Mark this day
gammanu95
Have you ever tried to stick a silver dollar into a stripper's G-string?
It is not surprising, but it is still incredibly frustrating that Donald Trump was found guilty by a deeply prejudiced NYC jury. With a series of bullshit made-up crimes, a judge who is biased and compromised beyond measure, in a district who would rather see 100 muggers go free than single MAGA hat in public, there was no way this trial could have had a better outcome than a mistrial. This is the darkest day for America as a democratic republic. I want democrats and leftists to remember this: you guys started this. Two bullshit weaponized impeachments. Lawfare to torment and bankrupt your opponents and interfere with elections. This is how banana republics begin.
I hope Putin nukes NYC the day after Trump leaves. Fuck 'em, the USA would be better off without them.
I hope Putin nukes NYC the day after Trump leaves. Fuck 'em, the USA would be better off without them.
89 comments
If Trump goes to jail, he's going to get Clintonized.
LOL
I’m in your head loser
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I do not like Trump. But let the above statement sink in. It’s chilling. Is America becoming the Soviet Union, or Cuba or China?
Part of what has always ensured a peaceful transfer of power to newly elected presidents was the restraint shown by new administrations in avoiding seeking revenge against political rivals. When a country's leaderhas to worry about what his rivals will do when he no longer has power, he is tempted to try to keep power. It's why every dictator tries to stay in control for life, fighting tooth and nail and even committing atrocities when necessary. Until now we have been blessedly free of this concern, but I fear that what is happening with Trump will set the stage for a future President to try to stay in office in perpetuity.
Ammo is going to skyrocket on this news. Thankfully I'm stocked on that, and alcohol.
AGs openly campaigning on getting him for a crime to be determined, and with the way they stretched statutes of limitations and definitions of predicate crimes, this total was so ridiculous that my most avid progressive friends are shocked.
This is going to escalate. I said the same thing when Clinton was impeached. All the rejoicing is extremely short sighted.
Don’t make me laugh by telling me he is getting raped because of his dressing provocatively, he’s creating this chaos because he believes he is above the law.
Trump's crime was winning the presidency in 2016. Everything else has been a pretext.
Don't be blind, or act surprised when Republican AGs and prosecutors start feeling their oats.
My "opinion" is backed up by the nature of the indictments and trials.
God bless America!
-Donald J Trump (paraphrased)
Lock him up!
Lock him up!
Trump was bad for the republican party. He's now made us the party of criminals the way we always said the dems were. And there's still three other cases that he is more likely to be convicted for than he was here.
Don't commit crimes if you don't want to be a convicted felon. Would love to see this be the catalyst for my party to clean house of him, mtg, boebert, eyc and get back to traditional conservatism like that of McCain and the Bushes.
😂
The irony of calling someone a criminal for paying off a hooker and supporting a guy who invaded a country on the basis of "WMDs" ... do you have no self-awareness or are you just trolling?
Eisenhower stopped Nixon from suing when Kennedy stole the election from him. The democrat party has no such great patriot and statesman when Gore sued Bush in 2000. The Firector of the FBI confirmed that Hillary committed felonies and other crimes in her midhandling of classified information. Trump wanted to prosecute, but his advisors warned against starting a cycle of prosecutorial retaliation, which would begin the banana republic decline of the United States. The democrat party is so jealous and power- hungry that they went all in. They are the Fascists, prosecuting your political opposition is textbook Fascism.
Republicans in Congress, state offices, and district attorneys, need to stop being polite and seeking comity. The only way the Democrat party will understand the gravity of what they've just done will be if they get their hands burned by the same iron. The gloves are already off.
http://newser.com/s351075
Lock him up!
Lock him up!
Lock him up!
And throw away the key!
"Soon after Trump was arraigned, records emerged showing Justice Merchan had donated a total of $35 to Democrats during the 2020 election.
That included a $15 donation to Joe Biden's campaign, NBC News reported, as well as $10 donations to groups called the "Progressive Turnout Project" and "Stop Republicans".
