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2020 Election Results

 
 
 
thebeave said:
TomC said:
thebeave said:
She does look like a man, for sure. I wonder if there is a secret clue in her last name being "Bobb"? :unsure:
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Bobb as in Bobbit?

Some things I don't want to know.
Tom
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Heh. Didn't think of that. To "bob" something is to cut it short (or off). Like a bob haircut or bobtail cat. I like yours better though.🙂
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You are an appalling human being.

Probably why I like you.
Tom
 
SCOTUS rules, 'We got yer back' in Trump v United States.

SCOTUS ruled that President (well a Republican) can legally abuse his authority with the Justice Department and Vice President, seemingly regardless what the action was. They seem to assert the Seal Six hypothetical is actually true. We again round the wagons back to Mueller's point regarding the Constitutional solution being about impeachment.

The SCOTUS told the DC Circuit to do 500 years of research to see whether Trump was doing official acts when he conspired to get fake elector slates set up after his crime to conspire to get state legislatures to reverse the election results.

And SCOTUS really showed their contempt for the American people with this doozy:
SCOTUS's ass said:
Trump asserts a far broader immunity than the limited one the Court recognizes...
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This is after giving Trump a huge pass and then sending stuff back to the DC Circuit. Then this...
SCOTUS's ass said:
The Government takes a similarly broad view, contending that the President enjoys no immunity from criminal prosecution for any action. On its view, as-applied challenges in the course of the trial suffice to protect Article II interests, and review of a district court’s decisions on such challenges should be deferred until after trial. But questions about whether the President may be held liable for particular actions, consistent with the separation of powers, must be addressed at the outset of a proceeding.
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When did the Government claim anything was in bounds? I don't recall that argument during oral arguments.
 
This is the worst ruling since Dred Scot.*

Now, I'll note, this is indeed untested waters. So SCOTUS would need to invent something new. The problem is, they didn't. They just said the President can conspire to commit illegal acts with the Attorney General of the United States, and he is immune. That is frightening! Among the many troubling parts, I find this extraordinarily awful.
Trump v US (my emphasis) said:
Finally, the principal dissent finds it “troubling” that the Court does not “designate any course of conduct alleged in the indictment as private.” Post, at 27. Despite the unprecedented nature of this case, the significant constitutional questions that it raises, its expedited treatment in the lower courts and in this Court, the lack of factual analysis in the lower courts, and the lack of briefing on how to categorize the conduct alleged, the principal dissent would go ahead and declare all of it unofficial. The other dissent, meanwhile, analyzes the case under comprehensive models and paradigms of its own concoction and accuses the Court of providing “no meaningful guidance about how to apply [the]new paradigm or how to categorize a President’s conduct. ”Post, at 13 (opinion of JACKSON, J.). It would have us exhaustively define every application of Presidential immunity. See post, at 13–14. Our dissenting colleagues exude an impressive infallibility. While their confidence may be inspiring, the Court adheres to time-tested practices instead—deciding what is required to dispose of this case and remanding after “revers[ing] on a threshold question,” Zivotofsky, 566 U. S., at 201, to obtain “guidance from the litigants [and] the court below,” Vidal v. Elster, 602 U. S. 286,328 (2024) (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment).
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WTF?! So the Roberts majority is whining that it in order to do it right, they'd need to rule on every possible option. My response to that:
  • Fuck you!
  • You didn't exactly come to this finding immediately, this is a last second finding.
  • You don't need to answer all cases, rather establish a standard for what is an Official Act.
    • Oh wait, you can't do that, because likely any standard would require looking into the intent and the action by the President
    • You already gave carte blanche for Executive privilege within the Executive Branch, regardless of intent or action, so that means you'd already have to undo earlier parts of your ruling
Then they go all dickish with that part saying:
"Our dissenting colleagues exude an impressive infallibility. While their confidence may be inspiring"

I expected better from Roberts. This reads like Alito... but apparently Roberts isn't notably better than Alito.

