IANAL, but...
I feel like the Georgia case is the kind of "luck" that any rich person would have had, not just Trump. I remember discussion when it was in the news (maybe here, maybe on Reddit) pointing out that what she did doesn't actually create a conflict of interest or otherwise compromise the case, it just looks bad. I feel like most media-savvy billionaires would have made roughly as much hay over a similar error, and few people with a public defender could have.
The federal insurrection case, on the other hand, is pure bullshit. I'm not generally the "both sides are the same, it's all a con, all Washington insiders are equally bad" type, but if I was, that would be strong evidence. Merrick Garland, nominated by Obama to the SC because he would supposedly be acceptable to Republicans and then they stonewalled anyway, appointed AG by Biden, dragged his feet every step of the way on that.
Jimmy Carter's state funeral was very moving, although I joined in about halfway through so I missed the tributes from Gerald Ford and Walter Mondale, both delivered by their sons. Andrew Young, who did not try to go up the pulpit but spoke from a chair, talked about what south Georgia was really like when he was young. The tribute from one of Carter's grandsons was lovely: "He spent four years in the governor's mansion and four in the White House and the other - ninety-two - years of his life elsewhere." If contempt could kill, lightning would have struck Trump when Biden summed up Carter's public life: "Character. Character. Character." Uncle Joe has some iron self-discipline.
Trump got very lucky when the Supreme Court decided to take up his claim that presidents are like kings and can't be prosecuted
This does not seem to fall into the category of "luck" to me.
I wouldn't call "luck" most of things the linked post calls "luck". The summary does really foreground the extent to which legal proceedings are determined by things other than the factual details of cases.
For the judge who recused himself because he asked people not to be sexist or racist, was that just a norms thing and he wanted to avoid the appearance of "bias"* or would he have ended up getting removed if he had refused to recuse?
*Treating people with respect is bias, of course. Some people are objectively degraded and it's bias not to treat them like shit.
They say I shot a man named Gray
And took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks
And when she died it came to me
I can't help it if I'm lucky
Similarly, Donald Trump can't help it if he's lucky.
I feel like the Georgia case is the kind of "luck" that any rich person would have had...
The luck was having the DA make the unforced error in the first place.
3: It was luck in the sense that most observers, even partisan Republican observers, thought he had a very small chance of prevailing on that argument, and he went for it at prevailed. (Jack Smith was so confident there was no colorable argument there that he asked for a preemptive ruling dismissing the immunity claim last December.) It was not luck that Republicans have been stacking the Court for three decades, nor that the current SC majority are partisan hacks.
I think the Georgia case was still a Trump-only reaction, not something any rich guy could have pulled off. (Maybe Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg level rich, but not anyone).
The theory that a consensual relationship between the AG and outside counsel was misconduct going to the rights of the defendant was a huge, weird, stretch. Depending on the AGs policies, it wouldn't have been unreasonable for her to be in trouble for directing work to someone she had a personal relationship with, because there would be a possibility that they weren't objectively the best for the job. But without any indication at all that the prosecution had been ginned up solely for the financial benefit of outside counsel, which is nuts in this case, it's not the kind of thing that I would believe would derail a case even if a rich defendant with good lawyers made a fuss.
That turned out the way it did because judges were protecting Trump specifically, not just applying normal rich-guy rules.
7: I rather doubt they were working in ignorance that the Court was going to help them. That body is so openly contemptuous of image at this point there have got to be back channels.
I agree it was fortunate that Willis made that unforced error. Though from what I can tell, she was grandstanding all over the place in managing that trial - per Ken White's podcast, it was likely to take several years even if everything went well.
NY sentencing is not stopped. But only by 5 to fucking 4.
Cool, maybe we'll get court-packing out of this!
/pollyanna
NMM to Anita Bryant.. you know who you are...
Orange juice and homophobia, an intoxicating combination.
I don't want to go back and look at what she said to get fired, but being fired for saying something anti-gay in the 80s was not easy.
10: The judge has indicated there would be no penalty. Couldn't we get probation after the end of his term? I mean, i'd like to preserve some semblance of the rule of law.
So everyone's excited about that accent, huh?
You know, we talk a lot about how fucked up it is that Trump is avoiding all (or most) legal consequences for his many crimes. We don't talk enough about how fucked up it is that his associates and underlings are NOT avoiding those consequences. He presumably will pardon (corruptly) all of the targets of the federal investigations, but that leaves lots of cannon fodder out on the battlefields of GA, AZ and MI, and Rudy Giuliani is in bankruptcy.
14: I don't think it was because the Florida Citrus Commission thought she had behaved offensively per se, just that she had stirred up controversy (including the boycott) and they preferred their spokeswomen to be opinionless blobs. Also she had had that role for 11 years when they declined to renew her contract.
