A story about a pathetic man's downfall [34 Felony Convictions]

[Pato del Muerto 52120]

And one country group of loud mouthed women. 
I guess that was early 2000s since it was in response to their comments about W. 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Pato del Muerto

[bolverk 29116]

16 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

And one country group of loud mouthed women. 
I guess that was early 2000s since it was in response to their comments about W. 

And all things French because they didn't want to go along with the invasion of Iraq. Turns out they were right to not support that particular endeavor.

[JimmyJames 12267]

Freedom fries!

[We’reTexas 1467]

16 minutes ago, bolverk said:

And all things French because they didn't want to go along with the invasion of Iraq. Turns out they were right to not support that particular endeavor.

I don’t understand why we are not twisting the knife on this more. Twenty years ago the MAGA crowd - and many on this board who were on HornFans - was about freedom fries, “If you haven’t done anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried”, and blindly trusting the Deep State about WMDs because it involved bombing brown people. The Lee Greenwood bukkake has been going on for two decades but their positions have basically reversed. 

[staboner 4943]

On 4/4/2021 at 4:24 AM, Francisco 2.0 said:

The Art of Grifting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donations.html

 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

As the election neared, the Trump team made that disclaimer increasingly opaque, an investigation by The New York Times showed. It introduced a second prechecked box, known internally as a “money bomb,” that doubled a person’s contribution. Eventually its solicitations featured lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.

The tactic ensnared scores of unsuspecting Trump loyalists — retirees, military veterans, nurses and even experienced political operatives. Soon, banks and credit card companies were inundated with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.

“Bandits!” said Victor Amelino, a 78-year-old Californian, who made a $990 online donation to Mr. Trump in early September via WinRed. It recurred seven more times — adding up to almost $8,000. “I’m retired. I can’t afford to pay all that damn money.”

The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. All campaigns make refunds for various reasons, including to people who give more than the legal limit. But the sum the Trump operation refunded dwarfed that of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign and his equivalent Democratic committees, which made 37,000 online refunds totaling $5.6 million in that time.

The recurring donations swelled Mr. Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.

 

In effect, the money that Mr. Trump eventually had to refund amounted to an interest-free loan from unwitting supporters at the most important juncture of the 2020 race.

 

Marketers have long used ruses like prechecked boxes to steer American consumers into unwanted purchases, like magazine subscriptions. But consumer advocates said deploying the practice on voters in the heat of a presidential campaign — at such volume and with withdrawals every week — had much more serious ramifications.

“It’s unfair, it’s unethical and it’s inappropriate,” said Ira Rheingold, the executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.

Harry Brignull, a user-experience designer in London who coined the term “dark patterns” for manipulative digital marketing practices, said the Trump team’s techniques were a classic of the “deceptive design” genre.

“It should be in textbooks of what you shouldn’t do,” he said.

Political strategists, digital operatives and campaign finance experts said they could not recall ever seeing refunds at such a scale. Mr. Trump, the R.N.C. and their shared accounts refunded far more money to online donors in the last election cycle than every federal Democratic candidate and committee in the country combined.

Over all, the Trump operation refunded 10.7 percent of the money it raised on WinRed in 2020; the Biden operation’s refund rate on ActBlue, the parallel Democratic online donation-processing platform, was 2.2 percent, federal records show.

 

Several bank representatives who fielded fraud claims directly from consumers estimated that WinRed cases, at their peak, represented as much as 1 to 3 percent of their workload. An executive for one of the nation’s larger credit-card issuers confirmed that WinRed at its height accounted for a similar percentage of its formal disputes.

That figure may seem small at first glance, but financial experts said it was a shockingly large percentage, considering that political donations represent a tiny fraction of the overall United States economy.

In its investigation, The Times reviewed filings with the Federal Election Commission from the Trump and Biden campaigns and their shared accounts with political parties, as well as the donation-processing sites ActBlue and WinRed, compiling a database of refunds issued by day. The Times also interviewed two dozen Trump donors who made recurring donations, as well as campaign officials, campaign finance experts and consumer advocates. Nearly a dozen bank and credit card officials from the nation’s leading financial institutions spoke for this article on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

A clear pattern emerged. Donors typically said they intended to give once or twice and only later discovered on their bank statements and credit card bills that they were donating over and over again. Some, like Mr. Blatt, who died of cancer in February, sought an injunction from their banks and credit cards. Others pursued refunds directly from WinRed, which typically granted them to avoid more costly formal disputes.

