Day: June 4, 2024

New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez filed to run for reelection as an independent on Monday, a move that could be costly for Democrats trying to hold on to what has been a safe Senate seat.

Menendez, who is on trial in New York on corruption charges, could play the role of spoiler if a significant chunk of voters stick with him. Although Democrats are still favored to hold on to the New Jersey Senate seat, a Menendez candidacy could force the party to spend more money there when the party already is on defense nationally.

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New Jersey Republicans and Democrats hold their primaries on Tuesday but Menendez isn’t on the ballot. Democratic Representative Andy Kim is widely expected to succeed Menendez.

The senator’s filing appeared on the New Jersey Department of State’s website on Monday. His party is listed as “Menendez for Senate.”

Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, who’s running the Senate Democrats’ campaign operation, dismissed the notion that Menendez’ decision could hurt the party’s candidate, saying “the Democrat is going to win.” But his Republican counterpart, Steve Daines of Montana, smiled and quipped: “Keep your eye on New Jersey.”

Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, called his colleague “a tremendous senator for the state of New Jersey when it comes to delivering results” and a good partner, but said the focus now should be on the trial, not November. “He deserves a fair trial, where he gets to be judged by a jury of his peers,” Booker said.

Menendez, 70, has pleaded not guilty, and his defense has blamed his wife, Nadine, for withholding information from him about gold bars and other items federal prosecutors say were bribes to the senator for assorted official acts.

Read More: The Long, Sordid History of Foreign Governments Courting Members of Congress

Menendez, who was first elected in 2005, stepped down as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee after his indictment but continues to vote and attend classified briefings and committee hearings in the Senate. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has criticized Menendez’ conduct, saying it fell far below the standard of a U.S. senator, but has refused to address whether Menendez should face expulsion, be denied access to briefings or otherwise punished.

Episode 187 has been uploaded.

Preview is a short.

YouTube, later

A-Block

• SPECIAL COMMENT: The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden Campaign at 2:03 PM Eastern yesterday. They had USED the phrase before and they had said the phrase before but it was at THAT moment that they sent it out into the world alone: a Twitter-X post reading simply “Convicted Felon” and under it the close-up, sweating, mottled-face, golf picture of Convicted Felon Donald Trump that looks it was the before shot in a before-and-after about your grandpa’s risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts and they are not decided by nicknames and they are not decided by bad photos but you can probably decide ONE PERCENTAGE POINT in an election with them. Or two. Or five. We may hate it, but we live in America where the name “Crooked Hillary” stuck, and the phrase “Lock Her Up” stuck, and the acronym “MAGA” — one of the stupidest and discordant acronyms of all time — stuck.
• And here Joe Biden has an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult and it’s not only a GREAT answer but it has the added benefit of being entirely true and it has the even GREATER benefit of utterly deranging Trump’s whores. They have spent every day since the conviction screaming, shouting, whining, crying “don’t say that” like you did the day the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the 3rd or 4th Grade.
• Now they have to make it show up in the polling. In the newest poll, CBS/You Gov, the number of Republicans saying he’s not fit to be president is up to 10 percent and the number of Independents saying he’s not fit to be president is FIFTY percent. Echelon Insights, run by the conservative Kristen Soltis Andersen, went back to 477 people it previously polled who had had it 47-47 and after the verdict asked them again and they came back 49-47 for Biden.
• So keep calling him “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Every time. Like he legally changed his name to it. And that means Joe Biden, personally. Say it. Put it in campaign ads. Can you imagine the political media freakout? It would be indelibly attached to Trump.
• MEANWHILE: The Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams: The civilian victim in the Alito Flag Scandal now says that both IN late 2020/early 2021 AND two weeks ago, a black SUV from the Alito security detail parked in front of her mother’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. “I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass,” Emily Baden told The Guardian, “and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.” But Congressman Jamie Raskin has a solution, if only Merrick Garland will get off the dime.

