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Mirengoff “Forgets” That — In Withholding Of Ukraine Aid — Tangerine Committed Felonies, As POTUS

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Paul makes a transparently stupid claim tonight that the GOP, in general, and Tangerine in particular — has done as much for Ukraine as the Democrats have.

He reaches back to pre-2012 to make his case (blaming Mr. Obama, falsely), such as it is. Then he ignores the last three years. AND THEN… he soft-pedals Trump’s obvious (and felonious) corruption in unlawfully conditioning the delivery of already Congressionally approved aid, upon seeking “dirt” on the son of Mr. Biden… as depicted at right.

Not exactly “the same as…” — as he would ask us to believe. [He goes on to say that Speaker Johnson risked much to get this done. DAMN — what a dumb lie: MTG was the sole voice to dump him, and if by “risking much”, Paul means he… got Democratic help to pass it… that bipartisanship is what we USED to expect from our Congress, in times of war. Jeebus, Paul!]

And certainly, for almost a year now, the MAGA / GOP wing has willfully thwarted an aid package to Ukraine, for the sole reason that it did not want Mr. Biden to get “a win”.

Again — Paul is looking through the telescope… “from the fat end” (moron!), if he truly believes his own drivel.

Confidential Nota Bene, to Paul: WE DON’T.

And he concludes tonight by suggesting that had Tangerine won in 2020, he isn’t so sure Putin would have invaded Ukraine, at all. He is likely correct, but in an ironic fashion, solely.

We cannot know for certain — but (if we are to entertain Paul’s pure conjecture…) it is just as highly likely that Trump would have given Putin “sub-silencio” permission — to just take Ukraine, and Trump (as he did repeatedly) would blunt NATO’s objections thereto, by arguing that the member nations hadn’t paid their share.

So Trump, based on clear past observations (well documented over six long years, now), would have likely actively aided Putin — in getting something that is NOT his — for the right payoff, of course — from Russia, to Trump, personally. Sheesh, Paul.

Out.

It Seems CEO Devin Nunes… Made A Material, Objectively-Verifiable As FALSE Pair Of Statements, In Today’s SEC Form 8-K Filing, For “Truth Social”. IRONIC.

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Look — I don’t care that much, because any human with a working forebrain will no longer want to own this pig of a stock — symbol “DJT”. But Mr. Nunes, as its ’34 Act CEO, has some… duties, imposed by decades of SEC case law. One is not to lie, knowingly, about any material matter, related to the stock, in the public square.

And a second is to correct a material misstatement, once made, again knowingly — by the CEO.

I’ve seen numerous data-bases, and MSM published reports that put the retail shareholder base at under 50,000 people. The RECORD holders number around… 500. And he claims no larger “Wall Street” institution holds the DJT stock, as a long position (I am pretty sure that much is true).

So, when he claimed on air yesterday, and repeated it — in an SEC filed Form 8-K (Material Developments) today… that he has “millions” — or even “hundreds of thousands” of retail shareholders… he was lying, and he knew it.

Please let the SEC enforcement lawyers take a look at this 8-K.

This is willful — and material — misstatement, of fact — not a projection, not “forward looking information”. It is a material factual claim… one that is… clearly false. [Of course, if the DJT transfer agent, or the renamed “EF Hutton” brokerage firm in Georgia (or other similar, and reputable representative of the company) will sign and notarize an affidavit that there are “retail holders” into the millions, under just five or ten or fifty record holder names. . . I will gladly print him a complete apology.] Onward — but this is… just so… on brand!

Me? I’d expect the SEC to ask after this — messrs. DJT, “Truth” and Nunes, in due course….

नमस्ते

A Very Cogent NYT Opinion — By Jamelle Bouie — On The UAW Win In Tennessee, And Its Deeply Resonant Civil Rights… Echoes.

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In the NYT, Jamelle Bouie offers a very poignant perspective, on why the sitting GOP governors (thus far, failing) attempts at fear mongering — about union rights… ring a decidedly-discordant and ugly bell… to the Jim Crow South… just dressed up, in some latter-day morning coats.

Do go read it all — he is clearly right: this past week was / is concrete evidence of MAGA / GOP party wags cum governors… largely seeking the “good ol’ days“, in Dixie (which never were such, for any non-whyte, non-landed gentry, non-male… classes):

…The mere potential for union success was so threatening that the day before the vote began, several of the Southern Republican governors announced their opposition to the U.A.W. campaign. “We the governors of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas are highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the U.A.W. has brought into our states,” their joint statement reads. “As governors, we have a responsibility to our constituents to speak up when we see special interests looking to come into our state and threaten our jobs and the values we live by.”