WinRed said that every donor receives at least one follow-up email about pending repeat donations in advance and that the company makes it “exceptionally easy,” with 24-hour customer service, for people to request their money back. “WinRed wants donors to be happy, and puts a premium on customer support,” said Gerrit Lansing, WinRed’s president. “Donors are the lifeblood of G.O.P. campaigns.” He noted that Democrats and ActBlue had also used recurring programs.

Jason Miller, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, downplayed the rash of fraud complaints and the $122.7 million in total refunds issued by the Trump operation. He said internal records showed that 0.87 percent of its WinRed transactions had been subject to formal credit card disputes. “The fact we had a dispute rate of less than 1 percent of total donations despite raising more grass-roots money than any campaign in history is remarkable,” he said.

That still amounts to about 200,000 disputed transactions that Mr. Miller said added up to $19.7 million.

“Our campaign was built by the hardworking men and women of America,” Mr. Miller said, “and cherishing their investments was paramount to anything else we did.”

Mr. Trump’s hyperaggressive fund-raising practices did not stop once he lost the election. His campaign continued the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through Dec. 14 as he raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America.

In March, Mr. Trump urged his followers to send their money to him — and not to the traditional party apparatus — making plain that he intends to remain the gravitational center of Republican fund-raising online.

A small yellow box and a flood of fraud complaints

The small and bright yellow box popped up on Mr. Trump’s digital donation portal around March 2020. The text was boldface, simple and straightforward: “Make this a monthly recurring donation.”

Even that was more aggressive than what the Biden campaign would do in 2020. Biden officials said they rarely used prechecked boxes to automatically have donations recur monthly or weekly; the exception was on landing pages where advertisements and emails had explicitly asked supporters to become repeat donors.

But for Mr. Trump, the prechecked monthly box was just the beginning.

By June, the campaign and the R.N.C. were experimenting with a second prechecked box, to default donors into making an additional contribution — called the money bomb. An early test arrived in the run-up to Mr. Trump’s birthday, June 14. The results were tantalizing: That date, a seemingly random Sunday, became the biggest day for online donations in the campaign’s history.

Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chairwoman, crowed to Fox Newsabout the achievement without mentioning how exactly the party had pulled it off. “Republicans are thinking smarter digitally,” she said, and were poised to “outwork, outdo, and outmaneuver the Democrats at every turn.”

Until then, the Biden and Trump operations had nearly identical refund rates on WinRed and ActBlue in 2020: 2.18 percent for Mr. Trump and 2.17 percent for Mr. Biden.

But from the day after Mr. Trump’s birthday through the rest of the year, Mr. Biden’s refund rate remained nearly flat, at 2.24 percent, while Mr. Trump’s soared to 12.29 percent.

In early September — just after learning that it had been outraised by the Biden operation in August by more than $150 million — the Trump campaign became even more aggressive.

It changed the language in the first yellow box to withdraw recurring donations every week instead of every month. Suddenly, some contributors were unwittingly making as many as half a dozen donations in 30 days: the intended contribution, the “money bomb” and four more weekly withdrawals.

“You don’t realize it until after everything is already in motion,” said Bruce Turner, 72, of Gilbert, Ariz., whose wife’s $1,000 donation in early October became $6,000 by Election Day. They were refunded $5,000 the week after the election, records show.

Around the same time, officials who fielded fraud claims at bank and credit card companies noticed a surge in complaints against the Trump campaign and WinRed.

“It started to go absolutely wild,” said one fraud investigator with Wells Fargo. “It just became a pattern,” said another at Capital One. A consumer representative for USAA, which primarily serves military families, recalled an older veteran who discovered repeated WinRed charges from donating to Mr. Trump only after calling to have his balance read to him by phone.

The unintended payments busted credit card limits. Some donors canceled their cards to avoid recurring payments. Others paid overdraft fees to their bank.

All the banking officials said they recalled only a negligible number of complaints against ActBlue, the Democratic donation platform, although there are online review sites that feature heated complaints about unwanted charges and customer service.

