We respond…
Damn.
Here’s an actual scandal.
This is all nearly immediately prior to J6.
By A MAGA-loyte.
Inside FBI — go read EmptyWheel on it all:
…D’Antuono (an FBI agent, and Trumper), we’ve since learned, repeatedly tried to limit the investigation in the aftermath, playing a key role in thwarting any investigation into Trump’s actions for ten months.
Manage the elephant [the wider federal government] by controlling what it sees and hears….
Damn. Check that, Betsy and John.
Let’s just stipulate: the whole “whistle-blower” narrative — Bitsy’s shiny new bauble (along with GOP Sen. Grassley’s fawning credulity) — even if literally true (a dubious proposition, at that)… amounts to… nothing.
There is a plea agreement, kids. [And this scolding applies with equal force to Scott Johnson, as well, this morning.]
You Powerliners don’t seem to be willing to let criminals accept public responsibility.
Which explains why you all fell silent in 2020 when Tangerine PARDONED felons who helped him keep power.
GOP: the party of feckless, self-washing felons, everywhere.
What a… winning brand!
Yikes.
This stuff always lights my imagination, and helps to inspire. . . my passions.
In early 2028, when the NASA Roman space telescope settles in and cools down, at L2, it and the Euclid mission, from the European Space Agency (we have followed Euclid here, for over two years), will work in tandem to increase the power of the science in both missions.
“That is how we do this“, folks — just like Milo Morales’ team-ups in the Spider-verse. Heh — here’s a bit:
…The universe has been expanding ever since its birth – a fact discovered by Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître in 1927 and Edwin Hubble in 1929. But scientists expected the gravity of the universe’s matter to gradually slow that expansion. In the 1990s, by looking at a particular kind of supernova, scientists discovered that about 6 billion years ago, dark energy began ramping up its influence on the universe, and no one knows how or why. The fact that it’s speeding up means that our picture of the cosmos is missing something fundamental.
Roman and Euclid will provide separate streams of compelling new data to fill in gaps in our understanding. They’ll attempt to pin down cosmic acceleration’s cause in a few different ways.
First, both Roman and Euclid will study the accumulation of matter using a technique called weak gravitational lensing. This light-bending phenomenon occurs because anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time; the bigger the mass, the greater the warp. Images of a distant source produced by light moving through these warps look distorted, too….
“Euclid’s first look at the broad region of sky it will survey will inform the science, analysis, and survey approach for Roman’s deeper dive,” said Mike Seiffert, project scientist for the NASA contribution to Euclid at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Together, Euclid and Roman will add up to much more than the sum of their parts,” said Yun Wang, a senior research scientist at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, who has led galaxy clustering science groups for both Euclid and Roman. “Combining their observations will give astronomers a better sense of what’s actually going on in the universe….”
Indeed — platonic team-ups are a… good thing! Now you know — as the haze and raw choking feeling eases a bit here, this afternoon. Smile.
नमस्ते
There were solid majorities (in the past two weeks), even inside the GOP appointed US Supreme Court wing, to vote in support of the notion that even in ruby red, GOP controlled states, these state-level legislatures and governors cannot ignore the commands of the federal 14th Amendment. In sum, the preposterous MAGA claim that state-houses alone get to decide what a “fair racial map” looks like… is now effectively… dead. [Didn’t these jokers read Marbury v. Madison in high school?!]
Because in nearly every case, the gerrymandering attempts sought to dilute cognizable brown and Black voting power, it is plain the GOP sought a return to Jim Crow, albeit in white velvet gloves.
With the highest court quashing these odious efforts, it is very likely that the state level GOP organizations will see losses on the national stage, in general elections in 2024.
In fact, when this SCOTUS impact is amplified by the wave seen in local Virginia primaries last week, the GOP as a brand may be… in danger of dying out. The most straight-forward reading of Virginia’s Summer 2023 results is that whyte suburban college-educated married women in red or purple states are abandoning their decades long GOP voting patterns, in a ferocious protest voting bloc — against the oozing, dripping misogyny embedded in last year’s Dobbs decision.
Can’t say we didn’t warn those doddering, embittered old whyte male coots who pretend to run national politics.