New York state, following the American Bar Association's guidance, prohibits judges from making contributions to political organisations or candidates.
Even though the donations were ill-advised, they would be "viewed as trivial, especially given the small sums", Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at New York University, told the BBC.
Justice Merchan did not recuse himself over the donations."
Most of you are incapable of objective introspection, but just pretend that you're not boot licking cowards, and ask yourself, if a judge presided over a case against Joe Biden, and the judge had contributed $1 to Trump's campaign, and $1 to "Stop Democrats", would you think it's fair?
:D
1. The judge did not allow the then-head of the FEC to testify that no campaign laws were broken.
2. The judge allowed the prosecution to claim in their closing argument that violations of election laws were proven to be broken, they were not.
3. The judge did not allow the Trump org CFO to testify
4. Several jurors committed perjury about their neutrality.
5. The judge would not consider a change of venue in a deep blue part of a deep blue city.
6. The judge himself contributed to the Biden campaign (small amounts but still shows a sharp partisan lean), and whose daughter raises money for Democratic candidates.
7. The judge allowed salacious testimony that had no bearing on the alleged violation.
This trial was more predetermined than professional wrestling. Trump's fundraising website crashed from the eagerness to donate.
I wonder when Democrats will be tried in West Virginia. It's the norm now.
I want you never-Trumps, blue-no-matter-whos, democrats, and liberals to just stop and consider that last sentence (the progressive and leftists already support such state Fascism): The government of a "democracy with free elections" is attempting attempting to convict and imprison the leading opposition candidate. The trial was held in a government loyalist city, with a loyalist prosecutor, before a loyalist judge. The loyalist judge prevented the defense from calling in witnesses and testimony that could have exonerated him. The prosecutor was not required to disclose which actual laws were broken. Most assumed the conviction was a foregone conclusion. This wasn't Russia or Iran. This was the United States of America where a deeply unpopular president with low odds of re-election has had his justice department and party allies in major cities change laws and erase constitutional freedoms to ensure that his chief opponent will not be able to run against him. How depraved must you to be to sanction that?
SCOTUS did not pull the right to abortion out of thin air. What they did was determine that Roe V Wade was based on the wrong interpretation of law. I read the decision and, as much as it pains me to say, they had a point.
A much better defense of the right to abortion would be a religious freedom one. Unless you're not fond of Jews, that is.
I don't know which amendment or document would hold a right to abortion, but as far as I'm concerned, the abortion argument should be strictly on bioethical grounds, when the fetus has a working CNS (~14 weeks). The brain is when we decided if a born individual is "dead" or "alive," so it's consistent. That's around where Europe places the line, as well, so this isn't just me speaking.
When Democrats had 60 in the Senate under Obama, I wonder why they didn't codify it then.
My point being, live by the Supreme Court, die by the Supreme Court. Instead the Dems are all sour grapes, talking about packing the court or reshaping the rules...because if it isn't the tool of progressives, something has to be awry, right?
Just trying to pipe up with cross-the-aisle style agreement whenever I can manage it. :)
SCOTUS and other courts have made lots of rulings concerning the establishment clause. Just as it doesn't permit "respecting" a religion, it also forbids *restricting* one, except as regards the violations of others' rights, e.g. human sacrifice and the other straw men you raised. Judaism explicitly places the mother's health and safety over the unborn, and abortion is definitely an option.
Human sacrifice is an extreme example to demonstrate that you can't just slap the label "religion" onto anything and get it allowed. The Satanic Temple is trying to say abortion is a sacrament of their religion, but no one takes it as a sincerely-held religion--it's a giant trolling of uptight Christians. I don't see any Jewish group lobbying for legal abortion on the grounds that it constitutes a religious practice. Don't know what you're seeing in the religion argument that no one else seems to be.
