Judge to determine damages since it appears legal team did not submit request for jury trial

The damages in Donald Trump’s fraud trial will be determined not by a jury, but by state supreme court judge Arthur Engoron because Trump's lawyers appear to have failed to file the proper paperwork. This could be devastating for Trump because he's been publicly vilifying and disparaging the judge all morning.

The show will have Lincoln Riley and Brenden Rice on so I'll get a transcript going right after the show ends.

Here is the link if you want to follow along:

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If the Grinch train eventually derails…

You could bring in the best investigator in the world but when there is no evidence, what difference does it really make?​

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Republicans eye ‘reset’ after failed impeachment inquiry hearing​

After last week's failed hearing, some Republicans want Jim Jordan to replace James Comer as the impeachment inquiry lead. That's a deeply flawed plan.


Oct. 2, 2023, 9:38 AM CDT
By Steve Benen

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill might not agree on much, but there was one belief that generated bipartisan consensus last week: The GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing was an embarrassing fiasco.

One senior Republican staffer described the proceedings as “an unmitigated disaster.” Another conceded that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and his staff “botched this bad.” Steve Bannon, meanwhile, slammed GOP members for being unprepared, while one of his guests said House Republicans “don’t know what they’re doing at all.”

It was against this backdrop that Politico reported that some in the party were prepared to do more than just complain.

After a dud of a first impeachment hearing Thursday, some House Republicans are pushing to take the Biden inquiry away from House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and put it in the hands of Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). ... “People are just not happy,” a senior GOP aide said, adding that Jordan, on the other hand, “been tested on this stuff” because he led Republicans through Trump’s impeachments.

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The same report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that House Republicans privately agreed that “a ‘reset’ needs to happen.” It went on to note that Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina is among those “pushing for a Jordan takeover.”

While GOP officials weigh their options, there are few angles to this that are worth keeping in mind.

The first is that Comer has earned the frustration of his allies. The Kentucky Republican has spent months overseeing a flailing crusade, making promises he couldn’t keep, holding hearings that undermined his own partisan efforts, and releasing ostensible “evidence” filled with factual errors.
Of course “people are just not happy.”

The second is that GOP insiders are mistaken if they think Jordan would excel where Comer has failed. Let’s not forget that the Ohioan’s conspiratorial “weaponization” committee has held all kinds of strange hearings, none of which has done Republicans any favors. Indeed, after one of his many underwhelming endeavors, Jordan confronted complaints from disappointed conservatives and headlines about his GOP-led crusade being “a dud.”

In April, in the aftermath of several Jordan missteps, one GOP aide conceded that Jordan’s campaign was off to a “rocky start.”

Politico’s report from Friday quoted a Republican saying that Jordan has been “tested on this stuff.” Perhaps. But is there any reason to believe the far-right Judiciary Committee chairman has passed any of these tests?

Finally, whether GOP insiders are prepared to grapple with this or not, maybe congressional Republicans are struggling with their impeachment effort targeting President Joe Biden because the Democrat hasn’t actually done anything wrong? Maybe shifting from one chairman to another would be irrelevant if there’s no underlying controversy worth examining?

Putin’s Pals Brag: Elon Musk ‘Really Is Our Agent!’​

Kremlin propagandists are rejoicing after Congress omitted aid to Ukraine from its most recent government funding bill.

Julia Davis​

Published Oct. 02, 2023 3:34PM EDT



Russian experts have long predicted that it’s only a matter of time before U.S. aid to Ukraine is jeopardized by war fatigue and domestic issues. The MAGA branch of the Republican Party is currently delivering in spades, as a stopgap funding bill that was passed by Congress to avert a shutdown excluded much-needed funding for Ukraine.

As a special bonus for supporters of the Russian war effort, Elon Musk over the weekend mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X (formerly Twitter) for seeking international support to help his country repel a genocidal aggressor.

Predictably, Musk’s cruelty brought joy to Putin’s mouthpieces. During Monday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes, state TV host Olga Skabeeva noted, “It’s impossible not to notice that the West is getting sick not only of Zelensky but Ukraine as a whole, as a circumstance that is constantly siphoning away their money. Elon Musk is magnificent, he is wonderful and perhaps he really is our agent! He published a meme about a beggar that recently became popular, using Zelensky’s face instead of that person. It says, ‘When it’s been five minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.’”

Skabeeva mentioned the Congressional bill that specifically omitted aid to Ukraine and cheerfully noted, “Only recently, it was impossible to even imagine anything like this!”

