Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the recent controversy over President Donald Trump’s use of “lynching” and what it portends for any Senate impeachment trial.
Here is the column:
This week Americans saw a preview of the likely impeachment trial of President Trump. No, it was not the testimony of William Taylor, the acting United States ambassador to Ukraine, who certainly added damaging information on an alleged quid pro quo demanded by Trump. Rather, it was the kerfuffle over Trump using the word “lynching.”
Trump thought it was appropriate to compare the investigation of his alleged misconduct to lynchings, a word more often reserved for racist murders carried out in this country for decades. It was yet another Trump tweet that caused many of us to cringe over his language. Former Vice President Joe Biden expressed shock that Trump would use the term. Republicans and Democrats joined in objecting to his tweet.
Then the stories began to surface of some of the same politicians using the same word in the past, including Biden, who actually used it in the same context of impeachment. This is all a foreshadowing of what would come with the impeachment of Trump. The problem in Washington has never been a lack of corruption, just a lack of clarity. The public is in store for a drawn out process that takes the hypocrisy over this one word and multiplies it a thousandfold in a trial over self-dealing in office.
As I have said before, there is no question that the use of public office for personal gain is an impeachable offense, including the withholding of military aid in exchange for the investigation of a political opponent. You just have to prove it happened. If you can establish intent to use public office for personal gain, you have a viable impeachment offense. The problem then becomes not the charge but the members of jury.
The Senate may be the worst jury in world. As someone who has tried a case before that body, I would move to strike half of them for cause in a real courtroom. In that impeachment trial of a judge, I had jury figures like Republican Senator David Vitter, who had escaped criminal charges over his admitted use of prostitutes in Washington. Indeed, he sat there in judgment of a judge accused of improper conduct involving gambling and other acts, such as the payment of a stripper by a lawyer.
Trump would be judged on self-dealing by a jury that would include Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, charged with corruption for exchanging official acts for gifts from a wealthy doctor. All politicians are self-dealers who use their offices to advance their ambitions. It is in their blood. The fact is that “public service” often means “self-service” to those in political power. Watching a trial on self-dealing with this jury is like having Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman sit on a college admissions board. They certainly have experience, just not the right kind.
That is why the “lynching” controversy is so instructive. Biden expressed absolute revulsion with Trump using the term. “Impeachment is not lynching, it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It is despicable.” He is certainly correct, but that is not what he believed when a Democratic president was being impeached.
During the impeachment of President Clinton, Biden declared, “History will question whether or not this was a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that, in fact, met the standard.” To make matters worse, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Representative Gregory Meeks, and other Democrats also have used the term.
When confronted with his own use of the term, in the same context with the same underlying point, Biden insisted there was no comparison. Him using the “despicable” word was merely incautious, while Trump using it was “deliberative.” Biden apologized but added that Trump “chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word ‘lynching’ and continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily.” The same act is apparently a venial sin for a Democrat but a mortal sin for a Republican.
The same spin will be required in any trial, as shown by the business dealings of Hunter Biden. Joe Biden dismissed any controversy as entirely without merit, but the windfall payments to his son from a Ukrainian company will not be so easily set aside in a Senate trial. A respected ambassador said he was so concerned about those dealings with one of the most corrupt Ukrainian figures that he raised the matter with the staff of the vice president. He said he was shut down in his efforts.
The same is true of the outrage over seeking investigations or evidence from foreign governments. The Clinton campaign denied that it funded the dossier investigation of Trump until the media proved that it had lied. Former British spy Christopher Steele sought information from foreign sources, including Russian intelligence. The Obama administration investigated Trump campaign officials and sought information from foreign governments on alleged meddling in the 2016 election.
None of that excuses Trump if he demanded quid pro quo on Ukraine. The question is whether a compelling case can be made if Democrats have to excuse the actions of themselves. It will not be enough simply to claim their corrupt contracts or foreign inquiries were not as “deliberative” as those of Trump. If a case can be made against Trump, it will require a narrative that offers the public some clarity to distinguish the conduct of the defendant from those sitting in judgment in a Senate trial.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He also served as the last lead counsel in a Senate impeachment trial and testified as a constitutional expert in the Clinton impeachment hearings. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
It only takes a couple of minutes to look up the true definition of “lynching,” which dates back to the Revolutionary War when Charles Lynch of Campbell County, Virginia set up his own court and imposed punishment on Tories. The real definition of “lynching” is a trial by an unauthorized court.
Yep.
Yes indeed, Right wingers want to fight over the simple fact that the use of thousands of public lynchings up into the 1950s as both murder and systematic intimidation against blacks might cause them more sensitivity to the word then say Charles Lynch’s relatives or the descendants of cattle rustlers. Might also want to bring up the fact that “there were black slave dealers in Africa, so what’s with the attitude against whites?”.
I think this is a winning strategy for earning back black voters to the GOP, their home base until FDR. Keep it up.
The total number of blacks lynched in the United States over an 80 year period was about 3,500. About 1/2 occurred prior to 1902 and 97% prior to 1935. The typical Southern county hasn’t seen a lynching since about 1918. The very last occurred in Mississippi in 1959.
The number of metropolitan centers in the South during that era averaged roughly 50. You’d have seen around 1 or 2 lynchings reported in a given metropolitan paper in a typical year.
DSS, can you provide us with the data of the annual killings of blacks in Democratically controlled cities and compare those deaths to the annual number of black lynchings?
We all are concerned with prejudice and killings but it seems some of us only recognize the deaths when Democrats aren’t involved.
How many of those lynchings of blacks were done by Democrats. Is there a number on that?
The homicide rate in Baltimore has been running at 55 per 100,000 in recent years. It was 37 per 100,000 prior to the BLM hoo-ha. So, that’s an increment of 18 per 100,000, or just shy of 110 homicides per year. Over 32 years, you get three generation’s worth of lynching. NB, 99% of the black population of this country is not resident in Baltimore City.
To make sense of what interests anon1, see Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed.
Thanks DSS. Great book as are all of Sowells. I recomment that people read Sowell’s books because he understands data and uses it so well. The left cannot argue with most of what he says.
He describes being a Marxist and doing his PhD on Marx. Then he checked the data and low and behold he changed 180 degrees.
Anon – the meaning of the word “lynching” in the vernacular is clear.
“verb
gerund or present participle: lynching; noun: lynching
(of a mob) kill (someone), especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial.
“her father had been lynched for a crime he didn’t commit””
The Left wants to suddenly pretend that lynching only refers to a Democratic organization, the KKK, terrorizing black people many years ago. This was a tactic used to try to force blacks to vote Democrat, and submit to Jim Crow laws.
But that is not the actual definition of the term.
The PC police should stop trying to take control of the English language, and arbitrarily assign different meanings as it suits them, never of course, to apply to them. Thug does not mean a black man, either.
When Biden et al called Clinton’s impeachment a lynching, did it infer that Clinton was suffering a similar level of terrorism as either slaves in the Antebellum South, or blacks under the Klan? When Republicans called the abuse of Justice Clarence Thomas a lynching, were they referring to attempted murder?
No. And anyone with a grasp of the English language, not suffering political poisoning, would be aware of this fact.
Go fly a kite …. or something else.
Facts do seem to trouble you and trigger hostility…
Anon1 – you probably mean LBJ instead of FDR
In addition, the lynching, or attempt thereof, of an innocent man is one of the most common plot devices in Hollywood.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – uses his arrow to prevent the lynching of his friends, including a child.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Summersbee – the execution of the Doppleganger could be considered a lynching, as everyone know it was not him
Practical Magic – the witch survived because her magic snapped the rope
Hang ’em High – actually it was the shooting that was the attempted lynching
Big Jake – John Wayne interferes with a lynching of a shepherd, buys his flock, and then pays him to take them to market and sell them all.
Places in the Heart – that was a Klan lynching that Sally Fields and her blind boarder prevented
High Planes Drifter – lynching of the sherif through a fatal whipping. He come back and hell ensues.
Clint Eastwood made a living in one of his movie, turning in his partner, a wanted man, for the bounty, and then shooting him down from his hanging so they could do it all again. Was that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly?
Outlaw Jose Wales
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
The Quick and the Dead
Back to the Future III
Shanghai Noon
Quigley Down Under
The A Team (A bunch of Times)
Machete Kills
The Mountie (he is lucky she was a quick study)
Bonanza (A Bunch of Times)
Gunsmoke (A Bunch of Times)
How many times has it been done where the hero severs the hangman’s rope with a bullet, arrow, ax, sword, laser blaster, magic…?
These are just a few of the many movies that use the plot device of the successful, or averted, lynching of an innocent man without authorization. It refers to mob justice, an oxymoron.
Shall I get into the use of “lynching” as the fight against injustice in literature? Ballads? Opera? Poetry?
A trend that I see is for the Left to make a wildly inaccurate claim, and keep repeating it, until their followers mindlessly repeat it.
Claiming that using the term “lynching” to apply to mob injustice is either racist, or belittles what blacks went through being terrorized by the Klan is absurd. People who now claim the term must not be used in any reference other than to blacks, have used the term themselves over their lifetimes. They must be fully aware of its meaning in the English language. How do they set aside that knowledge and join the flock of bleating sheep? Is it the rush for virtue?
I’m sorry. Were you talking to me?
Anon – false accuser who mugs and mocks when presented with facts. This is typical of someone overfaced with an argument they cannot win.
Yeah, that’s it.
DEFICT EDGES TOWARDS $1 TRILLION MARK
TRUMP’S TAX CUT BLAMED
The United States federal budget deficit jumped 26 percent in the 2019 fiscal year to $984 billion, reaching its highest level in seven years as the government was forced to borrow more money to pay for President Trump’s tax and spending policies, official figures showed on Friday.
The deficit has now swelled nearly 50 percent since Mr. Trump took office and it is projected to top $1 trillion in 2020. It did not hit $1 trillion in fiscal 2019, which ended Sept. 30, but that was largely the result of Mr. Trump’s tariffs on trading partners like China, which brought in more than $70 billion in revenue.
Annual budget deficits have now increased for four consecutive years, the first such run since the early 1980s. That is a sharp rebuke to Mr. Trump, who promised as a presidential candidate to eliminate deficits within eight years by cutting spending and expanding the economy.
The rising levels of red ink have come despite a period of sustained economic growth, when budget deficits typically fall as households earn more money, corporations make higher profits and fewer people use safety net programs like unemployment benefits and food stamps. The United States entered its longest expansion on record in July and the jobless rate is at a 50-year low, yet the deficit has continued to widen.
The deficit is growing in large part because tax receipts are falling, as Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts continue to siphon revenue from the Treasury. The numbers reflect the fact that Mr. Trump’s most significant legislative achievement is not paying for itself, as Republicans have said it would. In fact, tax revenue for the last two years has fallen more than $400 billion short of what the Congressional Budget Office projected in June 2017, six months before the tax law was passed.
