Originally posted by vindicktive vinny
sounds like some excuse cowards would say.
Dying is easy. It's living that's hard.
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Originally posted by stl1
LOCK HIM UP…LOCK HIM UP…
The Washington Post
Opinions | Prosecuting Trump would set a risky precedent. Not prosecuting would be worse.
Opinion by Matthew Dallek
When President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, the odds of his standing trial for obstruction of justice seemed high: His actions undermining the Watergate investigation had been tape-recorded, and his part in the coverup led to pressure on the legal system to hold him accountable. In September 1974, however, one month after Nixon left office, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. Ford later told a congressional subcommittee that the pardon was designed to “shift our attentions from the pursuit of a fallen President to the pursuit of the urgent needs of a rising nation.”
It didn’t — not in the immediate aftermath and, in some ways, not ever. Although views later softened, many Americans at the time saw the pardon as a mistake. Some were livid. One powerful man had essentially condoned the criminality of another. The get-out-of-jail-free card exacerbated public cynicism and deepened the nation’s social fractures. The White House switchboard lit up with calls that ran 8 to 1 against Ford’s action. The New York Times captured some of the liberal rage when it described the pardon as an affront to “the American system of justice.” A president who thought he was doing the right thing had taken justice into his own hands, casting doubt on a bedrock idea: Justice is blind; no one is above the law.
Nearly five decades later, Joe Biden is president, and a pardon for Donald Trump isn’t happening. But whether Trump will eventually be prosecuted for his conduct in the White House is more of a conundrum: If the country crosses this inviolate threshold, all hell will break loose. If we don’t cross it, all hell will break loose. There will be no “shifting our attentions” by advocates of either course. And whichever path the nation follows will have lasting repercussions. One thing is increasingly clear — fear will play a greater role than facts in determining it.
If Trump were indicted, he would become the first former president to stand criminal trial. Prosecutorial threats are multiplying: Bank and tax fraud charges are under consideration in Manhattan. In Fulton County, Ga., a special grand jury is investigating Trump’s interference in the 2020 election. In a Washington courtroom, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told a convicted Jan. 6 Capitol rioter that he was a pawn in a scheme by more powerful people, and the legal community is debating whether Trump’s seeming incitement of the insurrection has opened him up to criminal charges. The National Archives requested that the Justice Department open an investigation into Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents that the government recently retrieved from his Florida estate. Trump still faces legal jeopardy for obstructing justice during Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election (remember that one?). During the 2016 campaign, Trump allegedly orchestrated hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels (the charges that landed his handler Michael Cohen in prison referred to Trump as Individual #1). This list is hardly exhaustive and omits the dozen-plus civil lawsuits and civil investigations Trump faces.
In some cases, prosecutors would need to prove “intent” — a high bar. But it isn’t insurmountable; Trump’s words and deeds have demonstrated that his actions tend to be intentional. If an ordinary citizen had pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election; systematically misrepresented the value of his assets to the IRS and banks; funneled money to silence a paramour; or put government documents down a toilet, this person would almost certainly be facing an array of criminal charges. More than a year after he left office, Trump isn’t facing any such thing yet.
The stakes are enormous. The rule of law, the notion that we are all equal under our criminal justice system, is among the noblest of principles but also the ugliest of myths. The question of putting Trump on trial before a jury of his peers is a test for a principle of democracy that has often proved out of reach for most Americans.
Historically, White and wealthy citizens have sometimes managed to avoid the consequences of their criminality. For decades, White mobs lynched and terrorized African Americans with impunity, and this legacy of a racist justice system, separate and unequal, looms over the debate about charging Trump. The system remains deeply unfair, biased against Black people and favoring the wealthy who are able to afford the best lawyers. Nonviolent drug offenses for the poor have resulted in decades-long prison sentences, while hardly any bankers stood trial for reckless and probably illegal activities that helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis.
