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

[Biff Tannen 45491]

1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

In Iowa there are 41,410 miles of hazardous liquid and natural gas pipelines in Iowa. There are 51 pipeline operators in Iowa. (2010 Iowa Pipeline Association)

In Iowa?

[Pato del Muerto 52337]

Oh and some basic reading tells me that this is byproduct gas from turning corn into ethanol, that they want to trap and bury instead of releasing into the atmosphere.  In theory making ethanol production more carbon neutral and therefore more palatable to some groups that might otherwise fight it- and THERFORE making corn a better energy source and more valuable and usable in the future. Which the corn farmers of Iowa are probably all for. 

[Gatorubet 30083]

1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

There’s a C02 pipeline?  Is that a name or is it really a carbon dioxide pipeline?  
 

Googling, apparently they want to move the gas via pipeline for some reason. 
 

wonder if that woman knows this about Iowa’s precious farmland:

 

In Iowa there are 41,410 miles of hazardous liquid and natural gas pipelines in Iowa. There are 51 pipeline operators in Iowa. (2010 Iowa Pipeline Association)

 

https://iowadot.gov/about/pipelines#:~:text=Iowa's pipeline system provides the,oil and highly volatile liquids.

Not clicking the link, but one of them has to be called Grazeprom

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19092]

Trump Seeks Court Order to Quash Investigation in Georgia https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/us/trump-georgia-election-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

In his latest legal maneuver, Donald J. Trump sought a court order on Friday that would throw out the work of an Atlanta special grand jury and disqualify Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor leading an investigation into election interference in Georgia.

A decision on indictments looms in the investigation, which has been in progress for more than two years. Ms. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has signaled that the decision will come in the first half of August; she recently asked judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers made their request in a filing to Georgia’s Supreme Court. They want the court to throw out the evidence gathered by the special grand jury.

Though the Georgia Supreme Court is predominantly Republican, the Trump legal team acknowledged in its filing that its latest stratagem was a long shot, conceding that it had identified “no case in 40 years” where the court had intervened in the way it seeks. “Then again, never has there been a case like this one,” it added.

The investigation has examined whether the former president and his allies illegally interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, where Mr. Trump lost narrowly to President Biden. The special grand jury heard evidence for roughly seven months and recommended indictments of more than a dozen people; its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them. To bring any charges, Ms. Willis must now seek indictments from a regular grand jury.

The Trump team’s filing raises a number of legal concerns, both about Georgia law relating to special grand juries and about how a special grand jury was used in this inquiry.

Mr. Trump’s local legal team includes the lawyers Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little. Their filing takes for granted that their client will be charged, saying that Ms. Willis “now seeks an indictment, the basis for which would be evidence unlawfully obtained during the special purpose grand jury’s proceedings.”

The district attorney’s office had no immediate comment on the latest filing.

Intervening in a potential criminal case before an indictment is even filed is complicated. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already sought to scuttle the investigation with a motion, filed in March, to quash much of the collected evidence and take Ms. Willis off the investigation. To their frustration, the Superior Court judge handling the case, Robert C.I. McBurney, has yet to rule on the motion.

“Stranded between the Supervising Judge’s protected passivity and the District Attorney’s looming indictment, Petitioner has no meaningful option other than to seek this Court’s intervention,” the lawyers wrote in their filing on Friday to the State Supreme Court.

“Nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable,” they wrote, adding that “the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies” are “because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”

 

Please tell me this is futile.  Also, they always file on a Friday.  

[Biff Tannen 45491]

1 hour ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Trump Seeks Court Order to Quash Investigation in Georgia https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/us/trump-georgia-election-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

In his latest legal maneuver, Donald J. Trump sought a court order on Friday that would throw out the work of an Atlanta special grand jury and disqualify Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor leading an investigation into election interference in Georgia.

A decision on indictments looms in the investigation, which has been in progress for more than two years. Ms. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has signaled that the decision will come in the first half of August; she recently asked judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers made their request in a filing to Georgia’s Supreme Court. They want the court to throw out the evidence gathered by the special grand jury.

Though the Georgia Supreme Court is predominantly Republican, the Trump legal team acknowledged in its filing that its latest stratagem was a long shot, conceding that it had identified “no case in 40 years” where the court had intervened in the way it seeks. “Then again, never has there been a case like this one,” it added.

The investigation has examined whether the former president and his allies illegally interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, where Mr. Trump lost narrowly to President Biden. The special grand jury heard evidence for roughly seven months and recommended indictments of more than a dozen people; its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them. To bring any charges, Ms. Willis must now seek indictments from a regular grand jury.

The Trump team’s filing raises a number of legal concerns, both about Georgia law relating to special grand juries and about how a special grand jury was used in this inquiry.