The annual budget shortfall is the highest since 2012, when the unemployment rate was twice as high, topping 7 percent, and the economy was emerging from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. By 2029, the national debt is projected to reach its highest level as a share of the economy since the immediate aftermath of World War II.
In the year through September, the pace of government spending has grown twice as fast as that of tax revenue, with higher outlays on Medicare, Social Security and military spending.
Edited from: “Federal Budget Deficit Swelled To Nearly $1 Trillion In 2019”
Today’s New York Times
Congress writes appropriations bills, Peter.
Well let’s go with that, Tabby. Republicans were still controlling congress when this fiscal year began. So Republicans own this deficit. It was also a Republican congress that passed the tax cut that ballooned this deficit.
Actually, the only ‘control’ the Republicans have over the upper chamber is the committee chairmanships. The parliamentary rules assure that little gets done and the the monkey-wrench caucus of Republicans (Murkowski, Portman, et al) would prevent any decisive action anyway. These tiresome careerists are the ‘moderates’ you fancy are so dandy.
When it comes to spending there is a tug of war but to simplify things all one has to do is look at the Democrat’s front runneer Elizabeth Warren and add up the expenses she wishes to bring to the table.
“Peter,” yeah, huh?
It’s the format, stupid!
LOL!
Here’s a case of lynching folks may or may not know about. From 1913 or so. I’ll try and recite the facts as history records them. People can make of it what they will.
Mary Phagan was a child laborer working in a textile sweatshop in Georgia. Somebody strangled and murdered her and her body was found in the cellar of the factory. The Superintendent, a Jewish fellow from New York, Leo Frank, was arrested along with a couple black workers, the night watch and a janitor. Frank was prosecuted and convicted of murder of his 13 year old worker.
The prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of the janitor, who said he was an accomplice. The defense argued he was the perpetrator. Unsuccessfully. The attempt to blame the black man for the crime of murder of the 13 year old white girl Mary Phagan did not work for the Jewish defendant.
Frank was a respected member of the Jewish community in New York and had good lawyers who filed many appeals, which were unsuccessful. But, the Georgia governor commuted his sentence from capital to life.
Outraged, citizens stormed the jail and lynched Leo Frank, hung him by the neck until dead.
This incident, usually, is not called the Mary Phagan case. It’s called the Leo Frank case. It is attributed with being a catalyst for the rise of an organization called ADL. Anti-Defamation league of Bnai Brith.
it’s interesting today that there’s no wiki entry for Mary Phagan, the child laborer victim, but there’s one for Leo Frank. If you find a link for Mary Phagan, it will lead back to the one for Leo Frank. Evidently today, even in this era of female empowerment etc., the victim, well, she’s just a footnote. Anyhow, here’s another source for this episode and some commentary on it
https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/did-leo-frank-kill-mary-phagan-106-years-later-we-might-finally-find-out-for-sure/
“The spectacle of a Jim Crow–era court relying on a black man’s testimony to convict a white man of murder was remarkable, but the nation remembers the case because of what happened next. Following extensive coverage in the press and appeals that ran all the way to the United States Supreme Court, Governor John Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence in June 1915. Shortly thereafter, a group of men from Marietta, Phagan’s hometown, abducted Frank from the Georgia prison farm in Milledgeville, drove him to Marietta, and lynched him. Several months later, the Ku Klux Klan, which had disbanded following Reconstruction, reestablished itself at a cross-burning atop Stone Mountain.
The Frank case opened a deep vein of anti-Semitism in America, unleashing furies that remain part of the national psyche. (The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 to combat those furies.) As a result, any discussion of the subject is difficult. Emotions about it run strong, and, while a majority now believes the factory superintendent was guiltless, others resent what they regard as a knee-jerk acceptance of that fact. Howard’s investigators will need to keep this in mind if they are to vindicate Frank. The affair pitted Jew against Gentile, white against black, rural against urban. Regardless of the outcome, not everyone will be happy”
I read a 600 page book on this incident. The lynching involved many of the leading business and civic leaders of Marietta were involved.
Frank was a resident of Atlanta, originally from NY. He and his family lived just a few blocks south of downtown, within walking distance of the wherehouse. As I recall, the prosecution locked in on Franks not so much as a matter of anti-semitism, and certainly not to benefit the black witness and certain murderer, but more as a reluctance to admit their mistake. Certainly anti-semitism made it easier and fueled the lynching.
Mary Phagan worked in a factory which made pencils, not a textile factory. Leo Frank was the factory manager. No clue why you say ‘sweat shop’.
i called it a sweat shop cuz it was in Georgia back when no A/C so it was sweaty. that’s also what people generally call these factories employing child laborers. if they weren’t a garment factor fine thanks for the correction but don’t get too punctillious about pencils
employing child laborers.
She was just shy of 14 at the time she was murdered. People pushing child labor laws in that era wanted the age of 14 as a lower bound for employing the young. NB, people agitating against child labor tended to be bourgeois and their options with their young were not as constrained as those in the wage-earning strata.
You’ll recall Harry Truman grew up more-or-less middle class, his father engaged in a mix of small business and farming. He was one of the odd minority of his cohort (15% or so) who earned a high school diploma. His brother left school at age 12. Among my ancestors a generation or two earlier were several men who built businesses. One left school at age 12 and secured an apprenticeship as a turner; another was apprenticed to a shoemaker in adolescence; and another landed his first job (at a sawmill) at age 14.
Mary Phagan’s mother was a widow for over a decade. Leaving school and getting wage work was with scant doubt the family’s best option.
OK. i think i agree with you. i started drawing a payroll check when I was 13 but it was just a few hours a week. my grandfather was full time by that age and never looked back. I know people my age who started working same age in china and they’re doing just fine today as well.
My suspicion is that Frank was ‘not from around here’ and that removed a bias that might otherwise have protected him. His Jewishness was a component of that, but not necessarily a crucial one.
You read accounts of the case and it amazes you how quick-and-dirty the investigation was and techniques they employed which would never be used today (such as arranging for confrontations between witnesses offering contradictory information). What also hits you in summaries of people’s testimony is the incredible to-the-minute recollection of just when they visited his office on that day. Evidently one angle Frank’s attorneys employed was to attempt to build a detailed timeline to demonstrate that there was no window in which he could have committed the crime.
One other thing was the subsequent account of the office messenger nearly 70 years later. If he was on the level, it appears that his mother and father sized up the situation and figured that the local authorities wanted a blood sacrifice, and if their son told what he knew, he might end up in the docket in place of the other three the authorities were investigating.
That’s all correct from remembrance of the book, which offers a depressing look at the “good old days” in Atlanta. The case drew much national attention.
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Shall-Rise-Murder-Lynching/dp/0679764232
a lot of these old fashioned methods pre Miranda were pretty effective.
I don’t know what to make of the recanting of the one witness late in life. it may be as you suggest or it may be that over the decades it became clear to him that the important people wanted him to recant, so he did
as for Frank’s Jewishness, I don’t know what role it had, but the ADL built its multi-millions of dollars of endowment saying so. I’ll take them at their word that the locals didn’t like Jews, and ones from New York even less. That is not really a stretch of the imagination.
in spite of bias however, the jury may have come to the correct conclusion. just because there is a social bias against an accused, does not mean that the accused is necessarily innocent. this escapes a lot of people these days.
OT: Awhile back Peter Hill was arguing Project Veritas was lying and I think this might be one of the cases Peter Hill brought up when attacking Project Veritas and James O’Keefe. “New Hampshire resident Robert Bell, was caught on hidden camera wherein he admitted to voting twice in the 2018 federal election, once in New Hampshire and again in Florida. As a result of Project Veritas’ findings, Bell was arrested, charged, and convicted of felony voter fraud. On Wednesday, a jury in Rockingham County New Hampshire found Bell guilty of felony double voting. He is scheduled for sentencing on November 7, 2019, with penalties ranging from significant fines and/or prison time. Bell could also lose his right to vote under the New Hampshire Constitution.”
An article appears in the Union Leader.
https://www.unionleader.com/news/crime/jury-finds-atkinson-man-guilty-in-case-of-double-voting/article_116dbbc6-32e9-5e94-b0ab-ccf8e0dabbbb.html
Peter Hill has been wrong so many times but time passes and his statements are forgotten. If this wasn’t one of his claims then another similar one was but Peter Hill forgets about all the times he is wrong while he continues ranting and raving about things that aren’t true.
Note Peter Hill goes by a variety of names becuase he fouls names so quickly. The latest is Wilkinson.
Hill, Natacha, Anon, Ynot, Justice Holmes have nothing but lies to offer the readers of Res Ipsa much like Democrats have nothing to offer Americans but lies because they are bereft of any virtuous, original thought
Case closed
Still stupid, Allan, gleefully ignorant.
see YNOT
Offered by “Anonymous” @ 5:06 PM
“Hill, Natacha, Anon, Ynot, Justice Holmes have nothing but lies…”
In other words, anyone who disagrees with you…
What a ridiculous blame-game you like to play.
Allan, this Peter fellow is like big foot. Folks keep talkin about him but he ain’t seen. Guess your kind of scared of him.
So Project Verizon caught an illegal voter. Just one? Seems there should be more from the way folks talk.
For people that pay attention they recognize that Peter changes his name. I leave it to you to figure out which name he has already used posting on this thread.
More than one illegal voter has been found, many more. But some people think fair elections involve people voting twice and aren’t willing to use ID’s to secure our elections. Take a look at the Veritas video of Eric Holder at the polls. Rather funny and terrifying at the same time except for those that like dictatorships.
Thank goodness for Durham who has made the investigation into a criminal investigation. Maybe some of those who also like to subvert the law will be put in jail.
Patriot, I am curious. Why do you think voter fraud does not occur?
1. No ID required to vote in CA. Just state your name.
2. Easy mail in ballots, no proof of identity required to sign up.
3. Automatic voter registration at DMV. Just self check the box that you are a citizen
4. Why wouldn’t mail in ballots be collected and filled out for the elderly, the dead, and those who have moved?
5. Efforts to purge voter rolls prevented.
There’s really nothing stopping anyone from voter fraud, especially in deep blue California. There is probably little need in most elections in a super majority Democrat state, but there would be intense temptation in close races, where seats flip, either in CA or elsewhere. Parties switch by the narrowest of margins sometimes. And which party fervently opposes any attempt to stop voter fraud? Democrats. Let’s compare to their behavior in their own primaries however. In NY, you have to register Democrat 9 months before the primary, if I recall correctly. To attend their events requires ID, and they have armed security.
Actions speak a million words.
Easy Karen – It carries up to 5 years in prison and $20k fines and the benefit for someone doing it is virtually non-existent. Even Trumps own commission on this supposed problem disbanded with nada. The real question is why you continue to pump this phony problem which does disenfranchise legitimate voters by the thousands, if not millions.
