Ingesting lead can and will kill you, and it will impair your cognitive functioning in the meantime. Lead was banned from automobile gasoline in 1975, but it was too late. There are small amounts of lead in the air and water, almost everywhere, that will remain for centuries and that were not there before cars,

This case involved charges of fraud made against Trump’s company by the State of New York. This was a civil case, not a criminal case. The consequences were not supposed to be criminal.

The defamation lawsuits brought by E. Jean Carroll were also civil cases. She was not charging Trump with the crime of raping her many years ago; She was suing him (twice) for lying about whether he raped her many years ago. (She won both times.)

I think I get where you are coming from, though. When a person is rich enough to pay the fine, and also shameless enough to revel in the infamy of being found liable in a civil dispute, it can seem like that person doesn’t end up suffering any significant consequence for their actions at all.

$355M is a lot of money. Add in the $83M owed to Carroll and these recent fines top $400M, which is an estimated amount of Trump’s liquid assets. Trump is now likely running out of cash-on-hand, which could explain his recent takeover of the Republican National Committee – the GOP’s fundraising (and fund-spending) organization.

Criminal consequences come from criminal cases. Trump has invested most of his legal defense against the criminal cases he is facing. Pending criminal cases involving Trump include:

1.) A RICO (“Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations”) case charged by the State of Georgia, against Trump and several others who allegedly conspired to steal the state’s 16 electoral votes, including by having the President call (Republican) Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and ask him to “find 11,780 votes” for him. Four people in that case have already accepted a plea deal. This case is currently delayed by a motion to disqualify the DA because she had a romantic relationship with a lawyer her office hired to help prosecute the case.

2.) A federal case against Trump for retaining classified documents. A year or so ago, it was found that former President Trump and former VP Mike Pence had kept classified documents after they left office, and that when Joe Biden left the office of VP in 2017, he also kept some classified documents. Both Pence and Biden complied with federal investigation and surrendered the documents immediately when asked. Unlike Pence and Biden, Trump did not comply with federal investigation, and instead took action to conceal the classified documents in his possession. This case is being heard in a Florida courtroom, because Trump was storing these stolen national secrets in a spare bathroom at Mar-A-Lago. The judge is a Trump appointee, and has demonstrated a tendency to rule in Trumps favor whenever she can, but if she shows too much bias she may get taken off the case.

3.) A federal case against Trump for his involvement in the insurrectionist attempt to disrupt the electoral vote count in congress on January 6, 2021. Trump has been indicted on four charges in this case: “conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.” Trump’s defense has been that he has “absolute immunity” for any actions he took while serving as President. This claim of immunity has been denied and appealed multiple times. Trump has now asked the SCOTUS to hear his appeal, but they haven’t said if they will yet. Until they do, that case is on hold, but there’s no one else to appeal to higher than them. If SCOTUS chooses not to hear Trump’s immunity appeal, the lower court’s denial of it will stand and the case will go forward.

The insurrection took place on January 6, 2021, which was three years ago.

Over 700 people have plead guilty or been convicted for crimes they committed at the capitol that day. Others have not yet been apprehended or gone to trial, and some others have not been identified. https://apnews.com/article/capitol-riot-jan-6-criminal-cases-anniversary-bf436efe760751b1356f937e55bedaa5

Trump has also been charged for his actions three years ago, but has delayed the trial with repeated appeals all the way up to SCOTUS. https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4468789-trump-special-counsel-jack-smith-supreme-court-jan-6-trial/

I don’t know what Brazil has to do with January 6. In the United States – as in many countries with “decent legal system” – a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Anything less than proving Trump guilty beyond a reasonable doubt will be taken as a complete victory for him, and very possibly catapult him to re-election in November.

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This strikes me as a particularly ahistoric take. I’d like to make two points in that regard.

News Radio was the biggest gig yet for both Joe Rogan and Andy Dick, who played main characters on the show from the start. Jon Lovitz was already well known from his time on Saturday Night Live – arguably a higher-profile position than the one he took on News Radio.

Jon Lovitz wasn’t spawned by News Radio, is my first point. To the contrary: Lovitz was brought onto the show as an established big-name talent after (his friend and fellow SNL alum) Phil Hartman died.

And how did Phil Hartman die? Phil Hartman was shot and killed by his wife, Brynn Omdahl, who struggled with substance abuse. According to Lovitz, Andy Dick was said to have shared cocaine with her at a Christmas party at Hartman’s house.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lovitz-speaks-out-on-dustup-with-andy-dick/

“[Andy] was just complaining and really giving me a hard time for no reason. Phil told me that they had a Christmas party and Andy was doing cocaine and he gave it to Phil’s wife Brynn, who had been sober for 10 years. So Andy said to me, ‘Well, you shouldn’t be here,’ and I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t given Brynn coke in the first place.’”

