UNKNOWNS: "What Happened to Daniels," the headline said!

SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2024

It was trafficking in unknowns: What actually happened to Stormy Daniels back in 2006?

We can't exactly answer that question. Beyond that, we can't say that voters should have been encouraged to explore the answer to that question in the fall of 2016.

Starting with the downfall of Candidate Hart in 1987, our presidential elections have increasingly turned on questions about who is, or has been, zoomin' who—on largely unanswerable questions about the (consensual) sexual conduct of some one of the major candidates.

Back when men (are said to have) fought on the plains outside Troy, this was the only topic which actually seemed to matter. Three thousand years later, our drift back toward this One Central Topic is a bit hard to ignore.

Who got to be married to Helen, radiance of woman, the most beautiful woman in the world? Back in the late Bronze Age, it was the only thing Achaean warriors seemed to care about!

They spent ten years waging war against Troy because they cared so much about this braindead question. And now, so too across Blue America, within our own atavistic tribe. 

For the record, we're speaking here of consensual sex, not of sexual assault. Within our defiantly unimpressive tribe, are we actually able to focus on much of anything else?

Last week, Stormy Daniels took to the witness stand in the puzzling Gotham trial of Candidate Donald J. Trump. At the web site of The Atlantic, this headline appeared atop a (largely) thoughtful essay by Lawfare's Quinta Jurecic:

What Happened to Stormy Daniels Is Not Salacious

From that headline, a reader might think that Jurecic actually knows what happened to Stormy Daniels on the one occasion in question, back in 2006.

Jurecic made no such specific claim in her largely thoughtful essay. In fairness, though, we'd have to say that she may have fudged the matter a bit.

From that headline, a reader might also think that something "happened to" Daniels on the occasion in question. That something had perhaps been done to Daniels, not that Daniels—she was 27 years old at the time—had perhaps engaged in a set of voluntary behaviors.

What actually happened on the one occasion in question? We can't exactly tell you!

We can direct you to the transcripts of Daniels' testimony concerning that question. That said, her testimony is merely what Daniels has said—more specifically, what she said on the witness stand in the Trump trial last week 

Daniels has said various other things on various occasion in the past. There is no obvious way to turn her most recent statements—all of which may be perfectly accurate—into an account which can be verified as something which is known.

We can show you what Daniels has said. We can't necessarily tell you what actually happened. That said, here's the way Jurecic's essay started:

What Happened to Stormy Daniels Is Not Salacious

One evening in March 2018, I joined some friends at a bar in Washington, D.C., to watch a live broadcast of Anderson Cooper’s interview with the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels on 60 Minutes. For months, we’d all been reading news stories about Daniels’s reported sexual encounter with then-President Donald Trump, along with Trump’s efforts to pay her off in order to cover it up before the 2016 election—and now, finally, we were going to hear from the woman herself. The story itself seemed funny, an absurd dispatch from a faraway, brightly colored world of celebrity gossip.

But once the broadcast started, the story that Daniels told was not funny at all. It sounded, in fact, a great deal like the accounts of many of the women who had been recently sharing their experiences of sexual coercion as part of the #MeToo movement, which had exploded just a few months before, following The New York Times’ reporting on the abuses of the film producer Harvey Weinstein. Daniels hadn’t wanted to sleep with Trump, she told Cooper, but felt that “I had it coming for making a bad decision, for going to someone’s room alone.” Still, she insisted that she was “not a victim.” The atmosphere in the bar remained cheerful, but my “Dark and Stormy Daniels” cocktail no longer seemed quite so amusing an order. I left feeling unsettled.

"I left [the bar] feeling unsettled," Jurecic said. Because Jurecic is a good, decent person, there's no obvious reason why she shouldn't have had that reaction.

That said:

In that passage, Jurecic is describing "the story that Daniels told." More specifically, she's describing the story "she told [Anderson] Cooper." 

That said, here's the problem:

On that evening, in that bar, there was no obvious way to assess the extent to which "the story Daniels told" was factually accurate. 

To this day, Donald J. Trump insists that the story Daniels told is wholly bogus. That said, it has long been clear that there is no earthly reason to believe anything Donald Trump says.

A sensible person can't believe anything Donald Trump says. Stating the obvious, that doesn't let us determine the extent to which we can credit the various assertions offered by Daniels herself.

Last week, pundits were busy turning unknowns into knowns all across the fruited plains of Blue America. 