As desired by the GOP state legislatures which enact them, the laws disproportionally affect Democratic constituencies. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-we-know-about-voter-id-laws/
By the way:
“Here are nine investigations on voter fraud that found virtually nothing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/25/here-are-nine-major-investigations-on-voter-fraud-that-found-virtually-nothing/
Mistyped – $10k in fines.
Anon1 – here is the voter fraud you should worry about
http://voterfraudfacts.com/
Anon said people do not engage in voter fraud because “It carries up to 5 years in prison and $20k fines and the benefit for someone doing it is virtually non-existent.”
1. In close races, the benefit is getting the political party of their choice in power…obviously. Voter fraud is usually an organized affair.
2. If the fines and 5 years in prison prevents it from occurring, then why are there so many thieves, rapists, and murderers in prison?
The inducements is there. The means is there. The safeguards are gone, thanks to Democrats. Fraudulent voter rolls are not purged, thanks to Democrats. ID or any means of verifying identity are not used in blue CA. You would never be found out, in CA. So why doesn’t voter fraud happen?
And if it never happens, then why do Democrats require voters register as Democrats 9 months in advance of their own primaries in NY? Why do they require ID? Voter fraud, after all, is not a problem…
The inducements are not there as thousands to millions of voter fraud would be necessary to have any sense of success,, nor is there evidence it is happening with any signifigance.
Go away.
So, you have no reason that voter fraud doesn’t happen, other than it suits your narrative.
??? MAYBE YOU’RE DEAF KAREN
1. THE PENALTIES FAR OUTWEIGH ANY BENEFIT FOR THE INDIVIDUALS WHO WOULD HAVE TO COMMIT THE CRIME – THERE IS NO BENEFIT UNLESS YOU HAVE THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS JOINING A CONSPIRACY FOR WHICH EACH CAN RECEIVE 5 YEARS AND $10K IN FINES.
THAT LIKES TRYING TO ROB A BANK WITH THOUSANDS OF ROBBERS AND GET AWAY CARS
2. THERE HAS BEEN NUMEROUS STUDIES OF THE SUPPOSED PROBLEM AND ALL THE REPUTABLE ONES FOUND NO SIGNIFICANT FRAUD, WHICH IS WHAT YOU WOULD EXPECT GIVEN #1 ABOVE. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/25/here-are-nine-major-investigations-on-voter-fraud-that-found-virtually-nothing/
3. YOUR CITED STUDY HAS BEEN DISCREDITED – SEE ABOVE.
4. TRUMP’S OWN COMMISSION DISBANDED WITH NOTHING. PARTLY THAT WAS BECAUSE STATE GOVERNMENTS – BOTH DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN LED – TOLD THEN TO GFT. OF COURSE THEY COULD HAVE STUDIED ANYTHING THEY WANTED TO MAKE THE POLITICAL POINT WHICH WAS THEIR GOAL. THEY DIDN’T.
1) Wrong! What are your benefits to posting on this blog? 0.
2) Washington Post. No credibility. “Austere religious figure” is what the WP call al-Bagdahdi.
3) See #2 and refer to all the times you have been proven wrong ony to run away.
4) Those in cozy government positions never want to rock the boat.
What happened when Trump formed the Voter Fraud Commission?
1. States like CA refused to comply and send any voter data
2. ACLU, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Electronic Privacy Information Center, and Public Citizen all filed suit.
Democrats in power routinely stymie investigations into voter fraud.
Since states refuse to cooperate, I’m frankly surprised any cases of voter fraud are determined. I personally know illegal aliens who voted. In addition to anecdotes, polls have shown illegal aliens admit to voting.
Now, on the one hand, we have Anon, who claims that the criminal penalties alone must be enough to discourage illegal voting. And then we have this paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379414000973
“We find that some non-citizens participate in U.S. elections, and that this participation has been large enough to change meaningful election outcomes including Electoral College votes, and Congressional elections. Non-citizen votes likely gave Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrats-vote-against-motion-condemning-illegal-immigrant-voting
“Nearly every House Democrat on Friday opposed a measure condemning voting in U.S. elections by illegal immigrants, as part of a sweeping election reform bill.
The GOP-backed measure would have added language to the “H.R. 1” election proposal stating that “allowing illegal immigrants the right to vote devalues the franchise and diminishes the voting power of United States citizens.””
Federal law already prohibits non-citizens from voting in elections for federal office. But the GOP motion referenced how San Francisco is allowing non-citizens, including illegal immigrants, to register to vote in school board elections.
The motion was voted down 228-197. All but six Democrats in the House voted against it. Just one Republican opposed it.
“These 41 Democrats must now answer to voters why they were against illegal immigrants voting in elections six months ago, but are suddenly in favor of it now,” Fine said.
You know what the Democrat bill did? Required Presidential candidates disclose tax returns, and that all organizations involved in elections disclose donors. This was an obvious attempt to harass conservative donors.
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/author-trumps-favorite-voter-fraud-study-says-everyones-wrong/
who knows what the systemic proportion of vote fraud is, whether it’s zero percent (not likely) or a big proportion (also not likely)
to say there is no concern over it is false.
I have repeatedly connected to reliable media coverage and analysis from qualified experts about the 2008 vote fraud in the Indiana Democrat primary which lead to a couple convictions and is believed to have favored Obama over Hillary. this included faking thousands of signatures on primary related petitions.
I have also referred to the account from Robert Cooley, an FBI snitch, a former lawyer from Chicago, who represented Pat Marcy, the legendary “Secretary of the First Ward” political boss in the Chicago Democratic machine, and various organized crime figures, and who fixed by bribery the only murder trial which as been so proven to have occurred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Corruption_Was_King
in this book he explains how during his day– most of the book occurs in the 1960s and 70s- Democrat operatives would take briefcases full of absentee ballots out to Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago and buy votes for $5 a signed blank absentee ballot.
I wonder, are you so naive that you believe they stopped doing that by the 1980s?
I wonder do you think that criminal penalties and fines keep people from doing stuff like selling drugs? apparently not but i wonder why you find this so compelling an explanation for why you think voter fraud does not occur
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/25/here-are-nine-major-investigations-on-voter-fraud-that-found-virtually-nothing/
7 papers, 4 government inquiries, 2 news investigations and 1 court ruling proving voter fraud is mostly a myth
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/09/7-papers-4-government-inquiries-2-news-investigations-and-1-court-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/
When it comes to statistical issues Anon know nothing about ‘selection’.
“…many of us cringe over his language..” – Imagine, an American afraid to speak English. What’s wrong with this picture?
You don’t suppose Swahilis speak Swahili in Swahililand, do you?
________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Trump thought it was appropriate to compare the investigation of his alleged misconduct to lynchings, a word more often reserved for racist murders carried out in this country for decades. It was yet another Trump tweet that caused many of us to cringe over his language.”
– Professor Turley
_______________
“If all earthly power were given me,” said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, “I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” After acknowledging that this plan’s “sudden execution is impossible,” he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not, then, make them equals.”
– Abraham Lincoln
_______________
Professor Turley genuflects to the Africans of timidity and faintheartedness while “Crazy Abe” planned to righteously and compassionately repatriate them – for their own benefit; a sense of nationhood and self-esteem – fully understanding that no natural accommodation would ever be possible; that political emulsifiers (entitlements as generational welfare, affirmative action privilege, forced busing, etc.) would be imperative in perpetuity to force the unnatural intermixture of host and parasite.
It’s interesting that JT hasn’t opined yet on the Durham investigation transitioning into a criminal investigation. That would seem to be worthy of his expertise in the law. Instead he wastes his time on the Democrats efforts to influence the 2020 election with this sham inquiry.
Olly, perhaps word of the event hasn’t yet been released by his news sources or by those in the university where he resides.
Please allow me to disabuse you of the notion of imminent and appropriate prosecution. The Warren Commission went to great lengths to gather then suppress, hide and erase all of the evidence and the testimony that definitively incriminated the FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, ONI, the Mob, Johnson, Dulles, the Texas oilmen, etc., etc., etc., in the JFK assassination. The Warren Report was a work of pure fiction.
Durham Schmurham!
William Barr is Mr. Deep Deep State.
__________
“The more things change, the more they remain the same”
– Alphonse Karr
That’s what I’ll be calling & raising hell with the polecats next George.
This smells like one of the largest cover ups yet.
Please allow me to disabuse you of the notion of imminent and appropriate prosecution.
Well George, had I had that notion, then your disabuse would have been somewhat relevant. That being said, the odds anyone will face criminal prosecution are about the same as you not making a crazy Abe reference. In other words, The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Thank you.
BTW, You have to read the following, then tell me the guy wasn’t an anti-American, power-hungry zealot that was never supposed to happen – he won 1860 with 38.9% and 1864 with brute military force – everything Lincoln imposed on America was by force including the willful destruction of the Constitution. It’s even possible that the Deep Deep State took him out after he had served his purpose.
“Crimes and Cover-ups in American Politics: 1776-1963”
– Donald Jeffries
Trump has to see the likes of Comey, Clapper, Brennan prosecuted and convicted or they will go after his children after he leaves office.
There’s no lynching if nobody died.
https://medium.com/@williamspivey/no-donald-trump-theres-only-one-kind-of-lynching-df5f4b72e15e
“There’s no lynching if nobody died.”
“Originally any sort of summary justice, done without authority of law, for a crime or public offense; it especially referred to flogging or tarring-and-feathering.”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/lynch
No one race or crime has a greater claim to the use of the word lynch even though some might like to lay claim to the exclusive use of the word.
Affirmative Action Opinion!
How much were Americans forced by communists to pay in taxes to ultimately obtain the affectation of erudition above?
I want my money back!
Enigma – “lynching” is being used as a figure of speech. No one, except the media, thinks it is literal.
In early America, on the frontier, the court system was not available. If someone was caught murdering, rustling, or raping, they were promptly hanged. At the time, it was the only form of justice available in some parts of the country. Whatever the movies may say, if a criminal wanted to kill you, he usually wouldn’t take the time to hang someone.
It was only later that lynching came to symbolize a miscarriage of justice, whether it was the murder of a slave in the Antebellum South, or that of a black person by the Klan.
The term refers to a gross miscarriage of justice, in an effort to absolutely destroy someone. There have been many attempts made to police language. Those who claim that “slave” should only refer to actual slaves, are usually guilty of uttering the word as a figure of speech themselves. We often see slurs of slave origin hurled, openly, at black conservatives with impunity. It seems that no one on the Left is outraged that such terms are used.
Lynching, slave, murder, and all sorts of war rhetoric are used in common parlance, because they evolved organically. Their meaning is quite clear, as is the fact that it in no way demeans what any slave suffered hundreds of years ago.
The attempt to accuse Trump of appropriating slave victim hood is yet another manufacture crisis, of which a lot of us are fatigued.
If no one died, it was an attempted lynching. Figuratively speaking.
Crud! Marina Butt-tina deported. Sad! We need to help the migrants. ICE had her in a CAGE!
