The most insecure man in the world.

While the rest of the world was paying attention to other details of Michael Cohen’s testimony in the Trump trial yesterday, I was struck by a smaller one: That among the payouts for this and that after Stormy Daniels was silenced, etc., there was a smaller, $50,000 payment for “tech services.”

The services?

At least in part, the services were Cohen getting a computer programmer to buy IP addresses in order to rig an online CNBC poll to make sure Trump ranked among the most influential business leaders alive.

Ladies and gentlemen, the former president of the United States, and maybe the next one.

This is why, despite everything I know about people and their foibles and complexity and all that, I simply cannot find it in my black heart to give Trump voters a break – on anything, ever, from now until the end of time.

And in a busy week, I feel like I just want to leave this here and let things go at that.

Posted at 2:44 pm in Current events |
 

54 responses to “The most insecure man in the world.”

  1. Sherri said on May 14, 2024 at 3:50 pm

    Not that much different than the way conservative orgs bulk buy books to game best seller lists.

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  2. Suzanne said on May 14, 2024 at 4:27 pm

    I believe the difference between conservatives and liberals is reaction to the knowledge that the system is rigged to the benefit of the rich and powerful.
    Conservatives react by trying to figure out how to game the system for their own benefit. If the system favors corruption, be the best at corruption.
    Liberals try to change the system to benefit everybody. If the system favors corruption, stop the corruption.

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  3. Peter said on May 14, 2024 at 4:57 pm

    I don’t get it. I mean, Trump IS one of the most influential business leaders alive. A really bad influence, of course, but an influence none the less….

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  4. alex said on May 14, 2024 at 5:53 pm

    Wow, that’s even sicker than his fake Time “Man of the Year” covers on display at his clubs.

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  5. Jeff Borden said on May 14, 2024 at 7:47 pm

    Fuck tRump. Fuck his followers.

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  6. brian stouder said on May 14, 2024 at 9:49 pm

    Jeff said exactly what I was thinking! Especially including the kicker (‘….his followers’) This will all make for a fairly entertaining mockumentary at some point….ala “The Office”, (only darker)

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  7. Deborah said on May 14, 2024 at 10:06 pm

    Not only that, not only did Cohen pay tech folks to come up with that false result for Trump’s benefit but that he exaggerated the cost to him to have that tech done so he (Cohen) profited off of it. It’s all so slimy.

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  8. Sherri said on May 14, 2024 at 10:22 pm

    Red state governance at its finest!

    Texas, which hates Houston because it’s a big city full of non-white people who vote for things that bigots don’t like, took over the Houston schools a year ago. They put in place as superintendent a guy named Mike Miles, who also runs a chain of charter schools in Colorado and recently expanded to Texas.

    Yesterday, Miles announced massive layoffs in the Houston schools. Today news breaks that Miles had funneled taxpayer money from his Texas charter schools to his Colorado charter schools, which were financially struggling.

    I suppose it’s conceivable that there’s a charter school operator out there somewhere who not a grifter and/or a fraud, but the field sure is full of them.

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  9. Jeff Gill said on May 15, 2024 at 6:13 am

    Bill Lager, Altair, & ECOT would support your theory. $117 million at minimum owed to Ohio, no prospect of anyone even lifting a finger to pursue him.

    https://alsummersconsulting.com/blog/f/william-lager-a-charter-school-on-a-napkin-betsy-devos-591m

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  10. Jenine said on May 15, 2024 at 11:24 am

    The intentional destruction of public schools enrages me.
    Endless Screaming account at bluesky.

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  11. Dexter Friend said on May 15, 2024 at 11:55 am

    Joe’s new TV ad has Joe telling he’d debate Trump on any day, and Wednesdays would work… “I hear you have Wednesdays free”.
    No court for Trump on hump days.
    Deny deny deny! Always deny everything, and delay everything to the maximum as well.
    The documents case is delayed, the Georgia fraud case is delayed, they are all delayed. But what the hell, if you vote for a crooked adjudicated rapist and tax cheat and all-around criminal bastard, you are just someone who doesn’t care about life anyway, and you yourselves, Trump cucks, are oxygen thieves. I don’t want the country to die as a republic , to a dictator and autocrat like the rapist. I want the rapist Trump to eventually live out his days in the Colorado detention prison, max-security, in isolation in the tiniest cell they have.