After this on-set exchange, Lovitz and Dick were said to have made up and were able to work professionally together on News Radio. Later, however, when Lovitz was out at a restaurant, Dick came over to his table and invoked his ostensible involvement with Hartman’s murder:

“He’s standing there with liqueur dripping down his chin and he says, ‘I put the Phil Hartman hex on you, you’re the next one to die,’” said Lovitz. “And he’s smiling, and my blood just went to my head. I wanted to smash him, but if I hit him he would have gone flying into the table behind him. He was really drunk.”

My second point is that, while Jon Lovitz maybe be a “character,” he’s an entirely different class of character than Andy Dick. (Or Joe Rogan, for that matter, just to pretend this whole long reply still has something to do with the actual OP topic.)

So like, “Biden should seize the powers of the presidency to take a more authoritarian stance against authoritarianism.” Is this really what you mean?

finger wagging is for the powerless citizenry not the president

Contrary to your premise, Biden has consistently promoted an anti-authoritarian view of how our representative democracy should work. He thinks people should vote against authoritarianism, instead of them calling on a POTUS who was elected to office because of his anti-authoritarian views to start taking authoritarian action against his authoritarian opponents.

The citizenry is not powerless. The citizenry has the most fundamental power of all: power over who is elected to office.

Just because that power can be corrupted and diminished through gerrymandering, electoral college imbalances, and two-party FPTP distortions (and a million other for-better-or-worse Constitutional safeguards against mob-rule) does not change the fact the citizenry still holds the most basic and fundamental power of all.

Tweets and finger-wagging are fine too, if you like, but if you are against fascism, I’m glad too. I hope you vote, and I hope you vote strategically instead of out of anger.

It’s not just for quality, but for authenticity too, I think.

Foods that are fermented or aged can take on a unique flavor profile, based on the unique blend of bacteria and mold and yeast in the area. Even using the same milk from the same cows and processing it the same way, cheese that is naturally aged in a cave in France might taste different from cheese that’s aged in a cave in West Virginia. Not necessarily better or worse, quality-wise, but different. Not authentic.

Weather patterns, seasonal changes, and soil conditions are also distinct and varied in different places. The same grapes grow differently in German soil than they do in Kansas. The grass that the cows eat grows differently in different places, and this can have a significant impact on the flavors of the milk and cheese.

I’m American, but I used to work in a fancy wine store that sold a lot of imported cheese and groceries. I imagine that in practice, PDO must seem like an annoying mix of over-regulation and jingoistic propaganda – especially to someone in Europe. But it does seem to serve a purpose, even if in an overbearing way.

I think being proud of local food culture is more like community spirit or neighborhood pride. It’s like saying, “here’s something ingeniously delicious we created using only our limited local resources.” I don’t think of that quite the same way as “pride” about race, gender, sexuality.

A pastor usually leads a Protestant church. Catholic churches are led by priests.

Confession of sins to (God though) a priest is a rite in the Catholic church, but not in Protestant churches. Protestant churches often encourage members to ask forgiveness for their sins directly to God through prayer.

There are more Catholics than protestants in the world, but there are more protestants than Catholics in the U.S. The type of Christianity most often associated with socially conservative Republican/MAGA primary voters is Protestant “evangelical” Christianity.

Evangelicals are a hardcore subset of Protestants who take the Bible literally. They’re sometimes called “Born-again Christians” because of their belief in the importance of personal conversion. That is, you’re not really a real Christian until, as an autonomous adult, you willingly choose to surrender yourself, mind body and soul, and devote your life to (your pastor’s teachings about) the teachings of Jesus.

Anyway, now I’ve done an eight-hours-later four-paragraph TED-talk riff on what is otherwise quite a fine and clever comment. I mean no offense and hope none is taken. I mostly just wanted to note that when Nikki Haley talks about “pastors,” she isn’t talking to Catholics; she’s talking directly to the GOP evangelical voter base.

Yet you still don’t seem to understand why a serious person might hesitate to take you seriously?

I know that the “United States of America” is the only country with the word “America” in its name. I know that the “United Mexican States” also has the words “united” and states" in its name – are Mexicans “USians” too?

I know that most Mexicans, by default, refer to people from the United States as “Americanos.” I know that most Canadians are quite happy not to be confused with the “Americans” from south of their border.

I know that people from the United States of America have been referred to as “Americans” for over 200 years. I know that when someone makes it a point to start calling someone else by a different name than the one that’s preferred, that person is usually pushing some outside agenda and should not be taken seriously in the conversation at-hand.

TL;DR: What does any of this have to do with your point about Israel and Gaza?

USians

Just as I was starting to take you seriously,

As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.

I’m pretty sure he tried, but institutions held and the military didn’t let him get away with it.