Jurecic was unsettled by what she heard Daniels say that night. But Daniels had sought a big sack of cash for the story she said she wanted to tell, and our politics has been roiled in the past by unreliable story-tellers seeking other such sacks of cash.

Does Quinta Jurecic actually know "what happened to Stormy Daniels?" Putting it a slightly less partisan way, does Jurecic actually know what actually happened that one night, way back in 2006?

Does Jurecic know what happened? There's no point in her (largely) thoughtful essay where she makes any such claim. The editor who presumably composed that headline seems to have taken the usual liberties with something Jurecic said much later on, in the following passage:

For all the attention that Daniels’s testimony has received, how much of a difference it will really make to an eventual verdict is not obvious. Though prosecutors seem to have calculated that her story will help build their case, the key questions they must prove to the jury don’t depend on what Daniels says happened to her that evening or whether she’s telling the truth. And there’s a risk that the sometimes-graphic details shared by Daniels might provide Trump with legal arguments with which to appeal any conviction, on the grounds that they could bias the jury against the defendant in a case that doesn’t turn legally on matters of sex. Twice, following Daniels’s testimony, Trump’s legal team moved for a mistrial on these same grounds—motions that the trial judge denied.

On cross-examination, the former president’s lawyer seemed committed to attacking Daniels’s credibility regarding her interactions with Trump. The questions took a shape familiar to anyone who has ever been questioned about their own experience of assault: Shouldn’t you have known that this was what he wanted? You didn’t say no? Aren’t you just making this all up? Daniels fought back, insisting on the truth of what had happened to her. Throughout it all, Trump sat there silently. When Daniels left the courtroom, he looked straight ahead, not turning to watch her go.

In the first of those paragraphs, Jurecic refers to "what Daniels says happened to her that evening." Apparently choosing to take the usual liberties, some headline writer dropped the part of that formulation in which Jurecic is explicitly referring to what Daniels says.

Also gone is Jurecic's reference to the fact that there might conceivably be a question concerning "whether [Daniels is] telling the truth." And in the second of those paragraphs, Jurecic herself creates a bit of a sea monster, offering readers this:

Daniels fought back, insisting on the truth of what had happened to her. 

"Insisting on the truth of what had happened to her?" By now, even Jurecic seemed to be hiding the ball. Wouldn't that odd formulation have made more sense if she had instead written this:

Daniels fought back, insisting on the truth of what she says happened to her. 

Who knows? Maybe that's what Jurecic wrote, and some editor did a bit of editing—all part of the never-ending human desire to turn unknowns into knowns.

No one denies the fact that Daniels and Trump met one day, in 2006, at a "celebrity" golf event. A photo exists of the two together. There seems to be evidence that the two also met on a few later occasions.

Little else can be said to be known about the matter at hand.

That said, it increasingly seems that our hapless Blue American tribe may be on its way to electoral defeat at the hands of Candidate Trump. It increasingly seems that our tribe's unimpressive corporate thought leaders have come to see a conviction in the Gotham trial as perhaps the only way we can stave off this disaster.

We're going to have to lock him up! Our thought leaders focus on this possibility hour after hour, day after day after day,

We'll be voting for Candidate Biden ourselves. But at such desperate times as these, some of us humans know what we must do:

We should talk about who's zoomin' who, the only topic we human beings have ever really cared about. Also, we should start to turn a big sack of unknowns into one big pleasing known.

Such things are done all day and all night on Red America's "cable news" channel. So too over here, on our own.

Starting Monday: With what crime has the defendant been charged? In search of the allegation!


72 comments:

  1. "Beyond that, we can't say that voters should have been encouraged to explore the answer to that question in the fall of 2016."

    Different voters will have different concerns that they explore when deciding who to vote for. Mine includes how the candidate treats women, because roughly half of the people living in the USA are women and because women have issues that need to be dealt with by whoever is elected president. I care whether the person I vote for is a misogynist or behaves in a sexist manner, and I care whether he or she has advanced the issues I care about, including abortion rights, women's health care, equal job opportunities, voting rights and representation in Congress and in the adminstration, and the welfare and advancement of women worldwide (where women bear the brunt of poverty). This things all matter to me.

    That's why Trump should not have been able to suppress the description by Stormy Daniels of her experiences with him. Nor should any of the various other accusations by women against Trump have been suppressed. This was important information for women voters and we had the right to know that he is a total asshole when it comes to women.