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  12. Sherri said on May 15, 2024 at 12:11 pm

    In the Republicans find new ways to commit election fraud category:

    Glen Morgan is a conservative activist here who spends his time poring over campaign finance reports of progressive candidates looking for any possible violation and filing complaints (one of my donations was the subject of one of his complaints, which required a correction.) Glen thought he’d up his game and have some fun.

    Bob Ferguson, the state AG, is the leading candidate for governor. Glen went looking for other Bob Fergusons, and got a couple to file to run for governor at the last minute last week, presumably paying the filing fee for them, looking to create confusion.

    Unfortunately for the other Bobs, it turns out Glen didn’t do his homework, and it’s been a felony since the 1940s to do that. The other Bobs hastily withdrew. No word yet whether Morgan will face charges, as recruiting the candidates is also a felony in the law.

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  13. Sherri said on May 15, 2024 at 3:10 pm

    Long past time that this should have happened, and the kind of thing that will fall apart should Republicans regain control. I’ve said all along that autonomous vehicles are not close to ready to put out on our streets, because they fail in unpredictable and unexpected ways. And just putting them out there to “learn” will not solve that problem.

    https://www.theverge.com/24157228/robotaxi-nhtsa-investigations-waymo-tesla-zoox

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  14. Brandon said on May 15, 2024 at 3:13 pm

    Re: Sherri’s comment at 12: These are like Wile E. Coyote’s shenanigans.

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  15. Sherri said on May 15, 2024 at 3:58 pm

    Elon becomes more Trump-like every day.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inside-story-elon-musk-mass-100216178.html

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  16. David C said on May 15, 2024 at 5:08 pm

    I bet, if she wanted it, Ms Tinucci had a new gig five minutes after she left the building. I read an article the other day on how Elon is screwing every contractor in south Texas who have worked on the SpaceX facility at Boca Chica. Another sounds like Trump.

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  17. Mark P said on May 15, 2024 at 9:22 pm

    Reuters reported that a number of contractors have put liens on SpaceX properties. The Register reported at least 72 liens against SpaceX and its contractors.

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  18. Jeff Borden said on May 16, 2024 at 9:20 am

    Anyone see the graduation speech delivered at a religious college by the Kansas City Chiefs kicker? He basically told the graduating women some “might” have great careers, but their real satisfaction will come from marriage and having babies. How’d you like to be the parents who ponied up six figures for their daughter’s education only to hear the commencement speaker invoke Satan as the force behind career-minded women?

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  19. Icarus said on May 16, 2024 at 10:23 am

    Jeff Borden @ 18: I haven’t watched it but I’ve read the reactions and it’s not good. Apparently, it was “demeaning, uneducated, misogynistic, and laced in male insecurity.”

    he’s getting roasted on the Socials but of course, there are those “who just don’t get it” who are defending him. Free speech, his beliefs, etc.

    of course his wife is happy: they can outsource a lot of the difficult points of running a household like nannies, maids and pool boys.

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  20. FDChief said on May 16, 2024 at 10:25 am

    I guess what really gets me about this is how at any time since 2015 it would have taken anyone with a decent search engine ten spare minutes to determine precisely what a trash human being Tubby has always been.

    It wasn’t a mystery. He’s always been a thin-skinned raging egotistical asshole. It was all over the national press way back in the Eighties when he was cratering the USFL and bankrupting casinos to the mockery of Manhattan glitterati.

    No. It’s that it turns out that about a third of your neighbors and relatives and fellow Americans either 1) want that to be the boss of you, or 2) are as trash or worse.

    How the hell do you run a civil society with somewhere between a quarter and a third of the people jonesing for unrestricted douchebaggery?

    Hint; you can’t. Or you can’t if you want a society that tries to honor its best intentions instead or the grudges of the worst of its people.

    So it’s not really Trump.

    It’s that he embodies the trash that these people want. You want to be rid of him? You’ve got to get rid of them. Or disempower them forever.

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  21. Sherri said on May 16, 2024 at 12:56 pm

    How’d you like to be the kicker’s mother, who is a medical physicist in radiation oncology at Emory in Atlanta? “I treat people with cancer, while my son kicks balls through goal posts for a living and tells women they should stay home and raise kids.”

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  22. Icarus said on May 16, 2024 at 1:11 pm

    Sherri, one of the ironies (and perhaps where some of his issues are coming from) is that kickers aren’t exactly thought of as the most masculine members of the team. (and I don’t agree with that, but I’ve never been a fan of toxic masculinity).

    Also, people are now referring to him as Elizabeth Butker’s son.

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  23. Deborah said on May 16, 2024 at 2:12 pm

    Another NFL jerk spouts nonsense, not suprising.

