli ministers who encourage “unacceptable vigilante settler violence in the West Bank.” And he called for elections in Israel.

 

To that, I say: Amen. Schumer undoubtedly spoke for many American Jews.

 

“I’m so glad Schumer said what he said,” my rabbi, Danny Zemel, an ardent Zionist, told me this week. Netanyahu “has abandoned the basic tenets of Zionism. … Bibi is a one-man wrecking ball, and he’s out for himself alone. His morals are the morals of self-preservation.”

 

Trump, too, operates by the morals of self-preservation alone. Like Netanyahu, he has every political interest in prolonging the bloodshed in Israel. Both men would make Israel a pariah and put it on a fast track to its destruction for their own gain. So let’s not quibble about what Trump meant when he promised a “bloodbath” if he loses the election. The bloodbath has already begun.