Get a load of the guns she’s carrying under her jacket
http://brownsvilleobserver.blogspot.com/2018/07/marina-butina-from-russia-with-love.html
love those redheads, but keep em away from guns, sheesh! you know what they say
It’s like they never heard of video tape!
Turley should get his facts straight about lynching, and he could start by reading Senator Jim Webb’s excellent book, “Born Fighting.” In particular, see page 215 (paperback edition): “And contrary to popular mythology, in the twenty years before the Civil War, more than 90 percent of those hanged or burned by lynch mobs in the South were white.”
I read one of Webb’s books to see who he was because he impressed me as a candidate. I might have to pick this one up as well.
I was a civil rights lawyer in a town which was governed by a mayor and five alderman who were all members of a political party called The White Citizens Council. Y’all know what that was don’t you? It was the klan. They burned crosses on the levee when they had an issue.
When you have a jury trial and the jury is composed of 12 white rednecks and 2 alternate rednecks and you represent a minority fellow who is charged with assault on a white hat then you will know what a trial lynching is. Trump confronts a biased Congressional jury.
Liberty2nd,
One gets a Redneck bent over Working, are you insulting working people are are you just stupid when it comes to the definition of words?
Maybe you could have had a jury of Section 8 or political welfare queen cronies out of the railroading Obama/Deepstate DC circuit?
There was a song several years ago called “Rednecks”. I forget the composer or group which sang it. It does not have to do with “working people”.
(music)
We’re Rednecks… We are Rednecks!
We don’t know our arse from a hole in the ground…
We’re Rednecks, Rednecks….
We are keeping the N (n word) ers down!
—
Remember that song?
My point about Congress here is that the group in the House choosing whether to have the Senate have a trial is not made up of a fair and square jury picked from a good town. When the Senate has the trial there may be a better cast of characters to decide on removal from office.
When Trump employed the word “lynching” he was perhaps being sarcastic and a bit over bearing in his description of the Congressional House activity here. But some of the accusations against him are unfounded and to remove him from office on some of these grounds is kinda like a trial by an all white jury of redneks in the old south against a minority person accused of a crime against a white person. Remember that even college men from LSU can be said to have “went in dumb and come out dumb too” and they may be hustlin round Atlantai in their alligator shoes.
Yes. Some of the members of Congress are drunk on the weekends at their bar be ques. And they are keeping the Trumpster down.
That Redneck song might have been written and sung by Randy Newman.
Liberty
Randy Newman wrote that song to show the hypocrisy of yankees who think only Southerners were bigots.
His mother was from N’Orleans and they moved there when he was 3.
“Rednecks” is one of the best satires he wrote……but you may not get that until near the end of the song.
Liberty2nd,
Don’t feel insulted, the point was the improper use of words to disparage the wrong people.
George Carlin made millions of people laugh + plus millions $$$ showing how the Deep State jackazzes play with the public’s mind through twisting the meaning of words.
Lynching frenzy in Iran.
As of 9/1/2019, between 4000 & 6000 gays & lesbians were hanged in Iran.
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-publicly-hangs-man-on-homosexuality-charges-578758
2020 presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg might start a war if elected.
Sidney Powell, Flynn’s lawyer, filed quite the motion last night..it’s an excellent read:
https://www.scribd.com/document/431949856/US-v-Flynn-DE-129-2?campaign=VigLink&ad_group=xxc1xx&source=hp_affiliate&medium=affiliate
Super-lawyer Sidney Powell is going to save Flynn from being lynched.
Flynn was lynched but his neck wasn’t broken. He served our nation honorably and these pigs attempted to destroy his life and force him to say things that didn’t exist. Those that did that will be exposed but I do not think they will be punished. What they did was so reprehensible and un-American that the one’s responsible should pay for their misdeeds for the rest of their lives.
Ivan….thank you for the link. She is a helluva woman and attorney.
I’m With you. She’s a heroine.
mespo……….and being a Southern girl doesn’t hurt, either 😁
Like Ms. Suzanne says to me at least twice a week, “that’s no girl, that’s a woman.” She’s a Yankee but she’s right.
mespo…..yes, your wife is right. But…. when I found out it drives liberals crazy, I couldn’t switch to saying “girl” fast enough….lol
My big beef is going into a restaurant with hubby and having a waitress ask ” What would you GUYS like to have?”
That started in Canada, btw…it’s not even ‘Murrican!
But there’s no way a waitress would ask a table full of straight men ” What would you gals like to have?” thus, the argument that the words are interchangeable falls apart….
The state rests. 😉
You win!
Cindy:
You know when Suzanne moved South she looked on aghast as we proved to her that bar-b-que is a noun, not a verb and that crabs start blue and end up red — and the best part ain’t the claws. Now she cracks those back-fins with the best of ’em and shoves me out of the way to get to the brisket and pork butts in the smoker. Live and learn I guess.
mespo……cute story. I’m sure Suzanne is a proud Southerner now!
When I was little and we moved to Okla from Louisiana, my mother’s mother spent a week packing groceries, dry goods, and jugs of water for us to take because we were moving to “Indian Territory”!! Nothing there but wild savages and a trading post!! (oh, and the university my father would be attending….LOL)
Cindy:
That’s a fun story. Suzanne says she Southern by choice not birth. We let he believe that. We chose her you know.
mespo…….it’s so sweet the way you talk about your bride!
Cindy Bragg – I always used guys as gender neutral when I was teaching. “I need you guys to turn to page 45.” I have no problem with it being used on me. Laurie Chen (from Canada) did a nice piece on just that problem.
Paul……I know I’m the Lone Rangerette on this issue usually. Some of my best friends say “guys”…..lol
It actually and honestly offends me more as a Southerner than as a woman, if you can believe that.
But, I’m the first to admit I am standing outside of the cultural drum circle on lots of issues……….for instance,
I am still not convinced that O.J. did it! (See what I mean?😊)
p.s. Paul C…. Thank you for telling me about Laurie Chen…….I’ll loook for that story
Cindy Bragg – if it makes you feel any better, I watched the entire OJ trial and would have voted Not Guilty. The State did not make their case.
Paul, based on the way you analyzed Benedict Arnold’s particular brand of treasonous behavior I believe you would have voted OJ not guilty.
Allan – Arnold tried his best to be a great Rebel and got screwed over for it, so he made a deal with the British who would later screw him. It appears only his wife really made out in the deal.
“got screwed over for it, ”
Paul, I guess “the dog ate my homework” was an adequate excuse for children.
Allan – you know how people finally have had enough and climb up on a clock tower at the Univ of Texas and start shooting people? Arnold had reached that point.
Paul, lots of people are faced with such adversity but don’t start shooting from a clock tower or do what Benedict Arnold did. Many of them are mentally ill or quite bad people. You are making excuses for bad people. Did you start with the excuse that the dog ate your homework?😀
Allan – here is a case from Greek history where a general got screwed over.
Alcibiades (or Alkibiades) was a gifted and flamboyant Athenian statesman and general whose shifting of sides during the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BCE earned him a reputation for cunning and treachery. Good-looking and rich, he was also notorious for his extravagant lifestyle and loose morals. Never short of enemies or admirers – amongst whom was Socrates – he was one of the most colourful leaders in the history of Classical Athens.
Early Life
Alcibiades was born in 451/450 BCE, the son of the Athenian politician Cleinias, and his mother Deinomache was from the ancient aristocratic family the Alkmeonidai. Alcibiades was also the nephew of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, and he spent his childhood in the family home of his famous uncle. As a young man, he was the pupil and friend of Socrates.
ALCIBIADES HELD THE POSITION OF GENERAL FOR 15 CONSECUTIVE YEARS.
C. 420 BCE Alcibiades was made a general or strategos (at the minimum age of 30) and therefore became a member of the strategoi, the influential military council in Athens which could propose items for the agenda of the assembly. Alcibiades wasted no time in his new role and promptly negotiated an alliance between Athens, Argos, Ellis, and Mantineia, which would last 100 years. Alcibiades would go on to hold the position of strategos for 15 consecutive years.
The Sicilian Expedition
In 415 BCE Alcibiades gave a speech to persuade the Athenians to launch a military expedition to Sicily. The pretext for this expedition occurred in 416/415 BCE when Segesta, a city-state in the west of Sicily, asked Athens for help against local rival Selinus which was allied with Syracuse. Besides imperialist ambition, Alcibiades may well have been after the timber of Sicily, an immensely important material for the Athenian navy. Alcibiades argued that the mixed-race population and political instability in Sicily would make a strong and unified military response unlikely. Further, Alcibiades promised that the Persians could be persuaded to assist Athens if certain constitutional changes were made. In the end, Alcibiades won the vote of the assembly despite the doubts expressed by his rival Nicias, and the two generals, along with Lamados (or Lamachus), were given the equal status of strategoi autokratores (unlimited power) and sent, along with 6,000 men and 60 ships, to protect Segesta.
Shortly before the expedition’s departure from Athens, though, Alcibiades was perhaps the victim of an infamous conspiracy. Hermai (statues with a head of the god Hermes and a large erect phallus) were damaged across the city. The sailors of the Athenian fleet, like all sailors before and since, were a superstitious lot, and as Hermes was the patron of travellers, their confidence was badly affected by the attacks. In addition, according to popular opinion, the attacks on the hermai were somehow connected to an attack on the democratic system of Athens. Alcibiades, known as one of the frivolous and impious ‘golden youth’ of the aristocracy, was held as the prime suspect along with several others. To make matters worse, Alcibiades also faced the more serious accusation of profaning the Mysteries of Eleusis during a drinking party or symposium. Perhaps confident he would prove his innocence, Alcibiades called for an immediate trial, but the city procrastinated and he was sent to Sicily anyway. However, Alcibiades was soon officially recalled to Athens to face the court’s guilty verdict. Given that punishment was the death sentence, it is perhaps not surprising that Alcibiades at this point fled to Sparta rather than face the music at home.
Magna Graecia
Advising Sparta
Alcibiades made himself useful to his new hosts and, according to his accusers in Athens, he freely gave Athenian state secrets to the Spartans. He also advised the Spartans to take by force the Athenian fortress of Dekeleia (which they did in 413 BCE). Meanwhile, the Athenian expedition in Sicily was a complete disaster with total defeat in 414 BCE and the loss of Nicias and the gifted general Demosthenes. According to Xenophon, Alcibiades had advised the Spartans to send the general Gylippos to aid the besieged Sicilians. However, Alcibiades soon fell out of favour at Sparta, in particular with King Agis, and so he joined the Persian Satrap Tissaphernes (Persia had been giving aid to Sparta so that they might build a fleet to rival Athens). Alcibiades encouraged Persia to keep on friendly terms with both Athens and Sparta, and yet at the same time Alcibiades attempted to convince the Athenian fleet based on Samos that he was the man to negotiate an Athenian-Persian alliance. Alcibiades knew that this would only be possible if an oligarchy gained political control in Athens. To this end, Peisandros was sent to Athens where he persuaded the disgruntled aristocrats to attempt a coup d’état. This was successful, and so democracy gave way to an oligarchy of 400. Alcibiades was made strategos by the navy at Samos (who were actually pro-democracy) and despite the 400 being replaced by a wider oligarchy of 5000 in Athens, he led the fleet to victory over the Spartans at Cyzicus on the Hellespont in 410 BCE. Other victories included the defeat of the Persian Satrap Pharnabazos at Abydos and the taking of Byzantium.