    If you substitute farm issues for Stormy Daniels, would Somerby ever say he doesn't know whether the voters had the right to know about Trump's farm policies and plans for helping farmers? Of course not. If Trump had shot his dog the way Kristi Noem did, would voters have the right to know he had done that (and bragged about it)? Or should he have been able to suppress that after his campaign decided dog lovers wouldn't vote for him with that knowledge?

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    1. Generally, when two people engage in adultery, there’s an implicit understanding that they’ll keep the matter secret.

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    2. You would have known already he was a misogynist and behaved in a sexist manner from the Access Hollywood tape.

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    3. Somerby continues to be obsessed with the sex and ignores the illegality.

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    4. Sex is cold, dreary, clinical. Zoomin’ stirs the blood — and the hormones.

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    5. 11:28 - Do “feminists” really say that a woman who has sex with a married man should tell his wife?

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    6. Should the married man tell his wife? Or maybe, not commit adultery?

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    7. Yes and yes. And your answer to my question is ___?

      But I understand why you deflect. You admit there’s a “secrecy norm” that Stormy has broken. Your point is that some feminists may criticize the norm, but you can’t bring yourself to admit that you yourself would say that a homewrecker shouldn’t tell the wife.

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    8. Who is the “home wrecker” here, piper? I’d say there are two people involved in an adulterous affair. And since you take your chances doing something that risks your marriage if you’re the married man, perhaps the “other woman” should tell the wife. Why not be honest? I don’t get this obsession you have that adulterous husbands are entitled to keep their adultery secret. Is that some unwritten code of adultery ethics?

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    9. The husband has no right to secrecy. As you put it, it’s a “norm.” And Stormy broke it, just like she broke the “norm” against sleeping with another woman’s husband.

      But go ahead - deflect by pointing out that Trump broke norms, too.

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  2. "A sensible person can't believe anything Donald Trump says. Stating the obvious, that doesn't let us determine the extent to which we can credit the various assertions offered by Daniels herself."

    When Somerby decides he doesn't wish to believe something, he uses an insistence on perfect knowledge to dismiss whatever he finds inconvenient to acknowledge.

    Trump made a statement to Billy Bush on video that he grabbed women by their private parts and didn't even wait to start kissing them. After that 20+ women came forward with stories about how Trump had done that to them. But we are supposed to believe Trump's denial about Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll, both of whom he took pictures with and yet says he never met?

    A sensible person should know that Trump's word cannot be trusted. But how much evidence does a sensible person need in order to believe that Trump behaves badly with women? Somerby conveniently chooses to disbelieve every single one of the women coming forward with stories, even when a judge has ruled that Trump raped one of them (E. Jean Carroll) and a jury found in her favor when Trump defamed her. Stormy Daniels' story is plausible and Somerby will say he finds it likely, but he will not say it is true because he lacks perfect knowledge that can arise only from omniscience, conditions impossible in this world.

    In a he said/she said situation, is it fair to side with the man's version of the story (that nothing happened) always simply because no one else was there? That is what gives men the opportunity to abuse women, as they do. They receive the automatic benefit of the doubt, as Somerby demonstrates here, because the absence of proof always supports their contention that nothing happened, when it is equally likely it did as that it didn't. With Trump's record for lying and his sexual bragging, there is no reason to give him that benefit of doubt.

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    1. This is not a he said/she said situation, though, is it? It’s a he said AND she said/she said situation. Stormy’s on both sides of the divide.

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    2. I don’t know why this is so difficult. He’s a liar. She’s a liar. We don’t know what happened, but probably she’s telling the truth now.

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    3. He's a liar. She was coerced into an NDA and forced to sign a statement denying anything happened, which she later went to court to have vacated. Daniels was not denying the sex and she WAS trying to sell her story to various media, at which point she became part of the catch-and-kill operation Trump had set up. She wanted to tell what happened and she was prevented from doing that by Cohen and Trump.

      Her statement in court was made under oath. She does not have the reputation of being a liar, like Trump does. She respected the NDA, until the sex was revealed as part of Cohen's confession in 2018, at which point she gave interviews, as she had wanted to do all along.

      What basis do you have for saying she has been lying? The forced suppression of the info by Trump, that's all.

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    4. Stormy admitted to Anderson Cooper that her signed statement denying sex with Trump was a lie.

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    5. Yes, piper, it’s crucial, and worthy of many blog posts and your comments, to show how stormy Daniels is a scum bag. The fixation on that idea is bizarre.

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    6. And also, can’t we keep adultery private? You wouldn’t want to describe Trump as a scumbag, just a poor deluded mental case who deserves our pity, even if he wants to be Leader of the Free World. You and Somerby are so twisted.