Mr. Trump’s local legal team includes the lawyers Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little. Their filing takes for granted that their client will be charged, saying that Ms. Willis “now seeks an indictment, the basis for which would be evidence unlawfully obtained during the special purpose grand jury’s proceedings.”

The district attorney’s office had no immediate comment on the latest filing.

Intervening in a potential criminal case before an indictment is even filed is complicated. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already sought to scuttle the investigation with a motion, filed in March, to quash much of the collected evidence and take Ms. Willis off the investigation. To their frustration, the Superior Court judge handling the case, Robert C.I. McBurney, has yet to rule on the motion.

“Stranded between the Supervising Judge’s protected passivity and the District Attorney’s looming indictment, Petitioner has no meaningful option other than to seek this Court’s intervention,” the lawyers wrote in their filing on Friday to the State Supreme Court.

“Nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable,” they wrote, adding that “the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies” are “because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”

 

Please tell me this is futile.  Also, they always file on a Friday.  

Because that is what innocent people do.  This is all so dumb.

[Bullneck 18983]

16 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

In Iowa?

Yes, in Iowa.  How many times do they have to say it?

30 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Trump Seeks Court Order to Quash Investigation in Georgia https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/14/us/trump-georgia-election-investigation.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

In his latest legal maneuver, Donald J. Trump sought a court order on Friday that would throw out the work of an Atlanta special grand jury and disqualify Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor leading an investigation into election interference in Georgia.

A decision on indictments looms in the investigation, which has been in progress for more than two years. Ms. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, has signaled that the decision will come in the first half of August; she recently asked judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers made their request in a filing to Georgia’s Supreme Court. They want the court to throw out the evidence gathered by the special grand jury.

Though the Georgia Supreme Court is predominantly Republican, the Trump legal team acknowledged in its filing that its latest stratagem was a long shot, conceding that it had identified “no case in 40 years” where the court had intervened in the way it seeks. “Then again, never has there been a case like this one,” it added.

The investigation has examined whether the former president and his allies illegally interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, where Mr. Trump lost narrowly to President Biden. The special grand jury heard evidence for roughly seven months and recommended indictments of more than a dozen people; its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them. To bring any charges, Ms. Willis must now seek indictments from a regular grand jury.

The Trump team’s filing raises a number of legal concerns, both about Georgia law relating to special grand juries and about how a special grand jury was used in this inquiry.

Mr. Trump’s local legal team includes the lawyers Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little. Their filing takes for granted that their client will be charged, saying that Ms. Willis “now seeks an indictment, the basis for which would be evidence unlawfully obtained during the special purpose grand jury’s proceedings.”

The district attorney’s office had no immediate comment on the latest filing.

Intervening in a potential criminal case before an indictment is even filed is complicated. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have already sought to scuttle the investigation with a motion, filed in March, to quash much of the collected evidence and take Ms. Willis off the investigation. To their frustration, the Superior Court judge handling the case, Robert C.I. McBurney, has yet to rule on the motion.

“Stranded between the Supervising Judge’s protected passivity and the District Attorney’s looming indictment, Petitioner has no meaningful option other than to seek this Court’s intervention,” the lawyers wrote in their filing on Friday to the State Supreme Court.

“Nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable,” they wrote, adding that “the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies” are “because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”

 

Please tell me this is futile.  Also, they always file on a Friday.  

One of the pundits (probably on MSNBC) I follow said that motion has a 0% chance.

[tx 3 putt 76296]

Why would an innocent man do this ?

have they not listened to the perfect call ?

[Hermanator 6930]

There's zero reasonable doubt at this point about this man's guilt in all of this shit. The only doubt is whether the republican led Georgia justice system will very publicly break precedent and go full on corrupt for him. Same with Florida. It's just going to take time to see what they do and like all things relating to lawyers and law it'll be frustrating and full of bullshit. 

[Red Five 40627]

30 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

“Nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable,” they wrote, adding that “the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies” are “because Petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”

This kind of shit makes my blood boil. The only reason he's not in prison this very moment is because he is Donald Trump. 

[Underdog 28443]

The mother/daughter election workers need to sue his ass also for the bullshit he spewed about them. 

[Red Five 40627]

17 minutes ago, Underdog said:

The mother/daughter election workers need to sue his ass also for the bullshit he spewed about them. 

Listening to the mom's testimony was heartbreaking and really stuck with me. Something like "Do you have any idea how scary it is to be targeted by the President of the United States?". 

[Neonmoon 38127]

Don’t worry Iowa farmers. If Trump is elected again, he might start a trade war, bringing you to almost bankruptcy, and then give you a bailout bigger than the auto industry 

[GhostOfTomJoad 9306]

Don’t worry Iowa farmers. If Trump is elected again, he might start a trade war, bringing you to almost bankruptcy, and then give you a bailout bigger than the auto industry 

"Those were the good old days!"

