trumpty plumpty

[jfish26]

he woulda nuked it

i mean, why have nukes if we can’t use them, right?

[Overlander]

Fittest President ever.

As a 78 year old man he's in better shape and health than you are.
At least that's what he says/will tell you - so it must be true. Right?

Being more serious, him being 300 pounds or him being 200 pounds doesn't really matter to me. I might prefer he be fatter (so there might be a better chance of him dying - yeah, I said it) but I'm not exactly a J.D. Vance fan, so 300 or 200 pound Trump probably doesn't make me no never never mind.

Him dropping dead of a Big Mac induced heart attack is the only way the MAGA loons will let Trump go. If he dies in prison of old age, he will forever be a martyr.

It would still be blamed on the Radical Left.
Don Jr probably already has his response drawn up.

[Overlander]

If trumpty plumpty had been president, Hurricane Helene would not have struck 'Merica.

He is a tough guy and hurricanes respect that.

He is so powerful, he would have "sharpied" it back out to sea.
Or, toward Mexico.

[japhy]

It would still be blamed on the Radical Left.
Don Jr probably already has his response drawn up.

Kamala worked in a McDonald's making Big Macs, coincidence?

[jfish26]

It would still be blamed on the Radical Left.
Don Jr probably already has his response drawn up.

Kamala worked in a McDonald's making Big Macs, coincidence?

Or DID she???

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

It would still be blamed on the Radical Left.
Don Jr probably already has his response drawn up.

Kamala worked in a McDonald's making Big Macs, coincidence?

Is that what the kids call it these days?

[Sparko]

It would still be blamed on the Radical Left.
Don Jr probably already has his response drawn up.

Kamala worked in a McDonald's making Big Macs, coincidence?

Is that what the kids call it these days?

I'm loving it. On the couch.

[jfish26]

If trumpty plumpty had been president, Hurricane Helene would not have struck 'Merica.

He is a tough guy and hurricanes respect that.

He is so powerful, he would have "sharpied" it back out to sea.
Or, toward Mexico.

The thing is, and where the real bitch of ALL of this is generally, is that there’s very LITTLE doubt that Trump would leverage relief funds and materials for personal gain.

Don’t believe me? Ask Ukraine.

[Overlander]

So, Donny will roll in...toss some paper towels at folks and sell the Trump Water for $5 a bottle?

Be sure to pick up your commemorative "Muscled Badass Trump" fighting the hurricane into submission while riding a GOT Dragon t-shirts!

[RainbowsandUnicorns]

What do you get when a former President, a guy who is worth millions and goes out in public looking like he hasn't bathed in a month, and a Heisman winner who played at Georgia and has an IQ the equivalent of his jersey number, all get together at an Alabama football game?

Amurca! Hugh! Es! Hay!

[twocoach]

If trumpty plumpty had been president, Hurricane Helene would not have struck 'Merica.

He is a tough guy and hurricanes respect that.

He is so powerful, he would have "sharpied" it back out to sea.
Or, toward Mexico.

The thing is, and where the real bitch of ALL of this is generally, is that there’s very LITTLE doubt that Trump would leverage relief funds and materials for personal gain.

Don’t believe me? Ask Ukraine.

He has already stated that FEMA would receive deep cuts in his next administration.

[jfish26]

He is so powerful, he would have "sharpied" it back out to sea.
Or, toward Mexico.

The thing is, and where the real bitch of ALL of this is generally, is that there’s very LITTLE doubt that Trump would leverage relief funds and materials for personal gain.

Don’t believe me? Ask Ukraine.

He has already stated that FEMA would receive deep cuts in his next administration.

Yes, but now we're talking about how Trump would use the powers of the office in a particular situation.

And, I'll remind everyone again: we must now assume that Trump would face NO consequences for simply bailing out his financial supporters - open corruption - and telling those in blue cities to take it up with their mayors and governors.

[KUTradition]

and THOSE are the standards of “leadership” psych thinks meet the expectations of the good ol’ U-S-of-A

[jfish26]

Trump, Magic Beans, and the $100,000 Watch

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-magi ... the-100000

1. Crime

Let’s say you are an unscrupulous politician who wants to monetize your power. You might attempt the following:

* You have goods/services you can offer. When you’re in office, you have the power of choosing vendors for government contracts, nominating people to important posts in government, and/or signing/vetoing/voting for legislation.

* These are valuable fucking things that you don’t have to give away for nothing.

* An individual who places value on these actions can offer you money for them. Depending on your circumstances, maybe that money is offered in the form of donations to your campaign. Or maybe it’s bars of gold given to you personally. Or something else.