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    7. The fixation is on the idea that we don’t know what happened, but like to pretend we do.

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    8. 22:14 - You think I wouldn’t describe Trump as a scumbag? You are very much mistaken.

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    9. Well, amidst the constant allegations Somerby makes about her being an extortionist, and yours that she is a liar, and that adulterers have some supposed understanding that they don’t kiss and tell, so bad on you, Stormy, it seems a big dose of discrediting Daniels goes along with the heady idea that this is all just about what we do and don’t know. Give me a break.

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    10. But we can agree that we don’t know what happened, right? Maybe they had sex; maybe they didn’t.

      If you’re in the blue tribe, you’re inclined to believe they probably did. If you’re in the red tribe, you’re inclined to believe they probably didn’t. In either tribe, you’re inclined to turn what you believe into what you “know.”

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    11. I’m in the blue tribe. I’m inclined to believe she’s telling the truth now. But I’m not so blind that I can’t see some enormous challenges to her credibility.

      But, believe (or “know”) what you want.

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    12. No, we do not agree about that. I feel confident I know the gist of what happened, including that they had sex. Stormy Daniels has made a convincing case and Trump has made no case at all. He has no alibi. His bodyguard has said nothing about who came and went on that night. He has made no attempt to falsify any of the details Daniels' presented. All Trump has done was try to delay the public finding out until after the election, which is the act of a guilty man. Defending him makes no sense at all. He has offered no basis for believing his side of things at all, especially given his lying.

      Trump told the E. Jean Carroll court that he had never met E. Jean Carroll, that she was making things up, and he defamed her in public statements. Not only were there pictures of them together, but he misidentified her as his ex-wife after saying that she was "not his type". In this case too, there is a picture of Trump together with Stormy Daniels at the Tahoe tournament. He has similarly made derogatory statements about her in public (she did not win her defamation case against him). But since then 20+ other women have come forward with similar stories. And there is the Access Hollywood tape that describes his belief that women let stars do what they want to them (as Stormy Daniels did). In that tape, he describes his pursuit of a different married woman using the same techniques. But we are supposed to believe that Trump didn't do it?

      Saying "we don't know what happened" is joining Somerby in requiring eye witness evidence, which doesn't exist in intimate situations except those occurring in public. That is an unreasonable standard.

      This isn't about red or blue tribes. If you were on a jury and refused to vote on a verdict in the absence of absolute knowledge, you would be removed from that jury. There is evidence, but you and Somerby are refusing to consider it. I believe you and he are doing that for partisan reasons. It is certainly not the way reasoning under uncertainty works -- and we always have some degree of uncertainty because we are not God, all knowing and omniscient and omnipresent. But we still must make decisions despite imperfect knowledge. Your failure to do so is a device for calling Democrats biased, when any moron can see that Trump had sex with Daniels.

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    13. Like I say: Believe what you want. Call it “knowing” if you want. Lash out against me if it makes you feel better.

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    14. I'm in the red tribe and I think Trump had sex with Stormy, more power to him.

      All my friends are in the red tribe, they all think Trump did it, but we just do not care.

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    15. Yes, it was my mistake to engage with you when you do not discuss things in good faith. Fuck off Pied Piper.

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    16. 1:29 hits the nail on the head.

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    17. Everything in the universe is on a spectrum (and has wave-like properties); aside from some math, we can not know anything for certain, everything comes down to probabilities, including for example the speed and position of a particle.

      In court, cases hinge on "reasonable".

      Pied's stance is specious, in reality it is untenable and irrelevant. Pied's White Knight defense of Somerby/Trump may provide Pied with some temporary emotional comfort, but he is merely being ignorant and foolish, so in the end he is only harming himself, which is why we all here try to guide him and his ilk towards a better path.

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    18. Lashing Pied Piper would make me feel so good.

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    19. Pied may be a masochist and enjoy that too.

      Although he certainly seems to derive pleasure from triggering others, since that is all he does here.

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    20. Actually, I find the groupthink tedious and the insults tiresome.

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    21. "All my friends are in the red tribe, they all think Trump did it, but we just do not care."

      Yup. They only care about bigotry and white supremacy, as has been pointed out at TDH for years.

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  3. "That said, it increasingly seems that our hapless Blue American tribe may be on its way to electoral defeat at the hands of Candidate Trump. It increasingly seems that our tribe's unimpressive corporate thought leaders have come to see a conviction in the Gotham trial as perhaps the only way we can stave off this disaster."