    I’m not reading that the Republican legislators showing up at Trump’s hush money to cover sex with a porn star trial are engaged in jury or witness tampering which it clearly is, if you ask me. I’ve only heard people saying that it makes Trump look weak that he needs his entourage around him to feel good about himself or that it’s a campaign tactic that he’s trying to project solidarity with his obsequious sycophantic lackeys. While it may be those things too it seems as though the fact that it’s happening mostly during Cohen’s testimony must be meant as a hail mary by Trump to rile up Cohen so he’ll crack in front of the jury. It reminds me of that scene in, I think it was Godfather 2 when the Al Pacino shows up in court sitting with the innocent Italian brother of the witness at that moment who was spilling his guts against the Corlene family, to intimidate the guy into changing his tune. Which the witness clearly did, getting the message loud and clear. Not that Trump was trying to get Cohen to change his tune but to agitate Cohen to lose his cool and have the jury see that and possibly be persuaded to acquit Trump, it only takes one to have a hung jury afterall.

    It seems demeaning to me that those guys (and Boebert) would stoop that low to be clearly seen as lackeys for someone, particularly for a guy being tried for falsifying records to cover up hush money payments to a porn star, etc etc.

    I particularly liked what Liz Cheney tweeted about Mike Johnson showing up, “Have to admit I’m surprised that Speaker Johnson wants to be in the ‘I cheated on my wife with a porn star’ club. I guess he’s not that concerned with teaching morality to our young people after all.” As Johnson previously bragged about the pious pact he had with his teenage son to check each other to discourage porn viewing online.

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  24. Dexter Friend said on May 16, 2024 at 3:56 pm

    It’s sickening and infuriating to regular people seeing the Trump clones and Tiny Boebert out there defending the mob boss. Deborah is right, this is for intimidating witnesses and you can assume the jury knows it’s happening.
    Did you see Lady Lindsay yelling over Welker on Sunday? He screamed Israel deserves total USA commitment of all armaments, especially the 2,000 pound bunker busters that are being used to blow up civilian Palestinians. He does not pay attention that this war of aggression is what is keeping the criminal Netanyahu out of prison, which 70% of Israelis want. Netanyahu is bidding to be ranked with Idi Amin and Pol Pot in history annals. His extermination policy is making Israelis sick…there has to be better ways to negotiate a hostage exchange or release.
    The students and interlopers carrying Hamas-positive signs on campus grounds are fools and should be disregarded. We all know October 7 was a massacre and Hamas must be eliminated. Genocide by Netanyahu would have Jesus Christ spinning in the tomb if he hadn’t escaped that tinderbox. Fuck !

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  25. Dave said on May 16, 2024 at 5:10 pm

    Abbott, thoroughly reprehensible governor of that state, you know which one, just pardoned a murderer who drove into a Black Lives Matter rally and shot someone because, after all, he was standing his ground.

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  26. David C said on May 16, 2024 at 6:02 pm

    In a world full of Harrison Butkers, be a Chris Kluwe.

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  27. Sherri said on May 16, 2024 at 7:29 pm

    A gift link to a very long and detailed NYTimes look at Israeli right wing extremism: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU0.K4vv.qnwy9EopiAYz&smid=url-share

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  28. Sherri said on May 16, 2024 at 7:37 pm

    Strip Search Sammy flew his US flag upside down in support of Stop the Steal, but blames it on his wife being mad at a neighbor’s anti-Trump yard sign with expletives.

    Sure, Sammy, it was the uncivil nature of the sign. Just like Clarence thinks everyone is so mean to talk about all this gifts his sugar daddy Harlan Crow gives him. Why can’t people just be nice to these gentlemen?

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  29. Deborah said on May 17, 2024 at 7:51 am

    Does anyone want to bet that Trump will last minute back out of the debates? He’ll claim bias by the moderators or some such thing, playing the victim. If I’m wrong and he actually does the first debate it will be a disaster for him and he’ll refuse the second one. After the ridiculous things he says everywhere all of the time, how can he possibly be able to sound lucid? Of course he’ll lie, snarl and interrupt constantly thinking it will make him look tough. Will his base care? Of course not.

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  30. Mark P said on May 17, 2024 at 10:24 am

    According to what I have heard, Biden insisted on conditions for the debates, including no audience and mikes that shut off when they reach their time limit. Surprisingly, Trump agreed, but I won’t be surprised if he backs out.