A Returning Hero
In 407 BCE Alcibiades returned to Athens in triumph, the old charges against him were dropped, and as a reward for his efforts he was made strategos autokrater once again, but this time above all other generals, the only such instance in the history of Athens. In effect then, Alcibiades was now commander-in-chief of the Athenian armed forces. Quashing a rebellion at Andros was followed by an expedition to fight the poleis of northern Ionia. Whilst occupied there, Alcibiades left Antiochos in charge of the fleet at Samos. Unfortunately for Athens, the Spartan commander Lysander took advantage of Alcibiades’ absence and soundly defeated the Athenian navy at Notium (or Notion) in 406 BCE. Alcibiades was blamed for negligence in leaving only a helmsman in charge of the main fleet and was not re-elected strategos. Consequently, he left to live in Thrace, whilst the Spartans went on to finally win the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE with Lysander’s victory over the Athenian fleet at Aigospotamoi. In the same year, after taking final refuge with the Persian Pharnabazus, Alcibiades was murdered in Phrygia possibly following the intervention of Lysander and the Thirty Tyrants of Athens.
Paul, Benedict Arnold was no Alcibiades.
Who says one should make excuses for bad behavior by Arnold or Alcibiades? Eventually Alcibiades was assassinated. I don’t recall, but I believe Alcibiades initial problem with Athens was political and there was an open disagreement. That substantially differentiates him from Benedict Arnold whose traitorous actions were hidden. Additionally Alcibiades was a fighter as well as a politician who after fighting with Sparta and then Persia returned to Athens. Arnold was working with the British secretly and not for political reasons weakening Fort Washington which he knew could directly lead to the injury and death of his friends and those he was responsible for. His payment was cash. Arnold never returned not even to save Andre’s life.
You have odd ideas when you evaluate people’s character especially where excuses are concerned.
Allan – Alcibiadies did not return after he had been tried in absentia and was going to be killed. Surprise, surprise, surprise!!! Arnold thought the war was lost and he was going to make his. You could consider that a political reason.
Paul, Benedict Arnold was not a political figure and was well respected by Washington and the Continental Congress. Acibiades was a political figure and had severe political differences that were out in the open.
Allan – Arnold was not respected enough by the Continental Congress to get the rank and awards he should have gotten. And it wasn’t just once, but several times this happened.
Arnold was not respected enough by the Continental Congress to get the rank and awards he should have gotten.
NEWSFLASH: If every member of our military turned traitor because they didn’t receive the promotions or medals they thought they deserved, we’d soon have no country.
Arnold lacked the humility necessary to honor his commitment. He put his interests above the cause. He may have been wearing a military uniform, but he acted like the worst of the political class.
OLLY – the Continental Congress was not honoring its commitment to the troops, including Arnold. Paine will have to go to France to get funds, clothes and supplies for the troops. BTW, I don’t humility is a requirement for generalship.
BTW, I don’t humility is a requirement for generalship.
Did you get that out of some book? I never said it was. You’d understand the point if you served honoring an oath in good times and bad. Pathetic.
OLLY – do you know what the oath was during the Revolution? I don’t. I know some soldiers where only there for a year and then their time was up, which was the reason for the attacks on Trenton and Princeton. I know commands were screwed up because some state militia would not leave the state.
Paul C. Thank you! That does make me feel better!
Paul, your history of Alkibiades reminds me of how stupid the Athenians seem to me my entire life and now not one “iota” less than when I was little.
Unbelievable, how they took a traitor back and made him their tyrant after running off to the Spartans and then the Persians too, it’s just incredible that this mischief making self promoter ever survived as long as he did.
Of course comparing the ancient Athenians to some of those who worship them today, they were a lot smarter, most of all in limiting the franchise.
Cindy,
I’m guilty as charged to calling guys with gals or just a few gals, hey guys…. see you guys later etc…
Back when I worked crews of men, for example, I’d come in just before work, they’d be drinking coffee BS’ing & I’d say “Good Morning Ladies”
You know guys have that junk that makes them feel tough.
Anyway I thought I was being funny & I hope they did to.
I don’t know your response but back then sometimes a day or 2 before a few or just one might gripy/bitchy, I’d try to wait & the next day or so I might try to make a joke of it: I hope everyone is off their periods by now.
It’s a bunch of guys, about the same locker Rm bannter I’ve heard that ladies have.
But all things considered it has me wondering is this all our free thought or is some Deep State guiding our thoughts & language, I think now much of thoughts/Language is being implanted.
Oky1……Thank you, Oky1..you are so honest and straight with people, which I always expect from Okies! That’s why I love them.
Okies helped raise me through my formative yrs….walking, talking, etc
I first saw Santa Clause at the hardware store in Shawnee.and was baptised in Duncan, on the Chisholm Trail.
What you see is what you get with Okies. West Texas people are that way too.
I think that’s why we like Pres. Trump so much…….we see that quality in him.
He may trip on his words, and change his mind, and speak off the cuff, but it’s from his heart.
It’s real. He’s real.
unbelievable. Not safe to be let alone at the State Fair.
Anon1 – you still go to the State Fair?
Anon1…….we have a friend from Chicago who moved to Austin in 1975. His Chicago accent is still thick.
My uncle from Chicago moved to Louisiana in 1941. Until the day he died in 1996, we still had a hard time understanding his yankee accent.
Chicago accents do not die…..they don’t seem to simply fade away, either.
Besides, the affected “southern” accent of Hillary’s is not found in Arkansas.
Cindy, I didn’t say Hillary had a good southern accent – I’ve lived here over 60 years and still don;t sound like from around here – only that she has southern cred and undoubtedly has been trying for those many years to fit in. She is also married to a southerner with the accent.
Cindy, it breaks my heart to tell you this, but Donald Trump has no connection whatsoever with people in your region. Until he ran for president, Trump never set foot between Miami and Dallas.
Trump was born and raised in New York City and went to college in Philadelphia. His family has been rich for 100 years. Trump has probably never spent time with Americans outside the biggest cities. He would have never had any reason to.
Trump is basically a big city con man who knows that certain Americans like so-called “honest talk”. For that reason Trump speaks in a vernacular typical of working class New Yorkers. But that’s not who he is.
Trump’s father ranked for years as one of New York’s richest citizens. Trump’s father set Donald up in real estate and left him as much as $200 million. But Donald would have Americans like you believe that he ‘worked hard’ to build his fortune. It is one of the biggest con jobs in American history!
It’s sad to think that well-meaning Christians in America’s heartland think Donald Trump cares about their welfare. Trump worships no god but money. And he honestly doesn’t care where money comes from as long it makes him richer.
Back in the 1980’s, Trump had a ghostwriter develop a book that became a huge bestseller. “Art Of The Deal” celebrated greed like it was a great virtue. Trump reveled in telling readers how he would use any trick to win. Any trick he could get away with was perfectly justified. Because getting even richer was all that really mattered in the culture Trump extolled.
Peter – unlike Hillary, who puts on an accent south of the Mason-Dixon line and pops that hot sauce in her purse, Trump is the same person whereever he goes. What you see is what you get. I just watched him award the Medal of Honor on a video yesterday and he gave shout-outs to almost everyone in the room, except himself. He was incredible generous with his praise.
Paul, Hillary lived in Arkansas for 18 years as a transplanted Chicagoin, so trying to fit in would be a familiar and comfortable effort for her, and one she earned.
Anon, it’s worth noting that one can drive from Chicago to Little Rock in the course of a single day and arrive no later than early evening.
James…..I am aware of all you have told me. But I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong about Trump, though I appreciate the fact you are looking out for people like me, and accept the kindness.
I’ve lived in several states, and lived in DC. My brother was an FBI agent, my husband was a Capitol Hill policeman and Peace Corps volunteer before becoming an attorney and spending 45 yrs suing con men, among others. These familial ties and experiences have given me a keen eye for charlatans, believe me.
Cindy, james Wilkinson is one of those charlatans you mention just not as good. He wssn’t good as Peter Hill, PH, Gates, Hill or the Shill as he was affectionately called. I know you already are aware of this but I wanted to say it anyway.
Paul, Hillary lived in Arkansas for 18 years as a transplanted Chicagoin, so trying to fit in would be a familiar and comfortable effort for her, and one she earned.
Ha ha. She was a faculty wife in Fayetteville ‘ere landing a slot at the Rose Firm after her husband was elected state Attorney-General. She moved into the governor’s mansion two years later and lived there for 12 of the next 14 years. Veterans of the governor’s security detail offered (names attached, on the record) that she was, in meat space, horrible to people. You’ll notice she never attempted to run for public office in Illinois or Arkansas. You’ll also notice that she hasn’t lived in Arkansas in 26 years and that neither she nor her brothers settled around Chicago. Roger Clinton, btw, decamped to California 25 years ago. The younger generation of Clintons and Rodhams live in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles (except for Roger’s love child, who lives NE of Nashville).
TIA would apparently be surprised to learn that even top firm lawyers in the South sound like – surprise! – they’re from the south and that Hillary’s life long husband talks the talk.
Peter, Trump is a workaholic. His children, despite their wealth, all work and are productive.
Now let’s compare them to Hunter Biden who is known as a crackhead and gets large amounts of money from tagging along with his dad (better known as graft.)
Let’s compare Trump with Obama. Obama’s wealth is now 36 times what it was while Trump has lost almost 1 Billion serving this nation.
I forget the multiples for the Clintons since they are so far out in the stratosphere.
The con men are the one’s Peter supports who are “bank robbers” and figure that the biggest “bank” is the US treasury.
Trump built a vast empire and some leftists claim he lost it all. But what they don’t think about is that if he lost it all he created that wealth again. Trump is great.
Trump 2020.
“TIA would apparently be surprised to learn that even top firm lawyers in the South sound like – surprise! – they’re from the south and that Hillary’s life long husband talks the talk.”
if they are FROM THE SOUTH then they talk like that.
if they are CARPETBAGGERS they generally dont
I know a few who sound just like they did when they were growing up, elsewhere
and I know a few who sound like they have deep roots in the South, because they do
I would give Bill Clinton the edge on his wife on the “sincerity” meter, any day of the week
I actually liked Bill Clinton in spite of his various policies and mistakes which I did not
I never liked his nasty shrew of a wife
Western movies and tv shows often showed horse thieves and cattle thieves being “lynched”. Almost always the accused were white men.
john wood – I am from Montana where we lynched cattle rustlers. They were almost always white.