The Trump operation was not done modifying the yellow boxes. Soon, the fact that donations would be withdrawn weekly was taken out of boldface type, according to archived versions of the president’s website, and moved beneath other bold text.

As the campaign’s financial problems became increasingly acute, the yellow boxes became dizzyingly more complex.

By October there were sometimes nine lines of boldface text — with ALL-CAPS words sprinkled in — before the disclosure that there would be weekly withdrawals. As many as eight more lines of boldface text came before the second additional donation disclaimer.

Even political professionals fell prey to the boxes.

Jeff Kropf, the executive director of the Oregon Capitol Watch Foundation, a conservative group, said he had been “very careful” to uncheck recurring boxes — yet he missed the “money bomb” and got a second charge anyway.

“Until WinRed fixes their sneaky way of adding additional contributions to credit cards like they did to me, I won’t use them again,” he said.

Mr. Brignull, the user-experience designer who also serves as an expert witness in legal cases involving misleading advertising, noted that a Consumer Rights Directive in Europe prohibits companies from deploying a defaulted opt-in tactic for recurring payments.

“It is very easy for the eye to skip over,” he said. “The only really meaningful information in that box is buried.”

 

The ‘Gary and Gerrit’ operation

By last summer, the Biden campaign had begun outraising Mr. Trump’s team, and the president was hopping mad. For months, years even, his advisers had been telling him how he had built a one-of-a-kind financial juggernaut. So why, Mr. Trump demanded to know, was he off the television airwaves just months before the election in critical battleground states like Michigan?

“Where did all the money go?” he would lash out, according to two senior advisers.

Inside the Trump re-election headquarters in Northern Virginia, the pressure was building to wring ever more money out of his supporters.

Perhaps nowhere was that pressure more acute than on Mr. Trump’s expansive and lucrative digital operation. That was the unquestioned domain of Gary Coby, a 30-something strategist whose title — digital director — and microscopic public profile belied his immense influence on the Trump operation, especially online.

A veteran of the R.N.C. and the 2016 race, Mr. Coby had the confidence, trust and respect of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, who unofficially oversaw the 2020 campaign, according to people familiar with the campaign’s operations. Mr. Kushner and the rest of the campaign leadership gave Mr. Coby, whose talents are recognized across the Republican digital industry, wide latitude to raise money however he saw fit.

That meant almost endless optimization and experimentation, sometimes pushing the traditional boundaries. The Trump team repeatedly used phantom donation matches and faux deadlines to loosen donor wallets (“1000% offer: ACTIVATED…For the NEXT HOUR”). Eventually it ratcheted up the volume of emails it sent until it was barraging supporters with an average of 15 per day for all of October and November 2020.

Mr. Coby, who declined an interview request for this article,outlined his philosophical approach when offering advice to other ambitious young strategists after he was named to the American Association of Political Consultants’ “40 under 40” list in 2017: “Asking for forgiveness is easier than permission.”

Mr. Coby’s partner in fund-raising was Mr. Lansing, the president of WinRed, which had been created in 2019 as a centralized platform for G.O.P. digital contributions after prominent Republicans feared they were falling irreparably behind Democrats and ActBlue.

The Trump and WinRed operations had been closely aligned since the platform’s inception — Mr. Trump reportedly helped come up with the firm’s name — and the president’s re-election operation amounted to a majority of all of WinRed’s business last cycle, when it processed more than $2 billion.

Inside the Trump orbit, “Gary and Gerrit” became something of a shorthand term for Mr. Coby and Mr. Lansing, according to multiple senior Trump campaign and White House officials.

The two strategists were already well acquainted: They had worked together at the R.N.C. in 2016, when Mr. Lansing oversaw its digital operations and Mr. Coby was the director of advertising. And they were business partners in Opn Sesame, a text messaging platform, which Mr. Lansing co-founded and served as chief operating officer for; WinRed said he stepped away from its day-to-day operations in early 2019.

Top Trump officials said they did not know specifically who had conceived of using the weekly recurring prechecked boxes — or who had designed them in the increasingly complex blizzard of text. But they said virtually all online fund-raising decisions were a “Gary and Gerrit” production.

“The campaigns determine their own fund-raising strategies and make their own decisions on how to use these tools,” Mr. Lansing said in WinRed’s statement.