More I dug up:
Despite the LGBTQ community's efforts, the Florida Citrus Commission renewed Bryant's contract as their spokesperson for several more years. It was not until August 1980 that it dropped her from their payroll. And even that decision, it was reported, had been a result of her filing for divorce from her husband -- not her position on gay rights -- which helped tarnish her wholesome family image.
Washington Post article from 1977, when the boycott was well underway:
LAKELAND, Fla. -- Anita Bryant's success as a spokesman against homosexual rights threatens to cost her the $100,000-a-year job of pitching Florida orange juice in television ads, state officials say, though they hasten to add that it all depends on orange juice sales.
In a prepared statement, Richardson said "The Florida Citrus Commission . . . has continually taken the position that what Anita Bryant does in private life is her decision, and we should not try to influence or direct this decision."
On Saturday, Arthur Darling, director of publicity for the Florida Department of Citrus told the Associated Press that, "The whole Anite thing is a mess. No matter what we decide, we're only going to lose. I wish she would just resign."
But yesterday Dan Richardson, chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission, said there is no present plan to cancel Bryant's contract. He left no doubt however, that orange juice sales are the key to Bryant's continued employment.
"If however, Anita Bryant's activities in her public life should develop to the point where, in the mind of the public, she could no longer be an effective saleswoman for our industry," the statement continued, "it is quite obvious that we would have to reconsider our position in fulfilling our responsibility to the citrus growers, whom we represent."
It goes on to say they had frozen filming of the next ad campaign & were waiting on a survey on her marketing effectiveness. So presumably the survey came back positive, since she was renewed for three more years.
So everyone's excited about that accent, huh?
I tried to listen but the video wouldn't play for me -- I got the thumbnail but when I hit play it just spun.
It's probably fine to bury the link in the comments. It's here, at 17:47.
I, and Rudy Giuliani is in bankruptcy
UM ACTUALLY, it's worse for him: his bankruptcy petition was dismissed, so the proceedings against him are to force him to turn over his assets without bankruptcy protections at all. And in those proceedings he was just held in contempt of court.
Someone listen and validate me.
I'm in a meeting, but will do so . . .
25: I had no problem with the original link and enjoyed the poignant speech as well as the accent. I spent my early career sitting in bars after work debating sex, politics and religion with (kindhearted, smart) people with thick accents not too different from the one in that video.
Nowadays, I am able to be sentimental about the South in a way that would be impossible for me if I hadn't actually gotten the fuck out of Tennessee.
Whew. I was a bit distressed there for a moment at having been demoted to No. 2.
Oh huh, is it just that it's a Tennessee accent and not a Texas accent that made it stick out to me? It didn't sound quite like a Texas accent, but I was imagining some sufficiently isolated little hamlet with its own weird thing.
My ear isn't great for these things, but it wasn't really Western Tennessee. I'd place it in Southern Arkansas/Northern Lousiana. I perceived some Cajun influence in there.
I listened to it, and appreciated the speech and didn't have a strong reaction one way or another to the accent (except that there was a slight marbles-in-his mouth dynamic that surprised me), so I think pf is bringing more value here.
I still rank urple first, because I'm not corruptable or subject to recency bias.
Urple is ranked on the imaginary axis. You all aren't a well-ordered set.
urple is a real as any of us. At least, I'm pretty sure at least one of us saw him.
urple is the most real of any one of us, he's the only one to come up with an entirely novel sex act
That wasn't even very good. It was the other things.
Urple and the Case of the Expired Egg.
I was surprised to learn that Anita Bryant was still alive (until she wasn't).
The neighbor kid switches between trombone and marching baritone. It is pretty great.
We just went to a folk music camp. In the etiquette guide, they recommend asking to join any jam, particularly if you play one of the "battlefield instruments". (Pretty much the non-string instruments.) You hear one of those brass instruments up close and it definitely reminds you of the battlefield purpose.
Re; the legal stuff. If you want your blood to boil read John Robert's year-end state of the judiciary thingy. What a smarmy prick. There was one big legal story for the past few years, the implicit and explicit threats against the legal system for attempting to hold one fucking piece of shit to account. It got a lot of piecemeal coverage, but it really should have been a big overarching story. 2nd biggest was the supremes continuing to confirm their suckage. Speculation that if anything real were at stake, the NY sentencing case would have been 5-4 or 6-3 in the other direction. And I believe it.
47.last. Merchan clearly believed that, too, and acted accordingly by making sure that SCOTUS knew in advance that nothing was at stake in the sentencing.
17 is a good thing though - Trump needs underlings to do anything and it is very healthy for them to be reminded that they are vulnerable even if he isn't.
49 is why I felt pretty comfortable he wouldn't be able to mount a coup if he lost again but is thin gruel with him back in office. The only angle of vulnerability is unofficial acts that are state crimes or torts. There's an unimaginable amount of damage to be done outside of that scope.