Politics & Stuff

[manpe 10,861]

On 16/07/2023 at 20:42, Vesper said:

this is terrifying

and it is only going to get worse as the tech rapidly advances

 

Parents who post public pictures or videos of their children on the internet are retards, long before AI was even a thing. I feel sorry for the upcoming generations.

[Vesper 30,231]

Students at Florida public schools will now learn that Black people benefitted from slavery https://archive.li/XGOg8 https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/07/19/do-not-for-the-love-of-god-tell-kids-that-slavery-was-beneficial/ Students at Florida public schools will now learn that Black people benefitted from slavery because it taught them skills. This change is part of the African American history standards the State Board of Education approved at a Wednesday meeting. The description of slavery as beneficial is not the only grievance parents, teachers, education advocates and politicians had with the new standards. People speaking at the Wednesday meeting generally called out the diluting and omissions of history. For example, instruction at the elementary school level is largely limited to identifying famous Black people, and high school teachers will talk about the “acts of violence perpetrated by African Americans” at the 1920 Ocoee Massacre, in which a white mob killed at least 30 Black people. “Please table this rule and revise it to make sure that my history our history is being told factually and completely, and please do not, for the love of God, tell kids that slavery was beneficial because I guarantee you it most certainly was not,” said Kevin Parker, a community member. Though the public testimony period lasted over an hour, most of the people objected to the adoption of the standard, with supporters of it waving from their seats. Paul Burns, the chancellor of K-12 public schools, defended the standards, denying that they referred to slavery as beneficial. “Our standards are factual, objective standards that really teach the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said. Board member Kelly Garcia upheld the standards and said that none of the backlash she read about them before the meeting pointed to specific concerns. A coalition of Black leaders and community groups — Florida Education Association, FL’s NAACP and The Black History Project, Inc. and Equal Ground — sent a letter to the board on Monday in opposition to the standards.

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

On 18/07/2023 at 14:18, Vesper said:

Poorest Region of America - What It Really Looks Like 🇺🇸

😕

Great documentary - this is the free market, inevitable inequality exists

[Vesper 30,231]

Byelection results paint ominous picture for Tories despite Uxbridge win

Conservatives avoided a 3-0 defeat but face a daunting task if they are to retain an overall majority at next election

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/21/byelection-results-paint-ominous-picture-tories-despite-uxbridge-win

In the end the byelection scoreline was 2-1 to the opposition; a Labour triumph in Selby and Ainsty and a Liberal Democrat victory in Somerton and Frome, and a consolation win for the Conservatives in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. On the surface it looks like something for everyone, but taken together, the results paint a truly ominous picture for the Conservatives.

The swing to Labour in Selby and Ainsty was a monster 23.7%. This is the second-highest swing to the main opposition in any government seat since 1945, with only the 1994 landslide in Dudley West (29.1%) being larger.

It is a historically terrible result for a government, and correspondingly an amazing one for a principal opposition party. There may be one or two excuses for the Conservatives – many electors will not have been sympathetic to Nigel Adams’ reasons for resigning, the organisation may have become complacent, turnout was sharply down – but these are not enough to take away from the scale of the verdict on the government.

There have been several massive swings to the Lib Dems in recent years – Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire, Tiverton and Honiton – so Somerton and Frome does not tell us much that is new despite the big Lib Dem victory.

Selby and Ainsty shows Labour is capable of winning big, and that tactical voting is working consistently against the Conservatives. However, Uxbridge and South Ruislip has a certain amount to show us about the politics of outer London and the limits of the patience of the electorate during a cost of living crisis.

Uxbridge seems to be a jinxed constituency for Labour. This result makes it three times – December 1972, July 1997 and now July 2023 – that it has fallen short of the polling and expectations.

The third time was not the charm for Labour, and Frank Beswick (1945-59) and John Ryan (1966-70) remain the only non-Tory MPs for the constituency. Big byelections attract minor party and independent candidates, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip was no exception. There were two independent candidates standing in opposition to the London mayor Sadiq Khan’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) who polled 394 votes between them, but the Conservatives ran by far the most successful single-issue anti- Ulez campaign.