She also surmised: “Unless something changes in the next 45 days, the United States will certainly stop helping Ukraine!” Skabeeva described Ukraine as “a walking corpse” and opined that the West is ready to write it off as a loss. Thrilled with Musk’s contribution to the Russian trove of anti-Ukrainian propaganda, Skabeeva praised his wealth, his commentary and the “exquisite hat” he recently donned during a visit to the southern U.S. border.

State Duma deputy Andrey Isayev concurred, saying, “The strategy of our president turned out to be quite wise. Just a short while ago, the West seemed to be a consolidated and united front that was fighting against us. This consolidation keeps on fading.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kyiv-may-be-accidentally-helping-russian-agents-penetrate-ukraine
Isayev pointed out, “We remember that when Zelensky went to the United States one year ago, he received a standing ovation in their parliament.” He noted that this year, the president of Ukraine wasn’t even allowed to speak before Congress and later, both the Republicans and the Democrats voted for a bill that cut out funding for Ukraine. Isayev concluded, “We have arrived!”

Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov added that the draft law of the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the Biden Administration to lend or lease military equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, quietly expired Sep. 30 without being extended. He concluded that the program represented the faith of the West in Ukraine’s eventual victory and the failure to renew it signifies that U.S. faith and commitment to the war effort expired along with the law.

Dmitry Abzalov, Director of Russia’s Center for Strategic Communications, said that the changes Russia is observing in the United States would be unthinkable just one year earlier. He surmised that the diminishing U.S. support will bear fruit in the theater of military operations in the near future, leading to the decline in Western support overall and the corresponding deterioration of Ukraine’s defense capabilities.

Some of the most prominent Kremlin mouthpieces repeatedly reiterated that Putin’s invasion is nothing more than a landgrab and a plight to restore the Russian empire, with an unabashedly genocidal agenda towards Ukraine. Nonetheless, the moral clarity on this issue is taking the back seat to domestic power struggles in the United States.

During the evening broadcast of 60 Minutes, Skabeeva was still praising Musk for his anti-Ukrainian stance. She proudly noted that “the wealthiest person in the world” is now known as “Elon Moskal,” meaning “Elon the Muscovite.”

Ukraine Hits Back at Elon Musk Over Tweet Insulting Zelensky​

Alex Nguyen​

Breaking News Intern
Published Oct. 02, 2023 12:28PM EDT



Ukraine has taken a swipe at Elon Musk for posting a meme that made fun of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests for Western aid. Early Monday morning, the X Corp. founder shared a “Trying to Hold a Fart Next to a Cute Girl in Class” meme on X, formerly Twitter, with Zelensky’s face photoshopped onto the male student. Musk captioned the photo: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”

Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, reposted the meme and wrote, “The case when [Elon Musk] tried to conquer space, but something went wrong and in 5 minutes he was up to his eyeballs in shit,” referring to SpaceX’s disastrous launch in April, when the company’s Starship rocket self-destructed. The account for Ukraine’s parliament also got in on the action, placing Musk’s head on the teenager from the same meme and writing, “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t spread Russian propaganda.” (OW!)

Letssssss go ….

Pope suggests blessings for same-sex unions possible in response to 5 conservative cardinals​

BY NICOLE WINFIELD
Updated 2:59 PM CDT, October 2, 2023

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions, responding to five conservative cardinals who challenged him to affirm church teaching on homosexuality ahead of a big meeting where LGBTQ+ Catholics are on the agenda.

The Vatican on Monday published a letter Francis wrote to the cardinals on July 11 after receiving a list of five questions, or “dubia,” from them a day earlier. In it, Francis suggests that such blessings could be studied if they didn’t confuse the blessing with sacramental marriage.

New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the letter “significantly advances” efforts to make LGBTQ+ Catholics welcomed in the church and “one big straw towards breaking the camel’s back” in their marginalization.

The Vatican holds that marriage is an indissoluble union between man and woman. As a result, it has long opposed gay marriage. But even Francis has voiced support for civil laws extending legal benefits to same-sex spouses, and Catholic priests in parts of Europe have been blessing same-sex unions without Vatican censure.

Francis’ response to the cardinals, however, marks a reversal from the Vatican’s current official position. In an explanatory note in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said flat-out that the church couldn’t bless gay unions because “God cannot bless sin.”

In his new letter, Francis reiterated that matrimony is a union between a man and a woman. But responding to the cardinals’ question about homosexual unions and blessings, he said “pastoral charity” requires patience and understanding and that regardless, priests cannot become judges “who only deny, reject and exclude.”