Unlike ActBlue, which is a nonprofit, WinRed is a for-profit company. It makes its money by taking 30 cents of every donation, plus 3.8 percent of the amount given. WinRed was paid more than $118 million from federal committees the last election cycle; even after paying credit card fees and expenses like payroll and rent, the profits are believed to be significant.

WinRed even made money off donations that were refunded by keeping the fees it charged on each transaction, a practice it said was standard in the industry, citing PayPal; ActBlue said it does not keep fees for refunded donations. WinRed’s cut of the Trump operation’s refunds would amount to roughly $5 million before expenses. (Archived versions of WinRed’s website show it added a disclaimer saying it would keep its fees around when refunds surged.)

There is another reason Mr. Trump’s refund rates were so high: His campaign accepted millions of dollars above the legal cap, a problem exacerbated by recurring donations. A pianist in New York, for instance, contributed more than 100 times in the months leading up to Election Day, going far past the legal limit of $2,800. She was refunded $87,716.50 — three weeks after Election Day.

While every large-scale campaign winds up accepting and returning some donations above the legal limit, including Mr. Biden’s, the Trump situation stands out. Records show that Mr. Biden’s campaign committee issued roughly $47,000 in refunds larger than $5,000 after Election Day; Mr. Trump’s campaign issued more than $7 million.

Trump officials attributed the excessive donations to enthusiastic supporters and said the surge in postelection complaints was a result of losing the election, not of the recurring donation tactics.

The use of prechecked boxes is not unprecedented in politics, and WinRed said it was simply adopting tactics that ActBlue put in place years ago. ActBlue said in a statement that it had begun to phase out prechecked recurring boxes “unless groups were explicitly asking for recurring contributions.” Some prominent Democratic groups, including both congressional campaign committees, continue to precheck recurring boxes regardless of that guidance. Still, Democratic refund rates were only a small fraction of the Trump campaign’s last year.

Republicans widely hailed WinRed as one of the standout successes of the 2020 cycle, and in a memo last October the company declared itself the “trusted, recognizable platform” for Republican giving. “Scam PACs, shady operators and outright fraud is unfortunately a common occurrence in the online political donation world — particularly on the right,” the memo stated. “WinRed helps civilize the Wild West of the G.O.P. donation ecosystem.”

But for some Trump supporters like Ron Wilson, WinRed is a scam artist. Mr. Wilson, an 87-year-old retiree in Illinois, made a series of small contributions last fall that he thought would add up to about $200; by December, federal records show, WinRed and Mr. Trump’s committees had withdrawn more than 70 separate donations from Mr. Wilson worth roughly $2,300.

“Predatory!” Mr. Wilson said of WinRed. Like multiple other donors interviewed, though, he held Mr. Trump himself blameless, telling The Times, “I’m 100 percent loyal to Donald Trump.”

Trump was just the beginning

All told, the Trump and party operation raised $1.2 billion on WinRed, and refunded roughly 10 percent of it.

Whatever blowback it received, WinRed was not deterred. Soon after the November election ended, the two Republican Senate incumbents in Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, deployed prechecked weekly recurring boxes in advance of their January runoffs.

Predictably, refund rates spiked.

Keith Millhouse, a transportation consultant in California, intended to donate once to Mr. Perdue, with the aim of keeping Republicans in control of the Senate. He wound up a recurring contributor and called the practice “repugnant” and “deceptive.”

“I’m busy like a lot of other people during this Covid era and I just wanted to get in, make a donation, get done and move on to what I needed to do next,” he said. “I thought I had done that. Then I find out that, you know, I’m getting these other charges.”

He canceled the repeating charge when he saw the reminder email. But by then WinRed had already processed his second $100 “bonus” contribution. He figured it was not worth the hassle to protest. “Don’t try to sucker it out of me,” he said.

In the final 2020 reporting period, from Nov. 24 through the end of the year, Mr. Perdue and Ms. Loeffler refunded $4.8 million to WinRed donors — more than triple the amount refunded by their Democratic rivals via ActBlue, even though the Democrats had raised far more money online. The refunds have stretched into 2021 and have been a source of frustration for the Loeffler campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Now WinRed is exporting the tools it pioneered during the Trump re-election across the Republican Party, presaging a new normal for G.O.P. campaigns.