Their new MP Steve Tuckwell’s victory speech was about London politics rather than a defence of the Sunak government. There can be no doubt that Ulez enabled the Tories to run an anti-incumbent campaign that turned out enough of their vote to squeak home.

The Uxbridge result will cause short-term problems for Labour. Their candidate, Danny Beales, had already expressed reservations about the implementation of Ulez during the campaign. Dropping the change to the scheme would fit in with the cautious approach of the national leadership and be a gesture of listening to voters in a cost of living crisis. This is not the first Ulez election – Labour performed poorly against the Conservatives in the May local elections in places just outside London, such as Dartford and Harlow, where it was an issue.

However, Khan regards clean air as a vital climate and public health issue, and can hope that the politics of it will settle down after August when many people realise it will not affect them. Labour campaigners also pointed to the lack of a “retail offer” – a simple promise to improve people’s lives that would enable the conversation to move on from Ulez, and some on the left blame the national leadership’s lack of ambition. Uxbridge and South Ruislip could be a stress test for how well the anti-Tory vote holds up in the face of a vigorous campaign.

The longer-term dilemma is for the Conservatives. Going all-in on Ulez was enough to stave off defeat in Uxbridge, and the Tories will be tempted to go further down the road to campaigning as the motorists’ party, even at the cost of their own net zero transition policies and their long-term future with younger voters.

The Conservatives will find it hard to replicate the anti-incumbent technique outside London or Wales, and there are only a handful of other constituencies that resemble Uxbridge electorally or demographically (and the Uxbridge swing is big enough to take out some of them).

The problem the Tories have is that there are large numbers of constituencies that are a bit like Selby and Ainsty or Somerton and Frome. Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire is a mixture of small towns, commuter villages and some countryside, neither poor nor affluent. It has elements of “red wall” and “middle England” and a big swing here has wide implications. The Uxbridge result might caution us against expecting too many Labour advances into new territory in 2024, but Selby and Ainsty suggests Labour is on course to rebuild the electoral coalition that previously brought it victory. Somerton and Frome was part of a swathe of rural and small-town former Lib Dem seats in the south-west that seemed like extinct volcanoes after the coalition government and Brexit. If these seats are in flux, the Conservatives face a daunting task if they are to retain an overall majority.

The swings since 2019 look as if they are all over the place – 29% to the Lib Dems in Somerton and Frome, 24% to Labour in Selby and Ainsty, and only 7% to Labour in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

But from a longer perspective it looks a lot clearer. It is less dangerous to prognosticate on the basis of three byelections in very different types of seat than it is for a single byelection. In 1997 the Lib Dems gained Somerton and Frome by 130 votes – in 2023 they gained it by 11,008. In 1997 Labour gained the Selby constituency by 3,836 – in 2023, on less favourable boundaries, Labour gained by 4,161. And in 1997 the Conservatives held Uxbridge by 724 votes; in 2023 they held a somewhat more Tory version of the seat by 495 votes. These results, allowing for the Lib Dems’ winning ways in byelections, show the level and distribution of the parties’ support is a bit worse for the Conservatives than it was in 1997. The Brexit realignment? Left on economics, right on culture?

Gone like tears in rain.

 

[cosmicway 1,333]

On 22/07/2023 at 03:35, Vesper said:

Byelection results paint ominous picture for Tories despite Uxbridge win

Conservatives avoided a 3-0 defeat but face a daunting task if they are to retain an overall majority at next election

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/21/byelection-results-paint-ominous-picture-tories-despite-uxbridge-win

In the end the byelection scoreline was 2-1 to the opposition; a Labour triumph in Selby and Ainsty and a Liberal Democrat victory in Somerton and Frome, and a consolation win for the Conservatives in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. On the surface it looks like something for everyone, but taken together, the results paint a truly ominous picture for the Conservatives.

The swing to Labour in Selby and Ainsty was a monster 23.7%. This is the second-highest swing to the main opposition in any government seat since 1945, with only the 1994 landslide in Dudley West (29.1%) being larger.

It is a historically terrible result for a government, and correspondingly an amazing one for a principal opposition party. There may be one or two excuses for the Conservatives – many electors will not have been sympathetic to Nigel Adams’ reasons for resigning, the organisation may have become complacent, turnout was sharply down – but these are not enough to take away from the scale of the verdict on the government.