PCS, got photos – with you in ’em?
George – as a teen I was part of the 75th Anniversary of the Montana Cattleman’s Association. They put on huge history play and I played several of the voices. One included a cattle rustle who was hung every night, right of his horse in front of God and everybody. He was white, as were the people who hung him. In fact, the town is 96% white.
Paul C Too bad you don’t live closer so you could be in one of the historic old west murder plays here.
One had a scene that portrayed the lynching of 3 white men on Christmas Day 1887.
Lynch Pinheads
My comment isn’t allowed to post. It breaks no rules. It just disappears into the void. If someone could post it I would appreciate that very much.
Thanks, Jill
Jill,
I checked within the various filters traps but unfortunately did not find the comment. There might have been a technical issue during the post since I didn’t find it trapped. Wish I had more for you. You might try posting it again without any hyperlinks. On rare occasions I’ve seen where comments go into either because WordPress for whatever reason didn’t like the link.
In the main, I agree with others here that call this a distraction. I will name some of the things from which this “controversy” distracts.
1. The FED is injecting billions of liquidity into the system (99.9 billion just on Tuesday, WSJ). Most people understand the economy is disintegrating. Many of us cannot afford housing, food, healthcare or education. However, this means the FED understands that the economy is disintegrating as well. Instead of helping the people, they are propping up the thieves again.
2. USG supported “governments” around the world are seeing their populations rise against injustice. We don’t hear about it because these are our BFFs. In Chile, USG trained forces are again dissappearing people. The police/military has attacked protesters, wounding men, women and children. There are many others, see Max Blumenthal’s twitter feed.
3. In Oakland, CA, police who were trained by Israeli forces attacked peaceful, unarmed protesters at a school board meeting. They “successfully” took down the school librarian and parents by FORCE. People were beaten with batons and taken to the hospital.
4. At Assange’s most recent hearing, the UK “judge and prosecutor” took their orders from the US State Dept. officials at the courtroom. In the meantime, Spain has request Assange’s testimony regarding the CIA having used our tax payer dollars to spy on his legal team. The UK “judge” has refused to allow his testimony. The Spanish judge is fighting back against this lawlessness. Assange appears to have been tortured in UK’s Belmarsh. There will be no free speech in the US or anywhere else by the time this is done.
5. Trump has decided we will be taking Syria’s oil. That’s theft of another nation’s assets. And I thought people were against “socialism”? Well, are you?
People around the world are facing injustice and trying to fight back. States are responding with force against their own people. States don’t fix problems, they simply attack their own people for demanding justice.
The Ukraine is full of actual Nazi’s whom this govt. Democrat or Republican support. That’s the truth.
Thank you for checking into the Darren. I appreciate that very much. Jill
1. The FED is injecting billions of liquidity into the system (99.9 billion just on Tuesday, WSJ). Most people understand the economy is disintegrating. Many of us cannot afford housing, food, healthcare or education. However, this means the FED understands that the economy is disintegrating as well. Instead of helping the people, they are propping up the thieves again.
Jill doesn’t know macroeconomic statistics from tiddlywinks.
Tix XIV,
Well why don’t you just tell us in a few words about current macroeconomic statistics.
We’re all ears.
1. Growth rates in real GDP have been between 1.1% and 3.5% per annum over the last 10 quarters.
2. The rate of increase in the consumer price index are currently running at 1.7% per annum (that’s a September-to-September comparison).
3. The employment-to-population ratio (i.e. the ratio of people working to the whole population over the age of 15) is currently 0.61. That’s the highest in 11 years and above the median of the last generation. (The highest it has been during the post-war period was 0.64, around 1999).
4. The unemployment rate, at 3.5%, is the lowest recorded since 1969.
5. The Index of Leading Indicators remains above par at 106.4. The ISM index is below par at 47.8. Capacity utilization (at 77.5%) is declining slightly, a shade off the mean of 1972-2018 (79.8%)
6. Commercial banks’ loan delinquency rate is currently 1.45%, the lowest it has been in 13 years.
7. Household debt service and financial obligation ratios are the lowest recorded in 40 years.
8. The ratio of outstanding mortgage debt to gross domestic product is 0.73. That’s about what it was in 2001 / 02 and notably below what it was in 2007 (when that ratio stood at 0.93). (Room for improvement. NB, the ratio has declined since 2016).
9. Banks have ample reserves ($1.7 tn), accounting for 10% of their assets.
10. There’s been an increase in the monetary base over the last year (4.5%), but it hasn’t much exceeded the increase in nominal gross domestic product (4.0%). The Federal Reserve balance sheet has been stable, contracting slightly compared with last year at this time. Increases in M1 and M2 (at around 5.5%) are running somewhat ahead of increases in production (4.0%), but not so much as to generate irritating inflation.
11. The Federal Funds Rate (at 1.85%) is more than half the distance from what it had been for 10 years to normal range rates.
12. Trailing P/E ratios (at 22.6) are about 25% above par. A 20% decline in equity prices isn’t a disaster except for speculators.
Again, Jill knows nothing and is scrounging around for emotional validation.
Tix XIV,
Thanks for posting that.
I still support Trump but he/we inherited the largest financial mess ever in the world. I think he’s the best chance we have to steer through the US/world’s mess.
I do find it amazing that our USA central controlled economic system has had some many thumbs to plug so many dykes.
When was that 1986 when Reagan putting in place the plunge protection team?
In 2007/8/9 it was interesting to me/citizens trading against them, still is.
I know one of them now, a very nice guy, he was just doing what the Fed/NY banks wanted them to do. ( Taxpayers bailing out Warren Buffet, etc…)
A couple of sites beyond the govt/fed approved stats/comments you might be interested in. The 1st , Williams figures stats, the numbers the way he did back before the govt changed them & he worked for the govt.
http://www.shadowstats.com/
https://www.traderschoice.net/
Don’t take Mr. Shadowstats seriously. Haven’t looked at the site since about 2010.
TiaXIV,
As far as the markets go I can see is that in the next year the Deep State Trump/USA haters have to crash the markets & Trump has to counter their positions & keep the markets up.
We’ll see. Continued cold civil war or hot.
the main premises of shadowstats, that some statistics are improperly taken, is plausible
the main problem with shadowstats, is that they have been unable to predict much better than the statistics they have criticized
it’s one thing to say that’s wrong, its another thing to come up with something better
You think Mr. Shadowstats with his business degree from Dartmouth produces better numbers than the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Census Bureau? Are there articles in American Statistician or the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society confirming his complaints?
no, i don’t think so. that was my point
I do think that measuring economic activity is possible to do better or worse, over time, we should seek to do it better. ‘
then there is the interpretation of statistics. for example, one of the things that guy used to harp on, if I recall correctly, because I too lost interest in him years ago, but he used to harp on labor force participation rates as more important than generally credited. seems to me you made that point yourself here once or twice
Oky, some want to believe todays good economy is due to Obama. Of course they are wrong like they are with most things. The Council of Economic Advisors prepared this video to show how important stats in the Obama administration were getting worse but were reversed by Trump. Interesting video.
Allan….thank you….Good to know!
Cindy, you mean “Good to pretend.”
After the trump stimulus bill which is projected to cost us $5.5 trillion by the non-partisan Comm For A Responsible Federal Budget (https://www.crfb.org/blogs/tax-cut-and-spending-bill-could-cost-55-trillion-through-2029) managed to get yearly GDP growth to 2.8 % (2017), a mark Obama bettered in 2014. It is projected to hover around 2% for the next several years AT BEST. Jobs gained in Obama’s last 2.5 years surpassed Trump’s first 2.5 years with no likelihood he’ll better than that as the stimulus effect cools (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/20/trump-v-obama-economy-charts/)..
Hopefully our kids and grandkids will take care of that $5.5 trillion IOU
Anon1 – this “non-partisan” group is at least 2:1 Democrats to Republicans on the Board. And one of the Republican is for sure a RINO.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is an independent, non-profit, bipartisan public policy organization based in Washington, D.C. that addresses federal budget and fiscal issues. It was founded in 1981 by former United States Representatives Robert Giaimo (D-CT) and Henry Bellmon (R-OK), and its board of directors includes former Members of Congress and directors of the Office of Management and Budget, the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve.[2] CRFB was also host of the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform, which released its initial report, Red Ink Rising, in December 2009 and its second report, Getting Back in the Black, in November 2010.[3]
The Committee’s current President is Maya MacGuineas, who also served as Director of the Fiscal Policy Program at the New America Foundation. CRFB’s board of directors was previously co-chaired by William Frenzel (R-MN), Timothy Penny (I-MN), and Charles Stenholm (D-TX), all former Congressional representatives.
The organization’s activities are overseen by a 40-member board of directors made up of experts and prominent figures in federal budget, tax and fiscal policy.
A large part of the board is made up of former directors of major budget-related government offices including the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the House and Senate Budget Committees, and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The group also includes numerous former Congressmen, former U.S. Comptrollers General, university and think tank experts on fiscal policy, and prominent members of the business and legal community.[4] In July 2015, CRFB announced Mitch Daniels, Leon Panetta and Timothy Penny as the new co-chairs of its board.[5]
Barry Anderson, former acting Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
Roy Ash, former OMB Director for Nixon and Ford administrations
Nancy Kassenbaum Baker, former U.S. Senator from Kansas
Henry Bellmon, former Governor of Oklahoma and U.S. Senator from Oklahoma and co-founder of CRFB
Erskine Bowles, former co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform
Charles Bowsher, former Comptroller General of GAO under Reagan administration
Kent Conrad, former Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee
Dan Crippen, former CBO Director from 1999–2003
Mitch Daniels, former OMB Director and Governor of Indiana
Dick Darman, former OMB Director under George H.W. Bush administration
Vic Fazio, former U.S. Representative from California
William Frenzel, former U.S. Representative from Minnesota
Bill Gradison Jr., former U.S. Representative from Ohio
William H. Gray III, former U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve
William Hoagland, former Staff Director of the Senate Budget Committee
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Director of CBO, economic advisor to McCain 2008 presidential campaign
James R. Jones, former Chief of Staff to Lyndon Johnson
Lou Kerr, President and Chair of the Kerr Foundation
Jim Kolbe, former U.S. Representative from Arizona
James Lynn, former Director of OMB
Dave McCurdy, former U.S. Representative from Oklahoma
James T. McIntyre, former Director of the OMB
David Minge, former U.S. Representative from Minnesota
Jim Nussle, former Director of OMB under George W. Bush
Paul O’Neill, former Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush
June E. O’Neill, former Director of CBO
Marne Obernaurer Jr., Chairman of the Beverage Distributors Company
Robert Packwood, former Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee
Leon Panetta, former OMB Director and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Rudolph Penner, former CBO Director
Timothy Penny, former U.S. Representative from Minnesota
Peter G. Peterson, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce and founder of Peter G. Peterson Foundation
Robert Reischauer, former Director of CBO and current President of the Urban Institute
John J. Rhodes, former U.S. Representative from Arizona
Alice Rivlin, founding Director of CBO, former member of Federal Reserve Board of Governors
Charles Robb, former U.S. Senator from Virginia
Martin Sabo, former Chairman of the House Budget Committee
Charles Schultze, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
Alan K. Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming
John W. Snow, former Secretary of the Treasury under George W. Bush
John Spratt, former House Budget Committee Chairman
Elmer Staats, former U.S. Comptroller General
Charles Stenholm, former U.S. Representative from Texas
Eugene Steuerle, Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute
David Stockman, former Director of OMB under Reagan, former U.S. Representative from Michigan
Robert Strauss, former Chairman of Democratic National Committee
Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary and Director of the National Economic Council
John Tanner, former U.S. Representative from Tennessee
Tom Tauke, former U.S. Representative from Iowa
Laura Tyson, former Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers
George Voinovich, former U.S. Senator from Ohio
Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve
Carol Cox Wait, former President of CRFB
David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General and Director of GAO
Joseph R. Wright, former Director of OMB under Ronald Reagan
You offered a long list of establishmentarians, many of whom are dead. Of what possible relevance is this?
