2024 US Presidential Election Thread

  • Thread starter ryzno
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GBO Possum
From the New York Times - "Over the last week, demonstrators visibly identifying as supporting Mr. Trump — with red hats or clothing, or banners and flags — have never totaled more than a dozen. On most days, the number of people total in the portion of the park designated for protesters for or against Mr. Trump has never been more than two or three dozen. They have included tourists, locals coming to gawk, more than a few supporters of Mr. Biden, and proponents of conspiracy theories ..."
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Eunos_Cosmo
What's the worst case scenario for Don in this trial? I have a hard time believing he would be sentenced to anything more than paying a fine. I also don't think it damages his credibility with conservatives at all. Maybe some independents who somehow haven't noticed he's been a con man his whole life will wake up and be discouraged from voting for him, but I just don't see this case doing much of anything in the long run.
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It will be a fine at best. But, it puts another stain on his legacy & his cult will be voting for him regardless. Plus, it may be used against him in the other 2 cases. TMU, the Georgia case is the major one coming to term right now out of all the counts he’s facing.
 
A chasm has opened within Ohio Republican politics as Ohio governnor DeWine has said that Biden will be on Ohio's ballot in November, despite Secretary of State LaRose's "warning" to the Democratic National Convention that he will enforce a an obscure nomination deadline law which has existed but not been enforced for several decades.

https://www.10tv.com/article/news/l...ohio/530-c650a04a-16e5-4490-9cab-216d70ce515c

According to another article, Obama, Romney, Trump and Biden have all already appeared on Ohio's ballot despite their parties' conventions not being scheduled in time as per the law. In all cases, emergency measures have been passed by the legislature to allow inclusion.

As a life-long Ohioan who has followed and voted in every one of those elections, this is the first time I've ever heard of this issue. This is the first time anybody I know has ever heard of this issue. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time a Secretary of State has raised the issue publicly - or that their efforts have been made public. And I'm also aware that the law requires an exception to be made by May 9, yet LaRose's office didn't bother informing the DNC until earlier this month that this would be an issue.

Bottom line is LaRose is being a total chauch about this and everybody knows it. He's highly unpopular in Ohio, even in his current capacity and literally came in third place by a wide margin during the Senate primary despite having his name stuck to every gas station pump in the state. That's who he is to us, the gas pump guy. He mentions in that article that "first of all, this law was enacted by Democrats in 2009..." shut up dude, both parties have fudged this up multiple times, including your own fathers' 2020 campaign (whose endorsement you lost, btw). He's such a sore loser that Republican members of the Legislature and governor DeWine have all rolled their eyes and promised it'll get fixed as it has multiple times. Jeez, talk about getting embarrassed by your own party members.

DeWine is a real sack of 💩 for being involved in this criminal conspiracy scandal but LaRose reminds me of a particular Terrance and Phillip song from the first South Park album.

@Joey D how are you getting that nice URL preview? Every time I plug in a URL it never does that.
 
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If the implications of what Trump's lawyers are claiming on his behalf don't scare the crap out of you...

(From the Huffington Post)

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.

Jack Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, made the “absolute immunity” argument in a Supreme Court hearing in the Department of Justice election interference case against the former president. Trump’s team has repeatedly claimed that the ex-president can’t be prosecuted for “official acts” he did while in office.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer responded.

Sotomayor seemed taken aback at that line of reasoning.

“I am having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that,” Sotomayor said, including other examples from Trump’s lawyer’s argument that could logically lead to no prosecution.

Justice Elena Kagan offered a few more hypotheticals to Trump’s attorney, including if a president would be immune from prosecution if they sold the country’s nuclear secrets to a foreign power.

“Likely not immune,” Sauer said, before adding a qualifier: “Now, if it’s structured as an official act, he’d have to be impeached and convicted first.”

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked.

“I think it would depend on the circumstances,” Sauer said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, another liberal on the court, said Trump’s reasoning could mean presidents in the future could commit all sorts of crimes.