There have been several massive swings to the Lib Dems in recent years – Chesham and Amersham, North Shropshire, Tiverton and Honiton – so Somerton and Frome does not tell us much that is new despite the big Lib Dem victory.

Selby and Ainsty shows Labour is capable of winning big, and that tactical voting is working consistently against the Conservatives. However, Uxbridge and South Ruislip has a certain amount to show us about the politics of outer London and the limits of the patience of the electorate during a cost of living crisis.

Uxbridge seems to be a jinxed constituency for Labour. This result makes it three times – December 1972, July 1997 and now July 2023 – that it has fallen short of the polling and expectations.

The third time was not the charm for Labour, and Frank Beswick (1945-59) and John Ryan (1966-70) remain the only non-Tory MPs for the constituency. Big byelections attract minor party and independent candidates, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip was no exception. There were two independent candidates standing in opposition to the London mayor Sadiq Khan’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) who polled 394 votes between them, but the Conservatives ran by far the most successful single-issue anti- Ulez campaign.

Their new MP Steve Tuckwell’s victory speech was about London politics rather than a defence of the Sunak government. There can be no doubt that Ulez enabled the Tories to run an anti-incumbent campaign that turned out enough of their vote to squeak home.

The Uxbridge result will cause short-term problems for Labour. Their candidate, Danny Beales, had already expressed reservations about the implementation of Ulez during the campaign. Dropping the change to the scheme would fit in with the cautious approach of the national leadership and be a gesture of listening to voters in a cost of living crisis. This is not the first Ulez election – Labour performed poorly against the Conservatives in the May local elections in places just outside London, such as Dartford and Harlow, where it was an issue.

However, Khan regards clean air as a vital climate and public health issue, and can hope that the politics of it will settle down after August when many people realise it will not affect them. Labour campaigners also pointed to the lack of a “retail offer” – a simple promise to improve people’s lives that would enable the conversation to move on from Ulez, and some on the left blame the national leadership’s lack of ambition. Uxbridge and South Ruislip could be a stress test for how well the anti-Tory vote holds up in the face of a vigorous campaign.

The longer-term dilemma is for the Conservatives. Going all-in on Ulez was enough to stave off defeat in Uxbridge, and the Tories will be tempted to go further down the road to campaigning as the motorists’ party, even at the cost of their own net zero transition policies and their long-term future with younger voters.

The Conservatives will find it hard to replicate the anti-incumbent technique outside London or Wales, and there are only a handful of other constituencies that resemble Uxbridge electorally or demographically (and the Uxbridge swing is big enough to take out some of them).

The problem the Tories have is that there are large numbers of constituencies that are a bit like Selby and Ainsty or Somerton and Frome. Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire is a mixture of small towns, commuter villages and some countryside, neither poor nor affluent. It has elements of “red wall” and “middle England” and a big swing here has wide implications. The Uxbridge result might caution us against expecting too many Labour advances into new territory in 2024, but Selby and Ainsty suggests Labour is on course to rebuild the electoral coalition that previously brought it victory. Somerton and Frome was part of a swathe of rural and small-town former Lib Dem seats in the south-west that seemed like extinct volcanoes after the coalition government and Brexit. If these seats are in flux, the Conservatives face a daunting task if they are to retain an overall majority.

The swings since 2019 look as if they are all over the place – 29% to the Lib Dems in Somerton and Frome, 24% to Labour in Selby and Ainsty, and only 7% to Labour in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

But from a longer perspective it looks a lot clearer. It is less dangerous to prognosticate on the basis of three byelections in very different types of seat than it is for a single byelection. In 1997 the Lib Dems gained Somerton and Frome by 130 votes – in 2023 they gained it by 11,008. In 1997 Labour gained the Selby constituency by 3,836 – in 2023, on less favourable boundaries, Labour gained by 4,161. And in 1997 the Conservatives held Uxbridge by 724 votes; in 2023 they held a somewhat more Tory version of the seat by 495 votes. These results, allowing for the Lib Dems’ winning ways in byelections, show the level and distribution of the parties’ support is a bit worse for the Conservatives than it was in 1997. The Brexit realignment? Left on economics, right on culture?

Gone like tears in rain.

 

 

The Tories have had their kicks, 10 years.
It's not a record. The record is the monster 15 Thatcher years.
But this time they also had to manage brexit. It's like Potter, Lampard and Frank O' Farrel all in one.

 

[Vesper 30,231]

lololol

[Vesper 30,231]

We're doomed as a species...

[Gundalf 806]

11 hours ago, Vesper said:

We're doomed as a species...

[YorkshireBlue 3,279]

13 hours ago, Vesper said:

We're doomed as a species...

Where did she grow up? Her uncles basement? First time she's ever being outside clearly.

[YorkshireBlue 3,279]

On 23/07/2023 at 05:42, cosmicway said:

 

The Tories have had their kicks, 10 years.
It's not a record. The record is the monster 15 Thatcher years.
But this time they also had to manage brexit. It's like Potter, Lampard and Frank O' Farrel all in one.

 

Does it matter who's in charge? Tories or labour they both fuck you in the end.

[cosmicway 1,333]

15 minutes ago, YorkshireBlue said:

Does it matter who's in charge? Tories or labour they both fuck you in the end.

True, there is no party that meets everyone's specifications.
Imagine you were living during the war years.
The Germans are the occupying force with their stooges acting as government,
They want to make you into a soap bar.
Your alternative choice is to seek refuge in the mountains.
But in the mountains the reds will get you and cut you into pieces using tin can tops.

As things stand today the world is slowly but surely moving towards communism.
AI is bringing communism in its wake.
You are driving on the M1 in a friends car and he runs out of gas. Also he is not carrying any money so you lend him ten quid at the gas station. Later he remembers it and reimburses you with a bank transfer. But that now is deemed "suspected unauthorized commercial activity" as bank transactions are monitored. Before you know it big brother fines you 5,000 quid.

Edited July 26, 2023 by cosmicway

[Vesper 30,231]

AI MAGA's NEW Health Supplement: "Trump's Tiny White Balls"

 

[Vesper 30,231]

Donald Trump charged in Jan. 6, 2020 election investigation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/01/trump-indictment-jan-6-2020-election/

A grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump Tuesday for a raft of alleged crimes in his brazen efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — the latest legal and political aftershock stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol two and a half years ago.

The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump of three distinct conspiracies, charging that he conspired to defraud the U.S., conspired to obstruct an official proceeding and conspired against people’s rights.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment charges.

A spokesman for the former president, Steven Cheung, accused the current administration of trying to interfere with the 2024 election by targeting the current GOP frontrunner.

About 5 p.m., reporters observed a prosecutor with special counsel Jack Smith’s office and the foreperson of a grand jury that has been active for many months examining the events surrounding Jan. 6 deliver the indictment to a magistrate judge in federal court in Washington, D.C.

That grand jury panel gathered Tuesday, and left the courthouse in the afternoon. The indictment is the first known charge or charges to be filed in the special counsel probe of the machinations that led up to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and its aftermath.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya accepted the grand jury return, saying, “I do have one indictment return before me, and I have reviewed the paperwork in connection with this indictment.”

The indictment could mark a major new phase in Smith’s investigation of the former president and his aides and allies, coming nearly two months after Trump and his longtime valet were indicted for allegedly mishandling classified documents and scheming to prevent government officials from retrieving them.

Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the documents case, denies all wrongdoing related to the 2020 election as well. He announced on social media on July 18 that his lawyers had been told he was a target in the election-focused probe.

Smith was tapped in November to take charge of the both high-profile investigations, after Trump launched his 2024 presidential election campaign and Attorney General Merrick Garland — an appointee of President Biden — concluded that an independent prosecutor should oversee the probes.

A state grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., is also considering whether to file broad charges against Trump and his lawyers, advocates, and aides over their efforts to undo the 2020 election results. A decision on that front is expected in August, although previous plans to announce a charging decision have been delayed. Michigan and Arizona are also investigating aspects of the efforts to block Biden’s victory in their states.

Trump, who is the first former president charged with a crime, is facing a remarkable challenge: as a leading candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he is likely to be juggling campaign events with court hearings and criminal trials for months on end.

In additional to the Justice Department and Fulton County probes, he is scheduled for trial in March on New York state charges of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments during the 2016 election.

