W. Niederhut

How John Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous January 6th and election cases that helped obstruct the former president’s prosecutions. How Chief Justice Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak - The New York Times (archive.is) September 15, 2024

I wonder if these gun shots at Merde-a-Lago were fired by an angry Trump cult member who lost his life savings investing in Trump's Truth Social stock scam. Unfortunately, we'll probably now get several more pages of MAGA spam on this thread, posted by the guys who still haven't figured out that Trump is a perpetrator, not a victim.

John, Speaking or "relevance," did you watch the historic debate? Yes or no? Your MAGA trope about moderator "bias" is simply ridiculous. But you need to watch the debate to understand why. The mods were too timid, in point of fact. They could have confronted Trump about dozens of his lies. Instead, they politely asked about his double speak on Roe v. Wade, and corrected his disinformation about Haitians in Ohio eating pets. That isn't "bias." It's reality.

John, Give us all a break, please. Did you watch the debate? If modest fact-checking of a rabid, lying demagogue is "bias," our democracy is in serious danger. And, incidentally, Trump's clueless MAGA goons have been threatening the ABC moderators, in response to the kind of MAGA propaganda you just posted. In the debate, Trump was asked about his double speak on Roe v. Wade-- an important, fair question. The mod received racist MAGA death threats. The Haitian refugees in Ohio have also been threatened-- in response to Trump's dog whistle. Do you understand the problem?

No tsunami, Bill, but I suspect there are still some moderate Republicans in the U.S. who respect George F. Will. I appreciated Will's commentary after Trump's Helsinki press conference with Putin. He was aghast. And I also appreciate his metaphor of Trump as a "Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast." It's one of the best descriptions of Trump's rhetoric I've heard.

Megyn Kelly? Surely, you jest with these moronic references, John. Did you even watch the ABC debate? As usual, Trump told non-stop lies throughout. The mods timidly fact-checked a few of Trump's most outrageous flamers-- including his claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating pets. Is that your MAGA concept of moderator "bias?"

Yeah, Joe, Parkland was the ultimate dog. I watched that film a few years ago, when I was still in the early stages of sorting the JFKA wheat from the chaff, I remember asking my wife afterward, "Why was this film even made? I learned nothing from it." Same old JFKA mythology I grew up with. As for the new Reagan film, it was panned by a historian at Slate recently. Reagan movie 2024: I’m a historian, and I cannot tell you how weird this film is. (slate.com)

George Will Backs Harris September 15, 2024 at 9:26 am EDT By Taegan Goddard George Will endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “The restoration of normal politics will require two things: The removal of Donald Trump — that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast — from public life. And the rekindling of an irrepressible conflict.” “It is between progressivism, of which Kamala Harris is full to overflowing, and actual conservatism, about which Trump is contemptuous.”

Bill Maher Turns The Tables And Starts A Conspiracy Theory About Trump And Laura Loomer (politicususa.com)

My daughter and I went to see the Banksy exhibit here in Denver a few years ago. But I hadn't seen this March 2024 Bansky original until tonight. Trump is probably singing, "My Way," here. Incidentally, I once saw a bizarre video of Putin singing, "Blueberry Hill."

Here we go... 😎

Any predictions about Don's latest possible con? I predict that Trump is doing a head fake, to keep the price from plunging before he dumps his shares next week. Trump Claims He’s Not Selling Stake in Trump Media September 13, 2024 at 3:04 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Shares of Trump Media surged Friday after majority owner Donald Trump said he is not selling his stake, NBC News reports. Said Trump: “I have absolutely no intention of selling.”

What Really Happened in Ukraine in 2014—and Since A close look at the lies and distortions from Russia apologists and propagandists about the roots of the Ukraine war. What Really Happened in Ukraine in 2014—and Since Then (thebulwark.com) April 13, 2022 Excerpt "Naturally, Kremlin propagandists have pushed “false flag” narratives—endorsed by a few contrarian scholars such as the University of Ottawa political scientist Ivan Katchanovski—which claim that Yanukovych opponents either deliberately provoked the violence or even staged the sniper massacre in order to make events spin out of control and trigger regime change. The fact that no one has ever been convicted in the sniper killings has allowed these conspiracies to fester and made it very difficult to disprove them conclusively; but University of Alberta history professor David Marples contributed a solid debunking in October 2014, and in 2018 a virtual-model reconstruction, based on extensive video footage, by the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University concluded that the victims were indeed shot by Berkut members."