It is no shock to see conservative Republicans opposing organized labor. But it is difficult to observe this particular struggle, taking place as it is in the South, without being reminded of the region’s entrenched hostility to unions — or any other institution or effort that might weaken the political and economic dominance of capital over the whole of Southern society….

“In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina declared in an 1858 speech. “It constitutes the very mudsill of society and of political government, and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mudsill.”

A decade later and the slave system was dead, crushed underfoot by the armies of emancipation. The landowning Southern elites had lost their greatest asset — a seemingly inexhaustible supply of free labor. They would never regain it, but they would fight as hard as they could to approximate it….

Neither the vote in Chattanooga nor the coming vote of auto workers at the Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Ala., will be dispositive for the ultimate success of the U.A.W. campaign in the South. Win or lose, this will be a long march for organized labor.

But like a gardener taking stock of her plot for the season ahead, we will have to be patient. Victory might bring the chance to refresh the soil in preparation for a new kind of New South….

We will, of course, cover the upcoming Mercedes-Benz election, as well. Do breath easy, as we have our weather- eye keenly fixed on the horizon, here. And we see… change… is coming. Onward.

नमस्ते

Tangent: Bitcoin Mining Transaction Fees — Which Spiked Momentarily — Are Now BELOW The Pre-Halvening Levels… Hilarious — Market Discipline.

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The largely silly claim — last week — was that the debut of Runes, inscribed onto the blocks of mined Bitcoin would drive a vast increase in fees paid to miners. And true enough, the actual 480,000 block miner was paid about $2.6 million, in fees overall — but that was for the novelty of writing things onto that “Halvening” block.

Almost immediately, fees began falling over the weekend. They are now at under a third of where they were, at peak and slightly below the pre-halvening Levels.

In sum, the $80 or so per block in fees will never cover the fact that miners now face about four times more “squeezing” via the doubling in needed added capital for faster and more rigs, to the fact that the mining results in only half as many coins, as a reward, per block solved.

There is almost no chance Riot will be profitable — unless Bitcoin stays above about $160,000 for a full year, now.

Fairly valued, this is a sub-$3 stock (though it is trading near $10 this morning).

Onward — into the Spring sunshine of the fifty-fourth Earth Day! Be excellent to one another. . . .

Tomorrow, It Will Have Been 54 Loops Around The Sun, Since The Very First “Earth Day”…

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So on the eve of it, we will now re-run the one we posted — at a half century on.

…It has been [a half century] since that first Earth Day in New York City — and Philly, New Orleans… and Boulder. It certainly doesn’t seem a half-century ago — but it now is.

To be sure, the work attached to the movement has never been more vital — more urgent. We all share this fragile orb — and we are all responsible for how we pass it on, to our children, and theirs. So join with the kiddos… here:

…Earth Day was a unified response to an environment in crisis — oil spills, smog, rivers so polluted they literally caught fire.

On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans — 10% of the U.S. population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet.

The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement, and is now recognized as the planet’s largest civic event….

Now you know. Do something, even from home — to move the agenda forward, in your sphere of influence. Please. It will help our fragile, beautiful blue sphere, immeasurably.

नमस्ते

Off-Key, Part Deux… Scott Johnson’s Sunday Reflections.

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As luck would have it, Johnson made his usual Sunday music reminiscence about… Columbia University in the year 1969. [Maybe he is actually being followed by gray ghosts, late in the night — robbing him of sleep — the ghosts of his current hypocrisy, when laid out next to his own “youthful protests” profiles.]

His underlying goal this morning, it seemed — was to cluck, cluck about how awful a lawn camp out is, as a protest. How Columbia has gone rotten to the core.

To demonize kids who did nothing violent — simply because they might hold an idealized view — and a simplified view — of the Middle East, here in 2024. But his telling paints his 1969 Vietnam protests as… deeply patriotic. Wow. That’s something, indeed:

…Like so many, myself included, I think our motives constituted an utterly misguided mix of idealism, patriotism, and cowardice. I never hated the United States for one second….

He concludes by lamenting that the current Columbia protestors share no history with his Vietnam ones.