B-Block

• THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The publishers and distributors of “2000 Mules” repudiated the film, apologized to one of the people they slandered, and blamed it all on Dinesh D’Souza (who would now be meat). Josh Hawley either made up a story about an illicit use of American troops abroad, or he revealed military secrets — prosecute him! And once again the right wingers explain how they’ll show us, they’ll avenge Trump by shooting everybody. Why does it never occur to them that they may have lots of guns but who has all the tanks and military bases again? Meet Carl Higbie of Newsmax. Carl’s bonkers.

Quote by Robert Anton Wilson, from 1996: “The Gun Lobby says we need guns to protect ourselves from the present government. Heiligefliegendekindersheisse! —  Have they looked at the government lately? To protect ourselves against the current government we each need 1700 tactical nuclear weapons, at least 100 earth-to-air missiles, 50,000 flame throwers, 10,000 grenade launchers and at least a hundred times as many assault weapons as NRA now owns, plus biological and chemical (viral) weaponry.”

C-Block

• THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO COME: With the 80th Anniversary of D-Day looming I flashed back to the 60th Anniversary and the then-new MSNBC president who pulled out all the stops and went wall-to-wall live from Normandy and with all his big stars working a Saturday to impress his bosses … and then breaking news cancelled all of it!

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Episode 187 has been uploaded.

Preview is a short.

YouTube, later

A-Block

• SPECIAL COMMENT: The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden Campaign at 2:03 PM Eastern yesterday. They had USED the phrase before and they had said the phrase before but it was at THAT moment that they sent it out into the world alone: a Twitter-X post reading simply “Convicted Felon” and under it the close-up, sweating, mottled-face, golf picture of Convicted Felon Donald Trump that looks it was the before shot in a before-and-after about your grandpa’s risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts and they are not decided by nicknames and they are not decided by bad photos but you can probably decide ONE PERCENTAGE POINT in an election with them. Or two. Or five. We may hate it, but we live in America where the name “Crooked Hillary” stuck, and the phrase “Lock Her Up” stuck, and the acronym “MAGA” — one of the stupidest and discordant acronyms of all time — stuck.
• And here Joe Biden has an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult and it’s not only a GREAT answer but it has the added benefit of being entirely true and it has the even GREATER benefit of utterly deranging Trump’s whores. They have spent every day since the conviction screaming, shouting, whining, crying “don’t say that” like you did the day the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the 3rd or 4th Grade.
• Now they have to make it show up in the polling. In the newest poll, CBS/You Gov, the number of Republicans saying he’s not fit to be president is up to 10 percent and the number of Independents saying he’s not fit to be president is FIFTY percent. Echelon Insights, run by the conservative Kristen Soltis Andersen, went back to 477 people it previously polled who had had it 47-47 and after the verdict asked them again and they came back 49-47 for Biden.
• So keep calling him “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Every time. Like he legally changed his name to it. And that means Joe Biden, personally. Say it. Put it in campaign ads. Can you imagine the political media freakout? It would be indelibly attached to Trump.
• MEANWHILE: The Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams: The civilian victim in the Alito Flag Scandal now says that both IN late 2020/early 2021 AND two weeks ago, a black SUV from the Alito security detail parked in front of her mother’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. “I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass,” Emily Baden told The Guardian, “and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.” But Congressman Jamie Raskin has a solution, if only Merrick Garland will get off the dime.

B-Block

• THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The publishers and distributors of “2000 Mules” repudiated the film, apologized to one of the people they slandered, and blamed it all on Dinesh D’Souza (who would now be meat). Josh Hawley either made up a story about an illicit use of American troops abroad, or he revealed military secrets — prosecute him! And once again the right wingers explain how they’ll show us, they’ll avenge Trump by shooting everybody. Why does it never occur to them that they may have lots of guns but who has all the tanks and military bases again? Meet Carl Higbie of Newsmax. Carl’s bonkers.

