31 thoughts on “The Dealbreaker Smell Test”

  2. The former governor of New Jersey has dropped out of the presidential race, Trump’s lawyer claims that presidential immunity covers having rivals assassinated, and fringe candidate RFK Jr. got smacked around by celebs like Dionne Warwick after claiming they were attending his birthday fundraising gala.

  4. bink, picky, picky, picky. let’s not get granular about the glandular.

    one sometimes has to manipulate certain things no matter how painful and take license to fit an objective.

    altho I must admit that my excuse is a bit ironic given the juxtaposition to a thread topic about truthiness.

  5. christie’s speech yesterday had a marc anthony ring about it in some ways….  ‘the evil men do” and the talk of ambition in a leader kinda thing.

  6. Ah- poetic license.  Fair.
     
    Kinda weird what Nancy Mace yelled after yesterday’s thread title, does she read trailmix?
     
    Stay classy, Nancy 🤢 

  7. I had great hopes for Nancy Mace after she quashed the hopes of The Citadel assholes to remain a female-free zone.    (First female to graduate therefrom).   

    Then she came out as a Republican. 

    Then she came out as a Chump-Licker Republican.

    Then she just came right out as an Idiot.  

    So all I hope for now is that she never ever wins another election.

    The main problem here is that SC LOVES to elect idiots.
     
     

  8. article today for history buffs who are interested in political health privacy issue.

     Before Lloyd Austin, a history of White House health secrets and TMI – The Washington Post

    Long before Lloyd Austin’s cancer diagnosis, many top officials hid ailments. Others shared graphic details.

    On Sept. 26, 1055, the president of the United States did what many of us do upon waking up. It just happened
    to be national news. “He had a good bowel movement,” Dwight D. Eisenhower’s press secretary told reporters.
    One of Eisenhower’s physicians added, “The country will be very pleased — the country is so bowel-minded anyway — to know that the president had a good movement this morning, and it is important. It is good for the morale of people.”

    This intimate detail, revealed two days after Eisenhower suffered a major heart attack, represents one extreme when it comes to medical transparency from the nation’s top brass. On the opposite end is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who kept the nation and even President Biden in the dark about his prostate cancer diagnosis, surgery and subsequent hospitalization following complications.
    How much information do national leaders owe the public about their personal health? And when do we reach the point of too much information, intestinal or otherwise?
    “Some [medical] things are so obviously not the public’s business, and some are,” but figuring out where to draw the line is tough, said journalist Matthew Algeo, author of the 2012 book “The President Is a Sick Man,” about Grover Cleveland’s top-secret surgery for cancer.
    U.S. history provides several cautionary tales that support transparency – at least to a point.
    Several times, White House physicians failed to disclose major presidential health crises. The public didn’t learn that Franklin D. Roosevelt was on death’s door during his fourth term or that Woodrow Wilson was severely debilitated by a massive stroke, facts that had major consequences on the world stage.
    In total, four presidents (including Roosevelt) and seven vice presidents have died in office of natural causes.
    More recently, President Donald Trump and his staff were cagey about his health. In 2016, the year he became the oldest person elected president to that point, his physician claimed without providing any real evidence that he would “be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” and skepticism about his reported weight in 2018 spawned a “girther” movement. Later, the White House and the president’s physicians failed to tell the public how seriously ill he was with covid-19 during the 2020 campaign.
    [continues with health reporting tidbits about various presidents and presidential candidates]
    Meanwhile, members of Congress have floated proposals about the medical evaluation of presidents and presidential candidates, but none has become law. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she wants candidates older than 75 to take mental competency tests — a poll suggests Americans like the idea — and Carter, the oldest ex-president, has suggested that there should be an age limit for the presidency.
    Whether or not new policies are adopted, it’s not likely that the media will ever get the level of access it had following the 1881 assassination attempt on President James Garfield (even if the White House was giving the press an overly rosy assessment of his condition). Physicians provided daily bulletins to reporters about details ranging from his pulse and temperature to his rectal feeding.
    And before Garfield died later that year, an Associated Press reporter was allowed to sit outside the president’s sick room and tell other journalists what he heard. […]

  9. another interesting excerpt from a wapo story Christie is out but may not be done trying to stop Trump from winning :

    Christie loyalists signaled late Wednesday that, though he is no longer an active candidate, he will not go silent. As one put it, “More to come.” What course that might take isn’t known right now.

     

    considering how many times christie in his speech spoke about the soul of the nation, I wonder if that’s hinting of a future deal with uncle joe as we get closer to november.

  11. Christie has a habit of talking by “hot mic”.  I am trying to remember back to when he quit running in 2016 if there was one then.
     
