Thank you Jay, for a keenly researched and well written column, easy to follow despite all the legal bouncing balls between now and election day. If only all Trump’s judicial appointments could be invalidated based on his criming but that’s an idealistic pipe dream. Again, kudos to Kuo for excellent analysis.
Absolute Presidential immunity. Hmmmm…Devine Right of Kings: Runnymede, Battle, May 1215. Limited by Magna Carta, June 1215. US Constitution upholds Magna Carta, 1787. Ergo, absolute immunity - not applicable.
Who's gonna stop him, if he just decides to bull it through? All there is is impeachment, which is a total non-starter, as long as the House has even one more Republican vote than Democrats. And his wife is going to be leaning on him day and night.
First things first: No immunity, and no "double jeopardy". Then and only then can one run all the possible scenarios, including being elected whilst still embroiled in one or more trials. I remain bullish on DC Circuit upholding Judge Chutkan's ruling, Supremes denying cert, and tRump going to trial before elections, certainly in DC, and hopefully in GA.
And let's be mindful of the business fraud trial, where tRump et al could be hit with a few hundred millions in fines, pending appeal. We're not even as yet into 2024, and tRump's legal calendar is all but blocked out with court appearances, with attorneys' fees going through the roof...LOL!
So helpful to see the potential court timelines laid out clearly. Keeping fingers crossed for at least one conviction before Nov. I’d love to hear your thoughts on jury selection as it seems that alone could take months. And in the meantime, there are things we can’t control - all of these legal processes - and things we can - getting out the vote. For the latter, I highly recommend Movement Voter Project (www.movement.vote), an org that strategically supports over 400 grassroots groups engaging young voters and voters of color in swing states and districts across the country. It’s the most effective place to spend your political dollars.
In light of recent evidence that Dictatorship is the GOP platform for 2024 election, I will try again to point out that there is a law that says this is a disqualifying action, so how do we get it enforced, please?
I confess the Notes that go with the linked 5 U.S. Code 7311 make for a confusing read for those not trained in the code language of revoking and amending, but it seems subparagraphs (1) and (2) more than codify the insurrection clause of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
The Bloated Yam may have neither a case nor a defense, but he will drag this out as long as possible, with as much vicious personal attacks on TruthSocial as possible, until after the election, so that on January 21, 2025, as President-for-Life, he can order the federal cases dismissed, military governors to replace the elected state governors, send troops to the courts to imprison the judges and prosecutors, and replace the entire federal and state court systems with martial law.
Yes. But I will say I honestly wish we had a stronger candidate. I like Biden however the number of people who don't (even amongst those who dont like trump) scares me. I worry about his ability to win this time...but more so about the number of people still willing to vote for tRump even if convicted
Personally, I wish we could scrape Harry Truman's DNA off of one of his hats from his home in Independence, Missouri, bring him back to life, and run him. He was eligible to run in 1952, but chose not to.
If he ran today, he'd stomp the Bloated Yam into the ground.
Harry S. Truman is my second-favorite American after Ulysses S. Grant. He was right on the big decisions (the bomb, the Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, desegregating the Armed Forces, intervening in Korea, and firing MacArthur), while wrong on the small ones, like berating that music critic at the Washington Post.
After him comes FDR, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Jackie Robinson, Thomas Alva Edison, Dr. Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. I'd rate Kennedy higher if he wasn't a case of unfulfilled promise and Lyndon Johnson if he had just simply NOT escalated in Vietnam...it was a lost cause.
Interestingly, if Andrew Jackson had not been a genocidal maniac, he would rate higher with me. Except for whacking every Native American in sight, he had an outstanding presidency. Jimmy Carter made a better former president than actual president. Herbert Hoover was in over his head -- he did great in relieving starvation in Europe after two World Wars, but couldn't cope with it at home. I blame Harding and Coolidge for ignoring Hoover's warnings to prevent the 1929 catastrophe. Another American I like is Edwin Howard Armstrong, inventor of FM radio. His death was tragic.
I think his vicious truth social rants need to be amplified to the general public. I would bet a lot of $$$ that Faux News never mentions his 'truths'.