And the hayseeds will vote for him again en masse.

[Bullneck 18983]

2 hours ago, Underdog said:

The mother/daughter election workers need to sue his ass also for the bullshit he spewed about them. 

 

1 hour ago, Red Five said:

Listening to the mom's testimony was heartbreaking and really stuck with me. Something like "Do you have any idea how scary it is to be targeted by the President of the United States?". 

 

[tx 3 putt 76296]

[Bullneck 18983]

[Fudge Nuggets 19144]

22 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

Not clicking the link, but one of them has to be called Grazeprom

True story, back in 2009 Gazprom signed a joint venture deal with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (the corruption would have been otherworldly, but I digress).  No fucking shit, they named the JV ... drumroll...  NIGAZ.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigaz

Quote

The Economist said the name choice showed "a refreshing ignorance of politically incorrect language".^[5]

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33831]

3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Is that a real photo? I hope not but fear it is. I do feel for Ivanka, mostly because she never had a chance. I can condemn her actions as an adult, but damn. Oligarchic white trash. She's known nothing else. And we made her father president. Farts. 

[atomheartbevo 89400]

Edit: wrong forum

Edited July 16, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89400]

Edit Wrong thread

Edited July 16, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[Longhorn_Fan68 33831]

Jfc @atomheartbevo, get your shit together. 

 

😆 🤣 😂 

[atomheartbevo 89400]

2 minutes ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

Jfc @atomheartbevo, get your shit together. 

 

😆 🤣 😂 

[AnTiM 1657]

15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

This is what I hope donald JAIL trump looks like just before he pulls a good Enron guy routine and kills himself.

[Horn Dog 9671]

9 hours ago, Bullneck said:

Her pre adolescent hand is bigger than his.

[bolverk 29394]

What a goddamned nightmare a second term would be. They'd be much more prepared this time and would finally get the dictator in the White House they've been yearning for.

 

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025
The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Spoiler

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

 

[Red Five 40627]

So yet again, for the billionth time, exactly what they claimed Obama wanted to do.

[YChang 3430]

Seriously terrifying. The Biden isn’t liberal enough for me and general non-voters that identify as Democrats need to fucking vote. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26271]

1 minute ago, Red Five said:

So yet again, for the billionth time, exactly what they claimed Obama wanted to do.

It's a propaganda technique referred to as "accusation in a mirror," and in wide use by a plurality minority political faction typically signals dark times to come. 

[Biff Tannen 45491]

Well that's fucking terrifying.  And exactly what I expected.

[bolverk 29394]

22 minutes ago, YChang said:

Seriously terrifying. The Biden isn’t liberal enough for me and general non-voters that identify as Democrats need to fucking vote. 

What's almost as scary is that they're ready to do this for ANY Republican president.

From the spoilered section:

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election

Just think about how DeSantis runs Florida. The GQP is a party wholly supportive of having an autocrat in the White House so long he's theirs.

[Biff Tannen 45491]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

What's almost as scary is that they're ready to do this for ANY Republican president.

From the spoilered section:

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election

Just think about how DeSantis runs Florida. The GQP is a party wholly supportive of having an autocrat in the White House so long he's theirs.

And that is why if they "win", I think we will see some bad stuff from the majority.

[WhatTheBuck 28703]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

What a goddamned nightmare a second term would be. They'd be much more prepared this time and would finally get the dictator in the White House they've been yearning for.

 

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025
The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

  Reveal hidden contents

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Mr. Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Mr. Vought and Mr. McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Mr. Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Mr. Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John F. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decades-long effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Mr. Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mr. Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Mr. Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Mr. Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Mr. Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Mr. Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Mr. Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Mr. Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Mr. Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Mr. Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Mr. Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Mr. Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Mr. Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Mr. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Mr. Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Mr. Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Mr. Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Mr. Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but President Biden rescinded it. Mr. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Mr. Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

 

Hopefully that motherfucker never regains power. It’s terrifying that it’s even a possibility. And if/when he loses, it won’t mean the threat has gone away.

Coincidentally, I’m giving this a re-read. Seems relevant.

[YGIFS 19449]

3 hours ago, YChang said:

Seriously terrifying. The Biden isn’t liberal enough for me and general non-voters that identify as Democrats need to fucking vote. 

It's not enough to "turn out the vote" and whatever that Blue Wave group is called.  You need to actively work through disinformation and fear-mongering to convince a few million Republicans/anti-Democrats in a handful of key states to NOT VOTE.  If you haven't found the disaffected, non-participatory folks in this nation that would likely vote Democratic if they vote at all by now, it's too late---they're not gonna magically appear after 8+ years on the sideline.  You need everybody from 2020 and 5-10% more than that.  And you need to crush the spirits of 5-10% of the GOP side.  If he's alive and on the ballot, no matter what his criminal justice fate holds...he gets his 25mm MAGA nutjob base who vote him or not at all.  He gets his 25mm straight ticket "I don't even look at the ballot, I just click R and get my sticker."  The middle 25 that justifies voting for him with myriad approaches, you have to keep 10%+ of them from voting.  No intimidation, voter fraud, or cosplay at the precinct station.  Just plant seeds of doubt starting this Autumn that a vote for Trump is wasted and only feeds the Biden agenda.  I dunno, we don't have this part figured out yet.  But you have got to figure out a way to keep a few million of them sidelined.  