I think Gen. Mark Milley was on-guard against Trump’s antics (especially after he got tricked into appearing in uniform with Trump for that upside-down Bible photo-op) and that through the end of Trump’s term, Milley stood firmly against use of the military against civilians or for political purposes.

But if Trump really were to be elected again, who will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under his new administration?

Jack Smith does not want to remove Cannon. Or he shouldn’t at least. Not at this point, anyway.

By far, the best possible outcome is still for Jack Smith to convict Donald Trump in Aileen Cannon’s Florida courtroom. As long as Cannon doesn’t start conducting the trial in a way that actually prevents Smith from winning that conviction, keeping her in place is in everybody’s best interest.

This morning’s (11/07/'23) headlines are all about how Trump verbally attacked the judge in his fraud trial in New York yesterday. Trump has repeatedly accused Judge Engoron of being partisan and biased, to the press and now in his sworn testimony. MAGA eats that shit up. The more Trump looks like a victim to them, the more riled up they get in his defense.

It seems to me that “The Case of the Stolen Nuclear Secrets” is going to be much simpler and easier for people to understand than “The Case of Strategically Shifting the Valuation of Heavily Leveraged Real Estate Properties for Various Tax and Loan Purposes.” Considering even just the evidence that has already been made public in this case (photos of boxes of classified documents haphazardly stacked in a spare bathroom; audio recordings of Trump bragging that he shouldn’t be sharing a classified brief he’d illegally kept) the chances of a conviction are strong.

If Trump gets convicted by a jury in a Florida courtroom run by so seemingly biased a judge as Cannon, it’s going to be a lot harder for him to claim it’s all rigged against him by the Democrats. It’s going to be a whole lot harder to work that conviction into the whole victimhood narrative that Trump is currently thriving on.

There is a phone app, that pretty much allows you phone to work like the scanner gun. I’ve used it before and it works fine, but my phone’s camera is not as good as the guns at scanning barcodes.

Also, as much as I realize I am trading privacy for control, I figure there’s no need to have the grocery store’s app living on my phone, when it is just as easy for me to use the dedicated device they provide in-store.

The grocery store I shop at has handheld scanner guns for customer use. I check out a gun by scanning my loyalty card, then make my way around the store, scanning each item as I put it in my cart. When I’m done, the handheld scanner displays a barcode that I scan at the self-checkout scanner. My entire order shows up on the screen there, along with the total cost. I pay, take my receipt, and head out to the parking lot.

I like scanner-gun shopping a lot. I like it because it’s efficient, but also because it puts me in control. I can see the real price of everything I take off the shelf, in real-time. If something doesn’t ring up at the price it’s marked, I know instantly. The device keeps a running total as I shop.

Most days, my entire grocery experience involves no direct interaction with any store employee whatsoever, except maybe to exchange pleasantries with a stockperson. I do 100% of the work of checking myself out. I imagine the money the store saves on me in labor might make up for a lot of the money it loses in shrink.

But the store gets something else from my use of its scan-as-you-shop service. It gets to collect a huge amount of data on the way I shop. Not only does it record everything I buy, but it knows when and where I buy it. It knows the patterns of how I move through the store. It can compare my patterns to the patterns of all the other shoppers who use store scanner guns. It can analyze these patterns for useful information about everything from store layout to shoplifting mitigation.

One of the ways the store mitigates shrink from scanner gun shoppers who might accidentally “forget” to scan an item they put in their cart is point-of-sale audits. Not usually, but every so often and on a regular basis, my order will be flagged for an audit when I go to check out. When this happens, the cashier running the self-checkout area has to come over and scan a certain number of items in my cart, to make sure they were all included in my bill.

My main point in all of this was to offer a narrative that runs counter to the narrative I picked up from the article. I prefer to have more control over my checkout experience, and I will willingly choose to surrender personal information about my shopping habits and check-out procedures in order to gain that control, every chance I get.

Trump became a god to that entire swath of willfully ignorant racist Americans, way back when he first attacked sitting President Obama for not being an American citizen.

Trump used the same tactic against Obama that he always uses. The same tactic he perfected in all his ridiculously public feuds with people like Rosie O’Donnell. It’s simple: The more audacious the accusation, the more press coverage it gets. The bigger the lie, the more it gets repeated.

In a certain way, I still think of the entire MAGA movement as payback for America electing a Black man to be President in 2008. And I’m still shocked to think even before 2008, there must have always been that much anger and hate and fear there, among my fellow Americans. But the hate was quieter before Trump, and easier not to see unless you were looking for it.

But that’s why I think Trump is so much more dangerous than DeSantis, or any other wannabe strongman autocrat). Trump’s already tapped into all that pent-up American hate years ago, and Trump’s completely owned it ever since. As demonstrated countless times already, he controls that hate and can use it to make his followers do or say literally anything.