I want the billboard that reminds readers about how he moves on women by grabbing them where it counts.
He obviously went to the Leo Durocher School of Nerve on that one...the great baseball manager and miserable human being said that he would meet a woman, bring her up to the hotel room, and "make his first bold move" in the first five minutes. If she was happy, then they'd have a great romp. If she got angry and left, then Leo still had the rest of the evening to find another woman in the hotel bar or some other hotel, and he'd just keep doing the same thing until he found a woman who put out right away.
The best thing I can say about him is that he got Willie Mays into the majors and backed the kid through his rookie year difficulties in 1951, and won two pennants for the Giants.
Agreed. And also the bizarre word salad that passes for campaign speeches. The MSM tends to provide a snippet that has been tidied up for public consumption. How about they just print/show the rambling run on sentence word salad that comes out of his ugly mouth?
Well, as lovable Uncle Joe Stalin once observed, when someone pointed out to him the importance of the Catholic Church: "How many divisions does the Pope have?"
Once the Bloated Yam is back in power, between his control of the Armed Forces, his domination of White Nationalists, and his links to Organized Crime, he will have no trouble eliminating ANY opposition. There will be plenty of armed men ready to do his bidding.
For example, those two women who just won their case against Rudy Giuliani and his hair dye will likely be found stuffed headfirst in garbage cans in their home city, knives in their back, empty purses strewn about, the victims of an apparent mugging.
"How sad, how cruel, how tragic," Fox and Alex Jones will say. "Atlanta is certainly a violent city. It's a good thing the Glorious Leader has taken over the state and city government and deployed the National Guard and sworn in the Proud Boys as 'Auxiliary Police' to restore order."
The High Nine will suffer like fates...and they know it. Remember what Mitt Romney said about the impeachments: Senators ready to impeach the Bloated Yam were drenched in e-mails and phone messages that threatened their lives and those of their families.
In Nazi Germany, the law was called "Sippenhaft." The Soviets had a similar law. Family members were all responsible for their relative's "misdeed," and the whole bunch, regardless of age, would be swept up and shipped off to Sachsenhausen or the Gulags. Stauffenberg's wife and kids went there. Stalin had the wife of President Kalinin shot as an "enemy of the state." He never complained.
Dictators are amazing people. check out Peter Dinklage's series; "How To Be A Tyrant" on Netflix.
I've always been fascinated with tyrants, dictators, and bullies.
I started learning about them from my mother (who was one) and when I started public school in New York City. They were either my schoolmates in the schoolyard or my teachers in the classroom. I have always said that the Internet was the best thing to happen to the schoolyard bully since the invention of lunch money.
Contrary to popular belief, schoolyard bullies do NOT seem to get slammed down as they get older, if they're intelligent and get good grades. If they get good grades, they become kick-butt stockbrokers and corporate executives, like the Bloated Yam himself. Or they find victims to take tests and do papers for them...like the Bloated Yam did at Wharton School and Biff Tannen did with George McFly in "Back To the Future," until Marty changed history.
The worst male schoolyard bully I faced based his power on suffering from Hodgkin's Disease. He was miserable, so he took it out on anyone he considered beneath him, and that included me. He formed a little group of acolytes, who beat up suspected "faggots," and when not beating me, they pursued Greenwich Village gays. This was in 1973, so they would jump the stereotypical men on Christopher Street, who could not fight back.
That ended when they met up with two men who were into leather, weightlifting, and karate, emerging from a gym. The couple was not going to tolerate abuse from 12-year-olds, so they sent the whole lot to St. Vincent's Hospital. The supreme leader saw his gang disintegrating and fled the scene. He didn't "withdraw," like the British Army, or "retreat," like the US Army, he "ran like hell," and hid in his bedroom in the dark, smoking weed and listening to something called "Quadrophenia."
To this day, I am afraid to walk around the building he apparently went on living in for life. My therapist tells me he is likely dead. I told her that the Bloated Yam should also be dead, because of his diet, but he's still with us.