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  31. LAMary said on May 17, 2024 at 10:28 am

    Maybe Trump will walk around right behind Biden like he did when he “debated” Hillary. Maybe he’ll say something about blood from “someplace else” to a female moderator or reporter. He’s a great debater.

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  32. Dexter Friend said on May 17, 2024 at 12:11 pm

    Confirmed: 3 October 7 hostages’ bodies released or discovered in Rafah.
    President Joe @ African History Museum in D.C. fired up the attendees as he acknowledged 70 years passing since Brown v. Board of Education. “My administration is responsible for 100% of all African American Vice Presidents.” Basically preaching to the choir here now, I implore all brain-equipped people to reach out and spread the word that our hope lies in a Biden-Harris presidency lasting into January, 2029. Trump must be swept up and imprisoned.

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  33. FDChief said on May 17, 2024 at 12:31 pm

    Two opposing things can both be true:
    1) “Debates” in modern politics are useless as an actual aide to making a political choice. There’s no actual “debate” but instead a series of scripted political ads. If you’ve been paying attention to the “debaters” policy positions you’ll learn nothing. Instead they’ve just become another aspect of the “beauty pagent” that is a huge portion of US political campaigns.
    2) The “debates” are often the only, or much of the, exposure that a huge proportion of the public gets to the actual personalities of the candidates. So they are increasingly important TO the beauty pagent.

    Are the a breathtakingly idiotic way to choose a national chief executive? Ohhellyes. Given the quality of the reporting are they significantly worse than that? Not much.

    We’re so screwed at this point I can only hope we dodge the GOP bullet for another four years. If we don’t…

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  34. David C said on May 17, 2024 at 2:09 pm

    I read Harrison Butker jerseys are flying off the shelf. How kind of them to mark themselves so we know who to avoid.

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  35. Sherri said on May 17, 2024 at 4:44 pm

    What do cops spend their time doing? Basically, pulling black and brown people over for minor traffic violations, like broken taillights. Racially motivated pretextual stops, to use the technical term.

    Not solving crime. Not preventing crime. Not even responding to calls.

    https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/

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  36. Dexter Friend said on May 18, 2024 at 7:35 am

    Trump the fat-ass loudmouth asshole is out there screaming for a drug test before the June debate as he says Joe was “high as a kite” during the SOTU. Yeah, well, caffeine is a drug, so let’s demand the iv infusions of Diet Coke into Trump’s likely-syphilis-infected bloodstream be halted 72 hours prior to debate.
    How many Houston residents are climate change deniers , do ya think? Jeezuss, what a beating they take down there. Even the anus of the continent does not deserve this awful attack by Mother Nature.

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  37. Jeff Gill said on May 18, 2024 at 7:37 am

    Well, in my county, they respond to 911 calls pretty much the whole shift, about half of which are domestic disturbances, most of which become DV or DOC complaints (domestic violence or disorderly conduct). Their traffic stops are rare, and are quite often reports by friends and neighbors of drunk drivers, or 911 calls from fellow drivers. But somehow we keep having people arrested who have five, six, twelve DUI charges already under their visors. The yellow license plates with red letters are not unusual sights, and whatever the arguments against them (I can think of a few) they don’t really seem to make much of a deterrence.

    Not saying the Reuters report is entirely false, since I know zippity-doo-dah about California (never been there, even), I’m just not getting where and how this sorts out, because I end up seeing lots of police department logs and reports and filings, and over the last 20-plus years that’s not what I’m seeing here — and I’d say we have probably more than our fair share of racism in this area, too, so it’s not like we’re a bubble of comity and mutual acceptance.

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  38. Deborah said on May 18, 2024 at 8:14 am

    The Santa Fe cops stop no one in a vehicle, ever. Flagrant speeders, weavers, non-stoppers all over the place but they never get accountability. You’re on your own when you drive there.

    Reading the police blotter in the Rio Grande Sun, the local newspaper near Abiquiu, it’s hysterical. House calls abound but they’re petty and ridiculous. The town drunk does stupid stuff that gets mentioned almost every Sun issue. Meanwhile opioid use is through the roof. The addicts are buying it somewhere which doesn’t seem that hard to figure out, since you can watch them purchasing their fixes when you drive through the town in broad daylight. Drug related murders happen not infrequently too.

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  39. Jeff Borden said on May 18, 2024 at 10:07 am

    Many municipalities use their P.D.’s to generate revenue. A suburb of Cleveland, Ohio (Linndale) was notorious for running speed traps on I-71, which accounted for much of the town’s income.