Roger, Not so fast. IMO, we need to be very cautious about potential disinformazia originating from Putin's Russian Federation. Paul Rigby has recently posted disinformazia from Russia Today, Press TV, and even Strategic Culture (on the Political Discussions board. As for Maidan, the Berkut special forces in Kyiv were thought to be responsible for the Maidan massacre, and they had a documented pre-Maidan history of anti-Ukrainian activity under Putin's Yanukovych regime. IMO, it's inconceivable that the Berkut wasn't actively working for Yanukovych by February of 2014. See, for example; Meet the Ukraine's Brutal Berkut Police Force - Business Insider January 27, 2014

Addendum: Not to mention MAGA death threats against election officials, judges, prosecutors, and, most recently, the ABC debate moderators!

Steve, Trump is the very definition of a "stochastic terrorist" -- i.e., a demagogue who incites random acts of violence against the citizenry. The examples are legion-- MAGA Bomber Cesar Sayoc, the Baltimore journalist murders, the El Paso Walmart Massacre, and, of course, J6.

Wow! Great news! On Friday-the-13th, no less! I haven't watched Jeff Carter's documentary yet, but I intend to. No doubt the Langley propagandists who have been actively smearing Prouty for the past 30 years will be thrilled to learn about this new documentary... 🙄

Kirk, One thing that I wanted Harris to debunk is Trump's mantra that he, "created the greatest economy in history." It's bunk, but Trump has repeated it endlessly, and the public apparently believes the nonsense-- they think Trump was great for the economy. The truth is that Trump inherited seven years of sustained U.S. GDP and private sector job growth from Obama, before the economy crashed on Trump's watch. If people study quarterly GDP data, they will realize that there was never a "Trump Bump." The one thing that Trump increased, as POTUS, was the national debt. With his tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, Trump mushroomed the debt by $8 trillion in 4 years, while presiding over the worst jobs record in modern Presidential history. No 'Trump Bump"