Besides, the court has not restricted abortion, it has placed it in the hands of the states. While some states' practices, like rewarding people who rat out pregnant women crossing state lines to get an abortion, scare the ever living fuck out of me (it's straight-up KGB shit), it appears to be in its proper place, constitutionally. So it's not going anywhere, anytime soon.
Some people say Roe v. Wade should have stood because of stare decisis, but Dred Scott and Plessy stood longer than Roe v. Wade did and got overturned regardless. Realistically it'll take a massive, sustained shift of public opinion (not the trench warfare of today) that changes the composition of both Congress and the Supreme Court to restore legal abortion nationwide.
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Sorry, but I couldn’t resist. 😊
The same could be said for gun control laws. The left clamors for restrictive gun control laws after every mass shooting yet no law will stop the desperate criminal from obtaining one.
Big difference desperate woman aren’t criminals, unlike those folks buying a gun illegally, and there is a legal path to buying a firearm.
Roe v Wade affirmed the right to privacy, and basically stated that a woman has the right to consult with an advisor and receive treatment without government interference, this recent reversal, Dodd, claims the government has the right to refuse privacy to women, and intervene in what was previously allowed. The main problem here is the state taking away women’s rights to privacy, and even worse some states seem to have authorized private parties to intervene, reeks of big brotherism and empowering private parties to act as unauthorized state agents.
That being said, there are sincere people with valid points on both sides of the abortion issue. I understand people who are against the snuffing of a helpless life. And it’s not rare, abortions are happening on a massive scale. Approximately 30% of AA pregnancies are terminated by abortion.
The reality is, if fetuses could vote, Joe Biden would be banning every abortion.
The "privacy" argument from Roe was always shoddy. Constitutionally, it's meant to be in the states, as fucked up as some of the consequences have been. If America wants legal abortion, they should vote in enough pro-choice congresspeople to pass a law...then, it'll take a pro-choice majority on the SCOTUS, which will take a generation and likely making the Republican party itself pro-choice.
I used to be a hardcore pro-lifer who believed anyone participating in abortion should be charged with Murder 1. A lot has changed since, and while I'm "morally" pro-life (I have donated to crisis pregnancy centers in the past), I'm "legally" pro-choice for reasons like the biomedical determination I mentioned earlier, the rat-out-thy-neighbor we're seeing in red states, the difficulty and invasiveness of policing women's menstrual cycles (hint: we could double the number of police and detectives and STILL not do it effectively), and the functional barriers in place to determining that an abortion was necessary for the life of the mother. For one thing, medically, ANY pregnancy for a woman under 16 is INHERENTLY a health risk. I don't know why it gets delayed when there's near-unanimous medical agreement on it.
I also think there's a backlash against the Biden administration shoving abortion and its medical/"privacy" agenda up our ass, like trying to force Catholic hospitals and pro-life physicians to participate in abortion. If you say "don't like abortion, don't have one," why not "don't want to perform an abortion, you don't have to participate in one"?
Bringing this full circle, @book guy, that alliance of Chamber of Commerce Republicans and the religious right is fracturing. Republicans are becoming the working class party while the Democrats are increasingly driven by the wealthy. Progressive principles are a class signal as much as anything--it isn't urban blacks that want de-policing and the ending of gifted programs. Democrats are no longer hiding their contempt for "bitter clingers" and "deplorables" known, for people who want traditional families, shoot guns, and attend churches that don't wave pride flags.
I make good bank, own property and stock, and would benefit from some Dem priorities like repealing the SALT deduction (the ultimate affluent blue-stater handout). But I'm a proud class traitor, and shit scared of what'll happen if this lawfare gets validated.
For the first time in my life, I'm not only voting for Trump, but donating four figures to his campaign. Hey, it's cheaper than Bidenflation cutting my effective net worth by 20%.