With Trump in the White House, his friends and allies already had their own system of justice: Trump-loving Dinesh D’Souza (campaign finance violations), Trump-whisperer Roger Stone (witness tampering), Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn (lying to the FBI), Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort (tax fraud) and Trump son-in-law’s father Charles Kushner (tax evasion and witness tampering) are all convicted felons who received pardons from Trump or had their sentences commuted by him. Three of those convictions occurred during Trump’s presidency.
Now this unequal system of justice faces a crossroads. Any decision about prosecuting the former president centers on two conflicting fears: Inaction mocks the nation’s professed ideal that no one sits above the law — and Americans might wonder whether our democracy can survive what amounts to the explicit approval of lawlessness. But prosecuting deposed leaders is the stuff of banana republics.
The fear of the banana republic is hardly an idle one — and here Trump is a central figure, too. He has boasted of his willingness to go that route: In 2016, he ran by pledging that he intended to use the power of federal law enforcement to help his friends and pay back his enemies. His rallies routinely erupted with chants of “lock her up,” directed at his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When as president he told then-FBI Director James Comey that he should be “letting Flynn go,” he was doing as he had promised, using the presidency to try to save an ally from criminal investigation. Trump sees the law and law enforcement as a weapon: He wielded it to protect himself and rout his foes, as when his attorney general William P. Barr ordered the violent breakup of peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations near Lafayette Square. Trump has said that if he gets a second term, he would pardon hundreds of violent insurrectionists charged in the attack on the Capitol. More recently, his remarks about the investigation his administration began under special counsel John Durham suggest that he is still game to go after foes by wildly accusing them of crimes. Trump continually mischaracterizes the Durham investigation as having shown that Clinton’s aides “spied” on his campaign and his presidency, and he issued a statement saying that “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.” This was “treason at the highest level,” he said.
Of course, there’s also an appearance of impropriety when a Democratic elected official investigates Trump, lending a whiff of credence to the notion that politics sway prosecution decisions regardless of which side is doing it. Biden himself, before he was elected (and before Trump committed some of his most egregious misdeeds), said that prosecuting him would be a “very unusual thing and probably not very … good for democracy,” although he also promised to leave any decisions in the hands of the Justice Department. Indicting could trigger violence, spark a cycle of retribution once Republicans take back power, and erode yet another democratic norm.
But the far graver peril in this situation is inaction, a paralyzing refusal to hold Trump criminally liable for his behavior. The country has seen what happens when lawlessness triumphs; when some citizens feel they can do pretty much what they want with impunity. As historian Eric Foner has pointed out, in 1873, in reaction to the election of a biracial government in Colfax, La., a White mob assaulted the county courthouse, murdered a group of African Americans and seized control of the town government without substantial consequences. In 1874, in New Orleans, a white supremacist organization known as the White League tried to topple the state government (U.S. troops at least suppressed this riot). In 1898, long after Reconstruction, armed Whites overturned a duly elected biracial government in Wilmington, N.C. Because there was no law enforcement, no accountability and no consequences, such violence was condoned, sanctioned by the state and some leaders — which thus empowered anti-democratic forces for decades across the Deep South and elsewhere. (One of the impeachment charges against Andrew Johnson said he had fomented post-Civil War white supremacist violence in New Orleans and Memphis.)
Lessons from overseas also paint a bracing picture: Refusing to hold officials accountable for crimes emboldens them. Putting someone above the law is simply unsustainable for any mature democratic system. In the 20th century, Mexico’s long-time ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party refused to prosecute senior officials for corruption, choosing what three political scientists called “stability” in the political system over “accountability” in the legal one, and corruption became endemic. These scholars argue that nations transitioning toward democracy sometimes do better when they don’t prosecute former leaders and instead allow “democracy to take root.”
