John Roberts ‘moved mountains’ to help Trump avoid Jan. 6 trial: legal experts

Stephan: 

The corruption of the Supreme Court christofascist majority becomes ever more blatant. These six people are restructuring the laws of the United States in service to a convicted rapist, convicted felon, and traitor. It is destroying the respect Americans have for their legal system at the highest level. And none of these is ever held responsible for anything. History is going to record these six people as the worst individuals to ever serve on the court.

Christofascist Chief Justice John Roberts Credit: Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

Chief Justice John Roberts has been exposed, wrote legal observers Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern for Slate. He may pretend to be the deliberate, moderating force on the Supreme Court, but behind the scenes he has become as reactionary as the rest of the court’s right wing.

This became clear after the court handed down its radical decision giving former President Donald Trump a presumption of immunity for “official acts” in office, reversing all lower judges who considered the matter, all while leaving unclear guidance about how exactly to define an official act, they wrote.

Their feature followed a New York Times expose on how the court arrived at its decision — while the liberals were trying to moderate the opinion, and far-right Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch privately wanted to punt it until after the election, “It was Roberts who decided that Trump […]

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Judge Aileen Cannon Failed to Disclose a Right-Wing Junket

Stephan: 

It appears that every judge appointed by traitor Trump, when the truth about them emerges, is shown to be corrupt, and not really interested in an ethical fair judicial system. Here is the latest on Judge Aileen Cannon

Judge Aileen M. Cannon Credit:Photo illustration by ProPublica. Credit: Southern District of Florida (portrait) and Robert Knopes/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images (campus of George Mason University)

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within […]

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A thousand pigs just burned alive in a barn fire

Stephan: 

The animal and bird farming industry is disgusting, the people who ruun it are disgusting, the corporations that own this industry, most farmers do it under contract with a corporation, are disgusting. It is all about greed, and the fact that they have no sense of the matrix of life. Animals and birds are just objects to be exploited. This is something you can do something about. Do some research on the brands of meat and fowl you buy. Only buy organically raised animals and birds. Do a search on the name of the brand your markets are selling. My wife and I don’t eat mammals partly for this reason. If enough people do what I am recommending this loathsome industry will change its game.

Last Tuesday in Shine, North Carolina, a barn holding over 1,000 pigs caught on fire. Multiple fire departments were called to put out the blaze, but only 200 pigs survived. The cause of the fire is under investigation and hasn’t yet been determined.

This is not an isolated incident. Three weeks ago, 1,100 pigs died in a fire at a factory farm in Ohio, while 70,000 chickens died in a fire at a California factory farm in mid-July. So far, in 2024, nearly 1.5 million farmed animals have died in barn fires, according to data compiled by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), a US nonprofit organization.

More than 8 million farmed animals have perished in barn fires over the last decade, but animal advocates believe the true number is much higher because reporting requirements vary by state. Among the factory farming complex’s many cruelties, these deaths are little noted but disturbingly common.

This week’s fire at the pig farm in North Carolina is especially timely, however: The pork industry has recently pushed back against proposed fire codes that would require sprinkler systems at […]

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What presidents can and can’t do to lower grocery prices

Stephan: 

Most Americans seem to think that the President can just wave a magic wand and lower the cost of their groceries. Sorry that’s a fantasy. Here is the reality, and like most commercial realities it is all about greed, the major social value in the United States.

Grocery aisle Credit: Adobe

A majority of U.S. consumers believe elected officials, of one party or the other, can help lower their grocery bills — an expectation that could help swing the election, given how important inflation is to likely voters in 2024. 

The truth is likely to disappoint them. Despite what both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are promising on the campaign trail, the next leader of the free world has limited options to lower food costs in the speedy or widespread way many voters might hope. (Just ask President Joe Biden, who struggled for much of his presidency to show Americans he was reining in grocery prices). That said, POLITICO spoke to a number of economists who argued there are good reasons to go after some of the drivers of high food costs, even if the impacts won’t be felt for some time.

POLITICO took a look at some of the policies Biden, Harris and Trump have used, or said […]

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JD Vance admits he is willing to ‘create stories’ to get media attention

Stephan: 

I am running this story for two reasons. First, it confirms that traitor Trump and his Frankenstein Vance, openly and explicitly lie to stoke the fears and to manipulate the MAGAt voters, and are so confident of their control over these voters that they can publicly admit they are lying to them. Second, this was published in the British newspaper read around the world, and you can conclude the leaders of other nations now understand clearly if the Republican Party wins this election that they will not be able to believe anything they are told by Trump or Vance, until it can be checked independently. In other words, the United States is no longer a country whose word means anything that another country’s leadership can rely on.

Republican vice-presidential candidate defends spreading false, racist claims demonizing Haitian immigrants

In a stunning admission, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, said he was willing “to create stories” on the campaign trail while defending his spreading false, racist rumors of pets being abducted and eaten in a town in his home state of Ohio.

Vance’s remarks came during an appearance on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, where he said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”.

Asked by the CNN host Dana Bash whether the false rumors centering on Springfield, Ohio, were “a story that you created”, Vance replied, “Yes!” He then said the claims were rooted in “accounts from … constituents” and that he as well as the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, had spoken publicly about them to draw attention to Springfield’s relatively large Haitian population.

Vance’s remarks drew a quick rebuke from the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who supports his party’s White House nominee in November’s election, Kamala Harris.

“Remarkable confession by JD Vance when he said he will ‘create stories’ (that is, lie) to redirect the media,” Buttigieg wrote on X. […]

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Trump Lied More Than 30,000 Times During His Presidency. No Wonder We’re Exhausted

Stephan: 

This article is not up to date, but it has been confirmed by several other studies that are behind paywalls.That means the number of lies expressed by traitor Trump is now probably into the 40,000s. How is it possible that such a creature could have been elected President, and is being put forward once again for the highest post in the land? The answer is that the MAGAt Republican cult supported by ignorant frightened voters has no interest in truth. They care only about being in power and creating a racist, christofascist autocracy, owned and controlled by oligarchs and the corporations they control.

It’s the first weekend of Joe Biden’s presidency, which surely means a lot of things to many people, but to me, it means I don’t have to spend my weekend shift waiting to write about President Donald Trump’s latest, inevitable lie.

At Mother Jones, we’ve corrected countless Trump falsehoods over the past four years, from his bull about the stock market and hooey about global warming to disinformation about the legitimacy of the election and bunkum about the coronavirus pandemic. It was exhausting. And numbing.

The public’s apathy and despair towards Trump’s lies, researchers point out, were by design: The attacks mirrored a Russian propaganda technique known as the “firehose of falsehood,” which is exactly what it sounds like—relentless, rapid, bogus information. As Mother Jones‘ Mark Follman wrote in October, “Trump is using the autocrat’s playbook. Vladimir Putin’s, to be specific.”

Now the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker team has finished its final catalog of the extent of the former president’s efforts to mislead and misinform us. According to its tally, Trump made more than 30,000 “false or misleading” claims during his presidency. Half of those lies were told during his last year […]

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