Their time draws to an end, now — it would seem. Smiling… even though our throats are quite raw here, in the pale orange haze of this morning, in the City of Big Shoulders — due to a second wave of Canadian forest fires’ smoke plumes… ugh. Onward.
नमस्ते
Of course, it would only be a “Lowest Common Denominator” type thing.
Steve tonight says “no one” can really say what’s going on — in Russia.
Is Putin… truly in control? Or is he being stage-crafted toward the exit, as generals and oligarchs barter with forces in Belarus?
Will that be the new power center?
Or will it all just remain entirely… opaque?
Indeed, we civilians don’t know.
But our CIA likely does. And Mr. Biden does.
And what is known is that Ukraine forces are taking back their own land in lightning strikes.
It may be that the worst of the war is… over.
Perhaps only Wagner mercs were really still fighting at all, at the front.
And they’ve redeployed to merc bases, inside Russia.
So… yep, who knows?
Out.
In view of the FACT that this purportedly pure-as-the driven snow… idiot has done NO TAKEDOWN of Trump’s showing up on an altar in golf cleats (as really the only time he was filmed at an actual religious ceremony not convened to honor HIM)… and holding a Bible upside down as his shock troops battered mostly peaceful protesters against police brutality in Lafayette Square, that July night in 2020, in DC…
…It is utter lunacy that he still attacks the 44th President, over fourteen years later, over his intensely private religious convictions. That dimension (one’s religion — or lack of it) was intended to be irrelevant in public life, as envisioned by the founders — at least as to serving the federal government.
It was — and is — the purest jingoism to claim he is simply testing the truthfulness of Mr. Obama (who last held public office seven years ago), with his dead tired scree.
Were that factual… he long ago should have branded a scarlet A on the forehead of Tangerine. He’s done no such thing.
As that link shows, he’s done the opposite.
What an insufferable loser he — and Tangerine each, is.
Out.
Over the weekend, we alluded to Brent Saunders’ preposterous 2017-18 claim — that any repatriation tax would be “unconstitutional“. Pure poppycock.
But since then, a couple (last name: Moore) has claimed that paying $15,000 in taxes on their stockholdings in a very profitable Indian power-farming-tools company. . . is (somehow) unfair, and against limits of the federal 16th Amendment. In 2021, the Moores were soundly dumped out of court by a Ninth Circuit panel, citing the highlighted analysis factors in blue below.
Then, just at lunch-time today, the Supremes agreed to take the Moores’ case — likely to make plain forever, that Brent Saunders is wrong on the law, as are the Moores.
Every day, people must pay taxes on amounts they’ve not received in cash — for example, when one buys stock or certain kinds of options in a private or public company, as part of a restricted stock/option grant — while serving as an executive or director. Despite Brent Saunders’ Ayn Randian bleatings, there is no constitutional impediment as to any “tax on income” in the US, Brent.
Okay — now you know — and here’s the Moores’ version of this dispute, more fully-explained:
…The court of appeals began by setting forth three longstanding principles. First, “[w]hether the taxpayer has realized income does not determine whether a tax is constitutional.” Pet. App. 12 (citing Helvering v. Horst, 311 U.S. 112, 116 (1940)). Second, “[w]hat constitutes a taxable gain is also broadly construed.” Ibid. (citing Helvering v. Bruun, 309 U.S. 461, 469 (1940)). And third, “there is no blanket constitutional ban on Congress disregarding the corporate form to facilitate taxation of shareholders’ income.” Id. at 13.
Applying those principles here, the court of appeals determined that the MRT is a permissible income tax under the Sixteenth Amendment. “[T]here is no dispute,” the court explained, “that KisanKraft actually earned significant income.” Pet. App. 13. And even “[b]efore the MRT, U.S. persons owning at least 10% of a CFC were already subject to certain taxes on the CFC’s income.” Id. at 14. “The MRT,” the court reasoned, simply “builds upon these U.S. persons’ preexisting tax liability attributing a CFC’s income to its shareholders” by “assign[ing] only a pro-rata share of that income to the [petitioners].” Ibid.