Today, the websites of various Republican Party committees and top congressional Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, include prechecked yellow boxes for multiple or recurring donations.

And after Mr. Trump’s first public speech of his post-presidency at the end of February, his new political operation sent its first text message to supporters since he left the White House. “Did you miss me?” he asked.

The message directed supporters to a WinRed donation page with two prechecked yellow boxes. Mr. Trump raised $3 million that day, according to an adviser, with more to come from the recurring donations in the months ahead.

 

my girlfriend gave up her toe

[staboner 4943]

1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

it's cancel cancel culture.

duh.

we gonna no they no

no whatta mean

[TheStoicPaisano 9864]

41 minutes ago, bolverk said:

And all things French because they didn't want to go along with the invasion of Iraq. Turns out they were right to not support that particular endeavor.

Crossover episode from Boebert thread/‘restaurant’.

 

[bolverk 29116]

12 minutes ago, We’reTexas said:

I don’t understand why we are not twisting the knife on this more. Twenty years ago the MAGA crowd - and many on this board who were on HornFans - was about freedom fries, “If you haven’t done anything wrong you shouldn’t be worried”, and blindly trusting the Deep State about WMDs because it involved bombing brown people. The Lee Greenwood bukkake has been going on for two decades but their positions have basically reversed. 

Good question. I wasn't around in the HornsFans days but was adamantly opposed at the time to the invasion of Iraq, which was based off of falsified "evidence" from Cheney's planted CIA moles.

Go over to the DT sub and mention anything about France or the French, and you'll inevitably get a "cheese-eating, surrender monkey" quote from The Simpsons by an ill-tempered, incompetent, and slow-witted Scottish janitor (because that's what Surly aspires to be) that's based off of an outdated stereotype as opposed to a more recent and relevant reference to the country and its people. For full disclosure, I'm a Francophile who's actually spent time in that country. 

I suspect their line of thought isn't really based on any specific principle other than loyalty to a particular party, regardless of its reversal of positions or beliefs.

[bolverk 29116]

9 minutes ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

Crossover episode from Boebert thread/‘restaurant’.

 

Hahaha, holy shit. They're still sore about it.

[Francisco 2.0 32230]

1 minute ago, staboner said:

my girlfriend gave up her toe

 

 

 

[Goredho 17190]

1 hour ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

Crossover episode from Boebert thread/‘restaurant’.

 

Alright, enough not capitalizing on this shit.  Time to pool our resources and open MAGAritaville.  The Chinese Fluburger would be to die for.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Goredho

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

Now I've got 'Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast stuck in my head...

 

[DigglerontheHoof 20606]

I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't continued to hold rallies.  The only reason I can think of for him not doing so, is that the expenses would come out of the money he's fleeced from the morons and he's keeping that for himself. 

You know the great unwashed brainwashed masses would continue to flock to them; like some kinda NAZI Grateful Dead experience. 

[Blotto 23293]

55 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't continued to hold rallies.  The only reason I can think of for him not doing so, is that the expenses would come out of the money he's fleeced from the morons and he's keeping that for himself. 

You know the great unwashed brainwashed masses would continue to flock to them; like some kinda NAZI Grateful Dead experience. 

When he was president, it was probably next to impossible for a city to reject his traveling circus. Now that's he's defaulted back to just being a regular piece of shit who won't pay his bills, I wonder if a lot of cities just refuse to issue permits unless he fronts the cash for all off the necessary security, etc...

[Eskimohorn 5571]

When he was president, it was probably next to impossible for a city to reject his traveling circus. Now that's he's defaulted back to just being a regular piece of shit who won't pay his bills, I wonder if a lot of cities just refuse to issue permits unless he fronts the cash for all off the necessary security, etc...

Well he did incite an insurrection. Theres no box to check for that on the necessary permits.

[Brisketexan 103664]

9 minutes ago, Blotto said:

When he was president, it was probably next to impossible for a city to reject his traveling circus. Now that's he's defaulted back to just being a regular piece of shit who won't pay his bills, I wonder if a lot of cities just refuse to issue permits unless he fronts the cash for all off the necessary security, etc...

This is surely a big part of it.  A city really couldn't refuse the sitting POTUS saying his coming to town.  Which he did.  And then walked the tab on security and such, regularly.