Schoolyard bullies who have little brains but lots of violence wind up in clack, of course, when the law catches up with their increasingly higher levels of violence.
The female version are Queen Bees who dominate their crowd in middle school and later by ordering them what to wear, what music to listen to, what makeup to use, how to kiss their boyfriends, and which classmates to torment. They base those orders on what their "sophisticated" older sisters are doing. The Queen Bees go on to become dominant executives themselves, like Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada." The Queen Bee in my class went on to become Executive Producer of the Golden Girls. Truth.
I write about World War II history for WW2 History magazine and have a Kindle book on Amazon on the subject, and am working on another one, so tyranny and dictatorships are a huge part of my work.
Yes, tyrants and dictators fall, sometimes pulled down by their own people, sometimes at their own hands, sometimes by illness, but there's one tyranny that has become permanent: North Korea. I think that after the Bloated Yam breathes his last in the Lincoln Bedroom from over-exertion with a White House intern, his sons and grandson will take the Throne.
My high school teachers, between 1978 and 1980. They told me I was the stupidest person in class and it was even stupider of me to study history instead of mathematics, biochemistry, and engineering.
They were all Jews -- in New York at that time, the teachers' union was all-Jewish -- so I hit back at them by turning into a Hitler Youth: goose-stepping, anti-Semitic slogans, giving them the Hitlergruss, speaking highly of Adolf, calling for a new Holocaust.
When they got shocked and appalled, and asked me how I could say such things, and defend such a monster, I'd sneer, "Ahh, that's a historical judgment. And you said yourself that studying history is stupid. From where I stand, a Nazi state will get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the hostages out of Iran, end anti-draft protests in America, and restore order, discipline, and unquestioning obedience to schoolteachers. HEIL!"
I don't know if they got the point, but they sure were terrified. That was what I wanted.
I find it crazy that 1000s upon thousands of convicted felons have great difficulty getting hired with a felony conviction on their record and yet, this probable felon can run for president without it being a problem for many.
Can you imagine if Obama has pulled the crap Biff is pulling? There's NO way he would have been able to run for President. It seems only white, soul-less beings can. Thanks, Jay for your insight....again.
I don't understand how we still have undecided voters. What's there to decide? Honestly? Also, after the insanely preferential treatment Trump has been given, I don't even care which one of his many crimes he gets nailed for - as long as he gets nailed and put away.
As far as the Presidential immunity thing goes, I'm still stuck on why a positive ruling for trump wouldn't benefit the actual President. I mean Presidential immunity would cover President Biden too, right? He could declare himself the winner if trump somehow pulls this off or just have VP Harris do that in January 2025, just like trump said Pence could do. We wouldn't even have to stage an antifa insurrection to accomplish it. Just a thought.
A lot of comments I've seen on the ballot eligibility issue seem to be a dodge -not ripe for the primary because GOP can decide if he remains. But what if he remains on primary ballots, becomes nominee, and *then* the issue finally ripens and the courts decide he is not eligible for the general election because of the 14th amendment? What happens then? Or if he actually wins (hopefully not and I doubt it but it's a crazy world) and then SCOTUS finally says ineligible?
There's a potential further consequence that remains hypothetical at this time and dependant on conviction - that is disqualification based on individual state election or constituitonal eligibility restrictions.
Case in point: Florida does not allow any person to be a candidate, nor to vote, campaign or hold office (for which he/she cannot apperar on a Florida ballot) who is a convicted felon - AND - to gain restitution, a felon must complete a full -term sentence, make full (monetary fines and other) restitution, wait for two to five years period following completion, and then appeal to a separate Florida Clemency Board, headed by the governor. Even a felon appealing a sentence may not hold office, nor appear on a ballot. (Clearly there are legalities that would arise to be be litigated should a presidential candidate become disqualified).
All states have varying disqualification restrictions, only Maine and Washington plus DC allow an immediate reinstatement, but of those remaining, some 37 states have severe restrictions with red states having more restrictiv qualifcations than blue states (for which Republican legislators can thank themselves).
And, finally, if Florida were to disqualify a felon candidate for president, how then could other states not disqualify with similar restrictions.