I would note that there's also a disconnect between labor union leaders and their rank and file; leaders are still loyal to the Democratic party while the Democrats' openly shitting on their values is pushing them into the Republican camp. We're seeing this most strongly with black and Hispanic voters, both of whom are more culturally conservative than whites. It's not because of Trump's economic policies like his tax cut (which I was dead set against, as I think the national debt is about to become a big problem...1/3 of our debt is coming due in the next year and it'll have to get financed with higher-interest debt...Yellen is playing a dangerous short term game; this year we will spend more on debt service than all national defense).
Then why? It's because Trump is the first to acknowledge they've been ratfucked by globalism and free trade, which was the predominant ideology from Clinton through Obama. Their jobs have been shipped abroad, often in the name of environmentalists. They get condescended to with phrases like "learn how to make solar panels." Yeah, you're going to trade a $120,000 a year petroleum engineering job for $40,000 a year labor. Good rule not to talk to people like they're retarded.
We're also seeing the feminization of the Democratic party. They're becoming Nurse Ratched's, taking away freedom in the name of security, security, security. Hence why Trump's gain among blacks and Hispanics is almost entirely among MEN, who are hard wired to want risk and gain. And on both, we're seeing the teacher's union under Randi Weingarten responsible for years of learning loss and child mental illness up to and including suicide. What she has done is utterly criminal.
I'd like to know how you, personally, define "progressive" and why you embrace the label. The ones I see calling themselves "progressive" (the Squad, Bernie Sanders), the "democratic socialists" (there's no such thing, socialism = force) are essentially Marxists biding their time. What do I see they stand for? (1) Diminishing of our role in the world, (2) viewing any wealth in the country as theirs, on loan to the businessmen and professionals who made it, and wanting to confiscate it to fund their schemes, (3) putting the federal government at the center of American lives, (4) self-loathing, believing that America is fundamentally a force for exploitation and acting accordingly (the whole BLM movement among other things), (5) contempt for law and tradition (we've lost exponentially more freedom under Biden than Trump), (6) glorification of the street criminal and persecution of self-defense, like we're seeing in major cities) and especially (7) division of Americans by interest groups and pitting them one another. This can only end in disaster.
Note, I'm not a down-the-line Republican, I'm pro-choice, VERY pro-birth-control (make it available like vaccines or Sudafed, behind the counter), I don't think straight white Christian males are the most persecuted individuals in America, and would raise some taxes. But voting Democrat means 1-7 above.
Note 2, I do not like Trump. He is not particularly effective at passing conservative priorities, he is unfocused and narcissistic, he is reactive and can't pick his fights, he is indisputably of low personal character. But the crazier accusations--that he's a Russian agent, that he committed an "insurrection" that could have never kept him in power and in fact he told them to stop and go home, that he would reinstate slavery (like a lot of black people believe), lack merit to me.
I'm enjoying our discussion, Book Guy. Interested in your definition of progressive...I just see what people out there that call themselves progressives are doing.
Logging off for the night. Peace.
Maybe this was a Jay Z 99 Problems case “you were doing 55 in a 54” but there weren’t facts in dispute. The jury came back quickly. That’s what happens when you don’t defend the case.
@puddy - where is your source for Weisselberg “not being allowed” to testify. I’ve seen Lara Trump say this too. The defense didn’t call him to testify. How is that on the judge?
If it's not a crime, just twisted into one on dubious merits, does it matter if he did it or not? Celebrities pay hush money all the damn time.
Weisselberg was slimed until he wouldn't be seen as reliable. I'll admit it's according to Trump's legal team (Emil Bove), but procedural hurdles to it were everywhere.
No less than CNN liberal Elie Honig said if it were anyone else, this wouldn't have gone to trial. All this wasn't a finger on the scales of justice, it was a whole fist.
The hush money wasn’t a crime. Concealing it was. That said, I don’t think he should’ve been prosecuted for this. He’s done much much worse. This is like a speeding ticket. But it doesn’t mean he’s not guilty.
