News: DJT blocks immigration solution; Christian nationalist hate, bigotry & tyranny; Etc.

For personal political reasons, DJT wants to block a bipartisan effort to fix the border situation. This is not much different than Nixon sabotaging Johnson’s effort to reach a peace agreement with North Vietnam. What Nixon did struck me as treason. This doesn’t seem much different to me. The Hill reports:

Romney: ‘Appalling’ Trump wants to kill border bill so he can ‘blame Biden’

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday took aim at former President Trump for pushing Republican lawmakers to oppose a border deal so that he could use the issue to campaign against President Biden in the 2024 presidential election.

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”

“But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try to get the problem solved as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later,’” Romney continued.

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LGBQT Nation reports about a zealot Christian nationalist group calling itself One Million Moms. The zealots hate LGBQT people and how they live their lives. They hate a lot of other stuff too. LGBQT Nation Writes:

Conservative Christians rage at “unnatural” 

TurboTax ad showing a loving gay couple

“TurboTax is glorifying sin, and no sin should be honored,” the hate group wrote of the cute 30-second ad

The anti-LGBTQ+ organization One Million Moms (OMM) has condemned a new, humorous 30-second advertisement from the income tax preparation software company TurboTax. OMM claims the ad, which features a male same-sex couple, tries to “push the gay lifestyle and redefine ‘family.'”

The ad features Doug and Andre, a mixed-race male couple who say they “navigated a turbulent housing market” by buying a “boater home,” a playful word for a houseboat that sounds similar to the word “motor home.”

OMM, which only has 108,000 social media followers on Facebook and X, has a habit of throwing a fit anytime any company anywhere publicly acknowledges the existence of queer people.

Their past moral outrage has been directed at Parents magazine for featuring a same-sex couple, an anti-smoking ad that mentioned erectile dysfunction, Highlights magazine for acknowledging gay people, Scholastic books for featuring LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books, the Roseanne reboot for featuring a non-binary child, a Disney cartoon series for its brief scene of two men kissing, a Zales jewelry commercial for featuring a lesbian couple, the fairy tale drama series Once Upon a Time for showing a lesbian kiss, a 30-second TV ad for featuring an affectionate male same-sex couple, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for featuring trans and nonbinary performers, and an ad showing a lesbian couple playing with their laundry.

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Trumplandia

Everybody is reporting that the jury awarded $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for defamation in a second lawsuit. In the first trial, the jury awarded $5.5 million. Speculation is that DJT’s arrogant demeanor in the courtroom and his public comments was part of what motivated the jury to whack him hard in this trial. 

Whether Trump will wind up paying much any time soon is an open question. Trump can to wait to pay the full $83.3 million until appeals are exhausted. That could take years. But, in the meantime, Trump will have to either pay some, buy a bond and put up collateral or put some money under the control of the court until appeals are done. And there is this according to the NYT:

And when it comes to his varied legal expenses — of which there are many — he tries to avoid spending his own money at all. Mr. Trump has tapped his political action committee’s coffers to pay for his own legal fees and other expenses stemming from his criminal indictments and civil trials. Yet $83.3 million eclipses the amount in his political accounts. The verdict on Friday will require Mr. Trump to reach into his own pocket.

For what it’s worth, the standard of evidence in this matter was the preponderance of the evidence standard, i.e., more likely than not. That means that the plaintiff (Carroll) had to produce evidence which, considered in light of all of the facts, leads jurors to believe that what the plaintiff claims is more likely correct or true than not. That is a much lower evidence standard than what is needed for finding criminal guilt, namely proof or evidence beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt.