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On 12/4/2020 at 8:04 PM, Matt the Bruins said:

Is there anything other than using his veto power in the legislative process that Trump can do without Biden being able to almost immediately undo upon taking office? (Well, besides antagonizing another nation into declaring war on us, I mean.)

 

Presidential pardons are irrevocable. In theory, Trump could even be bribed to give out a pardon, get caught doing it, and the pardon still couldn't be revoked. That hasn't been ever tested in court but the way the pardon power is written, it doesn't have "but that doesn't make any sense" exceptions...other than the president can't pardon an impeachment itself. (He could pardon actual criminal charges which might arise from the "high crimes and misdemeanors" which brought about the impeachment case, but not the "being impeached and removed from office" part).

 

Other than that, everything else could be changed back, it's just a matter of how much effort and/or political heat a new administration would be willing to go through. Some things are very simple, some things are much harder.

 

Like Trump is changing civil service rules so he can fire the people he likes, put Trump loyalists into place, then have the new civil service rules protect the Trump loyalists from being removed. Rolling back civil service protections are intentionally very, very difficult so Trump is trying to put a bunch of new people in as his own "deep state" then give them more or less permanent protection for their entire careers under civil service laws.

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Oh, and we haven't discussed it here that I remember but the FBI this week admitted that high level Trump administration officials are being investigated as part of a cash-for-presidential-pardon scheme.

 

I don't have time to find a link to a story right now but it was covered on MSNBC.

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3 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

How much evidence has actually been found in the election fraud campaign?  So far all I've heard word of is an after-hours video.

 

Besides the Florida lawyer's Facebook video where he announces he's registering to vote at his brother's Atlanta address and reads it out so that people listening can do the same?

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3 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Besides the Florida lawyer's Facebook video where he announces he's registering to vote at his brother's Atlanta address and reads it out so that people listening can do the same?

 

Basically.  I'm hoping the whole thing has been shaky enough that people can peel off.  But they can imply a lot of shit just based on 'witnesses' and innuendo from video.

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What I've read and heard reported, is that there's been no evidence so far of vote fraud anywhere near extensive enough to have changed the outcome of any election race. Of the attempts at fraud confirmed by official sources that I have come across, almost all of them were committed by supporters of the GOP and/or Donald Trump.

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Here's the cash-for-presidential-pardon story I mentioned earlier. 

 

Of note, the Feds were investigating the administration for this at least as early as August (edit: according to the unredacted parts of the grand jury documents, at least as early as March 2020).

 

As much as I might have disagreed with the way the FBI handled announcements in the Hillary Clinton email scandal and the way that affected the 2016 election, I really do think we should have had at least a hint that the Trump administration was potentially trying to sell presidential pardons months before the November 2020 election.

 

 

Legal experts shocked by ‘pardon bribery scheme’ under DOJ investigation: ‘That’s a lot of warrants’

 

“At the end of this summer, a filter team, used to make sure prosecutors don’t receive tainted evidence that should have been kept from them because it was privileged, had more than 50 digital devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives after investigators raided the unidentified offices,” CNN reported. “The grand jury investigation also appears to relate to unnamed people acting as unregistered ‘lobbyists to senior White House officials’ as they sought to secure a pardon and use an intermediary to send a bribe, the unsealed court records say.”

 

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/legal-experts-shocked-by-pardon-bribery-scheme-under-doj-investigation-thats-a-lot-of-warrants/

 

 

DOJ investigating potential White House 'bribery-for-pardon' scheme

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/doj-investigating-potential-white-house-bribery-pardon-scheme-n1249609

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17 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

What I've read and heard reported, is that there's been no evidence so far of vote fraud anywhere near extensive enough to have changed the outcome of any election race. Of the attempts at fraud confirmed by official sources that I have come across, almost all of them were committed by supporters of the GOP and/or Donald Trump.

 

Yeah.  I'm more worried about what's there that can be misconstrued or misinterpreted on purpose.

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1 hour ago, archer said:

As much as I might have disagreed with the way the FBI handled announcements in the Hillary Clinton email scandal and the way that affected the 2016 election, I really do think we should have had at least a hint that the Trump administration was potentially trying to sell presidential pardons months before the November 2020 election.