The court emphasized that neither decision on its own terms supports “a universal definition of income” that requires realization. Id. at 15. And the court cited later cases “ma[king] clear” that “the concept of realization is ‘founded on administrative convenience’ and does not mean that a taxpayer can ‘escape taxation because he did not actually receive the money.’” Ibid. (quoting Horst, 311 U.S. at 116). Finally, the court of appeals observed that “courts have held consistently that taxes similar to the MRT are constitutional….”
[T]ax scholars have long agreed that “the formalistic doctrine of realization proclaimed by [Macomber] is not a constitutional mandate.” Stanley S. Surrey, The Supreme Court and the Federal Income Tax: Some Implications of the Recent Decisions, 35 Ill. L. Rev. 779, 791 (1941)….
So smoke that Brent Saunders / Fred Hassan and Martin Shkreli. You may not like paying taxes on non-cash income — but the practice is plainly constitutional. Soon the Supremes will so rule, as well.
Of course, with careful advance planning, one may always structure one’s affairs to only owe a tax on cash income — but you’ll need… a smart lawyer for that, Brent. Smile.
नमस्ते
While I was off-grid, she credited only one “whistleblower” — supposedly a govt. employee in the know — solely because he spouts the same loony rantings as she, and the putzes Comer and Jordan listen to him.
Hilarious.
But Bits… that’s not news, nor even newsworthy.
It’s just more nonsense — like Steve Hayward hoping here in the wee hours of Monday morning — that out there in the multiverse, somewhere… an alternate Unabomber might be… still succeeding.
Damn.
Even so, he refuses to offer the obvious — and now firmly-established — inference: in middle purple states, the GOP is doomed in 2024. [He nibbles all around it — but won’t just close the circuit the rest of the way, as it would electrify the third rail, and doom GOP fund-raising.]
So — what’s (in my opinion) driving the GOP’s vast current losses?
First, because it crowed about — and claimed — victory, when Dobbs was decided. That stain won’t wash out, and every loud pro life MAGAt lost in Virginia last week. Suburban, college educated married whyte women are killing the GOP for it — formerly a solid base demographic.
The second factor though is also increasingly clear — even in ruby red states and races: the GOP cannot be both pro- law and order… and pro Trump.
A serial felon cannot top the ticket — but many think he will.
And so GOP down ballots will burst into self immolation pyres, nationwide.
Overall, the hard right Republican aligned factions will see their worst defeats in a century, in 2024 — and likely beyond.
Paul now all but admits it.
Cheers.
Updated @ 2 AM: Steve Hayward just offered a second installment, on this sadly demented thesis of his, in which he expresses much admiration for a sociopath’s critique of what he sees as liberal thought (the sociopath is the Unabomber, BTW). That’s… just sad, on Steve’s part — he’s been reduced to citing SuperMax inmates (now deceased) to support his 19th Century predilections. Wild.
But I updated the post because Hayward wistfully offered a hope, at his paragraph 5, that in an alternate multiverse, had Kaczynski not been caught, he might have killed Al Gore, John Kerry or Bernie Sanders as well, with his homemade bombs. That’s a product of a badly warped mind — to write such a monstrous thing, on a public blog, Steve.
You’ll carry that, in Eternity. Sidling up to mass murderers. Charming, Hayward. End update.
Apparently, Steve Hayward thinks the now dead Unabomber — and his Manifesto — are urgent dangers, because (despite Kaczynski being a sociopathic serial killer), Hayward cannot tell his arguments apart from those of Al Gore.
Why?
Because both mentioned some unfortunate side-effects from the Industrial Revolution.
Riiiiiiiight.
Look, I get that all the Powerliners have very little meaning in modern political discourse, since each of them painted themselves into an intractable corner — by cheering the serial felon Trump for six years.
I do.
But to try to make the putative “Unabomber’s Ghost” a poltergeist which the Democratic Party must (by inference) support… is every bit as loony, on Hayward’s part — as is sending some homemade wooden explosive devices to a few professors, believing it will force post-industrial society to move back into caves, shivering in the dark and sliding around on guano.
Steve — buddy, that’s… idiotic.
Cheers!