He slept with Stormy. He signed a hush money NDA and agreed to pay her $130k. That is legal. But why go to such lengths to cover it up if not to conceal it from voters in 2016? Why not just pay her? He’s rich. But instead, he comes up with some crazy scheme where Cohen takes out a home equity loan and pays her out his own pocket. Then Weisselberg runs the math and writes down on paper to double it to $260k then add another $160k and pay Cohen out over 12 months. Remember, Cohen got a salary and bonus for working for Mango Unchained. These weren’t ordinary legal fees. It was a concealment scheme.
Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men “why the two orders colonel Jessup? If your orders were that Santiago wasn’t to be touched, why was it necessary to transfer him off the base?” If the hush money payment was legal, why was it necessary to cover it up? The answer is because he didn’t want it to hurt the election.
Weisselberg was “slimed?” I guess by slimed you mean convicted of fraud, and then later convicted of perjury? Yes, his testimony would be suspect. But the defense could’ve called him as a witness. The statement that the judge prohibited Weisselberg from testifying is objectively false.
The "if he's innocent, why did he act guilty?" defense is a prime example of that. Why would someone willingly allow salacious testimony to color it? At most, it was a misdemeanor whose statute of limitations long since ran out. Instead, it was raised to a felony, brought by a man who campaigned on getting Trump and didn't prosecute until election season, on the notion that it concealed a crime that couldn't be agreed upon, let alone convicted of, and the judge even gave instructions that they didn't need to agree upon the predicate crime. And the salacious gossip has been validated by the judge allowing Stormy to talk about the details of their sexual encounter.
OK, let's stipulate that it wasn't the judge who stopped Weisselberg from testifying. I did a little digging and it sounds like a stretch by Trump's lawyers. But if his testimony would have damaged Trump, or wouldn't have been believed, it's moot. Serial-liar-with-a-grudge Cohen was allowed to take the stand.
I'm amazed how the same people who talk about the judicial system being imperfect are willing to cover their eyes and ears when it comes to Trump and the most contrived prosecution in my lifetime. No matter whether you like Trump or not, this case is a litmus test of one's honesty. Prominent Dems up to David Fucking Axelrod said this wouldn't have gone to trial if it wasn't Trump.
I’ve pretty much posted only facts. Fact, the judge didn’t prevent weisselberg from testifying. You got that from Fox News or Trump allies. It’s not a stretch. We don’t need to stipulate. It’s false.
And I agree with you that this shouldn’t have gone to trial. Most defendants would’ve pled to a lesser charge and paid a fine.
Stormy’s testimony was as much on the defense strategy as anything else. They could’ve admitted the affair and then her testimony wouldn’t have been necessary. But the defense’s opening statement denied the affair so her testimony became necessary. The judge even objected to some of her testimony and criticized the defense for not objecting enough. That’s their primary job and they blew it.
I've cited many instances of impropriety, of which you've countered one. It should say something that CNN and MSNBC analysts have said this should have never been brought to trial, as well as longtime Democratic soldiers like Axelrod.
Glad you agree this shouldn't gone to trial. That's an admission that this whole affair was a travesty. At least the other cases don't--yet--involve this sort of chicanery. But I fully expect it to come to that.
Right now, the election of Donald John Trump is the bulwark against routine attempts to jail or disqualify every opposition candidate. The worm always turns.
With that being said I’m glad he got convicted, y’all keep throwing shit on the ceiling, just because it stinks doesn’t change a thing.
34 counts guilty, appeal it, I doubt it will change the verdict.
I've quoted a number of left legal experts that say this case wouldn't have been brought against anyone except Trump. That says it all.
Now, we're going to see lawfare in every election going forward, further eroding trust and making America more like Russia.
Don't think this is going to be limited to one side. The precedent has been set.
All this does is convince his cultists that he's being persecuted, and support him even more. Combine that with a crap economy and a corpse for an opponent, and he's a virtual shoe-in for the race.
Stupid fucking Democrats thinking it'll have any negative effect on him.
Now I fear this verdict may have handed the election to Trump. It seems only the hardcore Democratic base seems this is fair. I think many middle of the road independents might swing red.