Smith’s elections-related investigation has proceeded along multiple tracks, people familiar with the matter have told The Washington Post, with prosecutors focused on ads and fundraising pitches claiming election fraud as well as plans for “fake electors” who could have swung the election to Trump.

A key element of the investigation is determining to what degree Republican operatives, activists and elected officials — including Trump — understood that their claims of massive voter fraud were false at the time they were making them.

Each track raises tricky questions about where the line should be drawn between political activity, legal advocacy and criminal conspiracy.

A key area of interest for Smith has been the conduct of a handful of lawyers who sought to turn Trump’s defeat into victory by trying to convince state, local, federal and judicial authorities that Biden’s 2020 election win was illegitimate or tainted by fraud.

Investigators have sought to determine to what degree these lawyers — particularly Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Kurt Olsen and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as then-Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark — were following specific instructions from Trump or others, and what those instructions were, according to the people familiar with the matter, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation.

The Post has reported that Giuliani, a personal attorney for Trump who took over his campaign’s legal efforts after the 2020 election, coordinated the fake-elector effort. Ellis helped him urge state legislatures to reject certified Biden results, while Eastman argued to Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could accept alternate slates when certifying the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Chesebro wrote several memos on the fake-elector strategy. Olsen urged lawsuits to overturn the election results in several states, and Clark pressed Trump’s fraud claims from within the Justice Department.

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,231]

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Donald Turnip supporters

''It's the deep state because they know he's the real President'' 🤡

[Vesper 30,231]

4 IFs

1. IF Trump can delay all the cases (soon there will be 4 criminal ones once he is charged with felony election fraud in Georgia, a state case that he cannot self-pardon in) until after the 2024 election

and

2. IF Trumps beats Biden or another Dem (it is almost 100% likely to be Biden, bassing death or massive physical issues) in 2024

and

3. IF Trumps wins and then self-pardons in all the federal cases and/or makes them go away

and

4. IF the US Supreme Court allows that self-pardon (it has never been tried before by a US President, nor adjudicated in a federal court) and especially if Justice Clarence 'Uncle Ruckus' Thomas refuses to recuse and then is the deciding vote (his wife was deeply involved in the attempted coup d'etat)

then......................

the US is done as a viable democracy and may well spiral into a fascist pseudo dictatorship

[Vesper 30,231]

This Is the Case

Special Counsel Jack Smith has sounded the call, but voters must answer it if they wish to preserve American democracy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/08/trump-indictment-charges-overturn-2020-election/674887/

Donald Trump stands indicted for attempting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power and subvert the rights of American citizens. This is the moment that will decide our future as a democracy.

This Is the Case

Over the past year, state and federal prosecutors have alleged that Donald Trump went on something like a crime spree as a presidential candidate, as the sitting president, and then as a private citizen after his defeat. The charges, from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago, include business fraud, the illegal retention of classified material, and the destruction of evidence.

All of these accusations, however, pale in importance next to the indictment handed down today.

Trump is accused of multiple conspiracies against the United States, all designed to keep him in power against the will of the voters and in violation of the Constitution. The former president—once our chief executive, the commander in chief, the leader we entrusted with the keys to nuclear hell—is accused of knowing that he lost a free and fair election, and, rather than transferring power to a duly elected successor, engaging in criminal plots against our democracy, all while firing up a mob that would later storm the Capitol. (The Trump campaign issued a rambling statement that called the charges “fake.”)

Long before now, however, Americans should have reached the conclusion, with or without a trial, that Trump is a menace to the United States and poisonous to our society. (Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio once referred to Trump as “cultural heroin,” but that was before he decided to seek power in the Republican Party.) The GOP base, controlled by Trump’s cult of personality, will likely never admit its mistake: As my colleague Peter Wehner writes, Trump’s record of “lawlessness and depravity” means nothing to Republicans. But other Republicans now, more than ever, face a moment of truth. They must decide if they are partisans or patriots. They can no longer claim to be both.

The rest of us, as a nation but also as individuals, can no longer indulge the pretense that Trump is just another Republican candidate, that supporting Donald Trump is just another political choice, and that agreeing with Trump’s attacks on our democracy is just a difference of opinion. (Those of us who share our views in the media have a particular duty to cease discussing Trump as if he were a normal candidate—or even a normal person—especially after today’s indictment.) I have long described Trump’s candidacies as moral choices and tests of civic character, but I have also cautioned that Americans, for the sake of social comity, should resist too many arguments about politics among themselves. I can no longer defend this advice.