“For this reason, pastoral prudence must adequately discern whether there are forms of benediction, requested by one or more persons, that do not transmit a mistaken conception of marriage,” he wrote. “Because when a benediction is requested, it is expressing a request for help from God, a plea to be able to live better, a trust in a father who can help us to live better.”

He noted that there are situations that are objectively “not morally acceptable.” But he said the same “pastoral charity” requires that people be treated as sinners who might not be fully at fault for their situations.

Francis added that there is no need for dioceses or bishops conferences to turn such pastoral charity into fixed norms or protocols, saying the issue could be dealt with on a case-by-case basis “because the life of the church runs on channels beyond norms.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, welcomed the pope’s openness.

""The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the church does indeed recognize that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God,” he said in a statement. “Those recognitions, while not completely what LGBTQ+ Catholics would want, are an enormous advance towards fuller and more comprehensive equality.”

The five cardinals, all of them conservative prelates from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, had challenged Francis to affirm church teaching on gays, women’s ordination, the authority of the pope and other issues in their letter.

They published the material two days before the start of a major three-week synod, or meeting, at the Vatican at which LGBTQ+ Catholics and their place in the church are on the agenda.

The signatories were some of Francis’ most vocal critics, all of them retired and of the more doctrinaire generation of cardinals appointed by St. John Paul II or Pope Benedict XVI.

They were Cardinals Walter Brandmueller of Germany, a former Vatican historian; Raymond Burke of the United States, whom Francis axed as head of the Vatican supreme court; Juan Sandoval of Mexico, the retired archbishop of Guadalajara; Robert Sarah of Guinea, the retired head of the Vatican’s liturgy office; and Joseph Zen, the retired archbishop of Hong Kong.

Brandmueller and Burke were among four signatories of a previous round of “dubia” to Francis in 2016 following his controversial opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried couples receive Communion. Then, the cardinals were concerned that Francis’ position violated church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Francis never responded to their questions, and two of their co-signatories subsequently died.

Francis did respond this time around. The cardinals didn’t publish his reply, but they apparently found it so unsatisfactory that they reformulated their five questions, submitted them to him again and asked him to simply respond with a yes or no. When he didn’t, the cardinals decided to make the texts public and issue a “notification” warning to the faithful.

The Vatican’s doctrine office published his reply to them a few hours later, though it did so without his introduction in which he urged the cardinals to not be afraid of the synod.

Karikó and Weissman win Nobel Prize in medicine for work that enabled mRNA vaccines against COVID-19​

Katalin Karikó is a professor at Sagan’s University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Drew Weissman performed his prizewinning research together with Karikó at the University of Pennsylvania.


BY DAVID KEYTON, MIKE CORDER AND MADDIE BURAKOFF
Updated 2:51 PM CDT, October 2, 2023

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 that were critical in slowing the pandemic — technology that’s also being studied to fight cancer and other diseases.

Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman were cited for contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health,” according to the panel that awarded the prize in Stockholm.

The panel said the pair’s “groundbreaking findings ... fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system.”

WHAT IS THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR?​

Traditionally, making vaccines required growing viruses or pieces of viruses and then purifying them before next steps. The messenger RNA approach starts with a snippet of genetic code carrying instructions for making proteins. Pick the right virus protein to target, and the body turns into a mini vaccine factory.

In early experiments with animals, simply injecting lab-grown mRNA triggered a reaction that usually destroyed it. Those early challenges caused many to lose faith in the approach: “Pretty much everybody gave up on it,” Weissman said.

But Karikó, a professor at Szeged University in Hungary and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Weissman, of the University of Pennsylvania, figured out a tiny modification to the building blocks of RNA that made it stealthy enough to slip past immune defenses.

Karikó, 68, is the 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in medicine. She was a senior vice president at BioNTech, which partnered with Pfizer to make one of the COVID-19 vaccines. Karikó and Weissman, 64, met by chance in the 1990s while photocopying research papers, Karikó told The Associated Press.

WHY DO MRNA VACCINES MATTER?​

Dr. Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia, described the mRNA vaccines made by BioNTech-Pfizer and Moderna Inc. as a “game changer” in shutting down the coronavirus pandemic, crediting the shots with saving millions of lives.

“We would likely only now be coming out of the depths of COVID without the mRNA vaccines,” Hunter said.

John Tregoning, of Imperial College London, called Karikó “one of the most inspirational scientists I have met.” Her work together with Weissman “shows the importance of basic, fundamental research in the path to solutions to the most pressing societal needs,” he said.