“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country,” Jackson said. “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk future presents would be emboldened to commit crimes in office?”
 
GBO Possum
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, another liberal on the court, said Trump’s reasoning could mean presidents in the future could commit all sorts of crimes.

“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country,” Jackson said. “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk future presents would be emboldened to commit crimes in office?”
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Since Trump doesn't plan on there being any future presidents besides him (and whoever he installs as his successor), Justice Jackson is asking the wrong question to the wrong person.
 
GBO Possum
If the implications of what Trump's lawyers are claiming on his behalf don't scare the crap out of you...
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Ironically, if they prevailed in court, Biden could just do whatever to Trump to prevent him from taking office again - including assassination. Or Biden could assassinate the conservative justices and appoint liberal ones and they could re-try the case (and dobbs for that matter). I don't think Trump actually expects to prevail. The goal of this move was to delay the trial until after the election, a goal which they have already accomplished just by getting to this stage. It's mostly paperwork at this point.

There is a possibility that the supreme court could break the country right now, and I fully expect them to do something stupid, but I don't seem them giving the president the authority to assassinate them.
 
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Danoff
Ironically, if they prevailed in court, Biden could just do whatever to Trump to prevent him from taking office again - including assassination. Or Biden could assassinate the conservative justices and appoint liberal ones and they could re-try the case (and dobbs for that matter). I don't think Trump actually expects to prevail. The goal of this move was to delay the trial until after the election, a goal which they have already accomplished just by getting to this stage. It's mostly paperwork at this point.

There is a possibility that the supreme court could break the country right now, and I fully expect them to do something stupid, but I don't seem them giving the president the authority to assassinate them.
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Of course, this is also irrelevant to his CURRENT case in New York, unless presidential immunity somehow also extends to candidacy as well.
 
GBO Possum
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”
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Pfft, even the military can't just go around assassinating American citizens without consequences.

That's what the police are for.
 
GBO Possum
If the implications of what Trump's lawyers are claiming on his behalf don't scare the crap out of you...

(From the Huffington Post)

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.

Jack Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, made the “absolute immunity” argument in a Supreme Court hearing in the Department of Justice election interference case against the former president. Trump’s team has repeatedly claimed that the ex-president can’t be prosecuted for “official acts” he did while in office.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer responded.

Sotomayor seemed taken aback at that line of reasoning.

“I am having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that,” Sotomayor said, including other examples from Trump’s lawyer’s argument that could logically lead to no prosecution.

Justice Elena Kagan offered a few more hypotheticals to Trump’s attorney, including if a president would be immune from prosecution if they sold the country’s nuclear secrets to a foreign power.

“Likely not immune,” Sauer said, before adding a qualifier: “Now, if it’s structured as an official act, he’d have to be impeached and convicted first.”

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked.

“I think it would depend on the circumstances,” Sauer said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, another liberal on the court, said Trump’s reasoning could mean presidents in the future could commit all sorts of crimes.

“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country,” Jackson said. “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk future presents would be emboldened to commit crimes in office?”
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This really shouldn't even be this big of a discussion. It should be a 9-0 ruling that no, Presidents are not allowed absolute immunity.

It'd be more interesting if Sauer & the other Trump lawyers were presented with these arguments regarding Biden in them. He'd obviously never do them, but Sauer should be on record trying to spin the narrative if Biden specifically is immune.
 
If today's Supreme Court was around in 1776, they'd have judged that King George had the divine right of absolutism and that taxation without representation was fair when applied to colonists.

So many elements in the United States have fallen so far from what they country was supposedly founded upon.
 
www.theguardian.com

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.

In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.

But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.


What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.

Noem’s book – No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward – will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.

Like other aspirants to be Trump’s second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.

She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.

When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.

Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”
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"If you don't like it, kill it." Obviously the rat purports to be "pro-life."

Noem is a lock for the VP pick now, right? Who in the base wouldn't love this?
 