* - don't listen to me, I could be wrong. Worse decisions could be out here, but this is the first time, that I'm aware of that SCOTUS has made such a definitive statement on a President not being liable to illegal acts.
 

NEW YORK (AP) — Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, federal prosecutor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, was disbarred in New York on Tuesday after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The Manhattan appeals court ruled Giuliani, who had his New York law license suspended in 2021 for making false statements around the election, is no longer allowed to practice law in the state, effective immediately.

“The seriousness of respondent’s misconduct cannot be overstated,” the decision reads. Giuliani “flagrantly misused” his position and “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”

“In so doing, respondent not only deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 Presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant,” the court wrote.
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For the good of America, Biden should become a dictator by Adam Lee at FreeThoughtBlogs

"I wasn’t cynical enough about this Supreme Court."

He thought that the Court sitting on the case was an effort to run out the clock to keep Donald Trump from being tried before the election. The Court ruled very quickly on Fourteenth-Amendment disqualification, because that would have kicked Trump off the ballot.

He didn't expect that the Court would hand to a Democratic President the powers that it wanted to hand to Trump.

"I underestimated their depravity."

Being immune to prosecution for "official acts" is not a problem by itself.
The massive, frightening problem is that this ruling is sweepingly vague about what does and doesn’t constitute an official act. It seems to suggest that any action taken with the powers of the presidency would count, even if it’s for clearly self-serving or nakedly dictatorial motives. Issued as it was in response to the January 6 prosecution, it implies that even attacking Congress and trying to steal an election is an official act!
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From Key facts from the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling and how it affects presidential power | PBS News and Read the full Supreme Court decision on Trump and presidential immunity | PBS News
Justice Sonia Sotomayor made this argument in her sharply worded dissent, which Mark Osler, a University of St. Thomas law professor, called “the most chilling part” of the opinions released today.

Sotomayor wrote that the decision “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding…. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune…. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
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Adam Lee:
Under this court’s logic, Richard Nixon shouldn’t have resigned, because he did nothing that was prosecutable. Concocting a plan to spy on his political rivals and secure reelection is an official act for which a president can’t be charged.

This is the clearest sign you could imagine of the bottomless contempt that the Republican justices have for the rest of us. They’ve granted Biden near-unlimited power – and they weren’t concerned about it, because they believe our side will play by the rules and theirs won’t. They believe that liberals are civil and polite and nice, that we’ll follow the rules even when we don’t have to. Meanwhile, the next Republican president will be freed to abuse his power to its full, terrible extent.

There’s only one possible response: Biden has to call their bluff. This isn’t the time for kindly Uncle Joe, this is the time for Dark Brandon.
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Adam Lee then considered several things.

Going ahead with his original student-loan forgiveness plan. If some judge prosecutes some official for doing any of the work of it, he then pardons that official.

Using the Defense Production Act to commandeer fossil-fuel companies to make renewable-energy infrastructure. Not very practical, since these companies' assets are not very well-adapted for doing that. There is more of a chance for synfuel and chemical-feedstock production using hydrogen from electrolysis of water, however.
One more obvious move, one that was even floated during the trial itself, would be for Biden to declare his political rivals “enemy combatants” engaged in terrorism, and have the military whisk them away to Guantanamo Bay, beyond the reach of the law, where they can be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial. He should do this to all the Supreme Court justices who voted for this decision and then appoint their replacements. It would be a fitting taste of the medicine they sought to give to others but never expected to take themselves.
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Or else say that he will release them only when they make a legally binding retraction of their decision.

He concludes
But it’s a long, frustrating pattern in American politics that the progressive left only cares about the moral high ground, while the religious right cares about power. They ask what they can get away with and who’s going to stop them – and if the answer is no one, they have no hesitation in brushing aside any rule that stands between them and what they want. That’s why we lose more often than we win.

We need to fight as dirty as them. Playing by the rules when your opponent doesn’t amounts to unilateral disarmament. The Supreme Court has ruled, almost literally, that when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal. They’ve handed our side a weapon, trusting that we won’t use it against them. Biden has to make them regret it.
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I agree. Democrats often seem like they are apologizing to the Republicans about everything, including their very existence.
 