But the United States claims to be an advanced democracy. The costs of not prosecuting Trump have already been significant — and they’re already grounds for fear. Trump continues to stir up violence; he acts as if he remains untouchable. He praised the anti-public-health trucker convoy that shut down a key bridge linking Detroit to Ontario and has wreaked havoc in Ottawa: “I see they have Trump signs all over the place and I’m proud that they do,” Trump bragged to “Fox & Friends,” before suggesting that the truckers do the same in the United States, an even greater “tinderbox.” Trump’s acolytes take his cue. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) expressed his hope that the truckers would bring their mayhem inside America’s borders, while the Republican National Committee defended the police-beating armed rioters at the Capitol who sought to block Biden’s electoral certification by Congress as engaged in “legitimate political discourse.”
Although Trump has long sanctioned violence among his supporters — calling white supremacists in Charlottesville “fine people”; ordering the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”; urging a crowd to “march” on the Capitol and “fight like hell” to overturn the allegedly stolen election; tweeting “liberate Michigan” to followers a few months before a plot to kidnap and murder the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was discovered — the failure to prosecute Trump for any crimes he himself commits empowers him to do it louder.
Writing in the Atlantic, David Frum asked: “Will the politics of violence be accepted in the United States — or will it be punished and discredited?” Trump’s supporters are watching. After years of his burn-it-all-down oratory and above-the-law governance, they are emboldened. Like him, they see themselves as answering to an ideology, not to the laws. Like him, they claim to be fighting for freedom, even if their acts intimidate, harm and harass.
Not prosecuting Trump has already signaled to his supporters that accountability is for suckers. “The warning signs of instability that we have identified in other places are the same signs that, over the past decade, I’ve begun to see on our own soil,” political scientist Barbara Walter wrote in “How Civil Wars Start.” The signs include a hollowing out of institutions, “manipulated to serve the interests of some over others.” Trump’s continued ability to manipulate institutions to serve his interests and his supporters’ interests has eroded yet another democratic norm. “I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president,” Trump told the conservative organization Turning Point USA when he held the office. Until the criminal justice system stops him, he will continue to believe that.
Ford’s pardon of Nixon was noble in its intentions: He was trying to unite the country, and he expended political capital to issue it, ultimately losing his 1976 campaign largely as a result. And in fact the pardon never rehabilitated Nixon. Unlike Trump, Nixon left office severely weakened. His approval rating stood at 24 percent; comparatively few Americans were clamoring for him to make a comeback bid in 1976, and most Republican officials had abandoned him. He was never invited to another Republican convention. The “big lie” — that Democrats stole the election from Trump — has far more traction now than any Nixon-was-robbed sentiment had then. But Ford’s pardon still did damage: Nixon never had to face a jury, never had to pay for his crimes. In his post-presidency, he published books, made television appearances and consulted with other presidents.
These days, it’s fashionable to say the system worked after Watergate. But that’s not quite right. The system forced the president to resign his office, but it also protected the disgraced ex-president from criminal punishment. In 1974, Americans viewed the pardon as a blow to the rule of law. It’s not too late to learn from Ford’s mistake.
tl/dr
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It's not your mental health, it's the drugs. Get off the drugs first, then make life-changing decisions.
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Originally posted by stl1
Good always eventually triumphs over evil.
Which means your ilk won't last much longer.
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2022-02-18 at 4:57 PM UTC
in
Ban Wariat
Originally posted by Bradley
id spit on someone if they said that irl when i was discussing removing a chilid molestor. get fucking real dude
Sorry. The slope is much too slippery. Today, it's talking about pedophilia. Tomorrow, it's talking about something someone doesn't like. Speech is just words on a screen, frequencies in the air, signals in the distance. You can choose to not make contact with it, if you so choose. It's a matter of personal management, rather than an issue of mob overreach.
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Originally posted by Quick Mix Ready
I knock people out cold who do that.
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2022-02-18 at 3:07 PM UTC
in
Ban Wariat
Originally posted by aldra
I thought democracy was one of our values
lol.
Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
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Originally posted by stl1
Trump "Betewwn A Rock And A Hard Place"
WE GOT HIM NOW!
Newsweek
Judge Knocks Trump Lawyer for Claiming He's a 'Protected Class'
Jason Lemon
Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron pushed back after former President Donald Trump's attorney said her client was part of a "protected class" and facing discrimination from New York Attorney General Letitia James.
