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A story about a pathetic man's downfall


Francisco 2.0

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1 hour ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Forget Trump for a moment despite this being the Trump thread--while his inability to declare candidacy would be great, I additionally fear that DeSantis knows just as well how to apply the same methods of rule--witness his recent Florida administration purge. A lot of this Monday news action still leaves the Democrats wandering around in circles staring at their feet, while Rs reframe the relevant topics. The percentage to which you refer may decide that the quieter authoritarian is preferable to the bombastic one. It's all up in the air at this point.

Valid concern.  At this point, though, I'm kind of taking them one at a time.

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24 minutes ago, Jiggy-Z said:

Kind of.  It is a small sticker, about half the size of a business card.  Cool logo too. Not actual size.spacer.png

That is a cool logo.  However it looks a lot like the USSR flag which means you probably will be targeted for conversation by GQP nuts.

 

s-l500.jpg

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1 hour ago, Js1 said:

This.

Just donate the money or, even better, donate directly to vulnerable House Democrats and to Fetterman, Cortez Masto, Hassan, Kelly, Barnes, Beasley and Warnock.

Why not both? What if you want a “But her emails” hat? Assholes don’t sell a product and donate the proceeds to a good cause. They sell Trump-branded Sharpies after using one to modify the map of a hurricane’s trajectory then keep the proceeds for themself. There’s a big difference. 

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27 minutes ago, 'stache said:

There’s no measurable amount of voters who voted for him that would ever vote against him.

For the Republican base, yes. For non-Republicans, Independents went 54-41 for Biden (25% of the electorate) in 2020 after favoring Trump by 4 in 2016, 46-42. 

He keeps losing the middle. 

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31 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Oh, the violence is coming (again), and this will absolutely be part of the trigger.

The thing is, it was ALWAYS coming.  When a huge swath of the country thinks that laws should only apply to black and brown people and such (I mean.....law enforcement has been executing search warrants in suspect's homes for.....like, forever, this isn't anything new, and MAGAs are not only unconcerned, they "back the blue!").....and then those laws are applied to THEM, the, umm, "real Americans," it is fundamentally incompatible with their worldview.  They have no choice but to resist, violently, because this means that laws apply to them and theirs.  And we can't have that.  Cops, raiding the houses of rich white people?  What is this, communist china nazi germany russia?????

This may turn out to be a brilliant strategy.  Test the waters with this.  Depending on whether and how the country "overcomes" the potential for violence and other types of unrest, the table is set for an indictment.

If the country comes unglued, then an indictment is moot anyway.

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1 minute ago, Js1 said:

For the Republican base, yes. For non-Republicans, Independents went 54-41 for Biden (25% of the electorate) in 2020 after favoring Trump by 4 in 2016, 46-42. 

He keeps losing the middle. 

I trust your analysis of the situation implicitly because you're astute that way.  And that is what my intuition keeps telling me.

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4 minutes ago, Js1 said:

For the Republican base, yes. For non-Republicans, Independents went 54-41 for Biden (25% of the electorate) in 2020 after favoring Trump by 4 in 2016, 46-42. 

He keeps losing the middle. 

How’d he get so many more votes in 2020 than 2016 then?  Did he really make that many new far right voters?

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1 minute ago, Pato del Muerto said:

How’d he get so many more votes in 2020 than 2016 then?  Did he really make that many new far right voters?

He only won ~88% of Republican voters in 2016.  He won 94% in 2020.   He made marginal gains in non-white voters (black/Asian), mostly in Florida and Nevada, and we all know he did better with Hispanics in 2020 for a variety of reasons.

But he lost the middle.  You can't win elections if you lose middle/independent voters.  

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49 minutes ago, Jiggy-Z said:

Kind of.  It is a small sticker, about half the size of a business card.  Cool logo too. Not actual size.spacer.png

You're not fooling anybody, Ivan.

image.png.a1425e4b09d95790d2d357c6a812915d.png

 

There's a goddamn hammer and sickle, you red bastard. I hope somebody sets fire to your lousy Soviet car.

 

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Dang. Horn Dog beat me by a minute. But mine has a car.

