U.S. Politics

[ml1dch]

11 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

It looks like the plan is to keep sending the Feds around until they find something they can indict Trump with, so he can't run again.

There's also the possibility that there isn't a big conspiracy. And he's just another criminal who has finally run out of road and chances.

[MakemineVanilla]

1 hour ago, ml1dch said:

There's also the possibility that there isn't a big conspiracy. And he's just another criminal who has finally run out of road and chances.

I see what you mean.

Chomsky has a list of crimes committed by every post-war American President, and none of them are minor.

It is pretty chilling.

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by MakemineVanilla

[il_serpente]

1 hour ago, MakemineVanilla said:

It looks like the plan is to keep sending the Feds around until they find something they can indict Trump with, so he can't run again.

Which will be another first in American politics.

FBI lawyer Clinesmith actually forged evidence against Trump in the Russia-gate thing, and so maybe they'll do something similar again.

1.  An indictment will not prevent someone from running again according to what I've read referencing SCOTUS precedent in cases involving congressmen and the office of the President.  The argument is that the constitution sets the conditions for eligibility for national office and Congress cannot create statutes that change that.  So even though the public records statute says someone who violates it shall forfeit their office and be barred from holding office, it does not apply to Congress or the President, apparently.   Otherwise, a  Congress controlled by one party could pass arbitrary laws further limiting who can be President, such as requiring military service or something more partisan that gives them a distinct advantage.   Which makes a fair amount of sense.   They're not fishing for things to convict him of.   They're doing their job.  It's pretty clear he's done a number of things over the years that are, at minimum, borderline illegal and he's finally being held to account.

2.  Clinesmith didn't "forge evidence".  He edited an e-mail for the application for a third renewal of approval of surveillance on Carter Page so that it suggested Page had not been a government informant when he actually was.  Whether he actually believed his edit was accurate- which he claimed- or not, it wasn't "evidence" and was not a key part of the justification.  Again, this was an application for a renewal of surveillance that had previously been justified and approved prior to and independent of his involvement.  He pled guilty to falsifying a document and was sentenced to parole and community service, reflecting how serious the judge thought his crime was.  Hardly the nefarious manufacturing of a bogus case against Trump that the American right insisted it was.   And remember, this is the only thing found after a months-long investigation by a partisan special prosecutor appointed specifically to try to find evidence that the Russia investigation was a political hit job by the deep state and/or the Dems.

[TheAuthority]

2 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

It looks like the plan is to keep sending the Feds around until they find something they can indict Trump with, so he can't run again.

This tells me you have zero understanding around the various organizations in different jurisdictions investigating Trump & the Trump family for  a variety of different crimes.

 

[MakemineVanilla]

38 minutes ago, il_serpente said:

1.  An indictment will not prevent someone from running again according to what I've read referencing SCOTUS precedent in cases involving congressmen and the office of the President.  The argument is that the constitution sets the conditions for eligibility for national office and Congress cannot create statutes that change that.  So even though the public records statute says someone who violates it shall forfeit their office and be barred from holding office, it does not apply to Congress or the President, apparently.   Otherwise, a  Congress controlled by one party could pass arbitrary laws further limiting who can be President, such as requiring military service or something more partisan that gives them a distinct advantage.   Which makes a fair amount of sense.   They're not fishing for things to convict him of.   They're doing their job.  It's pretty clear he's done a number of things over the years that are, at minimum, borderline illegal and he's finally being held to account.

2.  Clinesmith didn't "forge evidence".  He edited an e-mail for the application for a third renewal of approval of surveillance on Carter Page so that it suggested Page had not been a government informant when he actually was.  Whether he actually believed his edit was accurate- which he claimed- or not, it wasn't "evidence" and was not a key part of the justification.  Again, this was an application for a renewal of surveillance that had previously been justified and approved prior to and independent of his involvement.  He pled guilty to falsifying a document and was sentenced to parole and community service, reflecting how serious the judge thought his crime was.  Hardly the nefarious manufacturing of a bogus case against Trump that the American right insisted it was.   And remember, this is the only thing found after a months-long investigation by a partisan special prosecutor appointed specifically to try to find evidence that the Russia investigation was a political hit job by the deep state and/or the Dems.

Thanks, that's very interesting.

[MakemineVanilla]

40 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

This tells me you have zero understanding around the various organizations in different jurisdictions investigating Trump & the Trump family for  a variety of different crimes.

 

Thanks for the update - always appreciated!

I can see my mistake now.

To claim that Trump has been made a special case of, would imply that such things have never been done before, which is obviously false.