The duo’s pivotal mRNA research was combined with two other earlier scientific discoveries to create the COVID-19 vaccines. Researchers in Canada had developed a fatty coating to help mRNA get inside cells to do its work. And studies with prior vaccines at the U.S. National Institutes of Health showed how to stabilize the coronavirus spike protein that the new mRNA shots needed to deliver.

Dr. Bharat Pankhania, an infectious diseases expert at Exeter University, predicted the technology used in the vaccines could be used to refine vaccines for other diseases like Ebola, malaria and dengue, and might also be used to create shots that immunize people against certain types of cancer or auto-immune diseases including lupus.

HOW DID KATALIN KARIKÓ AND DREW WEISSMAN REACT?​

“The future is just so incredible,” Weissman said. “We’ve been thinking for years about everything that we could do with RNA, and now it’s here.”

Karikó said her husband was the first to pick up the early morning call, handing it to her to hear the news. And Karikó was the one to break the news to Weissman, since she got in touch before the Nobel committee could reach him.

Both scientists thought it was a prank at first, until they watched the official announcement.

“I was very much surprised,” Karikó said. “But I am very happy.”

The two have collaborated for decades, with Karikó focusing on the RNA side and Weissman handling the immunology: “We educated each other,” she said.

Before COVID-19, mRNA vaccines were already being tested for diseases like Zika, influenza and rabies — but the pandemic brought more attention to this approach, Karikó said. Now, scientists are trying out mRNA approaches for cancer, allergies and other gene therapies, Weissman said.

“It’s already been going on for many years, but this has just given RNA the recognition,” Weissman said.

Karikó's family is no stranger to high honors. Her daughter, Susan Francia, is a double Olympic gold medalist in rowing, competing for the United States.

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

Nobel announcements continue with the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 9.

Ex-NYPD Boss-Turned-Trump Ally Bernie Kerik Wants Immunity to Testify​

Josh Fiallo​

Breaking News Reporter
Published Oct. 02, 2023 4:57PM EDT

Wikimedia Commons​

Bernie Kerik, the former commissioner of the NYPD who was identified as a likely unindicted co-conspirator in Donald Trump’s Georgia indictment, said Monday he’ll refuse to testify in trials for Trump and his allies without a written assurance of immunity from prosecutors.

Kerik was subpoenaed to testify in the first trial related to a sweeping indictment filed against Trump and 18 others—this one involving former Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell—but indicated through his lawyer, Tim Parlatore, that he’ll invoke his fifth amendment right to silence unless prosecutors cut him a deal. “No competent criminal attorney would allow Mr. Kerik to testify absent a grant of immunity,” Parlatore wrote in a fiery letter to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday, CNN reported.

It’s unclear what exactly Kerik did to land him on a list of co-conspirators, but Trump and a number of his allies face charges for their alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Trump’s favor.

After five games of giving a lot of players the opportunity to prove themselves, my choice of the starting linebackers are Cobb and Gentry with Lee and Curtiss as back-ups. (Clearly, the coaches are trying to get Curtiss playing at the level he needs to be to be a regular player but I don't feel he is quite there yet.)

...per a headline that I just saw.

Another fulllll one

I talked with Burgess Jr. this morning after he returned from his Colorado visit. He told me that he plans on visiting next weekend and that USC is currently one of his top schools.


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What’d I miss?

Yeah they suck... but their fans see the silver lining? Hahaha

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22 undefeated teams left

Okla v Tex - this is a huge game. Is UT for real or do they have a let down. Okla is looking better but this will be a true test

Maryland @ tOSU - would be awesome if Mar could steal this one.

LSU @ Mizz - would like to see Mizz give the knockout blow.

Wazzu @ ugly - another huge game for Wazzu

Bama @ A$M - now is the time to knockout Bama

Kentucky @ Georgia- if anyone is due for a let down it’s Georgia

ND @ Louisville- ND is going thru some tough games

Is instead of being able to celebrate another incredible game by Caleb Williams we are having to dissect and contemplate how are defense almost had another Tulane level meltdown. We literally have a generational talent in Caleb Williams and it is so infuriating that our defense sucks so bad. Crap this makes me so upset, I want to scream. We have now looked shaky on defense the majority of our games and it is frightening that we havent even played the top teams yet. It looks like we lack some conditioning and couple that with shaky coaching and yikes this season can easily go to hell once we get into the teeth of the schedule. Damn I am pissed.