(1) Jay's current series is doing all of us, and I hope the Democratic Party, an enorrmous favor. However, I think perhaps a 5th Case should be added, and that is the on-going defamation case brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll.
(2) Carroll initially charged Trump in the US District in Manhattan, with rape and defamation and the jury found him guilty of a lesser sex offense and defamation and awarded her $5 Million. (3) However, unable to stifle his endless grievances, Trump went on Truth Social and repeated his original denials and accused her of a familiar list of personal flaws. (3) Ms Carroll went back to the Federal District Court in Manhattan and accused him of defaming her again. The Court pointed out he had already been found guilty of defamation, leaving only the penalty hearing. Trump appealed to the 2nd US Court of Appeals claiming total immunity. Shortly before Christmas, it denied his claim. So next on the Distr8ct Court's docket is the penalty hearing, which will likely make Ms Carroll even richer, and weaken Trump's claim of immunity in other cases.
I think what keeps me hopeful is a lot of the wannabe dictator types that ran for state and federal offices lost in 2022. What keeps me up at night is 3rd party voters.
Can we put this myth to rest, please: "the mere reopening of a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server by the FBI, just weeks before the election, was enough to throw the race to Trump,"
She lost because people liked her even less than locker-room-talking Trump. And she lost because Democrats were frustrated that the primary didn't reflect the will of the people, but was basically a coronation. And, yes, that email server did hurt her - because it exposed her as a hypocrite, not because it was criminal. She had just fired the US Ambassador to Kenya for bypassing DoS IT. "Rules apply to thee, not to me!" was simply not a good look for her.
2016 was a year when we had a choice between a bad candidate and a worse candidate. She never should have been nominated.
Oh please. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes. She won the most votes of any candidate who did not take office and the third most of any candidate in history. If any “myth” needs to be laid to rest it’s that she was a “bad candidate”.
It's true that there were multiple reasons for her losing. Winning in a few big cities but neglecting the rest of the country was another issue. Heck, if it hadn't been for Los Angeles alone, she would have lost the popular vote, too. And that's the exact reason the founding fathers didn't want the President elected by popular vote.
In the end, it only matters because the Democrats have a track record of repeating the mistakes from the past.
The Electoral college is an archaic and ridiculous way to elect a president and should be abolished IMHO. It certainly hasn’t been implemented the way the Founding Father’s intended and is basically a rubber stamp as state electors simply vote the same way their state voters voted.
One person, one vote. Period. Time for something like the National Popular Vote Bill to be passed.
You will be fighting an uphill battle on that. Back in 1789, Delaware wanted to be sure it wasn't constantly outvoted by Virginia. Today, the people in Kansas, Montana, Alaska and Rhode Island don't want to be effectively stripped of their voice by the people in Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. And even though I live in California, I agree with them on that point, even if I don't like how those people vote.
Regardless - your opinion proves the original point: it's an utter myth that the investigation into the email server had anything to do with the outcome of the election. And that myth needs to die, die, die.
LOL. It’s not a myth that the Comey letter announcing he was reopening the investigation mere days before the 2016 election impacted the final results and swung the results a point or two into Trump’s column especially in states that were decided by 1 point or less. The Comey letter impacted the election and the only thing that needs to die, die, die is the denial of its impact.
Thank you Jay, for a keenly researched and well written column, easy to follow despite all the legal bouncing balls between now and election day. If only all Trump’s judicial appointments could be invalidated based on his criming but that’s an idealistic pipe dream. Again, kudos to Kuo for excellent analysis.
Absolute Presidential immunity. Hmmmm…Devine Right of Kings: Runnymede, Battle, May 1215. Limited by Magna Carta, June 1215. US Constitution upholds Magna Carta, 1787. Ergo, absolute immunity - not applicable.
Even Clarence Thomas couldn’t f*^% this up.
He really ought to recuse, but he won’t.
Bet me.
Who's gonna stop him, if he just decides to bull it through? All there is is impeachment, which is a total non-starter, as long as the House has even one more Republican vote than Democrats. And his wife is going to be leaning on him day and night.