Quote by Robert Anton Wilson, from 1996: “The Gun Lobby says we need guns to protect ourselves from the present government. Heiligefliegendekindersheisse! —  Have they looked at the government lately? To protect ourselves against the current government we each need 1700 tactical nuclear weapons, at least 100 earth-to-air missiles, 50,000 flame throwers, 10,000 grenade launchers and at least a hundred times as many assault weapons as NRA now owns, plus biological and chemical (viral) weaponry.”

C-Block

• THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO COME: With the 80th Anniversary of D-Day looming I flashed back to the 60th Anniversary and the then-new MSNBC president who pulled out all the stops and went wall-to-wall live from Normandy and with all his big stars working a Saturday to impress his bosses … and then breaking news cancelled all of it!

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Episode 187 has been uploaded.

Preview is a short.

YouTube, later

A-Block

• SPECIAL COMMENT: The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden Campaign at 2:03 PM Eastern yesterday. They had USED the phrase before and they had said the phrase before but it was at THAT moment that they sent it out into the world alone: a Twitter-X post reading simply “Convicted Felon” and under it the close-up, sweating, mottled-face, golf picture of Convicted Felon Donald Trump that looks it was the before shot in a before-and-after about your grandpa’s risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts and they are not decided by nicknames and they are not decided by bad photos but you can probably decide ONE PERCENTAGE POINT in an election with them. Or two. Or five. We may hate it, but we live in America where the name “Crooked Hillary” stuck, and the phrase “Lock Her Up” stuck, and the acronym “MAGA” — one of the stupidest and discordant acronyms of all time — stuck.
• And here Joe Biden has an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult and it’s not only a GREAT answer but it has the added benefit of being entirely true and it has the even GREATER benefit of utterly deranging Trump’s whores. They have spent every day since the conviction screaming, shouting, whining, crying “don’t say that” like you did the day the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the 3rd or 4th Grade.
• Now they have to make it show up in the polling. In the newest poll, CBS/You Gov, the number of Republicans saying he’s not fit to be president is up to 10 percent and the number of Independents saying he’s not fit to be president is FIFTY percent. Echelon Insights, run by the conservative Kristen Soltis Andersen, went back to 477 people it previously polled who had had it 47-47 and after the verdict asked them again and they came back 49-47 for Biden.
• So keep calling him “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Every time. Like he legally changed his name to it. And that means Joe Biden, personally. Say it. Put it in campaign ads. Can you imagine the political media freakout? It would be indelibly attached to Trump.
• MEANWHILE: The Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams: The civilian victim in the Alito Flag Scandal now says that both IN late 2020/early 2021 AND two weeks ago, a black SUV from the Alito security detail parked in front of her mother’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. “I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass,” Emily Baden told The Guardian, “and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.” But Congressman Jamie Raskin has a solution, if only Merrick Garland will get off the dime.

B-Block

• THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The publishers and distributors of “2000 Mules” repudiated the film, apologized to one of the people they slandered, and blamed it all on Dinesh D’Souza (who would now be meat). Josh Hawley either made up a story about an illicit use of American troops abroad, or he revealed military secrets — prosecute him! And once again the right wingers explain how they’ll show us, they’ll avenge Trump by shooting everybody. Why does it never occur to them that they may have lots of guns but who has all the tanks and military bases again? Meet Carl Higbie of Newsmax. Carl’s bonkers.

Quote by Robert Anton Wilson, from 1996: “The Gun Lobby says we need guns to protect ourselves from the present government. Heiligefliegendekindersheisse! —  Have they looked at the government lately? To protect ourselves against the current government we each need 1700 tactical nuclear weapons, at least 100 earth-to-air missiles, 50,000 flame throwers, 10,000 grenade launchers and at least a hundred times as many assault weapons as NRA now owns, plus biological and chemical (viral) weaponry.”

C-Block

• THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO COME: With the 80th Anniversary of D-Day looming I flashed back to the 60th Anniversary and the then-new MSNBC president who pulled out all the stops and went wall-to-wall live from Normandy and with all his big stars working a Saturday to impress his bosses … and then breaking news cancelled all of it!