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Has Sabotaged Early Voting in a Critical Swing State By Mark Joseph Stern Sept 12, 20242:24 PM The North Carolina Supreme Court tossed a grenade into the state’s election on Monday, violating both state and federal law to grant Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cynical, last-minute removal from the ballot. Its 4–3 decision will compel election administrators to destroy nearly 3 million already-printed ballots that featured Kennedy’s name and redesign 2,348 different ballot styles across the state to accommodate the eleventh-hour change. This complex process will significantly delay the distribution of new ballots—which will, in turn, unlawfully abridge early voting for everyone while jeopardizing the voting rights of service members overseas in clear contradiction of federal statute. It’s a nightmare for local election officials, who must now disregard the laws they’re sworn to uphold. And it’s an affront to North Carolinians at large, whose right to a fair, orderly election has been sabotaged by a lawless court and the candidate it so obviously favors. Kennedy v. North Carolina State Board of Elections, Monday’s decision, is exactly what you’d expect from a court controlled by elected Republican justices. The facts are damning: After running for months as a third-party candidate, RFK Jr. “suspended” his campaign and endorsed Trump on Aug. 23. Kennedy then sought to selectively remove his name from the ballot, but only in swing states where it might help Trump. By the time Kennedy dropped out, the North Carolina State Board of Elections had informed candidates and parties that the deadline for replacing nominees would be Aug. 22. Kennedy did not file his request for removal until Aug. 27, five days after the deadline and four days after he withdrew. By that point, county election boards were already printing ballots. Under state law, the board of elections may refuse a “late” request to remove a candidate from the ballot when removal is no longer “practical.” Another state law compels election officials to mail ballots to service members and others living overseas by Sept. 6. North Carolina’s state elections director testified that redesigning the ballot would take 18 to 23 days. So removing Kennedy’s name from the ballot—then designing and printing substitutes—would require election officials to violate state law. Even if these officials had begun removing Kennedy’s name the moment that he suspended his campaign, they could not have met the legal deadline. Yet the North Carolina Supreme Court still sided with Kennedy. A bare majority ordered election officials to work around the clock to destroy 3 million ballots, redesign new ones for every locality, and mail them out as quickly as possible. The work and the cost of this undertaking falls primarily on badly underfunded county boards of elections. Monday’s decision also forces the board to shorten the early voting period, which was required by law to begin on Sept. 6. And the ruling may also push the state into a violation of federal law, which orders states to send absentee ballots overseas by Sept. 21. North Carolina election officials have warned the court that removing Kennedy may make it impossible to mail ballots by that date. It’s no exaggeration to say that the state Supreme Court is nullifying federal voting rights. Why? Republican Justice Trey Allen’s opinion for the court accused the board of elections of misconduct, suggesting that it rushed to print ballots featuring RFK Jr. so he could not remove his name in time. This baseless accusation rests on the fact that the board did not stop printing ballots the moment that Kennedy announced his withdrawal—even though he did not say whether he’d withdraw from North Carolina in that speech, and did not file for removal in the state for five more days. Allen smeared election officials as lacking “clean hands,” maligning them for the crime of following the law as written. In search of a legal justification, Allen cited the North Carolina Constitution’s guarantee that “all elections shall be free.” Keeping Kennedy on the ballot after his withdrawal, the justice wrote, would infringe upon this “fundamental” and “exclusive right” by denying them “accurate information regarding the candidates.” What’s most preposterous about this logic is that Allen and his conservative colleagues have gutted this very right at every opportunity. As soon as conservative justices flipped the court in 2023, they overturned precedents protecting citizens’ ability to participate in “free elections.” Most notoriously, they reversed several landmark rulings that limited partisan redistricting, giving the GOP-dominated Legislature carte blanche to gerrymander Democrats into a permanent minority. In the process, these justices dismissed the guarantee of “free elections” as little more than an aspirational statement of principle. Now, in an about-face, the conservative justices have turbocharged the free elections clause—but only to reward RFK Jr.’s gamesmanship on Trump’s behalf. Evidently, this clause is so meaningless that it does not limit the Legislature’s authority to punish citizens for voting Democratic by denying them fair representation. At the same time, it is somehow so powerful that it compels courts throw elections into chaos and uncertainty, in violation of state and federal law, to benefit a candidate who broke the rules. What happens next? The elections board is desperately racing to design and print ballots to meet the federal deadline, but it may not succeed. Voters both stateside and abroad face a denial of their right, secured by state and federal statute, to vote early. “The whims of one man,” as Justice Allison Riggs warned in dissent, “have been elevated above the constitutional interests of tens of thousands of North Carolina voters.” Indeed, Monday’s decision substantially shortens the early voting period of all North Carolinians, and threatens the ability of service members stationed overseas to receive and return their ballot in time for the election. Voters who requested an absentee ballot were, by law, entitled to get them mailed out by Sept. 6. Now these ballots cannot be mailed out for weeks. The ruling was so destabilizing that even Justice Richard Dietz, a conservative, felt moved to dissent, faulting the majority for failing “to follow the law as it is written.” It was Riggs, though—joined by the court’s one other liberal, Justice Anita Earls—who laid bare the shameless partisan hackery on display. “Today, any public aspersions cast on the impartiality, independence, and dignity of our state courts are well-earned,” she wrote in her dissent, decrying “the magnitude of the harm” inflicted as “egregious and unjustified.” It’s telling that Riggs took the unusual step of inviting the public to condemn not just the majority’s decision, but its integrity as a judicial body. North Carolina’s justices are elected, and Riggs is running on November’s ballot for an eight-year term against Republican Jefferson Griffin. Over the past four years, Republicans flipped four seats on the court, consigning Democrats to a 5–2 minority. If Griffin unseats Riggs, then Earls will be the last remaining liberal. It would take decades to shift the court anywhere near the center, let alone flip it to the left. All the while, a far-right supermajority would run roughshod over North Carolinians’ rights and continually interfere in elections to benefit Republicans. That, of course, is what’s going on here. North Carolina is hugely competitive; polls indicate that Trump and Kamala Harris are effectively tied. Harris’ first two rallies after Tuesday’s debate will be held in the state, a sign of its extraordinary importance. As a candidate, RFK Jr. appeared to siphon more votes from Trump than from his Democratic opponent. He is removing himself from the ballot in swing states because he fears his supporters will vote for him if his name appears, and vote for Trump if it does not. And because he waited until the last minute, early voters—who skew Democratic in the state—will be denied their ballots on time. Now the North Carolina Supreme Court is breaking the law to abet Kennedy’s efforts on Trump’s behalf. If the state’s voters are sick of political chaos infecting their judiciary, Riggs’ election gives them an opportunity to fight back—if election officials can still get their ballots out in time. North Carolina campaign: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sabotaged early voting. (slate.com)