First things first: No immunity, and no "double jeopardy". Then and only then can one run all the possible scenarios, including being elected whilst still embroiled in one or more trials. I remain bullish on DC Circuit upholding Judge Chutkan's ruling, Supremes denying cert, and tRump going to trial before elections, certainly in DC, and hopefully in GA.
And let's be mindful of the business fraud trial, where tRump et al could be hit with a few hundred millions in fines, pending appeal. We're not even as yet into 2024, and tRump's legal calendar is all but blocked out with court appearances, with attorneys' fees going through the roof...LOL!
I hope you’re right, and I think you are.
So helpful to see the potential court timelines laid out clearly. Keeping fingers crossed for at least one conviction before Nov. I’d love to hear your thoughts on jury selection as it seems that alone could take months. And in the meantime, there are things we can’t control - all of these legal processes - and things we can - getting out the vote. For the latter, I highly recommend Movement Voter Project (www.movement.vote), an org that strategically supports over 400 grassroots groups engaging young voters and voters of color in swing states and districts across the country. It’s the most effective place to spend your political dollars.
In light of recent evidence that Dictatorship is the GOP platform for 2024 election, I will try again to point out that there is a law that says this is a disqualifying action, so how do we get it enforced, please?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7311
I confess the Notes that go with the linked 5 U.S. Code 7311 make for a confusing read for those not trained in the code language of revoking and amending, but it seems subparagraphs (1) and (2) more than codify the insurrection clause of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
The Bloated Yam may have neither a case nor a defense, but he will drag this out as long as possible, with as much vicious personal attacks on TruthSocial as possible, until after the election, so that on January 21, 2025, as President-for-Life, he can order the federal cases dismissed, military governors to replace the elected state governors, send troops to the courts to imprison the judges and prosecutors, and replace the entire federal and state court systems with martial law.
Let’s all make sure that future never comes to pass!
We have to donate to Biden and vote for him.
It's that simple.
Yes. But I will say I honestly wish we had a stronger candidate. I like Biden however the number of people who don't (even amongst those who dont like trump) scares me. I worry about his ability to win this time...but more so about the number of people still willing to vote for tRump even if convicted
Personally, I wish we could scrape Harry Truman's DNA off of one of his hats from his home in Independence, Missouri, bring him back to life, and run him. He was eligible to run in 1952, but chose not to.
If he ran today, he'd stomp the Bloated Yam into the ground.
absolutely!
Harry S. Truman is my second-favorite American after Ulysses S. Grant. He was right on the big decisions (the bomb, the Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, desegregating the Armed Forces, intervening in Korea, and firing MacArthur), while wrong on the small ones, like berating that music critic at the Washington Post.
After him comes FDR, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Jackie Robinson, Thomas Alva Edison, Dr. Martin Luther King, Barack Obama, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. I'd rate Kennedy higher if he wasn't a case of unfulfilled promise and Lyndon Johnson if he had just simply NOT escalated in Vietnam...it was a lost cause.
Interestingly, if Andrew Jackson had not been a genocidal maniac, he would rate higher with me. Except for whacking every Native American in sight, he had an outstanding presidency. Jimmy Carter made a better former president than actual president. Herbert Hoover was in over his head -- he did great in relieving starvation in Europe after two World Wars, but couldn't cope with it at home. I blame Harding and Coolidge for ignoring Hoover's warnings to prevent the 1929 catastrophe. Another American I like is Edwin Howard Armstrong, inventor of FM radio. His death was tragic.
I think his vicious truth social rants need to be amplified to the general public. I would bet a lot of $$$ that Faux News never mentions his 'truths'.
No, they have never said a bad word about him.
And never will.
They are looking forward to when they become America's sole TV network.
I want a billboard that says Rot in Hell, Merry Christmas. Donald Trump 2/24/23
I want the billboard that reminds readers about how he moves on women by grabbing them where it counts.