Now, he's just another psycho who wants a narcissist rally.  Cool, cool.  Now you gotta pay up front.  And we all know that Trump never, ever does that.

[Francisco 2.0 32230]

1 hour ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't continued to hold rallies.  The only reason I can think of for him not doing so, is that the expenses would come out of the money he's fleeced from the morons and he's keeping that for himself. 

You know the great unwashed brainwashed masses would continue to flock to them; like some kinda NAZI Grateful Dead experience. 

 

That's it.   No damned way is he going to bankroll some free to attend rally for the faithful to come bear witness.  

Now, if they can figure out a way to charge $100 a ticket, that could work.  He could go on tour like some aging band playing the greatest hits.  After all, the Stones make far more from concerts than they do anything else now (note:  I'm not at all comparing the Stones to Trump; just the finances could work).  But at the same time, he's such a toxic brand that his appeal is limited to essentially state fairs at this point.  And he sure as hell doesn't want to have the optics of that.

 

[Biff Tannen 45236]

15 hours ago, Goredho said:

Alright, enough not capitalizing on this shit.  Time to pool our resources and open MAGAritaville.  The Chinese Fluburger would be to die for.

[Ghost of LL 15255]

18 hours ago, bolverk said:

I'll be turning 50 in a couple of months, and the first corporate boycott I'm aware of in my lifetime was by the religious right against Proctor & Gamble back in the mid- to early-80s, because they thought the logo meant P&G was satanic. That doesn't mean it was the first one, but consumer activism has been going on forever by BOTH SIDES. Shortly after P&G, there was also the divestment movement against apartheid South Africa and Exxon after the Valdez oil spill by the left, but at least those were based on some semblance of reality and done in the defense of the oppressed and the environment.

Edit: The only boycotts I remember from the 1990s were against record labels, rock groups, and video games by cultural conservatives.

@Armybrat remembers when we canceled the East India Company's fucking tea.  Because fuck the East India Company and its fucking tea.

Seriously--politically driven economic boycotts predate the United States.  And people whining about cancel-culture today sound more than a bit like whiny-ass East India Company bitches from 250 years ago.

[Born to Run 6368]

Jimmy Buffett gonna sue y'alls ass to Bolivia.

[Pato del Muerto 52120]

1 hour ago, Ghost of LL said:

@Armybrat remembers when we canceled the East India Company's fucking tea.  Because fuck the East India Company and its fucking tea.

Seriously--politically driven economic boycotts predate the United States.  And people whining about cancel-culture today sound more than a bit like whiny-ass East India Company bitches from 250 years ago.

[Sawbonz 26912]

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33723]

 

[Underdog 28243]

1 hour ago, Sawbonz said:

 

Twitter may have missed a golden opportunity to let him have it back on 4/1 then promptly take it away the next day or even later that day. 

[Goredho 17190]

33 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

 

Twatter in April 2021:  Breaking news — Trump mismanaged COVID response.

Me:  Well that cements who I won’t be voting for in the November 2020 election.

[UTCzech III 2893]

A man of principles.  

 

 

[Guest Lobo]

"Mr. President.  For this photo, you should look like you're busying yourself these days with many readings.  Newspaper, briefs, books, etc."

Trump, "Sounds good.  Here, I'll put these two books right here on my left."

"Uh sir, that's two copies of the same book.  Nobody keeps two copies of the same book on their desk unless it's their own book."
 

Trump, "Yes, but see this way...it looks like I read twice as much."

 

(also, I'm surprised he let his reading glasses stay out for the photo)  

[Pato del Muerto 52120]

He’s boycotting Coca-Cola, not Diet Coke, you corporate commy lib. 

[Underdog 28243]

7 minutes ago, UTCzech III said:

A man of principles.  

 

 

Half inflated football under moldy boxes or New England Patriots locker room? 

[Sawbonz 26912]

54 minutes ago, Underdog said:

Twitter may have missed a golden opportunity to let him have it back on 4/1 then promptly take it away the next day or even later that day. 

 I imagine he tries his login every day just to see

[Willfully Horn 7892]

2 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

 

 

This is more than irritating. This question is not moot, though the specifics that frame the question are.