I'm also holding my breath that the RNC and some state leadership run him so fucking ragged alongside his court dates and non-stop grifting to keep he and his whole family's facade lifestyle afloat, that he keels over and dies.  

The greatest Democracy in the history of the world relies on three things in 2024-25 and beyond to survive:

1.  Biden remains in good enough health and/or a more hashed out succession plan is set into motion between now and then.

2.  Donald J. Trump dies between now and Election Day.

3.  A reliable conspiracy theory takes hold within MAGA nation that is convincing enough to keep a few million of them from voting.

The Republic is now confined to a tight-wire walk juggling jars of ammonium nitrate with tissue paper for a net.  Deep down inside, far left and far right acolytes have no idea where we're gonna be in 18 months.  And that uneasiness is gonna get real ugly real quick

[YChang 3430]

52 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

It's not enough to "turn out the vote" and whatever that Blue Wave group is called.  You need to actively work through disinformation and fear-mongering to convince a few million Republicans/anti-Democrats in a handful of key states to NOT VOTE. 

Oh believe me. I’m all for persuasion campaign to convince the maga crowd to not vote!

[atomheartbevo 89400]

7 hours ago, Red Five said:

So yet again, for the billionth time, exactly what they claimed Obama wanted to do.

Party of Small Government.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20342]

 

 

[Bullneck 18983]

 

 

[TwiceHorn 31240]

4 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

 

 

Take any victory we get.  But this was one of three whacks at this and the lowest percentage one of the three.

[Underdog 28443]

No one should be surprised over the latest revelations about Trump's 2nd term, not a doubt in my mind he'd be working on finding a way to a 3rd term had he won in 2020. 

[Bullneck 18983]

[Neonmoon 38127]

9 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Take any victory we get.  But this was one of three whacks at this and the lowest percentage one of the three.

I read the argument. Would it be fair to sum it up as “the grand jury law is vague and thus unconstitutional”

Thereby voiding every single indictment obtained by the process in Georgia?

[Brisketexan 104537]

I read the argument. Would it be fair to sum it up as “the grand jury law is vague and thus unconstitutional”
Thereby voiding every single indictment obtained by the process in Georgia?

Well, obviously not…I mean, black people. Duh.

[TwiceHorn 31240]

6 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

I read the argument. Would it be fair to sum it up as “the grand jury law is vague and thus unconstitutional”

Thereby voiding every single indictment obtained by the process in Georgia?

I did read the first filing back in March, but I don't remember anything about it.  His Georgia lawyers are pretty competent as Trump lawyers go.

And just now went back and scanned it, and it seems pretty thin in almost every respect.  The argument is not against grand juries broadly, but only this "special purpose grand jury."  It seems to argue that because it is not clear whether it is civil in nature or criminal, then it must be civil, and it was therefore unlawful to employ a uniform statute to subpoena witnesses from out of state.  It basically don't make no sense.

[Biff Tannen 45491]

50 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Take any victory we get.  But this was one of three whacks at this and the lowest percentage one of the three.

What are the other two?

[TwiceHorn 31240]

Just now, Biff Tannen said:

What are the other two?

They first filed in the court that was supervising the special purpose grand jury, in March.  That judge has sat on it until now (he's not going to give them anything).  They filed the second and third last week with another Fulton County Superior Court (a trial court like the first one) and the Ga. Supreme Court, styled this time as "writs of mandamus," which is kind of like "we're right, make the first judge rule and rule our way."  These are all considerable long shots, like most other attempts by Trump to short circuit investigations, lawsuits, and now indictments.

[Pato del Muerto 52337]

12 hours ago, YChang said:

Seriously terrifying. The Biden isn’t liberal enough for me and general non-voters that identify as Democrats need to fucking vote. 

Well they have a plan to suppress voting in certain areas so that they won’t be outvoted. And if that plan should fail, they also have a plan for how to grab power despite being outvoted.  They don’t really care to parse if the authoritarianism begins after the swearing in or before.  There’s no line there for them to even decide to cross. 

[Willfully Horn 7913]

Fuck him, and every other, fascist fuck.

[TDunk 590]

So the country hinges on which one these fuckers dies first? Just asking questions 

[tx 3 putt 76296]

The man must be stopped …
 

 

[henrygandorf 29174]

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

The man must be stopped …