He obviously went to the Leo Durocher School of Nerve on that one...the great baseball manager and miserable human being said that he would meet a woman, bring her up to the hotel room, and "make his first bold move" in the first five minutes. If she was happy, then they'd have a great romp. If she got angry and left, then Leo still had the rest of the evening to find another woman in the hotel bar or some other hotel, and he'd just keep doing the same thing until he found a woman who put out right away.
The best thing I can say about him is that he got Willie Mays into the majors and backed the kid through his rookie year difficulties in 1951, and won two pennants for the Giants.
Agreed. And also the bizarre word salad that passes for campaign speeches. The MSM tends to provide a snippet that has been tidied up for public consumption. How about they just print/show the rambling run on sentence word salad that comes out of his ugly mouth?
Actually Kiwiwriter47, this IS something SCOTUS should think about. Their tenure could be in jeopardy if any so
much as blinks at the wrong time, under the Bloated Yam
and his Tater Tots regime.
Well, as lovable Uncle Joe Stalin once observed, when someone pointed out to him the importance of the Catholic Church: "How many divisions does the Pope have?"
Once the Bloated Yam is back in power, between his control of the Armed Forces, his domination of White Nationalists, and his links to Organized Crime, he will have no trouble eliminating ANY opposition. There will be plenty of armed men ready to do his bidding.
For example, those two women who just won their case against Rudy Giuliani and his hair dye will likely be found stuffed headfirst in garbage cans in their home city, knives in their back, empty purses strewn about, the victims of an apparent mugging.
"How sad, how cruel, how tragic," Fox and Alex Jones will say. "Atlanta is certainly a violent city. It's a good thing the Glorious Leader has taken over the state and city government and deployed the National Guard and sworn in the Proud Boys as 'Auxiliary Police' to restore order."
The High Nine will suffer like fates...and they know it. Remember what Mitt Romney said about the impeachments: Senators ready to impeach the Bloated Yam were drenched in e-mails and phone messages that threatened their lives and those of their families.
In Nazi Germany, the law was called "Sippenhaft." The Soviets had a similar law. Family members were all responsible for their relative's "misdeed," and the whole bunch, regardless of age, would be swept up and shipped off to Sachsenhausen or the Gulags. Stauffenberg's wife and kids went there. Stalin had the wife of President Kalinin shot as an "enemy of the state." He never complained.
Dictators are amazing people. check out Peter Dinklage's series; "How To Be A Tyrant" on Netflix.
You're just a treasure trove on
tyranny and dictators. 😉👍
None of them came to a good
end though and we're onto the Bloated Yam. Perhaps he'll explode before 11/5/24.
Ya never know.
I've always been fascinated with tyrants, dictators, and bullies.
I started learning about them from my mother (who was one) and when I started public school in New York City. They were either my schoolmates in the schoolyard or my teachers in the classroom. I have always said that the Internet was the best thing to happen to the schoolyard bully since the invention of lunch money.
Contrary to popular belief, schoolyard bullies do NOT seem to get slammed down as they get older, if they're intelligent and get good grades. If they get good grades, they become kick-butt stockbrokers and corporate executives, like the Bloated Yam himself. Or they find victims to take tests and do papers for them...like the Bloated Yam did at Wharton School and Biff Tannen did with George McFly in "Back To the Future," until Marty changed history.
The worst male schoolyard bully I faced based his power on suffering from Hodgkin's Disease. He was miserable, so he took it out on anyone he considered beneath him, and that included me. He formed a little group of acolytes, who beat up suspected "faggots," and when not beating me, they pursued Greenwich Village gays. This was in 1973, so they would jump the stereotypical men on Christopher Street, who could not fight back.
That ended when they met up with two men who were into leather, weightlifting, and karate, emerging from a gym. The couple was not going to tolerate abuse from 12-year-olds, so they sent the whole lot to St. Vincent's Hospital. The supreme leader saw his gang disintegrating and fled the scene. He didn't "withdraw," like the British Army, or "retreat," like the US Army, he "ran like hell," and hid in his bedroom in the dark, smoking weed and listening to something called "Quadrophenia."
To this day, I am afraid to walk around the building he apparently went on living in for life. My therapist tells me he is likely dead. I told her that the Bloated Yam should also be dead, because of his diet, but he's still with us.