 

 

Honestly, why?  His supporters would just call it another smear, or another example of the Deep State at work, or congratulate him for protecting people from the Evil Machinations Of The Socialists.  This is just a variation on a theme we've heard for 4 years, if it's true.

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12 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

Honestly, why?  His supporters would just call it another smear, or another example of the Deep State at work, or congratulate him for protecting people from the Evil Machinations Of The Socialists.  This is just a variation on a theme we've heard for 4 years, if it's true.

 

Examination of "what actually went wrong with the polling so that the election turned out much closer than expected" is showing that Biden got about what the polls were showing in most places. But the undecideds and the "I don't know whether I'll vote or not" people broke very, very heavily toward voting for Trump.

 

Yeah, hardcore Trump supporters would have dismissed it.  But would all of those people who turned this into a fairly close election rather than a Biden blowout have turned out for Trump if they thought there was seriously a chance that he was selling the presidency for cash?

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/528782-why-the-polls-werent-as-wrong-as-you-think

 

I'd like to think that a lot of the people who were looking at it as an equal choice between the two candidates would have looked at open corruption of one of them as a tipping point.

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His pardons were already showing this beforehand.  And his corruption has been heavily suggested by the misuse of his properties to conduct official business.  So we'll have to agree to disagree on the potential shift this might have created;  I don't think it'd be that significant.

 

It was never an equal choice between 2 candidates, either.  As per the tail end of the article you linked...the issue wasn't Trump or Biden on policy, the issue was "Trump on policy all the way but can I live with how he operates?"  And that he's monetized the office should not be a revelation.

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1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

His pardons were already showing this beforehand.  And his corruption has been heavily suggested by the misuse of his properties to conduct official business.  So we'll have to agree to disagree on the potential shift this might have created;  I don't think it'd be that significant.

 

It was never an equal choice between 2 candidates, either.  As per the tail end of the article you linked...the issue wasn't Trump or Biden on policy, the issue was "Trump on policy all the way but can I live with how he operates?"  And that he's monetized the office should not be a revelation.

 

There's a lot of things which shouldn't be a revelation to the public when it comes to politics. Yet people seem to be constantly surprised and shocked because they don't really pay attention until some story reaches out and grabs their attention. < shrug >

 

Grand juries are the kind of things in politics which, in the past, have caught people's attention.

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Rudy Guilinani has COVID and is in the Georgetown University Hospital.

 

You might remember a couple of weeks ago I posted about how his son who works in the White House has COVID and exposed the whole Trump legal team, none of who went into quarantine like they should have.

 

So for Rudy to be bad enough to hospitalize now, he had to have been positive while going around to these press conferences at various hotels in several states which the Trump campaign has been promoting as "hearings" into the fraudulent election.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/politics/rudy-giuliani-coronavirus-positive/index.html

 

edit: sorry, didn't realize someone had already posted the story.

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6 hours ago, archer said:

 

There's a lot of things which shouldn't be a revelation to the public when it comes to politics. Yet people seem to be constantly surprised and shocked because they don't really pay attention until some story reaches out and grabs their attention. < shrug >

 

Grand juries are the kind of things in politics which, in the past, have caught people's attention.

 

In the past, yes. Donald Trump has moved the goalposts all the way outside the stadium.There's a long, long list of things he's done and said that before him, would have ended the career of any other politician. I've also noticed that other politicians on the Right have adopted his tactics, and as this election has shown, they often bring success.

 

"Surprise and shock" over what politicians are accused of seems to be vastly diminished in America today. Perhaps fatigue over Trump's chronic abuses has desensitized people. Much as it pains me, I have to agree with unclevlad. There's little reason to believe publicizing this investigation would have made much difference to the election outcome.

 

EDIT: Not that agreeing with unclevlad is inherently painful. ;)

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5 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

"Surprise and shock" over what politicians are accused of seems to be vastly diminished in America today. Perhaps fatigue over Trump's chronic abuses has desensitized people. Much as it pains me, I have to agree with unclevlad. There's little reason to believe publicizing this investigation would have made much difference to the election outcome.

 

EDIT: Not that agreeing with unclevlad is inherently painful. ;)

 

*I* find it painful to agree with me sometimes.  Because it can be very depressing. 

Trump fatigue is the best way to encapsulate it, IMO, too.  

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