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by MakemineVanilla

[nick76]

Made me chuckle

 

[NoelVilla]

Scream shit after the FBI and in America there will always be an idiot listening and use some of his many weapons.

 

[LondonLax]

 

Quote

As Republicans move towards an election season rife with internal disagreements within their own party and mixed public opinions on exceptions in abortion bans such as instances of rape and incest, many rightwing lawmakers are finding it increasingly difficult to implement cohesive abortion policies.

The phenomenon has been starkly illustrated by Kansas’s referendum last week, where the usually reliably Republican state voted to keep abortion protections in its state constitution, providing an unexpected boost from red state America to the abortion rights movement.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/11/republicans-anti-abortion-policies-roe-v-wade-kansas

I predict the fall of Rowe v Wade will be one of the best things that could have happened to abortion rights in the US. 

Abortion is democratically popular in the US. Red states and Blue. 

When Republican blowhards had the cover of RvW they could say all sorts of crazy rubbish to rile up the nutty fringe while they knew the moderates had the option to ignore that and vote for them anyway. 

Now abortion is to be judged democratically, rather than by a court ruling, those extremist idealogues have to test their ideas in front of the electorate and they are finding they are suddenly not as popular with the moderate majority as they thought. 

Hopefully a democratic solution will finally put the issue to bed in the US for the long term, as happened in other western democracies. 

Edited August 11, 2022 by LondonLax

[limpid]

1 hour ago, LondonLax said:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/11/republicans-anti-abortion-policies-roe-v-wade-kansas

I predict the fall of Rowe v Wade will be one of the best things that could have happened to abortion rights in the US. 

Abortion is democratically popular in the US. Red states and Blue. 

When Republican blowhards had the cover of RvW they could say all sorts of crazy rubbish to rile up the nutty fringe while they knew the moderates had the option to ignore that and vote for them anyway. 

Now abortion is to be judged democratically, rather than by a court ruling, those extremist idealogues have to test their ideas in front of the electorate and they are finding they are suddenly not as popular with the moderate majority as they thought. 

Hopefully a democratic solution will finally put the issue to bed in the US for the long term, as happened in other western democracies. 

They invented a wedge issue from nothing, made it the principle reason many people voted for them, and then delivered it.

I genuinely believed they wouldn't touch it for precisely this reason. But if you put religious nutters in charge of the legislative branch (for life) then you can't control them any more. Probably the end of the Republican party in it's current form; if Trump didn't already do that.

Hopefully Johnson / Truss / Brexit do the same to the Tories.

[maqroll]

Well then..

 

[MNVillan]

1 hour ago, maqroll said:

Well then..

 

Great, Trump has the nuclear codes in his underwear drawer

[LondonLax]

11 minutes ago, MNVillan said:

Great, Trump has the nuclear codes in his underwear drawer

They get new codes for each president. 

The troubling thing is there is enough plausibility in Trump’s claims of a political motivation to give Republicans plenty of motivation. 

The investigation was arranged by Merrick Garland, who should have become a Supreme Court judge for life at the end of the Obama era, until it was blocked by the Republicans and Trump. 

For Trump’s side of the story he claims representative agents visited the house earlier in the year and checked and approved the documents he was planning to keep on site. 

The political fix narrative is plausible enough and is going to give them a massive motivation boost in the run up to November.

Let’s hope the FBI found something juicy in the search and can parade it for us. 

[nick76]

[bickster]

The warrant has been unsealed. The Feds took 11 boxes of documents some of which were marked Top Secret and he’s being investigated under the Espionage Act  

[StanBalaban]

On 11/08/2022 at 11:13, nick76 said:

Made me chuckle

 

Another potential title...

[DCJonah]

26 minutes ago, bickster said:

The warrant has been unsealed. The Feds took 11 boxes of documents some of which were marked Top Secret and he’s being investigated under the Espionage Act  

Surely at some point some of this has to stick. 

[nick76]

11 hours ago, bickster said:

The warrant has been unsealed. The Feds took 11 boxes of documents some of which were marked Top Secret and he’s being investigated under the Espionage Act  

Remember Trump said if it’s something bad in those boxes then it would’ve been planted by the FBI and given he always tells the truth, that clears him of any charges.

[ml1dch]

3 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Remember Trump said if it’s something bad in those boxes then it would’ve been planted by the FBI and given he always tells the truth, that clears him of any charges.

It's fine. He says that the stuff that they planted, he'd already declassified it anyway.

[nick76]

2 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

It's fine. He says that the stuff that they planted, he'd already declassified it anyway.

Oh yeah I forgot that part.