Schoolyard bullies who have little brains but lots of violence wind up in clack, of course, when the law catches up with their increasingly higher levels of violence.
The female version are Queen Bees who dominate their crowd in middle school and later by ordering them what to wear, what music to listen to, what makeup to use, how to kiss their boyfriends, and which classmates to torment. They base those orders on what their "sophisticated" older sisters are doing. The Queen Bees go on to become dominant executives themselves, like Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada." The Queen Bee in my class went on to become Executive Producer of the Golden Girls. Truth.
I write about World War II history for WW2 History magazine and have a Kindle book on Amazon on the subject, and am working on another one, so tyranny and dictatorships are a huge part of my work.
Yes, tyrants and dictators fall, sometimes pulled down by their own people, sometimes at their own hands, sometimes by illness, but there's one tyranny that has become permanent: North Korea. I think that after the Bloated Yam breathes his last in the Lincoln Bedroom from over-exertion with a White House intern, his sons and grandson will take the Throne.
Wow! 👍
I forgot:
I dealt with one set of bullies pretty well.
My high school teachers, between 1978 and 1980. They told me I was the stupidest person in class and it was even stupider of me to study history instead of mathematics, biochemistry, and engineering.
They were all Jews -- in New York at that time, the teachers' union was all-Jewish -- so I hit back at them by turning into a Hitler Youth: goose-stepping, anti-Semitic slogans, giving them the Hitlergruss, speaking highly of Adolf, calling for a new Holocaust.
When they got shocked and appalled, and asked me how I could say such things, and defend such a monster, I'd sneer, "Ahh, that's a historical judgment. And you said yourself that studying history is stupid. From where I stand, a Nazi state will get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, the hostages out of Iran, end anti-draft protests in America, and restore order, discipline, and unquestioning obedience to schoolteachers. HEIL!"
I don't know if they got the point, but they sure were terrified. That was what I wanted.
That would indeed be his plan, yes.
I find it crazy that 1000s upon thousands of convicted felons have great difficulty getting hired with a felony conviction on their record and yet, this probable felon can run for president without it being a problem for many.
Exactly
Can you imagine if Obama has pulled the crap Biff is pulling? There's NO way he would have been able to run for President. It seems only white, soul-less beings can. Thanks, Jay for your insight....again.
I don't understand how we still have undecided voters. What's there to decide? Honestly? Also, after the insanely preferential treatment Trump has been given, I don't even care which one of his many crimes he gets nailed for - as long as he gets nailed and put away.
As far as the Presidential immunity thing goes, I'm still stuck on why a positive ruling for trump wouldn't benefit the actual President. I mean Presidential immunity would cover President Biden too, right? He could declare himself the winner if trump somehow pulls this off or just have VP Harris do that in January 2025, just like trump said Pence could do. We wouldn't even have to stage an antifa insurrection to accomplish it. Just a thought.
Maybe the Supremes didn't want Joe to also have immunity so they jumped on the Delay Train with TFG.
It would. But honestly he wouldn't and SCOTUS knows this.
A lot of comments I've seen on the ballot eligibility issue seem to be a dodge -not ripe for the primary because GOP can decide if he remains. But what if he remains on primary ballots, becomes nominee, and *then* the issue finally ripens and the courts decide he is not eligible for the general election because of the 14th amendment? What happens then? Or if he actually wins (hopefully not and I doubt it but it's a crazy world) and then SCOTUS finally says ineligible?
The Supreme Court needs to sort this out by taking the CO case.
There's a potential further consequence that remains hypothetical at this time and dependant on conviction - that is disqualification based on individual state election or constituitonal eligibility restrictions.
Case in point: Florida does not allow any person to be a candidate, nor to vote, campaign or hold office (for which he/she cannot apperar on a Florida ballot) who is a convicted felon - AND - to gain restitution, a felon must complete a full -term sentence, make full (monetary fines and other) restitution, wait for two to five years period following completion, and then appeal to a separate Florida Clemency Board, headed by the governor. Even a felon appealing a sentence may not hold office, nor appear on a ballot. (Clearly there are legalities that would arise to be be litigated should a presidential candidate become disqualified).