James and her team are seeking to force Trump to comply with a subpoena to answer questions under oath as part of a New York investigation into his business practices. Engoron heard arguments in the case on Thursday and issued a decision later in the day, ruling that Trump and two of his children are not part of a "protected class" and must comply with subpoenas and testify as part of the attorney general's probe.
Trump's attorney, Alina Habba, suggested that the entire investigation was discriminatory and due to the former president's politics. Habba argued that James, a Democrat, aimed to prevent Trump from running for president and winning again in 2024. She described him as part of a "protected class."
Engoron, a Democrat, rejected Habba's assessment of Trump.
"The traditional protected classes are race, religion, etc.," Engoron asserted. "Donald Trump doesn't fit that model. He's not being discriminated against based on race, is he? Or religion, is he? He's not a protected class. If Ms. James has a thing against him, OK, that's not in my understanding unlawful discrimination. He's just a bad guy she should go after as the chief law enforcement officer of the state."
Trump previously said in a statement this week that James' investigation into him and his business is a "political and racist attack." He recently told Washington Examiner that James' investigation into his business was due to her political ambitions. She "campaigned on a whole issue of, 'I'll get Trump. I'll get Trump.' And that's all it was," he told the conservative publication.
Engoron went on to rule on Thursday afternoon that Trump and two of his adult children, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., must comply with James' subpoenas and answer investigators' questions under oath.
"In the final analysis, a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities' principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so," the state judge wrote in the decision.
Trump is expected to appeal the ruling. If the decision is ultimately upheld, Trump could still claim his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination. However, he has previously criticized others for utilizing that right. Using the Fifth Amendment could potentially backfire as well.
"If Trump takes the Fifth, it can be used against him in the civil case being developed by the New York Attorney General. If Trump doesn't take the Fifth, the Manhattan DA can use his words against him," former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said in a Thursday tweet. "He's between a rock and a hard place."
You do know they don't call him 'Teflon Don' for nothing, don't you?
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Originally posted by WellHung
Get drunk and blow ur head off, instead. Be a REAL man.
Or kill yourself by old age! Now, there's what a REAL man does!
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Originally posted by CandyRein
😴
Me sheepy …gonna take a few puffs and get some sleep probably..or maybe get into a jam session.. ya never know after puffing nam saying ahaaaa
If you're sheepy, you shleep.
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2022-02-17 at 2:01 PM UTC
in
Random Thoughts
Originally posted by CandyRein
Speedy Gonzales had a cousin named Slow Poke Rodriguez 💗
He slow, but he carry a gun.
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Originally posted by Speedy Parker
Some dumb ass traded his right nut for my left nostril. Wanna play that game?
You ripped off his right nut with your left nostril? That's some serious taekwondo right there.
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2022-02-16 at 8:57 PM UTC
in
Who Should Be Next?
"Hey. Just settle dow..."
WHACK
"Mr. You're cra..."
WHACK, WHACK
"Are you out of your mi..."
WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK...
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2022-02-16 at 4:52 AM UTC
in
Food card reupped
So Biden has a heart after all, eh?
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You've lost all your marbles, kid. I strongly advise you search for them.
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Originally posted by Quick Mix Ready
as Kr0z might of said, looks like a Shit-Pussy with Teeth
is that photoshopped?
No, it's real.
So is this...
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Originally posted by Speedy Parker
Hillary has had people killed.
Yeah, but Trump made some mean Tweets that hurt people's feelings. Much, much worse than having hundreds of people assassinated.
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Originally posted by stl1
Rump disgraced the Presidency and the country.
Hillary was the most qualified Presidential candidate ever. Ex First lady for 8 years. A Senator. A Secretary of State.
Rump inherited his fortune, went bankrupt several times and hosted a reality show while bragging about grabbing women by the pussy and having an affair with a porn star while his wife tended their infant.
What president
hasn't disgraced the country, you stupid little brainwashed fuck? You just don't get it, do you?
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