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

Episode 187 has been uploaded.

Preview is a short.

YouTube, later

A-Block

• SPECIAL COMMENT: The light bulbs may have finally gone off over the heads of the Biden Campaign at 2:03 PM Eastern yesterday. They had USED the phrase before and they had said the phrase before but it was at THAT moment that they sent it out into the world alone: a Twitter-X post reading simply “Convicted Felon” and under it the close-up, sweating, mottled-face, golf picture of Convicted Felon Donald Trump that looks it was the before shot in a before-and-after about your grandpa’s risk of having a stroke. Elections are not decided by social media posts and they are not decided by nicknames and they are not decided by bad photos but you can probably decide ONE PERCENTAGE POINT in an election with them. Or two. Or five. We may hate it, but we live in America where the name “Crooked Hillary” stuck, and the phrase “Lock Her Up” stuck, and the acronym “MAGA” — one of the stupidest and discordant acronyms of all time — stuck.
• And here Joe Biden has an answer to every insult and every meme and every catchphrase used by Trump and his cult and it’s not only a GREAT answer but it has the added benefit of being entirely true and it has the even GREATER benefit of utterly deranging Trump’s whores. They have spent every day since the conviction screaming, shouting, whining, crying “don’t say that” like you did the day the kids gave you your first mean nickname in the 3rd or 4th Grade.
• Now they have to make it show up in the polling. In the newest poll, CBS/You Gov, the number of Republicans saying he’s not fit to be president is up to 10 percent and the number of Independents saying he’s not fit to be president is FIFTY percent. Echelon Insights, run by the conservative Kristen Soltis Andersen, went back to 477 people it previously polled who had had it 47-47 and after the verdict asked them again and they came back 49-47 for Biden.
• So keep calling him “Convicted Felon Donald Trump.” Every time. Like he legally changed his name to it. And that means Joe Biden, personally. Say it. Put it in campaign ads. Can you imagine the political media freakout? It would be indelibly attached to Trump.
• MEANWHILE: The Supreme Court is coming apart at the seams: The civilian victim in the Alito Flag Scandal now says that both IN late 2020/early 2021 AND two weeks ago, a black SUV from the Alito security detail parked in front of her mother’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. “I couldn’t say who was in the car because of the tinted glass,” Emily Baden told The Guardian, “and nobody ever said anything. I took it as a general threat. The message was, we could do terrible things to you, and nobody would be able to do anything about it. When it comes to justices at the supreme court, they make the laws, but the laws don’t apply to them.” But Congressman Jamie Raskin has a solution, if only Merrick Garland will get off the dime.

B-Block

• THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: The publishers and distributors of “2000 Mules” repudiated the film, apologized to one of the people they slandered, and blamed it all on Dinesh D’Souza (who would now be meat). Josh Hawley either made up a story about an illicit use of American troops abroad, or he revealed military secrets — prosecute him! And once again the right wingers explain how they’ll show us, they’ll avenge Trump by shooting everybody. Why does it never occur to them that they may have lots of guns but who has all the tanks and military bases again? Meet Carl Higbie of Newsmax. Carl’s bonkers.

Quote by Robert Anton Wilson, from 1996: “The Gun Lobby says we need guns to protect ourselves from the present government. Heiligefliegendekindersheisse! —  Have they looked at the government lately? To protect ourselves against the current government we each need 1700 tactical nuclear weapons, at least 100 earth-to-air missiles, 50,000 flame throwers, 10,000 grenade launchers and at least a hundred times as many assault weapons as NRA now owns, plus biological and chemical (viral) weaponry.”

C-Block

• THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO COME: With the 80th Anniversary of D-Day looming I flashed back to the 60th Anniversary and the then-new MSNBC president who pulled out all the stops and went wall-to-wall live from Normandy and with all his big stars working a Saturday to impress his bosses … and then breaking news cancelled all of it!

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.