    No, the trial is not a means of defeating Trump's 2024 campaign. The trial is a means of ensuring that no one is above the law and that Trump is punished for the crimes he committed during his 2016 election campaign.

    These vague references to blue tribe corporate thought leaders and Gotham (where's batman when you need him?) imply a conspiracy but what is going on is that the same justice system that applies to both Republicans and Democrats and unregistered non-partisans will apply to a manipulative pseudo-billionaire who has co-opted the far right to attempt a dictatorship in our country. No one is above the law.

    Somerby's disrespect for democracy and for the rule of law is noted. He claims to be voting for Biden but he has never defended the processes that make our elections fair, and today conducts a war against journalists who are essential to our democratic system. With supporters like Somerby, Biden doesn't need enemies.

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  4. "Starting Monday: With what crime has the defendant been charged? In search of the allegation!"

    Is there really a need to discuss this again? This is merely Somerby's repeated attempt to muddy the water in order to allow right wing morons to continue voting for Trump.

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  5. Somerby says this trial is about keeping Trump out of office, not the crimes he committed in 2016. Simon Rosenberg (Hopium) agrees that the trial is not an attempt to sabotage Trump's campaign:

    "The Six Things Americans Are Going To Learn About Trump They Didn’t Know in 2020 - We don’t need Trump to be convicted of a crime to win this election. It may happen, but there is no reason to count on it, or build a strategy around it. We have enough, now, today, to win. We have to establish, above, that Joe Biden is a good and successful President (which he is, and it is true), but we also must be relentless about informing the country about who Trump is now. We can and will inform about his escalating extremism on so many issues and the unprecedented threat he is to the country and our democracy, but we also can introduce information about six things we now know about him voters did not know in 2020:

    That he raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room

    That he oversaw one of the largest financial frauds in American history, and owes hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and penalties

    That he stole America’s secrets, lied to the FBI about it all and shared those secrets with others. It was without question among the most grave security breaches in our history, and the greatest betrayal of the country by a former President

    That he tried to overturn an American election, led an armed insurrection against the Congress, fought to end American democracy for all time and has promised to finish the job if he somehow gets into the Oval Office next year

    That he and his family have, corruptly, taken more money from foreign governments than any political family in our history

    That he was singularly responsible for ending Roe and stripping the rights and freedoms away from the women of America; and last week confirmed, by embracing the states’ rights position, that he supports the most extreme abortion bans in the nation - this making him without question the most dangerous abortion extremist America has ever seen."

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    1. Wow. That is overt propaganda.

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    2. It's no wonder you see ordinary people making blatantly false claims. They're exposed to propaganda like this. Incredible.

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    3. These are true statements about Trump that voters will discover as his campaign continues. These are the main reasons why no one should vote for Trump.

      Calling a statement "propaganda" is not an argument against its truth. What is your evidence that Trump was not convicted of defaming E. Jean Carroll, in a trial in which the judge said Trump raped her and the jury convicted him of defamation?

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    4. propaganda definition: "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view"

      A factual statement is not necessarily biased or misleading if it is true.

      Both candidates in a presidential election are partisan and are making statements to get elected. That is all this list of 6 facts about Trump that voters will hear is, campaigning in favor of Biden -- largely because he has never done anything as awful as these 6 things that are true about Trump.

      But the larger point was that we on the left do not need this criminal trial to keep Trump out of office. He is not going to win the election because voters will not reelect someone who has done these 6 things.

      Several of the upcoming trials concern acts by Trump that appear on this list. It is not our fault that Trump has used every measure he can think of, including collusion with at least one judge, to delay prosecution for those crimes. But we all heard the 1/6 Congressional hearings and we saw what happened on 1/6, and we have witnessed the convictions of the other participants, and we know how and why the fake-elector scheme failed. But we are high-information political junkies here. The average voter is unaware of this stuff. The campaign on the left will be to tell everyone what happened, and when they hear about this stuff, Trump will not have a chance in hell of being elected.

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    5. I disagree on a lot of different levels and think that hoping this misleading information will sway the average voter is a really, really bad plan. We'll see how it works out. Have a good weekend.

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  6. I am sincerely grateful to to Quaker for finding those quotes from Biden and Blinken. That was back in October and November. Biden's and Blinken's policy was consistent with those quotes, back in October and November. Israel should be given unrestricted support. Hamas should be destroyed for the good of the Palestinians, as well as the Israelis.