COMEBACK by M. Steven Fish with Laila M. Aghaie | Rivertowns Books
Voters care more about guts and grit than prescription drug prices.

Politics is a dominance game and a contest to capture the flag. Politicians who seem to be the strongest leaders and most passionate patriots have the advantage. The Republicans get this. The Democrats don’t.

Republicans have a high-dominance political style. They love “owning the libs.” They take risks, use provocative language, and welcome conflict. Democrats have a low-dominance style. They’re risk-averse, allergic to hot-button issues—and a little boring. Rather than give as good as they get, they call Trump a bully then leave him in charge of the playground. Republicans hammer away at their patriotism, even when they shred American values. Democrats are skeptical of patriotism and have no national story—just policy pledges.
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Then quoting Steven Fish himself:
  • What Trump’s voters love about him—he’s a strong leader who relishes the fight, he always says what he thinks and does as he pleases, and no one “owns” the liberals who look down on them like he does
  • Why laundry lists of policies bore voters—but a bold narrative of national greatness exhilarates them
  • What Democrats can learn from deeply principled, high-dominance, patriotic liberals like Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, FDR, JFK, LBJ, MLK, Jasmine Crockett, and more
  • 11 liberal, high-dominance practices that Joe Biden can ride to victory in 2024—if he adopts them now
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Wikileaks

Secret correspondence between WikiLeaks and Donald Trump Jr.​

In November 2017, it was revealed that the WikiLeaks Twitter account secretly corresponded with Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 presidential election.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Ioffe-2017-187">[186]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Pilkington-2017-188">[187]</a> The correspondence shows how WikiLeaks actively solicited the co-operation of Trump Jr., a campaign surrogate and advisor in the campaign of his father. WikiLeaks urged the Trump campaign to reject the results of the 2016 presidential election at a time when it looked as if the Trump campaign would lose.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Ioffe-2017-187">[186]</a> WikiLeaks suggested the Trump campaign leak Trump's taxes to them.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Ioffe-2017-187">[186]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Pilkington-2017-188">[187]</a> WikiLeaks asked Trump Jr. to share a WikiLeaks tweet with the made-up<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Silverman-2018-189">[188]</a> quote "Can't we just drone this guy?" which True Pundit said Hillary Clinton made about Assange.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Ioffe-2017-187">[186]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-190">[189]</a> WikiLeaks also shared a link to a site that would help people to search through WikiLeaks documents.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Ioffe-2017-187">[186]</a> Trump Jr. shared both. After the election, WikiLeaks also requested that the president-elect push Australia to appoint Assange as ambassador to the US. Trump Jr. provided this correspondence to congressional investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-Ioffe-2017-187">[186]</a> Assange repeated his offer of being ambassador to the US after the messages became public, publicly tweeting to Donald Trump Jr. that "I could open a hotel style embassy in DC with luxury immunity suites for whistleblowers. The public will get a turbo-charged flow of intel about the latest CIA plots to undermine democracy. DM me".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-191">[190]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#cite_note-192">[191]</a>
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I like this.

Roger Parloff on X: "Many conservatives now accept ..." / X
Many conservatives now accept with bored acquiescence the near certainty that Trump, if elected, will dismiss both federal indictments against himself. Yet it would be an abuse far greater than the Saturday Night Massacre that once shocked the nation.

In Oct 1973, Nixon fired AG Elliot Richardson & then Dep AG Wm Ruckelshaus for refusing to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was subpoenaing Nixon’s White House tapes. The firings galvanized bipartisan support for impeachment proceedings which began 10 days later. Quaint though it may now seem, US District Judge Gerhard Gesell even ruled, later on, that the Cox’s dismissal had been illegal.