Allan…..yes, I knew he was insincere, but thought I’d play along…lol
Thank you, though!!
Allan…..I’m referring to James Wilkinson….answering your question way upstream. Thank you!
Wow, Tia! Impressive!
Now could you please give the 10 day weather forecast for my area of the country? Thanks! 😎
Cindy,
No, the Climate Scientist can’t give an acturate 10 day forecast but they can assure us that if the USA & only the USA Does Not give up all it’s industry/oil/NG/Energy & start paying Wallst/City of London Banks their Carbon Trading Derivatives Scam that the planet will burn into a cinder in 7 to 12 years otherwise. LOL;)
BTW: They’ve just printed a fresh batch of counterfeit mineral rights they’d like to sell to us.
😊
” The FED is injecting billions of liquidity into the system (99.9 billion just on Tuesday, WSJ). Most people understand the economy is disintegrating. ” she says
MOST PEOPLE …. i see we have another poster who has a crystal ball to see into the minds of others
out here in flyover, we are feeling the positive effects of the lowest unemployment levels had in 50 years.
i don’t know to what extent President Trump deserves credit, I think some credit for sure, but the improvement since when Obama was president over 3 years ago is YUUUUUGE
as for liquidity, injections, there are short term borrowing problems in the past couple months that need attention, and if they’re stopping a blip from becoming a crisis, good, that’s what they’re supposed to do
Now if you want to get more complicated than that jill start by explaining what “repo operations” are, in 50 words or less.
The Feds’ injection of money is scaring some people around here! It’s supposed to be hidden from our population. Go to naked capitalism for some info. Don’t shoot the messenger. I used the info from the WSJ. Of course, many other places outside the MSM have noted what the FED is up to.
Also, you guys may want to know that the govt. is no longer required to give actual budget figures to the population any more. “FASAB Statement 56: Understanding New Government Financial Accounting Loopholes” Catherine Austin Fitts is one person who can explain that situation very well! “In the absolute most simple terms, Standard 56 allows federal entities to shift amounts from line item to line item and sometimes even omit spending altogether when reporting their financials in order to avoid the potential of revealing classified information.1 However, as with all laws, nearly every word in that sentence is a complicated concept to unpack. Who counts as a federal reporting entity? When and how can these entities conceal or remove financial information from their reports? What information can be removed? When does something count as confidential, and who makes that determination? All of these questions have enormous bodies of writing in FASAB memorandums addressing, and sometimes failing to address, their answers.” So check it out!
The Feds’ injection of money is scaring some people around here!
Who gives a rip that some ignoramus is ‘scared’? None of the monetary aggregates has been growing at an abnormal pace and the Fed’s balance sheet is not growing.
Thats just babble.
Refer to This is absurd x XIV’s post above on how to compile a lucid statement.
Jill, et al
Just another day of another year of defrauding millions of people in a Soviet style Central Planned Economy were punishment for breaking the laws only apply to the little people. Oh well, it anti like there isn’t already a bunch of PO’d people. The Mafia had to get out of loan sharking biz because the Wall St Banks were already charging 20-30% on a fed rate of 1.65% (sic):
Ex-Deutsche Bank Traders Avoid Prison Time For Libor Scheme
October 24, 2019
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two former Deutsche Bank AG traders will serve no prison time for conspiring to manipulate the Libor benchmark interest rate between 2005 and 2011, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, sharply criticizing U.S. prosecutors for treating the two men as “proxy wrongdoers” for a much larger scheme.
Matthew Connolly, who once led Deutsche Bank’s pool trading desk in New York, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan to six months’ home confinement, while Gavin Campbell Black, who worked on the bank’s London desk, was sentenced to nine months’ home confinement, which he will be allowed to serve in England.
McMahon also ordered Connolly to pay a $100,000 fine, and Black to pay a $300,000 fine.
The sentence is a setback for U.S. prosecutors in one of the few criminal cases to emerge from a sweeping probe of Libor rigging. The prosecutors had asked the judge to order “substantial” prison time for both men, saying federal guidelines called for close to 10 years, along with a $3 million fine for Connolly and a $2 million (£1.56 million) fine for Black.
McMahon, however, said the prosecutors were trying to hold Connolly and Black responsible for behaviour throughout the financial industry.
https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/24/ex-deutsche-bank-traders-avoid-prison-time-for-libor-scheme?fbclid=IwAR0qFWh-V1qtukUD7t4rqBbWKZ6CbqkEhMVxGaW0hpx2eSsgR0ZrJuvfiGc
Catherine Austin Fitts: i wasted a lot of time listening to her. she doesn’t have much to offer in place of what she criticizes. this is the same problem as shadowstats. and the others in that orbit, for the most part.
I am old enough to have been hearing the gold bugs predict imminent hyperinflation for many decades. in that time we have had fairly little. that’s reality.
the gold bugs are often people who specialize in fleecing people who are paranoid. I am just a little paranoid, not a lot, but enough that I have been the subject of many a pitch.
also a lot of these people have long positions that they can’t unwind for fear of taking their losses and admitting they were wrong. so they’ve invented a lot of explanations for why why why stuff like a massive cartel. well sure there is some price fixing going on and some market manipulation but not at the level that the “GATA” guys habitually suggest.
they also habitually ignore long term major deflationary forces at work in the world economy. the migration of labor and capital (globalization, offshoring, and outsourcing) which have proceeded apace for decades have increased competition in countless markets which has had the effect of lowering prices for materials and labor and finished goods. this factor is generally ignored by the goldbug press.
all that said, I like the barbarous relic myself. nothing beats the heft of a $20 gold in the palm of one’s hand, and the dull gleam of the yellow metal.
5. Trump has decided we will be taking Syria’s oil. That’s theft of another nation’s assets. And I thought people were against “socialism”? Well, are you?
I take it you have not an ounce of skepticism about what is published at your preferred crank sites (none of whom employ petroleum engineers, it is safe to say, or economists).
Syria’s entire mining sector prior to the civil war produced about $6 bn worth of exports per annum, IOW, the gross output of Dubuque, Iowa. No, it never occurred to Trump to ‘steal’ this, even if such a plan could be practically implemented.
“As I have said before, there is no question that the use of public office for personal gain is an impeachable offense.”
Setting aside that Turley himself has said he can’t find a quid pro quo here, a legal question. How is “personal gain” defined or used in a statute if Turley is referring to a statute at all. And if he isn’t I think he needs to reconsider the broad requirements he is setting for impeachment. Impeaching a President because “he did something wrong” leaves too much open to political biases. And can cause continuous impeachment drives ad nauseum — which is what we’ve been putting up with.
Some “intellectuals” made fools out of themselves by claiming that information was “a thing of value” under the campaign finance statutes. They tried to apply it to the Trump Tower meeting. Legal scholars who aren’t trying to get on T.V. would not make such an absurd argument. It defines the phrase “or anything of value” so broadly that it makes no sense.
Blagojevich, for example, initiated a pay to play scheme i.e. money i.e. bribery. I find things attached to this latest outrage to be legally vague.
Again, I’m open to any and all arguments. Give me statute where “personal gain” is used and let me look at it.
Blago was guitly but he got the shaft. A very unfair sentence. Other people get a slap on the wrist but they really threw the book at him.
Well of course the govt hammered Blago, he was White after all, not like that queer, Islamic, mulatto, American hating piece of trash Tratior.
I suggest you might find this article published in the Federalist Society Review useful in addressing the issue of the grounds upon which Trump can be impeached. https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/impeachment-the-constitution-s-fiduciary-meaning-of-high-misdemeanors
This is a good read. Much appreciated. I was trying to dance around the discussion in the article you reference as best I could.
I think Turley is putting the bar for impeachment too low, and the fact that “political gain” cannot be found in a statute makes its use vague.
The author you cite makes the following statement in his conclusion: “High misdemeanors are not limited to commission of crimes, but they do not include mere political differences.”
The idea that Congress will make that kind of distinction strikes me as ridiculous. They’re not doing so at present, and they didn’t do it in the case of Clinton. We’ve had a Special Council or Prosecutor investigating the President once every decade for the past half-century. And I think a lot of people, Turley included, are impeachment happy.
I was also struck by the author referencing this quote from Edmund Randolph: “No man ever thought of impeaching a man for an opinion.”
Mr. Randolph has his head in the sand.
Given your willful ignoring of clear evidence of Trump misusing the power of his office personal gain, I offer this article without much hope it will register. Hint – Google “what law Trump break ukraine”.
https://www.businessinsider.com/laws-trump-could-have-broken-ukraine-whistleblower-case-2019-9
Anon1 – Trump is losing money as President.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-lost-money-president-951137
I cannot see how losing money is personal gain.
Seeking dirt against a political opponent is seeking personal gain.
Anon1 – it is called opposition research.
Paul, this is not difficult. You cannot use the power of the office, including Congressionally appropriated funds, to get a foreign government to do oppo research for your campaign. If you do – and the evidence from multiple sources, including a Trumpster GOP senator, is that Trump did – you can be charged with violations of campaign funding laws, extortion, and misappropriation of funds. On top of that, it would be obvious that you were not morally fit to be president, even if suckers like Cindy thinks he has a big heart.
While he must have one to survive, there has been so far no other evidence he possesses on.
Anon1 – I know you have comprehension problems so I am sending you Judicial Watch’s update on Ukraine.
https://www.judicialwatch.org/videos/the-latest-on-the-biden-ukraine-corruption-scandal-inside-judicial-watch/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekend+playback&utm_term=members&utm_content=20191026142354
Let me know if you actually watch it.
No paul, I don;t watch video from hacks on the left or right. Why don’t you sum up what you find interesting?
Anon1 – JW is neither right or left, they are neutral. It is an explanation of the FOIA suits they have filed.
Yeah, right Paul.