I've always found it odd the 45 didn't have a dog. Even Nixon had a dog.

First President since McKinley to not have a dog. First since Johnson to have had no pets at all...
 
Famine
I've always found it odd the 45 didn't have a dog. Even Nixon had a dog.

First President since McKinley to not have a dog. First since Johnson to have had no pets at all...
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He's a total germophobe though, isn't he. Dogs are not especially clean-living beasts, so i can imagine he thinks they're icky.
 
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GBO Possum
If the implications of what Trump's lawyers are claiming on his behalf don't scare the crap out of you...

(From the Huffington Post)

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.

Jack Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, made the “absolute immunity” argument in a Supreme Court hearing in the Department of Justice election interference case against the former president. Trump’s team has repeatedly claimed that the ex-president can’t be prosecuted for “official acts” he did while in office.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”

“That could well be an official act,” Sauer responded.

Sotomayor seemed taken aback at that line of reasoning.

“I am having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that,” Sotomayor said, including other examples from Trump’s lawyer’s argument that could logically lead to no prosecution.

Justice Elena Kagan offered a few more hypotheticals to Trump’s attorney, including if a president would be immune from prosecution if they sold the country’s nuclear secrets to a foreign power.

“Likely not immune,” Sauer said, before adding a qualifier: “Now, if it’s structured as an official act, he’d have to be impeached and convicted first.”

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked.

“I think it would depend on the circumstances,” Sauer said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, another liberal on the court, said Trump’s reasoning could mean presidents in the future could commit all sorts of crimes.

“I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country,” Jackson said. “If the potential for criminal liability is taken off the table, wouldn’t there be a significant risk future presents would be emboldened to commit crimes in office?”
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Can you link the article? I'm aware that Huffington Post is a quite liberal agency and I find it interesting that the article has only mentioned three liberal justices asking obvious and reasonable questions with ridiculous answers. I'm wondering what the other justices thought about that.

TexRex
Screenshot-20240425-123248-Samsung-Internet.jpg
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Counterpoint, proposing ridiculous ideas is a solid argument tactic when you want others to realize how dumb what you're saying actually is. It's hard to do without making yourself look like an idiot. Alito may simply just be an idiot but I'm sure the guy is also a lot smarter and a better arguer than I am so maybe he's saying dumb things on purpose.

McLaren
This really shouldn't even be this big of a discussion. It should be a 9-0 ruling that no, Presidents are not allowed absolute immunity.

It'd be more interesting if Sauer & the other Trump lawyers were presented with these arguments regarding Biden in them. He'd obviously never do them, but Sauer should be on record trying to spin the narrative if Biden specifically is immune.
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It's rare but allowing these "lawyers" to make assinine and frankly illegal arguments could give their bars motivation to disbar them. They're very blatanty arguing for committing crimes, high crimes at that, and potentially treason, which surely is a monumentally stupid and dishonest thing to do in their line of work. I get that the whole point of the Supreme Court is to solve untested problems and we need to let the process play out...but in this case, the defense's arguments are so disingenuous that they're illustrating to me that they're unfit to serve whatever oaths they've given.

Edit: I probably would've killed that dog too honestly. Not sure I could've kept my head on straight enough to take it to a shelter...where it likely would've been put down anyway if it was aggressive. But I'm a cat guy so I guess I'm biased. My opinion of dogs is that most of them need to be trained by the whip becaue they're feral and uncivilized. They seem to like it, frankly.
 
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TexRex
www.theguardian.com

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume – and admits ‘a better politician … wouldn’t tell the story here’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

"If you don't like it, kill it." Obviously the rat purports to be "pro-life."

Noem is a lock for the VP pick now, right? Who in the base wouldn't love this?
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I hated reading every bit of that. A young dog that could’ve been just given away instead to someone who would know the best future scenario for the dog without killing it in a pit. Even a more humane way would’ve been better.

Disgusting animal herself.
 

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