Yet the SCOTUS majority in Trump v US contemptuously chided the bipartisan lower courts for trying to let justice be done before Trump has a chance to abuse power to derail it. They even purported to be acting expeditiously though we are, right now, pointlessly counting 32 more days off the calendar for SCOTUS’s ruling to become final, because the court declined to make it immediate. (The pause permits the losing party to seek rehearing—inconceivable here as the Court well knows.)

Is the president now above the law? Half-heartedly, the majority claims (s)he is not—with asterisks galore. They say the dissents are “fear-mongering” with “extreme hypotheticals”—which they tellingly don’t deign to refute. Justice Thomas disdains that tack. He quips that the once-revered notion has been largely meaningless all along. Immunity from prosecution for official acts *is* the law, he writes, archly. Silly Nixon, silly us, silly forefathers for imagining otherwise.
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I'm not worried about Trump dismissing those cases. I'm worried he is going to pull a Reagan to the Reagan to the Reagan and reclassify the worker designations in the Executive Branch and then dismiss most of them.
 
I always thought Biden should share in a debate the joke about Trump's cologne and his wife saying it smells like a whorehouse then Obama saying his wife would have no idea what a whorehouse smelled like, then dare Trump come across the stage and do something about it. Then if he don't Biden should say "oh you won't heah? Your just orange hair growing on a big fat orange pussy" Then go on all night what kind of man would let his wife be insulted like that.
 
jamiedupree.substack.com

Video surprise - Capitol security tapes show fake GOP electors scheme

Tapes detail Jan. 5 effort to get bogus documents to Pence
jamiedupree.substack.com jamiedupree.substack.com
The Jan. 6 security tapes being released by House Republicans have produced a surprise - video evidence of Donald Trump’s fake GOP elector scheme in action on Capitol Hill, one day before Trump supporters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol.

Buried in the thousands of hours of U.S. Capitol security tapes being released by House Republicans is video evidence of Donald Trump’s campaign trying to get slates of fake GOP electors to Vice President Mike Pence - on Jan. 5, 2021. It was all part of the larger effort to overturn the 2020 election and keep Trump in power.

The last-ditch attempt involved attorney Kenneth Chesebro, one of the architects of the fake electors scheme, and G. Michael Brown, the deputy director of Election Day operations for Trump's 2020 campaign.

With fake GOP documents from Michigan and Wisconsin missing in the mail, Brown flew to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 5 with a backup copy of fake elector certificates from Michigan.

The same day, bogus elector documents from Wisconsin were carried on a plane by a part-time GOP aide, who gave them to Chesebro outside the Trump Hotel.

Chesebro and Brown then walked to Capitol Hill to deliver the envelopes.
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First Arizona fake elector takes plea deal.
article said:
An Arizona Republican who falsely claimed to be a legitimate presidential elector for former President Donald Trump — part of a sweeping effort by Trump and his allies to subvert the 2020 election — has pleaded guilty for her role in the scheme.

Lorraine Pellegrino, one of 11 Arizona Republicans who falsely posed as Trump’s electors that year, accepted a guilty plea to a single charge for filing a “false instrument” — the fraudulent Electoral College certificate. The state charge was one of several she faced for allegedly joining in a conspiracy to corrupt Arizona’s election results.
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The best part of Trump losing in 2024 would be Trump being indicted and convicted in Arizona for his role in the conspiracy to overthrow the US Election in Arizona.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
First Arizona fake elector takes plea deal.
article said:
An Arizona Republican who falsely claimed to be a legitimate presidential elector for former President Donald Trump — part of a sweeping effort by Trump and his allies to subvert the 2020 election — has pleaded guilty for her role in the scheme.

Lorraine Pellegrino, one of 11 Arizona Republicans who falsely posed as Trump’s electors that year, accepted a guilty plea to a single charge for filing a “false instrument” — the fraudulent Electoral College certificate. The state charge was one of several she faced for allegedly joining in a conspiracy to corrupt Arizona’s election results.
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The best part of Trump losing in 2024 would be Trump being indicted and convicted in Arizona for his role in the conspiracy to overthrow the US Election in Arizona.
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Uh … that’s one of many.
 
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