    Unfortunately, the words changed and the policy changed. In the last few months Administration criticism of Hamas seems to be fading away. US policy no longer requires the destruction of Hamas. The US imposes big restrictions on Israel's ability to destroy Hamas.

    BTW someone on the prior thread said s/he opposed Netanyahu but not Israel. But, Netanyahu doesn't run the government. Israel has a coalition government. Furthermore, the Israel citizenry strongly supports the harsh military campaign. So, criticizing Israel's behavior does mean criticizing all of Israel.

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    1. Please stop highjacking threads here in order to talk about Israel. Talk about propaganda!

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    2. Israel/Palestine is more important than Bobs' topics.

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    3. There are other blogs where they are discussing Israel. Go there.

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    4. This is blatantly false.

      Netanyahu does run the government, he did prop up and fund Hamas, unlike the innocent civilians in Gaza that are being murdered by the tens of thousands, half of whom are children.

      There are regular protests in Israel, by Israelis, against the genocide, and they cumulatively account for a significant portion of the population.

      Most Jews in America, which is most Jews in the world, are opposed to Israel's actions.

      If you support the killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, you are, definitionally, psychotic.

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    5. George Soros gives me sacks of cash to comment here.

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    6. 1:31 ignores the horrible reality of war. Winning a war requires doing things that would normally be psychotic. But, Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower were not psychotic. On the contrary, even though their actions cost the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, their actions did far more good than harm to the world.

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    7. During WWII, FDR ordered the bombing of civilians and began to develop nuclear weapons. Ike waged normal war, for the most part, against the enemy military. A few years after the war, Ike became president and continued to develop nuclear weapons but never actually used them.

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    8. Gaza is not a war, FDR was defending against aggressors. This is bone simple stuff.

      If you support the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, which Netanyahu does and FDR did not, then you are psychotic.

      1:42 ignores the horrible reality of his personal stance.

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    9. The so called war has changed since November. Bombing Gaza into the Stone Age and genocidal starvation of children can sway opinion.

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    10. FDR did order strategic bombing that did result in civilians deaths; however, AFAIK FDR did not order the bombing of civilians, it was a prime concern to avoid civilian casualties.

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    11. David, what is the main point you want to make? What conclusion are you hoping people will draw from your loaded questions?

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    12. David, I agree with the other commenters here that I would appreciate it if you would take these off topic comments elsewhere. I realize this is an important issue for you but it's not the proper venue and it violates all rules of etiquette to keep doing it. Could you please stop posting these off-topic of comments? Thanks,

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    13. @DiC:
      "But, Netanyahu doesn't run the government."

      Oh, just stop it. He's the Prime Minister.

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    14. FDR bombed civilians. So did Churchill.

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    15. @2:30 Here are my main points
      1. The Oct. 6 was a historic atrocity, arguably worse than the World Trad Center attack
      2. Despites some claims to the contrary, Israel is prosecuting the war against Hamas with exceptional efforts to protect civilians
      3. Hamas is as evil as the Nazis were.
      4. The US should give Israel its full support in the fight to destroy Hamas

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    16. David, thanks for sharing your points. Out of respect for common etiquette, will you refrain from posting off-topic comments about this serious issue moving forward? There's lots of appropriate places to share these viewpoints. Thanks,

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    17. David,

      Thank you so much for understanding and for your cooperation. I really appreciate it!

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    18. David, your off-topic comments are more interesting than what Bob has to say.

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  7. Want to understand Israel? Paul Campos links to an essay by Megan Stack.

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/05/bloodlands

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  8. Netiporn Sanesangkhom has died.

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    1. I guess it is back to buying magazines from 7-11 then.

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    2. Happy trails, Neti.

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    3. talk about comments that are off topic. and it's every fucking day with this weirdo

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    4. Bob’s topics are ridiculous. To heck with them.

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  9. I don't know what to think. I can't form an opinion until I've read some thoughtful comments by Cecelia.

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    1. So sad that you need someone to tell you what to think. So sad that it is Cecelia you rely on, who needs Somerby to tell her what to think.

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    2. Cecelia’s comments are not sad, they are delightful.

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  10. I would quibble with Bob's statement that since Gary Hart, "our presidential elections have increasingly turned on questions about who is, or has been, zoomin' who..." I agree that the presidential campaigns are deeply involved with this matter, but Trump and Bill Clinton both got elected despite marital infidelity. When It comes to the ballot box, the voters are more concerned about other issues.

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    1. We all know both things Republican voters care about, whether we deny it or not.

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    2. I care about zoomin’.

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