The best thing about the Trump trial? It's turning CourtTV* into a modern day version of Skinemax

* = and other outlets

Well into the 2010s, but most notably in the 1980s and 90s, the cable channel Cinemax would broadcast soft core porn movies late at night, mostly on Fridays and Saturdays.  That practice earned them a nickname.

"Skinemax."

Cinemax, and its parent, HBO, have moved away from adult entertainment.

Also, "Skinemax" refers to the longtime nickname for Cinemax, and not the Canadian network of the same name that broadcasts hardcore porn.

From an analysis piece in The Guardian (UK) -

Stormy Daniels testimony was lurid and powerful – but Trump voters don’t care

Stormy Daniels may have regarded sex with Donald Trump as brief, unimaginative and regrettable but the porn star gripped the nation with a salacious and lengthy retelling of the encounter to a New York court this week.

Daniels’s humiliating testimony in Trump’s fraud trial infuriated the former president who glowered from a few feet away. But her account only confirmed what most Americans already knew about a man widely regarded as a sexual predator and appeared unlikely to change many votes in November’s presidential election.

New York state is prosecuting Trump for fraud for allegedly using his business, the Trump Organization, to pay $130,000 in hush money to Daniels days before the 2016 election. She went public anyway two years later with a book, Full Disclosure, in which she claimed to have had sex with Trump once.

[snip]

Daniels told the court how she went to meet Trump at his penthouse suite expecting to go to a restaurant only to find him in satin pyjamas. She said her evening evolved from administering a playful spanking with a magazine that had Trump’s face on the cover to her alarm at finding him spread across a bed stripped down to his underwear.

[snip]

“I was staring up at the ceiling, wondering how I got there,” she told the jury.

The judge stopped Daniels rapid-fire testimony at times, telling her the jurors did not need to know the pair had sex in the missionary position, with Daniels keeping her bra on, or that Trump didn’t use a condom. But by then they had heard it and, like almost everyone else in court and around the country, were unlikely to forget.

Daniels said the sex “was brief” although, apparently, not brief enough.

And that doesn't even include the creepiest stuff - Cheeto's remark about how Daniels resembled his daughter, Vanky.

All of this may result in Cheeto's biggest contribution to American culture - mental images of him boinking may serve as the ultimate form of birth control

MI AG charges fake electors there; AZ AG is investigating the ones here

Certain people here should be afraid, very afraid.  Because the next knock they hear may not be a welcome one.

From CNN -

Michigan AG charges participants in 2020 fake elector plot

 

Sixteen fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming President Donald Trump won Michigan in the 2020 election have been charged with multiple felonies, state Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday.

This is the first time any of the fake electors have been charged with a crime related to the scheme, versions of which took place in multiple states.

In Arizona, the fake electors scheme is being investigated by the current AG here, Kris Mayes.

From AZ Mirror, dated 3/3/2023, written by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy -

Kris Mayes is investigating Trump’s ‘fake electors,’ focusing on threats to election workers

While her predecessor used a dedicated election crimes division to investigate hundreds of bogus election fraud claims, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says she will redirect the unit’s focus to prosecute election-related threats and protect voting rights. 

“We are almost at a crisis situation in our state, in the sense that we now have a third of our counties experiencing the loss, or should I say the resignation, of a high-level election official due to death threats and harassment. That is unacceptable,” Mayes said in an interview with the Arizona Mirror. 

Certain people here should be worried; in light current developments, they may want to make the best deal that they can.  At least, I would suggest that if I had any legal knowledge at all, but since I don't, I'll encourage them to keep whistling past the graveyard.

Those people?

From another AZ Mirror article, dated 2/1/2022, written by Kira Lerner (as the article is from 2022, some of details of their non-fraudulent activities have changed in the interim) -

[snip]

(A * indicates a person who was listed as chairperson or secretary of their state group and who was subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee.)

ARIZONA (11)

Nancy Cottle*: Cottle is the first vice president of programs for the Arizona Federation of Republican Women. She has been active in Arizona politics for the past decade and holds various other positions on the Maricopa County Republican Committee and the AZGOP executive committee.

Loraine B. Pellegrino*: Pellegrino has served as president of Ahwatukee Republican Women.

Tyler Bowyer: Bowyer is the chief operating officer of Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative values in schools. He has previously worked for the Republican National Committee and the Maricopa County Republican Party.

Jake Hoffman: Hoffman is an Arizona state representative for the 12th District. Hoffman also runs a conservative digital marketing company, Rally Forge, that was banned from Facebook and suspended from Twitter for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on behalf of Turning Point Action, an affiliate of Turning Point USA. The company was enlisting and paying teens to share comments with right-wing opinions, including that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud and that coronavirus numbers were intentionally inflated. Experts told the Washington Post in 2020 that the effort was “among the most ambitious domestic influence campaigns uncovered this election cycle.”

Anthony T. Kern: From January 2015 until January 2021, Kern was an Arizona state representative for the 20th District. He is currently running for election to the Arizona state Senate to represent the 20th District. Kern participated in the January 6 riots in D.C. and has lied about breaching the U.S. Capitol building

James Lamon: Lamon is running for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Arizona. He is a veteran and was previously CEO of DEPCOM Power, a solar energy contractor, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Robert Montgomery: In 2020, Montgomery served as the chairman of the Cochise County Republican Committee. 

Samuel I. Moorhead: Moorhead serves as the second vice chair of the Gila County Arizona Republican Party. 

Greg Safsten: Safsten is the executive director of the Republican Party of Arizona. He previously worked for Rep. Andy Biggs and Rep. Matt Salmon, both of Arizona, in their U.S. House offices, according to his LinkedIn profile. 

Dr. Kelli Ward: Ward is an osteopathic physician who has served as the chair of the Arizona Republican Party since 2019. Following the 2020 election, Ward aided Trump’s efforts to invalidate the election results and filed a number of lawsuits to nullify Arizona’s results. In 2016, she challenged the late U.S. Sen. John McCain in the Republican primary but lost with 39 percent of the vote. She previously served in the Arizona state Senate. 

Dr. Michael Ward: Ward met his wife, Kelli Ward, while he was serving in the Arizona Air National Guard. In 2019, he was accused of spitting in the eye of a former volunteer of his wife’s when she was a candidate for Senate because the volunteer went on to support her former political foe, Martha McSally. Michael Ward denied touching, pushing, threatening or spitting on the volunteer in an email to police, according to AZ Central.