New academic article published today at The Conversation, from the University of Virginia. Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States would have given Nixon immunity for Watergate crimes — but 50 years ago he needed a presidential pardon to avoid prison Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States would have given Nixon immunity for Watergate crimes — but 50 years ago he needed a presidential pardon to avoid prison (theconversation.com) by Ken Hughes September 12, 2024 Gerald Ford knew Richard Nixon could be prosecuted for crimes he committed as president. That was simply a fact, when President Ford gave his predecessor “a full, free, and absolute pardon” 50 years ago this week. Former presidents did not enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution until July 1, 2024, when six members of the Supreme Court created that privilege in Trump v. United States. In 1974, when Nixon’s resignation seemed likely to lead to prosecution for his role in many of the crimes of Watergate, Republicans in the White House and Congress took their cue from the Constitution. Article II, Section 4 established that former presidents had criminal liability, not criminal immunity. Even after impeachment, conviction and removal, “the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” Ford faced that fact squarely in his pardon proclamation: “As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States.” Nixon had a right to a fair trial, Ford said. The Constitution guarantees that to all. But Ford raised doubts about whether America would be able to give Nixon a fair trial until months, perhaps years, elapsed. That was his justification for pardoning Nixon. It wasn’t good enough for most Americans. From anger to respect Only 26% of Americans supported the pardon in one poll, with 59% opposed. Reporters interviewed outraged citizens. “What about the others in his administration who are being tried?” asked John Dawdy, a Vietnam veteran and law student. After all, Nixon’s co-conspirators, including a former attorney general and former White House chief of staff, received fair trials. Joseph Hickel, a refugee from Czechoslovakia, saw “a danger of future crimes” by presidents if Nixon’s went unpunished. Ann Robinson of Cerritos, California, said, “Giving that pardon makes it seem that the man in office is a king.” Opinion shifted as Watergate receded in memory, and by 1986, one poll found only 39% opposed to the Nixon pardon and 54% in favor. Sen. Ted Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a critic of the pardon in 1974, later concluded that Ford was right and gave him a Profile in Courage Award in 2001 for taking an unpopular but conscientious stand. During the Donald Trump administration, when another president was under investigation for impeachable and indictable offenses, public opinion of the Nixon pardon shifted again, with Americans perfectly polarized: 38% in favor, 38% against. In light of the Trump experience, some historians looked back and saw the Nixon pardon in a new light: as a damaging precedent establishing presidential impunity. No one above the law This year, Americans face a new consequence of the pardon. Because Ford’s decision deprived the country of a precedent for prosecuting a former president, the six Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court were able to fill the void with what I see as a radical revision of the Constitution. The court majority’s ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for their “official acts” would have absolved most of Nixon’s Watergate crimes. Nixon used the CIA to obstruct the FBI’s Watergate investigation; created an illegal, unconstitutional secret police unit; sicced the IRS on political adversaries; commuted former Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa’s sentence for jury tampering and pension fund fraud in return for union support; and shook down campaign contributors in return for government favors. Under Trump v. United States, Nixon wouldn’t have had to worry about a pardon. He could have explained away all of these crimes as “official acts” he took using the powers of the presidency. The Supreme Court’s conservative justices, who see themselves as “originalists” and pride themselves on sticking to the literal text of the Constitution and original intent of its framers, have ironically provided a perfect example of the dangers of allowing justices to rewrite the Constitution to suit their current preferences. The Watergate break-in occurred in the same year that Joe Biden entered national politics as a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Delaware. The newly elected Sen. Biden criticized the pardon the day after Ford issued it, saying, “It puts one man above the law.” Biden couldn’t have known that 50 years later, during his last year in national politics, the Supreme Court would grant presidents license to commit Nixonian crimes – or worse – with the powers of their office and without any fear of punishment. As part of his legacy, Biden has proposed a constitutional amendment to undo the damage done by Trump v. United States. Its name reflects the principle Biden invoked 50 years ago. It’s called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would strip presidents of immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as “official acts.” As a soon-to-be-former president, Biden could have much to lose from the adoption of his own amendment. This year’s Republican nominee has often expressed eagerness to prosecute Biden despite a lack of evidence of criminality. Under Trump v. United States, Biden enjoys broad immunity. Under the No One Is Above the Law Amendment, he would lose that privilege. The amendment is not only an example of Biden putting the country before himself, it’s a profile in courage.

Pat, What is the story on JFK researcher, Brian Doyle, and Prayer Man? As a relative newbie on the forum, I'm not familiar with the details of Doyle's history on this forum. Doyle has, apparently, done some primary source research on Prayer Man, but was banned from the forum for conflicts with the mods.

Should Travis Kelce kick the crap out of Elon Musk? Musk offered yesterday to impregnate Taylor Swift, after Swift identified herself as a "childless cat lady" endorsing Kamala Harris. Kelce, the Kansas City Chief's future Hall of Famer, has been dating Swift. Personally, I would not want to scrap with Travis Kelce. I'd probably get hog-walloped in the first round.

Pamela, Any thoughts about these Minneapolis crime stats? Also, on a national level, violent crime has declined significantly during Biden's presidency-- the precise opposite of what Trump and his propagandists have been telling people.

John, If fascism is your concern, watch out for the Trump MAGA cult, Putin, and Viktor Orban.

John, Do you see any way out of your abysmal, plutocratic, pseudo-democratic falsely-dichotomous vassalage? Perhaps emigrating to Belarus or Tobolsk?