All states have varying disqualification restrictions, only Maine and Washington plus DC allow an immediate reinstatement, but of those remaining, some 37 states have severe restrictions with red states having more restrictiv qualifcations than blue states (for which Republican legislators can thank themselves).
And, finally, if Florida were to disqualify a felon candidate for president, how then could other states not disqualify with similar restrictions.
(1) Jay's current series is doing all of us, and I hope the Democratic Party, an enorrmous favor. However, I think perhaps a 5th Case should be added, and that is the on-going defamation case brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll.
(2) Carroll initially charged Trump in the US District in Manhattan, with rape and defamation and the jury found him guilty of a lesser sex offense and defamation and awarded her $5 Million. (3) However, unable to stifle his endless grievances, Trump went on Truth Social and repeated his original denials and accused her of a familiar list of personal flaws. (3) Ms Carroll went back to the Federal District Court in Manhattan and accused him of defaming her again. The Court pointed out he had already been found guilty of defamation, leaving only the penalty hearing. Trump appealed to the 2nd US Court of Appeals claiming total immunity. Shortly before Christmas, it denied his claim. So next on the Distr8ct Court's docket is the penalty hearing, which will likely make Ms Carroll even richer, and weaken Trump's claim of immunity in other cases.
I think what keeps me hopeful is a lot of the wannabe dictator types that ran for state and federal offices lost in 2022. What keeps me up at night is 3rd party voters.
"Don’t [Republican voters] really just want [Trump] to be as awful, and even criminal, as he can possibly be?"
I find it difficult to look my fellow American neighbors and colleagues who feel this way in the eye and not SMFH.
Can we put this myth to rest, please: "the mere reopening of a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server by the FBI, just weeks before the election, was enough to throw the race to Trump,"
She lost because people liked her even less than locker-room-talking Trump. And she lost because Democrats were frustrated that the primary didn't reflect the will of the people, but was basically a coronation. And, yes, that email server did hurt her - because it exposed her as a hypocrite, not because it was criminal. She had just fired the US Ambassador to Kenya for bypassing DoS IT. "Rules apply to thee, not to me!" was simply not a good look for her.
2016 was a year when we had a choice between a bad candidate and a worse candidate. She never should have been nominated.
Oh please. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes. She won the most votes of any candidate who did not take office and the third most of any candidate in history. If any “myth” needs to be laid to rest it’s that she was a “bad candidate”.
It's true that there were multiple reasons for her losing. Winning in a few big cities but neglecting the rest of the country was another issue. Heck, if it hadn't been for Los Angeles alone, she would have lost the popular vote, too. And that's the exact reason the founding fathers didn't want the President elected by popular vote.
In the end, it only matters because the Democrats have a track record of repeating the mistakes from the past.
The Electoral college is an archaic and ridiculous way to elect a president and should be abolished IMHO. It certainly hasn’t been implemented the way the Founding Father’s intended and is basically a rubber stamp as state electors simply vote the same way their state voters voted.
One person, one vote. Period. Time for something like the National Popular Vote Bill to be passed.
You will be fighting an uphill battle on that. Back in 1789, Delaware wanted to be sure it wasn't constantly outvoted by Virginia. Today, the people in Kansas, Montana, Alaska and Rhode Island don't want to be effectively stripped of their voice by the people in Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. And even though I live in California, I agree with them on that point, even if I don't like how those people vote.
Regardless - your opinion proves the original point: it's an utter myth that the investigation into the email server had anything to do with the outcome of the election. And that myth needs to die, die, die.
LOL. It’s not a myth that the Comey letter announcing he was reopening the investigation mere days before the 2016 election impacted the final results and swung the results a point or two into Trump’s column especially in states that were decided by 1 point or less. The Comey letter impacted the election and the only thing that needs to die, die, die is the denial of its impact.
My candidate of choice isn’t always the one nominated either but I always support the Dem candidate running in the General.