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Calcagno family burial monument at Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy. A bronze masterpiece statue lying on the steps, deposing a last flower on the grave; the personification of sorrow. Work of Adolfo Apolloni in 1904.

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Water freezing in high winds. ❄️🌬

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First you procrastinate on the task because it is not a big enough deal to get done urgently. Then you procrastinate on the task because it has become such a big deal that doing it is overwhelming. You would think that this implies a middle point where it is just big enough of a deal to get done easily, however the inherent perversity of the universe's causal geometry prevents this

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Excerpt from this story from The Nation:

Donald Trump believes that he has the Supreme Court in his back pocket. He is right. The court heard oral arguments on Thursday in Trump v. United States, the case about whether Trump is immune from prosecution over his attempt to obstruct Congress and reverse the results of the election he clearly lost. Trump is counting on delaying the trial about his crimes committed in the previous election until he gets to the next one, which he hopes to win so he can then dismiss the charges against him. The Supreme Court has done everything in its power to help Trump accomplish his goals, and that pattern continued on Thursday.

At this point, people who expect anything less than the maximum partisan thuggery possible from the Republicans justices are not paying attention—or worse, they’re actively lying to themselves and the American people about what the Roberts court has become. The question has long since ceased being “whether” the court will help Trump; the question is only “how” it will go about doing it.

Heading into oral arguments, the justices-for-Trump crowd had three ways to stand by their man: They could grant Trump absolute immunity; they could reject immunity but release their ruling as late as possible; or they could send the case back down to the DC Circuit court for an additional ruling (lawyers call this a “remand”) that would trigger another appeal and another opportunity for delay.

The first option is kind of a nonstarter. Unlike, say, the Republican judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Republicans on the Supreme Court are generally careful to make sure that their pro-Trump rulings cannot be turned against them later and used by a Democratic president. Giving Trump blanket, absolute immunity could be used by people like the current president, Joe Biden, to do whatever he wanted. Granted, Biden would not use the newfound power to steal an election as Trump did—Democrats are eager to follow rules that don’t apply to the other side—and the Supreme Court knows that. But still, granting future presidents total immunity from criminal prosecution sets a precedent that even Republicans can see is dangerous.

The second option of just delaying the decision rejecting Trump’s argument has always been in play. But that option might not get the Supreme Court and Trump all the way to the next election. There is a timeline, albeit an unlikely one, where special counsel Jack Smith could still get through a trial before November, so long as the court rules against Trump by the end of the term.

That brings us to the third option: Remanding the case back to the DC Circuit. This is the option that causes maximum delay of Trump’s reckoning, allowing him to avoid it entirely if he wins the next election, while still preserving the court’s ability to say that blanket immunity is unconstitutional later down the line, should Trump lose. Remand is therefore the best possible option for the Republican justices if they want to see a Republican president elected in November—and at oral arguments, most of them signaled that’s exactly what they’re going to do.

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“The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party and to an ambiguous degree right-wing anti-regulatory ideology. If we believe in a different set of policies or even democratic self-governance we will have to succeed at that with the Supreme Court acting as a consistent adversary.”

— The Court is Corrupt. Say It With Me.

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Reverse Shark Attack

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a frontrunner to be named as Donald Trump's running mate, admitted to killing her family dog for misbehavior.

The Republican governor wrote in her forthcoming memoir, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, that the female dog Cricket had an "aggressive personality" and proved herself "untrainable," according to excerpts from the book published by The Guardian.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, adding that the 14-month-old wirehair pointer was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

The governor said she included the story in her political memoir to demonstrate her willingness to take on “difficult, messy and ugly” tasks, and she described an attempt to teach Cricket to hunt with other dogs, but instead the pup ruined the trip by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life."

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Carolyn Thornton Davis

Misool. Raja Ampat.

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