And as to his momentary self-awareness — “the cowardice” he saw in himself, only on looking back — was due to the knowledge that could be drafted to go fight in Vietnam. As so many others were. [In fact, in my tiny mountain town, no fewer than five of my older brothers’ friends came home from Southeast Asia — in body bags. They weren’t college kids; they were miners’ sons — and three of them were not documented. They had come with their families from Mexico. But they died for this nation — whether one agrees with the goals in Vietnam, or not — they paid a price Scott, Paul and John would have never considered paying. Damn.]

Of course, returning to April 2024 at Columbia, on the lawn — in the tents — no one who lives in the US will be “drafted” to go fight in Israel, against their will. Nor to fight for Hamas — if they are living here, they can stay here — in relative safety. They are/were “camping out”. Entirely non-violently.

So it is particularly cowardly, in my estimation that Scott Johnson calls these camp-out kids the “kill the J*ws” crowd. Over and over.

He is an embittered, sad old man now… left awake at night, about his apparent inability to see the shades of gray he used to, as an undergrad. He sees only black and white, in his dotage.

That’s… unfortunate — indeed.

[U, X3] John, Paul & Scott: Strangely Off-Key, On Consequences — At Ivy League “Student Takeover” Protests…

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I’ve put up a new post, on all of this over the weekend — and here on Monday morning, Scott triples down on the claim that the Columbia tent city is somehow Nazis… reborn. Sheesh — were Paul, John and Scott… equal to Josef Stalin, reborn — when the takeover of Parkhurst occurred, on Dartmouth’s campus in 1969?

This is about to become a collapsible farce (by those opposing the protests). There is an argument that the protests are misguided — but that argument doesn’t include calling them… Nazis.

The old rule on the internet here obtains — if you call your opponent a Nazi… you’ve admitted to losing the rational argument. The boys are failing to make a rational argument against the present protests — especially since many Jews are joining the protesters. [22 children were killed by the IDF in Gaza this past weekend — a “raid”, that kills mostly kids?!? How is that a Geneva Convention compliant operation, boys?] End, update.

As we have long ago, and now repeatedly — pointed out, the boys, in 1968-69, look over an administration building then called Parkhurst, for three days — as a Vietnam protest. Each was arrested, but quickly bailed — and each graduated with all honors restored. [That Scott offers no quarter to today’s Ivy protesters… is unsurprising — but feckless, just the same.]

Scott in particular has dramatized / played / portrayed the current Columbia protests / “takeover” — of a lawn space, camping outside… as a hate crime. By the protesters, for supporting the people of Gaza. [He churlishly and falsely calls it a “kill the J*ws” movement.]

In any event, here is how the NYT sees it:

…Students who camped in tents to protest the war in Gaza, including the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar, may be barred from finishing the semester.…

I guess many saw what the boys did in ‘69 — inside a building / trespassing for three days… as equivalent to a hate crime against US troops then fighting, and dying in Vietnam (most without the privilege of a bucolic Ivy League undergrad stay).

The cries for expulsions and long jail terms — to try to equate this “camp out”… to J6?

Are in my estimation… Poppycock.

No one has died. There was no breaking down of barricaded doors. And no threats to kill Mike Pence.

The kids simply camped out. And refused to leave the lawn.

Me?! I think the boys’ reactions here… speak volumes about how little they believe in free expression in our system of ordered liberty.

Out.

And… What Texas Gets Wrong — About Two Supremes’ Cases, Decided This Past Week…

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Last week, the Supremes decided two cases… in wildly different circumstances (veterans’ benefits, for example) that have literally nothing to do with Texas’s open violation of the federal immigration schemes (of a half-century’s standing, now).

But that “super genius” Ken Paxton (MAGA TX AG) told the Fifth Circuit on Thursday, that these two cases mean… Texas should win in the SB-4 / Razor Wire Barrier cases.

That’s… simply… unhinged.

So the ACLU (for the asylees’ groups in Texas) said so, thus — just last night:

…Neither of Texas’s supplemental authorities help its case. DeVillier v. Texas declined to decide whether a person may sue under the Takings Clause because it found Texas law provided a cause of action. The decision has no bearing here. DeVillier involved a claim for “just compensation.” 2024 WL 1624576, at *2. The Court explained that such a “damages” remedy “is legal, not equitable,” and so prior Takings Clause cases permitting “equitable claims” for “injunctions” were inapposite. Id. at *3. Here, plaintiffs seek only equitable relief. That makes all the difference. Crown Castle Fiber, L.L.C. v. City of Pasadena, 76 F.4th 425, 434 (5th Cir. 2023) (“But Crown Castle is not asking for damages here. The company seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, bringing the suit in equity.”).

In Labrador v. Poe, the Supreme Court issued a partial stay of an injunction against an Idaho law. There is no opinion for the Court, only a summary order. See 2024 WL 1625724, at *12 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). And the Justices’ separate opinions have little relevance here. Poe involved a statewide injunction based on harm to two individual children. Id. at *2 (Gorsuch, J., concurring). The crux of the dispute was whether the need to protect those individuals’ anonymity warranted statewide relief. See id. at *13 (Jackson, J., dissenting) (explaining this “fact-specific reason” for affording statewide relief); id. at *4 n.2 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (suggesting the district court should have considered “the adequacy of less intrusive” relief to address anonymity concerns). Here, unlike in Poe, the United States is a plaintiff harmed by every application of S.B. 4.

And, even apart from that, Texas (suggesting the district court should have considered “the adequacy of less intrusive” relief to address anonymity concerns). Here, unlike in Poe, the United States is a plaintiff harmed by every application of S.B. 4. And, even apart from that, Texas has never even tried to explain how something less than a statewide injunction would provide complete relief for the Las Americas plaintiffs — two organizations and a municipality harmed by the systemic application of S.B. 4….

In any case, Texas waived any argument on appeal for plaintiff-specific relief by failing to brief it. See Lozovyy v. Kurtz, 813 F.3d 576, 580 n.2 (5th Cir. 2015) (“because this argument was not raised in Lozovyy’s initial brief, it is waived”)….

For the record, here is the feds’ version of the same argument. It is every bit as persuasive, and makes much the same point: AG Paxton… cannot read, for comprehension. [Where did AG Paxton get his law degree? DeVry? DAMNATION.]

Actually, it was Virginia — but that fine University should rescind his degree, on these papers alone.

Out.

The Case On The Preposterous “Arrest On Sight” SB-4 Law In Texas… Will Be Mothballed, At Trial Court Level, Until Fifth Cir. (And Supremes) Rule…

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Just a smallish matter, since one or more of the upper courts will almost certainly agree (as they did in 2013, as to Arizona’s version) that Texas SB-4 is an unconstitutional attempt by Texas to usurp federal “field preempted” law.

In any event, the Texas law remains enjoined, nationwide during the appeals. So, it matters little. Here’s that smallish note, in an overnight filing in West Texas:

…Currently, the grant of a preliminary injunction by this Court has been appealed, with proceedings currently ongoing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. ECF No. 49. The Fifth Circuit’s (and, possibly, the Supreme Court’s) review of the preliminary injunction order is likely to substantially affect subsequent proceedings in this litigation. Accordingly, staying all proceedings in these consolidated cases in this Court will conserve the parties’ and the Court’s resources….

Now you know — onward, grinning, still — about the UAW win.

नमस्ते

UPDATE: The UAW Will Bargain For The ~4,300 Workers, At The Tenn. Volkswagen USA Plant — In Chattanooga!

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The Detroit Free Press has called it — VW lost the vote in Chattanooga.

Yep. VW is unionized, in Tennessee. This is… exceedingly good news. And an “idea, whose time has come….” AGAIN.

The lesson? Multinational companies may only treat workers as disposable for so long. Then, the tide changes. It has changed tonight, in America — not just for this year, and this plant — but for workers, everywhere, and perhaps for decades yet to come. From NPR, then — a bit, from earlier tonight:

…Some 4,300 hourly workers were eligible to vote this week. The union needs a simple majority of votes cast to win the election. Just about 20 minutes into the counting, the UAW had received 73% of the first 1,000 votes….

All eyes are on the vote, especially because previous attempts by the UAW to unionize the same Chattanooga plant in 2014 and 2019 ended in defeat. Similar efforts at several other auto manufacturing plants in the South have also failed over the years….

[And from the Detroit Free Press:] “By having Ford, GM and Stellantis, after the ratification of the new contracts, immediately go to their stockholders and say, ‘It’s no big deal, we can still be very profitable,’ meant Chattanooga workers didn’t have to listen to the Republican governors who said that a union will shut them down,” Wheaton said. “Ford, GM and Stellantis showed that (a rich contract) does not dramatically damage their bottom line and they can still afford to give stock buybacks, give their CEOs big pay checks, and now the workers can afford to buy groceries….”

Onward, grinning ear to ear. Be excellent to one another!

नमस्ते