The indictment handed down today challenges every American to put a shoulder to the wheel and defend our republic in every peaceful, legal, and civilized way they can. According to the charges, not only did Trump try to overturn the election; he presided over a clutch of co-conspirators who intended to put down any further challenges to Trump’s continued rule by force. According to the indictment:

The Deputy White House Counsel reiterated to Co-Conspirator 4 that there had not been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that if the Defendant [Trump] remained in office nonetheless, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” Co-Conspirator 4 responded, “Well, [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the U.S. armed forces against American citizens. The alleged plot inside the White House was not merely to invalidate an election; it included the possibility of unleashing the American military against its own people.

This is why we can no longer merely roll our eyes when an annoying uncle rhapsodizes about stolen elections. We should not gently ask our parents if perhaps we might change the channel from Fox during dinner. We are not obligated to gingerly change the subject when an old friend goes on about “Demonrats” or the dire national-security implications around Hunter Biden’s genitalia. Enough of all this; we can love our friends and our family and our neighbors without accepting their terms of debate. To support Trump is to support sedition and violence, and we must be willing to speak this truth not only to power but to our fellow citizens.

Trump and his media enablers, of course, will fume that any criticism of choices made by millions of voters is uncivil and condescending—even as they paint other American citizens as traitors who support pedophiles and perverts. Trump has made such accusations, and the implied threat of violence behind them, part of the everyday American political environment. This brutish bullying is aimed at stopping the rest of us from speaking our mind. But after today, every American citizen who cares about the Constitution should affirm, without hesitation, that any form of association with Trump is reprehensible, that each of us will draw moral conclusions about anyone who continues to support him, and that these conclusions will guide both our political and our personal choices.

This is painful advice to give and to follow. No one, including me, wants to lose friends or chill valued relationships over so small a man as Trump. But our democracy is about to go into legal and electoral battle for its own survival. If we don’t speak up—to one another, as well as to the media and to our elected officials—and Trump defeats us all by regaining power and making a mockery of American democracy, then we’ll all have lost a lot more than a few friendships. We face in Trump a dedicated enemy of our Constitution, and if he returns to office, his next “administration” will be a gang of felons, goons, and resentful mediocrities, all of whom will gladly serve Trump’s sociopathic needs while greedily dividing the spoils of power.

In the 1982 film The Verdict, Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, an ambulance-chasing attorney with an alcohol addiction who takes on what he thinks will be a routine malpractice suit and soon finds himself fighting for justice against powerful institutions determined to stop him. On the eve of the trial, all seems lost. His mentor and former partner tries to comfort him. “There’ll be other cases,” his friend says. Galvin knows better. “There are no other cases,” he says quietly, with his eyes closed. “This is the case.” He repeats this truth, whispering to himself, over and over: “There are no other cases. This is the case.”

Jack Smith has indicted Donald Trump for trying to overthrow our system of government. There are no other cases.

This is the case.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Vesper

[robsblubot 3,595]

1 minute ago, Vesper said:

Special Counsel Jack Smith has sounded the call, but voters must answer it if they wish to preserve American democracy.

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is self-evident: one half would say "yes" while the other half would go for "no."

The answer, "yes, but as long as I win" would naturally fall into the "no" category.

I wonder if the people who act towards the "no" actually realize what they are and what they want in politics. Especially when there are media outlets, such as Fox News, which create "enemies" out of political adversaries.

[YorkshireBlue 3,279]

I can't lie Donald trump makes me fucking chuckle.

[Vesper 30,231]

9 minutes ago, YorkshireBlue said:

I can't lie Donald trump makes me fucking chuckle.

He has the potential, the real potential, to unhinge the planet. IF he regains the Presidency, Russia, China (invasion of Taiwan), and other authoritarian states will likely run riot. He will likely pull out of or massively defend NATO, leaving the UK and many nations in Europe (Ukraine may well be fucked, plus Poland, the 3 Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Moldava, Georgia, etc) dangling over a knife's edge.

In the US itself:

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html

 

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”