There are plenty of questions raised by 45 that I’d like SCOTUS to address. God forbid we find ourselves facing the queries once again. Will the system fail then, too?

[TwiceHorn 30851]

17 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

This is more than irritating. This question is not moot, though the specifics that frame the question are.

There are plenty of questions raised by 45 that I’d like SCOTUS to address. God forbid we find ourselves facing the queries once again. Will the system fail then, too?

Well, the Supreme Court doesn't operate in a vacuum.

Even though the Second Circuit, and the district court's rulings are vacated, their reasoning remains intact for adoption by any other court confronting the situation.

[Willfully Horn 7892]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, the Supreme Court doesn't operate in a vacuum.

Even though the Second Circuit, and the district court's rulings are vacated, their reasoning remains intact for adoption by any other court confronting the situation.

Thanks for your response. Was SCOTUS obliged to dismiss the case as being no longer relevant? I assume they’re not dismissing it because it can be argued by either side, without resolution.

Edited April 5, 2021 by Willfully Horn
More

[Fudge Nuggets 19001]

Fuck the Supreme Court.  Bunch of punk ass bitches.

[TwiceHorn 30851]

21 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

Thanks for your response. Was SCOTUS obliged to dismiss the case as being no longer relevant? I assume they’re not dismissing it because it can be argued by either side, without resolution.

Not a question of relevance.  Artlcle III of the Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal courts to "cases or controversies."  Because Trump is no longer president, the questions raised are no longer active cases or controversies, so dismissal was a foregone conclusion. These kind of rulings are common in certain circumstances, such as this one, or when the law has changed via legislation or another decision while the case was pending.  So common, in fact, that they have a nickname, GVR, for grant certiorari, vacate the lower court decision, and remand for further proceedings.

Cases like this that are GVR'ed because of case or controversy are kind of like kissing your sister, but the precedent that would be established by not adhering to the case or controversy rule (resulting in "advisory opinions" on theoretical disputes) would be a bad one, or at least contrary to everything our courts do.

I should add that any federal court considering this issue, SDNY or Second Circuit, would have dismissed this case had Trump left office while it was pending.  It's a feature of American jurisprudence.

Edited April 5, 2021 by TwiceHorn

[Willfully Horn 7892]

^Thanks. Would that I could believe that, in all instances, an executive with derision for precedent would abide by rulings that have not yet been definitively decided.

[TwiceHorn 30851]

25 minutes ago, Willfully Horn said:

^Thanks. Would that I could believe that, in all instances, an executive with derision for precedent would abide by rulings that have not yet been definitively decided.

Yes, even though the lower court decisions are no longer strictly precedential, they would be highly persuasive to decent elected officials and their legal staffs.

[Bama Chick 28595]

lol

[Willfully Horn 7892]

5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yes, even though the lower court decisions are no longer strictly precedential, they would be highly persuasive to decent elected officials and their legal staffs.

Decent folk do not worry me.

[4th&Five 41246]

 

[Guest Lobo]

I think he called for Don, Jr. not to consume coke for three days.  Something lost in the translation.  Because...you know?...Trump is stupid. 

[DigglerontheHoof 20606]

6 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

[atomheartbevo 89096]

On 4/4/2021 at 3:58 PM, bolverk said:

.Edit: The only boycotts I remember from the 1990s were against record labels, rock groups, and video games by cultural conservatives.

Fucking Tipper Gore.  

[Judge Roybeanbag 11730]

Probably took $100k to pay that Hooker desk off.  

Edited April 6, 2021 by Judge Roybeanbag

[Blotto 23293]

wrong thread

Edited April 6, 2021 by Blotto

[WhatTheBuck 28628]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Fucking Tipper Gore.  

She sold a lot of records.

[JimmyJames 12267]

Unfortunately the orange piece of shit is still alive but this guy isn’t. So at least we have that.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/03/rush-limbaughs-10-dumbest-remarks

[WhatTheBuck 28628]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Fucking Tipper Gore.  

[bolverk 29116]

35 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

She sold a lot of records.

Indeed. That warning label ended up being stamp of approval for us degenerates.

[Biff Tannen 45236]

3 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Indeed. That warning label ended up being stamp of approval for us degenerates.

Dee Snider taking them to task alongside John Denver will forever be one of my favorite memories.