 

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So am I right that there are two separate strands to this? 1. Misuse of classified documents. 2. Possession, concealment, destruction, etc. of government records.

The first would be far more serious, but might be clouded by his assertion that he declassified them before leaving office. 

The second would be an easier standard to prove, would apply regardless of the classification status of the documents, and could result in disqualification  from office per the statute quoted upthread.

 

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21 minutes ago, Red Five said:

So he stole about 15 boxes of classified documents, had them shipped to his home a year and a half ago, and refused to return them. 

"This is an outrage! Defund the FBI!"

I mean - that’s certainly not the only evidence of criminal activity that they will find. 

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55 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

They have no choice but to resist, violently, because this means that laws apply to them and theirs.  And we can't have that.  Cops, raiding the houses of rich white people?  What is this, communist china nazi germany russia?????

Them: protected but not bound

Everyone else: bound but not protected

 

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So am I right that there are two separate strands to this? 1. Misuse of classified documents. 2. Possession, concealment, destruction, etc. of government records.
The first would be far more serious, but might be clouded by his assertion that he declassified them before leaving office. 
The second would be an easier standard to prove, would apply regardless of the classification status of the documents, and could result in disqualification  from office per the statute quoted upthread.
 

I highly doubt they executed a search warrant on an ex-president over some missing papers. He also reportedly returned the boxes. I strongly suspect he either didn’t return everything or made illegal copies of top secret materials. And that the search warrant is with respect to something he did with the documents after he stole them and not do much the theft itself.
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The raid is unprecedented but it’s the outcome of unprecedented criminal presidential activity.  The mueller report laid it out, he’s protected from criminal indictment as a sitting president with impeachment the only remedy, after he leaves office though all bets are off.  Why do people think the idea of a self pardon was being considered? Geez.

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5 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:

They have him on tape asking the sec of state of Georgia to “find votes”. This is a federal crime. I’m not why this is hard to understand. You don’t commit crimes no matter what position you hold.

It's like you don't understand that he's white. And "rich." For Christ's sake he plays golf!! AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES??

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13 minutes ago, Horndog said:

So am I right that there are two separate strands to this? 1. Misuse of classified documents. 2. Possession, concealment, destruction, etc. of government records.

The first would be far more serious, but might be clouded by his assertion that he declassified them before leaving office. 

The second would be an easier standard to prove, would apply regardless of the classification status of the documents, and could result in disqualification  from office per the statute quoted upthread.

 

It's all speculation, at this point.

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I really hope some of the boxes pertain to fun conspiracies. What if, as President, he requested all the documents related to the Roswell UFO crash, and he wanted to take them with him to see what the government REALLY knew about it? Maybe he shared them with his dumb friends like Alex Jones. Or the records about the JFK assassination, WTC building 7, the Moon landing, etc. It would be so on brand if some documents about conspiracy theories were the root cause of this.

 

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3 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

So he is a brain-damaged child, but Scott Adams does make a point.  There's a sizeable portion of this country that really needs answers as to what's going on.

This isn't the John Wiley Price investigation (which, by the way, the Feds completely fucked up).  You can't have a big FBI raid, crack a safe, go off with truckloads full of evidence, and then just sit there and do nothing until handing down an indictment two years later.  All the MAGAs will freak the fuck out and say the search was over nothing and was just political intimidation.

And I think the DOJ knows that.

Maybe that is how they would handle a normal political-corruption case.  But this isn't a normal case.  They need to have an indictment ready to go in short order so that they can go public and explain exactly what Trump did and why a search warrant was proper.  Otherwise, this MAGA shit is just going to metastasize.  

What about the election window - usually DOJ goes silent approaching the election unless of course “her emails.”

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3 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

So he is a brain-damaged child, but Scott Adams does make a point.  There's a sizeable portion of this country that really needs answers as to what's going on.

This isn't the John Wiley Price investigation (which, by the way, the Feds completely fucked up).  You can't have a big FBI raid, crack a safe, go off with truckloads full of evidence, and then just sit there and do nothing until handing down an indictment two years later.  All the MAGAs will freak the fuck out and say the search was over nothing and was just political intimidation.