    I was pulled over in Chicago a few years ago by an unmarked SUV holding four cops. My offense? I had a clear plastic cover on my license plates. They spent more than 20 minutes with me and gave me a $75 ticket. I realized the next day it was almost the end of the month. I imagine these cops were meeting a quota and I presented an easy score.

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  40. Deborah said on May 18, 2024 at 2:11 pm

    It’s way too hot way too soon in Chicago today. It feels like July but obviously it’s only a few days past mid May, lord only knows how hot it will be in actual July. I’m going to be back in NM next weekend, where for a bit it will be in the low 70s during the days and 40s at night, dry, fresh, clean mountain air. Yes!

    My niece in Minneapolis said the high today is expected to be 86º already. She’s a big climate activist and is quite disturbed by this.

    As I age I can’t take the heat, it zaps me. I also can’t take the Lincoln Park green market anymore, at least on Saturdays. Now it’s full of 20 and 30 somethings who seem to be there for the social aspects, not looking for good, fresh produce etc. There are more and more food vending booths for consuming on the spot, like crepes and sausage on sticks etc which cause blocked paths of waiting customers, plus gangs of people simply socialize in the middle of the paths with their unruly dogs or gigantic strollers. It’s wonderful that thy have places in the community to see and be seen, so I need to get over my crabbiness and just go elsewhere.

    Luckily in Chicago there are lots of markets. Today I went to the one on Division between State and Dearborn where there are fewer booths than Lincoln Park but also way smaller crowds. I went close to the tail end of the time period and got 5 bunches of asparagus for a buck each. The woman was trying to get rid of them before packing up. I couldn’t believe my luck. It won’t be hard to figure out what to do with my favorite vegetable.

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  41. LAMary said on May 18, 2024 at 7:19 pm

    Trump wants Biden to be drug tested before the debates. This is based on Trump believing Biden had to be on drugs when he delivered the SOTU.

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  42. Jeff Gill said on May 18, 2024 at 8:02 pm

    Okay, if Trump is Wassermann tested, too.

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  43. David C said on May 19, 2024 at 6:14 am

    While they’re testing Trump for the syph, measure his height in his stocking bare feet (he’d probably find lifts for his socks).

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  44. Julie Robinson said on May 19, 2024 at 8:26 am

    Let’s pull out the scales, too.

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  45. tajalli said on May 19, 2024 at 10:46 am

    Deborah, we’ve been having our June summer weather here starting in early May, so a few days of 80°s alternating with cooler days. Normally (?), June and September are the summer months with July and August having cool foggy/cloudy mornings clearing by about 11am and then clouding over again early evening. But the past 6-7 years, the fogginess has receded to a bit of clouds morning and evening. Anyone denying climate change is not paying attention.

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  46. tajalli said on May 19, 2024 at 10:47 am

    And have Tubby take a VDRL, too.

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  47. Mark P said on May 19, 2024 at 4:09 pm

    I think maybe a PET scan as well. I understand that it may be able to detect some kinds of dementia indicators.

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  48. susan said on May 19, 2024 at 7:51 pm

    B-b-bbbuttt…FatNixon hates dogs and cats.

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  49. brian stouder said on May 19, 2024 at 8:15 pm

    ‘FatNixon’! I like that!

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  50. Dexter Friend said on May 20, 2024 at 1:46 am

    Today and the following 2 days are the days to focus on The Trial. Cohen completes his grilling session today, then final cross and summation and then the jury should get the case by Thursday at the latest. This is now Watergate-tense for us politics junkies.
    No one knows if a ghost juror was seated that will side with the rapist.

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  51. Dexter Friend said on May 20, 2024 at 2:43 am

    Bay-to-Breakers, 2024, San Francisco…always a blast, even just to see the photo-shoot. San Francisco ain’t quite dead just yet.
    https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/bay-to-breakers-race-san-francisco-19461891.php

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    • nancy said on May 20, 2024 at 9:51 am

      I like the people dressed as salmon, who run the race from the finish line to the start. Going upstream, so to speak.

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  52. Dexter Friend said on May 20, 2024 at 9:07 am

    Merchan moves summation 8 days ahead. Even he is in on delay delay delay.

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  53. susan said on May 20, 2024 at 10:58 am

    Dexter, Joyce Vance has this to say about the “delay”:

    Judge Merchan says closing argument will take place next Tuesday, after the holiday weekend.

    Smart move that avoids breaking up the arguments from the jury deliberations.

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