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President Joe Biden---Day 1346---Fourth Year---Day 341---Evening Shade---Thursday [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-02
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
EVERY PERSON WHO COMMENTS WILL GET A CRITTER
RULES IN THE DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
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From Wajahat Ali bsky.app/...
It seems 2025 will be very unsubtle with its metaphors and foreshadowing.
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Biden to award Trump critic Liz Cheney with service medal. www.rawstory.com/…
U..S. President Joe Biden on Thursday will award Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman and fierce critic of Donald Trump, with a citizens service medal, after the incoming president warned that she "could be in a lot of trouble" with the law once he takes office. ✂️ Describing Liz Cheney, the White House said Thursday that she "has raised her voice -- and reached across the aisle -- to defend our Nation and the ideals we stand for: Freedom. Dignity. And decency." "Her integrity and intrepidness remind us all what is possible if we work together," it added.
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This is a good piece from Barb McQuade. We can laugh at how unqualified FIDJT'S cabinet nominees are, but there are real world implications. The FBI's terrorism designation in New Orleans is much more than a symbolic act. www.msnbc.com/...
The investigation into Wednesday's deadly Bourbon Street attack has also highlighted the importance of an FBI director with knowledge, experience and judgment. ✂️ Designating an investigation as a terrorism probe is more than a symbolic act. It brings with it legal authorities that are urgently needed in this kind of investigation as law enforcement searches for potential accomplices and assesses any ongoing danger to the public. You can bet that dozens of FBI agents were called away from watching football on their couches to chase down leads to identify any criminal associates of the suspect as quickly as possible. By making the probe a terrorism case, the agents have access to investigative tools that might otherwise be unavailable. In such quickly moving situations, sober leadership is essential. Ahead of his inauguration this month, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Kash Patel to lead the FBI, nation’s premier law enforcement agency. But does Patel, who served a short stint as a trial lawyer in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, have the experience to understand that nuance and make these types of calls? It's a fair question with serious national security implications.
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Remember, from Stephanie Kennedybsky.app/...
Warning: Just as the FBI investigation into the deadly New Orleans terror attack begins, Donald Trump is preparing to pardon and unleash well over 1000 domestic terrorists who violently seized the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump persists in calling J6 domestic terrorists “patriots.”
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Dog, this man is an as shat. Texas sues to impose bigotry on the rest of the country. www.publicnotice.co/…
Donald Trump and JD Vance spent the 2024 election spewing the most rank transphobia, a tactic that should have made them pariahs but instead helped win them the presidency. Even though they haven’t taken office yet, their victory seems to have emboldened Republicans like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to go all out in their attacks on trans people. Trump’s transphobia is often focused on trans athletes, and Paxton is following his lead by suing the NCAA in Texas state court under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. His allegation is that the NCAA is somehow swindling Texas sports fans by allowing trans athletes to compete in women’s sporting events. Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act prohibits false, misleading, or deceptive acts in commerce. According to Paxton, the NCAA is misleading sports fans by advertising women’s sporting events when there are actually “biological males” competing. Or, as the lawsuit explains, the NCAA is “lead[ing] consumers to believe that they are purchasing goods and services associated with biological sex-based sporting events.” While rightwing weirdos might be attending NCAA games because of their deep desire to associate only with “biological sex-based sporting events,” the rest of the world watches women’s sports because they enjoy watching them.
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Sorry John Roberts, now you're trying to put your foot down? As Trump’s return looms, chief justice warns against defying courts. www.politico.com/...
✂️ With Donald Trump’s re-inauguration as president less than three weeks away, Chief Justice John Roberts is warning against calls to resist or defy the Supreme Court’s decisions. Roberts made no direct reference to the president-elect, but with Trump vowing to swiftly enact dozens of sweeping policy moves of questionable legality, he seemed to be on the receiving end of the chief justice’s admonition in his year-end report released Tuesday.
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Here's a fun take on Robert's whining reflections. The Chief Justice's Tone-Deaf Year-End Report. www.stevevladeck.com/…
✂️ This week’s bonus issue was prompted by the Chief Justice’s year-end report, which dropped, like clockwork, at 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. As I’ve noted before, the year-end report used to be the Chief Justice’s annual opportunity to reflect upon the Court’s relationship with the other branches—and to make specific recommendations to Congress for the year ahead. Chief Justice Roberts stopped asking for things around 2009—after which the report had turned largely into annual exercises in saying as little as possible. But the 2024 year-end report has a much sharper message—with the Chief Justice using his bully pulpit to rail, quite aggressively, against four types of attacks on judicial independence: “(1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.” What is especially striking about the Chief Justice’s report is that it comes in the midst of an ongoing public debate over the relationship between public criticism of the courts and judicial independence. Indeed, this very debate was supposed to be the focus of the Federalist Society panel in which I participated in November—which turned into … something else. But the Chief Justice’s report not only fails to even acknowledge the public discourse; it takes a position that is either wholly indifferent or remarkably oblivious to it—offering a remarkably un-nuanced view of when criticism crosses the line into “illegitimate activity.” In the process, the report also neglects to acknowledge what is, in my view, an even greater threat to judicial independence today: the continuing erosion of public faith in the courts that’s reflected in (but not caused by) much of the good-faith criticism that is out there. In those respects, at least, it’s a remarkably tone-deaf missive from someone who ought to know better.
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Well, this is interesting. The Rise Of Big Potato. www.levernews.com/…
Allegations of price collusions among the potato cartel reveal the new, sophisticated methods food corporations are using to keep prices high. One afternoon in April 2022, Josh Saltzman, the owner of a sports bar in Washington, D.C., opened his inbox to find what looked like a french fry price-fixing conspiracy. Saltzman had received a notice from his bar’s food distributor that effective April 4, the four major suppliers of frozen potato products, which sell products like french fries and Tater Tots to bars and restaurants around the country, were all hiking their prices in lockstep, each by $0.12 per pound. For Saltzman, it was hard to believe this was a coincidence. “It was just the most obvious example of collusion I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “All of them were raising their prices by virtually the exact same amount within a week of each other.” Frustrated, Saltzman took to the internet. “I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m going to fire off a tweet about Big Potato,’” he said. “Then it somehow took on a life of its own.” Big Potato was more real than Saltzman had anticipated. That April, Saltzman’s offhand tweet — “Totally not collusion or anything, right?” — went viral. And last month, it was cited in a new spate of antitrust lawsuits brought against the four biggest companies in the frozen potato market, claiming the companies were in fact colluding when they all hiked their prices at the same time in 2022. The four companies now stand accused of operating as a “ cartel ” and conspiring to hike prices, jacking up the cost of french fries and Tater Tots around the country. But they’re hardly alone. The case against Big Potato is a window into how consolidation has crept into every corner of the food industry — and how these firms are finding new, sophisticated methods to keep prices high.
In case you want to start prepping now for growing your own potatoes at home. This actually works.
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Evening Shade Seekers! Happy National Personal Trainer Day!
Which is a good thing, because it's also National Buffet Day!
Oh wait, this kind
Plus, it's National Cream Puff Day!
and tomorrow is National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day.
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