And I think the DOJ knows that.

Maybe that is how they would handle a normal political-corruption case.  But this isn't a normal case.  They need to have an indictment ready to go in short order so that they can go public and explain exactly what Trump did and why a search warrant was proper.  Otherwise, this MAGA shit is just going to metastasize.  

What answer do you think they'd even accept?

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Forget Trump for a moment despite this being the Trump thread--while his inability to declare candidacy would be great, I additionally fear that DeSantis knows just as well how to apply the same methods of rule--witness his recent Florida administration purge. A lot of this Monday news action still leaves the Democrats wandering around in circles staring at their feet, while Rs reframe the relevant topics. The percentage to which you refer may decide that the quieter authoritarian is preferable to the bombastic one. It's all up in the air at this point.

To be fair to the Democrats, reframing relevant topics for the base is exponentially easier for the Republicans.
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5 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

I really hope some of the boxes pertain to fun conspiracies. What if, as President, he requested all the documents related to the Roswell UFO crash, and he wanted to take them with him to see what the government REALLY knew about it? Maybe he shared them with his dumb friends like Alex Jones. Or the records about the JFK assassination, WTC building 7, the Moon landing, etc. It would be so on brand if some documents about conspiracy theories were the root cause of this.

Who did he hire to read them? Because he’s not making it through three pages let alone 15 boxes. 

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3 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The best case is that they have proof he was selling/trading classified documents to foreign countries.  That would shut up all but the most diehard trumpers.

You make it sound like he's an asset to a foreign government and an unscrupulous "business" man. What you allege he is doing would be traitorous! We're talking about an American president here. Show some respect!

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1 minute ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Who did he hire to read them? Because he’s not making it through three pages let alone 15 boxes. 

I assume he was going to get an executive summary from the FSB. 

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9 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

So he is a brain-damaged child, but Scott Adams does make a point.  There's a sizeable portion of this country that really needs answers as to what's going on.

This isn't the John Wiley Price investigation (which, by the way, the Feds completely fucked up).  You can't have a big FBI raid, crack a safe, go off with truckloads full of evidence, and then just sit there and do nothing until handing down an indictment two years later.  All the MAGAs will freak the fuck out and say the search was over nothing and was just political intimidation.

And I think the DOJ knows that.

Maybe that is how they would handle a normal political-corruption case.  But this isn't a normal case.  They need to have an indictment ready to go in short order so that they can go public and explain exactly what Trump did and why a search warrant was proper.  Otherwise, this MAGA shit is just going to metastasize.  

I can also see the opposite.  They know that it has huge political implications, so they carry it out to the letter exactly how it would look it it was executed on John Q Public precisely because they know that any deviation from normal will be viewed through a political lens and used to smear the FBI as political actors.

 

Also, interesting to recall, this was just in June:

n_maddow_barr_200205_1920x1080.jpg

 

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3 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

We can choose to peacefully go on in a fascist honky-run banana republic watching our favorite shows on the TV, or we can pull the rock off this next of scorpions and see if we can survive the stings to restore an actual repubic.

It’s a difficult choice. The surest way to defuse the powder keg is to let the rightwing power-grab plan play out. The right is far more likely to start a civil war if they don’t get their way. But how shitty would it be to live in an oppressive (but at least not war-torn) white nationalist state? 

On the other hand, we could enforce the rules and resist the attempted coups. But that greatly increases the risk that the right will start shooting and the government’s ability to enforce its rules diminishes. How much faith do we have in the US military and the police to side with democracy and constitutional principles when doing so favors the left wing? Senior officers, sure. But the bulk of enlisted troops are from deep red rural America. You think they’re gonna be cool shooting their hunting buddies from back home, the ones they rabidly agree with about politics and culture?

We’re in a really fucked up predicament at the moment. Centrists and liberals generally don’t understand how ripe conditions are for a civil war. And they don’t understand how mentally prepared is the far (and even not so far) right, which practically views civil war as the inevitable fulfillment of prophecy.
 

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