Very funny
“Founded in 1994, JW has primarily targeted Democrats, in particular the Presidency of Bill Clinton, the Presidency of Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton; however, it has also sued Republicans, including the administration of George W. Bush. The organization has described climate science as “fraud science” and has filed lawsuits against government climate scientists. JW has made numerous false and unsubstantiated claims that have been picked up by right-wing news outlets. Courts have dismissed the vast majority of its lawsuits.[1]..”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Watch
Anon1 – I told you not to use wikipedia. Any ah with a keyboard can edit it.
Noun. willful ignorance (uncountable) (idiomatic, law) A decision in bad faith to avoid becoming informed about something so as to avoid having to make undesirable decisions that such information might prompt.
Anon1, you are the epitome of that definition. And I guarantee you will not improve with age.
Sorry you had to look that up Olly. I’ll try to not use such big words when addressing you in the future.
Sorry you had to look that up Olly.
Your chronic inconsistencies are bordering on the pathological. You insult people as being willfully ignorant and then proceed to chastise them for bothering to look something up. You recommend people review links you attach, but refuse to review links recommended by others.
Here’s a couple more for your personality profile: Psychological Projection. and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You should’ve stuck with the shovel instead of the backhoe.
Anon, don’t be a dummy. You don’t have to listen to any spin you might feel exists but JW is known for FOIA requests so that you can read the real emails, the real documents and transcripts etc. That is not something created by them rather by the politicians that one could be nice and call “thieves”. You don’t want to listen to the results of their searches which reveal what your lover Hillary and others have done so you remain ignorant to the facts that exist.
Rather odd statements coming from a Hillary supporter who used her office to get tens of millions in gifts to her so called charity foundation and payments for her husband’s speaches. That along with her involvement in the Steele Dossier.
It makes what Anon says totally laughable and ignorant.
How many house members have willful ignorance of the clear evidence that Pelosi can’t bring an impeachment vote to the house floor? With all that clear evidence, wouldn’t you recommend Schiff provide full transparency of the proceedings, full minority rights to his Republican colleagues and full rights to the accused? You know, to move people from the willfully ignorant column to the fully enlightened?
On another note, we’ll likely be discussing the willfully ignorant issue again once the IG report is made public and Durham’s criminal probe moves along.
Olly, first interviews with witnesses in a possible prosecution are always done in secret. There are GOP members present at the hearings and whatever evidence is used against the President will be made public. That argument is ignorant, willful or otherwise.
Anon1 – Schiff does not get to set up his own Star Chamber to try the President. If Schiff did not leak like a sieve it wouldn’t be so bad, however he is leaking stuff against the President and nothing for the President. Where it a Grand Jury he would be sanctioned and possibly disbarred.
You’re right Olly, he doesn’t has hasn’t. For once I suggest you listen to Fox News:
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6097325158001/#sp=show-clips
President Clinton got disbarred and we might see Schiff disbarred as well. That probably is a status symbol for the left that was pushing Micahel Avenatti for President.
The left has no morals.
Possible prosecution? Are you being willfully ignorant? You stated the evidence was clear. Are you now saying the evidence is not clear? If this is being done in secret, you know, like a grand jury, then why is any of the testimony being leaked to the press? Should Schiff remove himself from this process as he is a fact witness in this inquiry? At what point should the house ethics committee sanction Schiff for allowing testimony to be leaked and for not recusing himself as a fact witness?
Olly, the evidence is clear. I suggest you review and that come back here with a stratight face and say Trump didn;t do this> I was being technical in saying “possible prosecution”. Sue me. He will be impeached.
Technical? LOL! If you are as technical in your construction business as you’ve been in this forum, building inspectors would condemn your work.
Anon should be known as ‘bent nail’.
Anon is blind to what he is saying. Of course the House might vote to impeach because it is a political vote not a vote on right and wrong. The majority of the House are Democrats and will vote for impeachment if the vote is taken. The Senate will not convict.
What we are seeing is that those that milk the government for whatever they can dislike Trump because he caught their hands in the cookie jar. The majority of those are Democrats but there are Republicans as well. No one likes their theft reported or their hand slapped when it is in the cookie jar so a lot of people do not like Trump.This extends to corporations that get large benefits from government and even to corporations that supply military equipment.
Trump is a threat to all those that depend on the government for their status in life or their incomes. Trump has helped the little guy and is trying to dismantle the ability of the state to provide these large gifts to those that are not deserving.
The operative words are “could be accused” “could-have-broken”. Of course Anon doesn’t know what that means. What is means is a list of questions follow. The answers, however, to date are that Trump has not committed any violation under the law and it appears that the Obama administration committed loads of violations of rules and law.
As President Trump has been transparent and has done alot for the economy and elsewhere. Obama, on the other hand, weaponized the DOJ, intelligence agencies, IRS etc.
Anon will say differently but one can easily look at the evidence.
Looks like the dictionary doesn’t mention anything related to Africa. Affirmative action privilege and generational welfare weren’t enough (nothing ever is). Now the communists impose affirmative action language. Dang!
Ben Franklin, 1787, we gave you “…a republic, if you can keep it.”
Oh, I know, Merriam Webster is a bastion of white racism and bigotry. My bad! Let’s report to the communist party political officer and confess. Perhaps they’ll show us a modicum of mercy and send us to an upscale club-fed type “archipelago.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Merriam-Webster
SINCE 1828
lynch verb
\ ˈlinch
\
lynched; lynching; lynches
Definition of lynch
transitive verb
: to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission The accused killer was lynched by an angry mob.
“Trump thought it was appropriate to compare the investigation of his alleged misconduct to lynchings, a word more often reserved for racist murders carried out in this country for decades.” Lynchings, like slavery, have very grim historical meanings, but they are also part of everyday lexicon, just like murder, kill, and other serious words.
“I’m going to murder you if you don’t put the toilet seat up and I sit in pee again” does not belittle the actual murder of anyone.
“I’m a slave to keeping this carpet clean with dogs” does not mock what actually happened to real slaves over a hundred years ago.
Calling the Clarence Thomas investigation a “modern day lynching” or the Clinton Impeachment, or the Trump series of a dozen or so investigations, does not in any way refer to the actual lynching of either slaves, blacks by the Klan, or horse thieves by a posse.
Everyone knows these words and phrases do not refer to actual murder or slavery. Everyone except the PC police on days when they are not using such terms themselves. The Left uses lynching all the time, when it suits their purposes.
This is just political warfare and yet another attempt to lobotomize the English language.
“The same is true of the outrage over seeking investigations or evidence from foreign governments. The Clinton campaign denied that it funded the dossier investigation of Trump until the media proved that it had lied. Former British spy Christopher Steele sought information from foreign sources, including Russian intelligence. The Obama administration investigated Trump campaign officials and sought information from foreign governments on alleged meddling in the 2016 election.” The dictatorial Left is creating a caste system of laws. The laws apply to Republicans, but not themselves. The is also true of the speech policing laws that the Left arbitrarily imposes upon everyone but themselves.
This reminds me of that time when they blamed Sarah Palin for a shooting, because she had an image of a seat in the crosshairs. Media outlets across the country declared that militarized political rhetoric causes shootings, and pledged to never use such words themselves. It was hilarious watching them try to get through a single show during election season without blundering into war rhetoric. They bumbled and mumbled apologies for “target”, “set their sights upon”, “attack”, “retreat”, “war on women”, “battle”, “front lines”. I used to keep a tally just for fun whenever I turned on the TV. This stupid effort eventually faded away, and everyone promptly forgot that Republicans were unilaterally blamed for universal language patterns.
A partisan impeachment process is always doomed to failure as many from both the left and right have said throughout our history. This should be obvious, but that doesn’t matter when emotions take over. The Senate Republicans now have a bill pending that condemns the House. The bill currently has 44 co-sponsors. The well is well poisoned. The game is essentially over, go ahead and impeach because the Senate will not convict.
Oh, and what’s coming down the pike will shock the nation: Barr’s probe into the origins of the “Trump is a Russian spy” hoax investigation has now turned into a CRIMINAL probe. And Flynn’s super-lawyer, Sidney Powell, has also put the FBI in the crosshairs if you haven’t noticed. Those who have actually been following the details will know what’s coming. The left won’t care until they’re hit square in the forehead. Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al already know they’re in deep, deep trouble.
I do not believe that impeachment is their goal. This is an opposition research gathering mission, at taxpayer expense. They also have pro-socialist candidates that are not appealing. They don’t have confidence in their message, candidates, or policy, and they certainly can’t talk about the economy, or keep crediting Obama, so they are trying to undermine Trump. They can’t win a fair fight. That’s why the media never seems to cover anything positive that Trump has ever done in office. People who get their news from the MSM think that Trump is some kind of paperweight occasionally sending out mean Tweets and constantly risking Armageddon. Plus he probably shoots bunnies from his window.
They are not going to get an accurate, or fair view of this Administration or how the country is doing. There is not enough discussion on the MSM about how catastrophic most of the Democratic Candidates would be for the economy.
You could seize the entire military budget and all the wealth of all the rich people, and it wouldn’t pay for Medicare for all, let alone all the other stuff like free college tuition or the Green New Deal. Plus then there are no more rich golden geese to pay the following year because you just impoverished them, destroyed their companies, and put everyone out of work.
There is not enough money in the world to pay for Democrats’ imagination…but there are Leftist economists who claim you can just print more money. I’m going to call that the Venezuelan Economics model.
Ivan, this is how the NYTimes headline spins that news. “The Justice Dept. is said to have opened a criminal inquiry into its own Russia investigation, which is likely to raise alarms of political payback.” That is why Anon and Peter Shill Hill Wilkonson seem to be so ignorant of what is actually happening until most of what they say is proven wrong. Once that happens they run away and later deny the truth.
You’re absolutely right. I do have sympathy for them because there was a time where I also believed what I read in the Times. And, as you are saying, the real question is what happens when you realize you were wrong…some change, most don’t. But this time we are beyond the tipping point: enough people understand what’s actually happened and we are forever changed.
Ivan, I have been suspicious of the NYTimes ever since I was aware. Their news didn’t match certain histories and things I was involved with. I am not saying they didn’t have a lot of good content in the past just that the news was spun though not as much as in recent years.
It was a serious newspaper at one time. The retirments of AM Rosenthal and AO “Punch” Sulzberger left it in the hands of “Pinch” Sulzberger, who made of the paper something grotesque with the aid of a serious of inadequate people in the editor’s chair. “Pinch” retired a few years back and left the paper in the hands of his son, AG Sulzberger and said Sulzberger’s minion, Dean Baquet. They made it even worse than it was before.
DSS, the NYTimes may have been a more serious newspaper under Arthur Oaks, but it still slanted the news something that should not be done but seems to be done by virutally every newspaper. It got worse but I judge a newspaper on its news service not its editorials thought they do help.
Today, the NYTimes is a bad joke and has totally lost its reputation.