    It was an interesting few days after sfb said he would do his closing.  Pundits, ex-whatevers, lawyers and the interwebs all joined in on offering advice.  It was the judge clarifying what limits a closing had to adhere to that squashed the orange blob’s dream of being something he is not.  So, we do not get to hear the judge inform him his night will be in jail for political campaigning instead of closing.

  14. At least PA seems to be dismissing the orange slime bit by bit.  Good.  Now if only the old farts in Michigan and Arizona get a clue Joe may have a fighting chance.
     
    I had to drive back and forth to a hearing this morning and spent over an hour in the car listening to the rehash of the Nikki-Ron spitting contest.  Good lord, neither of them sound like they are presidential material.  

  16. the guardian

    Trump leaves courtroom after accusing judge, attorney general of bias – report
    Donald Trump walked out of the courtroom after excoriating both New York attorney general Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron for the civil fraud accusations against him, MSNBC reports:

    lisa rubin

    Trump goes on — without any interruption from Engoron or her team — and attacks James, accusing her of election interference. “You have your own agenda,” Trump angrily says to Engoron. “You can’t listen for more than one minute!”
    12:59 PM · Jan 11, 2024

    Engoron pleads with Kise, “Mr. Kise, please control your client.” Trump nonetheless accuses James of going after him for her political gain, including an allegedly “failed” run for Governor, at which point Engoron shuts it down.
    1:01 PM · Jan 11, 2024

    But it’s too late. Everything Trump wanted to say was said. And now, having said it, he has left the courtroom after insisting James should pay him for the havoc she’s wreaked on his company.

  17. WaPo coverage of Trump’s rant:

    Donald Trump’s attorney Christopher Kise revived a request for the former president to be able to give his own summation Thursday, to which New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron had said no the day before.

    Engoron asked Trump if he would agree to stick to case-related subjects — the same sticking point that led to Engoron’s earlier denial — prompting Trump to begin ranting from his courtroom seat.

    “What’s happened here, sir, is a fraud on me,” Trump said. “If I’m not allowed to talk about [the political motivation] — it really is a disservice. I would say that’s a big part of the case. I would say it’s 100 percent.”

    Engoron asked Kise to “please control your client,” but Kise did not appear to make any effort to do so.

    Trump also railed against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), and reiterated his misleading claim that he was denied a jury. At one point, Engoron audibly sighed into his microphone and gave Trump one minute to wrap up his remarks.

    “I know this is boring to you,” Trump said. “You have your own agenda. You can’t listen for more than one minute.”

    Engoron also challenged Trump on a claim that he had never been in trouble with banks before. “By the way, you said you’ve never had a problem — haven’t you been sued before?” Engoron said.

    “I should have won it every time,” Trump shot back.

    In all, Trump spoke for about six minutes, until Engoron said the defense had used up its allotted time, and they were going to break for lunch.

    “Okay, it’s one o’clock. … Mr. Kise, this could have been done differently, and there would have been much more time,” Engoron said.

    Attorneys live for days like this.

  20. Engoron also challenged Trump on a claim that he had never been in trouble with banks before. “By the way, you said you’ve never had a problem — haven’t you been sued before?” Engoron said.
    “I should have won it every time,” Trump shot back.

    Translation – Well, yeah, I might have lost, but I disagreed when I lost.

  21. But wait, there’s more…

    “Your honor, look. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said during his remarks, which lasted about six minutes. “They should pay me for what we’ve had to go through.”

    …

    Trump and his attorneys say no one was defrauded and deny any wrongdoing. Trump, the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination this year, has repeatedly accused James, a Democrat, of being politically motivated.

    Well, tell it to the appeals court.  The Hon. J. Engoron has already ruled that you DID do something wrong and that you get to pay for that.

  22. He should get a break for his courtroom outbursts. He’s obviously in deep mourning for his late mother-in-law who’s not even in her grave yet. 

  23. Ivy – that is giving him a lot of credit. 
     
    Right now we have a situation going on which probably should include the Secretary of Defense, that is the escalation of response to the Houthis attacks and boarding of ships in the Red Sea.  Should the Secretary, and by extension the military, be sitting with the president, like in West Wing?  I am sure the super double dooper Teams connection is in use tonight. As I write this it is the middle of the night where the bad guys are, a good time to do stuff as the U.S. has superior night vision. If the drone and missile sites are being destroyed right now, this is why I am critical of the general/secretary.  If all is according to media reports he is good to go with a laptop.

  28. Oscar was redesigned with orange fur for his premiere on the first season of Sesame Street in 1969, and only changed to green for the second season. Oscar explained that this change was due to his vacation at Swamp Mushy Muddy where it was so damp that he became covered in slime and mold.

     

     

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