There’s a satisfying simplicity to such arrangements: Both parties agree to the terms, the transaction is explicit. The only problem is that sometimes these arrangements end with the politician in jail.

Not always! Because the legal distinction between “ordinary politics” and “bribery” is less clear than you might think.

Even so, most politicians want to avoid prison, so they will sometimes employ less straightforward, more exotic, mechanisms. Here is another way a politician can monetize his power:

* The politician publicly sells some valueless good—let’s say, magic beans—at a wildly inflated price. Say, $100,000.

* Very few people would pay $100,000 for magic beans.

* But an individual who wants to influence the politician might buy lots of them. This individual might say something like, “Yes, I will take $1,000,000 worth of your magic beans.”

* The politician takes the money and winks. It would be implicitly understood that the politician owes this individual an unspecified favor in the indeterminate future.

* I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but this arrangement is probably not illegal.

You can see the logistical problems with this arrangement. It is complicated and the implied contract has been abstracted. The briber doesn’t always get the chance to say explicitly beforehand, “I will buy $1 million of magic beans and then at a later date, you will do X for me” and confirm an agreement from the politician. And the more abstract the exchange is, the harder it is for both parties to be satisfied.

But that’s the tradeoff for mitigating criminal exposure.

If the politician wanted to further insulate himself, he could add a couple of wrinkles to the scheme.

* He could sell the magic beans during his campaign—meaning before he got elected to office.

* He could run the magic-bean sale through a third party.

How might this third-party arrangement work?

* While out of office, the politician licenses his name, image, and likeness to a vendor who markets and sells the beans.

* The terms of the license could stipulate that the candidate gets 90 percent of all gross receipts.

* The third party is then the one making the beans and taking money from the “customers.”

* The politician is only a pitchman who happens to be collecting money on the back end—and, crucially, this money is bundled, so he could plausibly say that he does not know who bought the beans.

Again, not a lawyer and not legal advice—but this all seems legal.

Actually, I’d go further: This seems like a clever arrangement specifically designed to defeat bribery laws.

2. Trump Watches, Redux

We talked about the Trump Watch last week and because I am a lunkhead I focused on the horology and economics.

I didn’t even consider the question of whether or not the Trump Watches had the potential to run afoul of bribery laws.

The short answer is: No. The sale of $100,000 Trump Watches is probably entirely legal grift and/or influence peddling.

The long answer gets kind of long and lawyery.

Modern bribery law was defined by U.S. v. Brewster, a case in the 1970s in which federal courts drew some bright lines around 18 U.S. Code § 201.

The law establishes a few important precepts for bribery cases:

The bribee is defined as a “public official” and the specific definition of this term is given as a “Member of Congress, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, either before or after such official has qualified, or an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia, in any official function, under or by authority of any such department, agency, or branch of Government, or a juror.”

A bribe is defined as giving or promising something of value with the intent to influence an “official act.”

A gratuity is a related, but lesser, offense in which something of value is given to a public official because of an official act they have already taken.

Trump is protected from 18 U.S. Code § 201 seven ways to Sunday. He would argue that:

(1) He is not currently a public official: He is merely a candidate for office.

(2) If/when he wins, the president is not a “public official” as defined by the statute. Go and look at that definition again and you’ll see that “president” isn’t part of it. A court would have to construe the president as either an “officer” or “employee” of the government. He would argue that the president is neither.

(3) Any purchases of Trump Watches would be divorced from specific asks regarding future, undefined “official acts.”

(4) The Trump Watches wouldn’t be purchased from him—the money would be given to the Trump Watch vendor.

(5) Thus, even if the purchaser of the watches intended to influence Trump, Trump would have no way of divining that intention. There might be quid but there would be no quo.

(6) There is no provable connection between actions taken by Trump as a private citizen in September 2024 and “official duties” he might assume in January 2025.

(7) There is sufficient value in the Trump Watch to justify its purchase totally aside from any intent to influence Trump’s future official acts.

There’s one tiny chink in the legal armor: Foreign countries are not permitted to donate to American political campaigns.

There is nothing to stop, say, Saudi Arabia from buying 50 Trump Watches.

But even this would probably be kosher.

For starters, how would anyone outside of the Saudis know? They could make the purchase using Bitcoin and take delivery through a cutout. They’d have to pass word to Trump (through Jared?) that they had pushed $5 million in his direction through the watch hustle.

And even then—if you had ironclad proof of all of this—that money would have been given to the watch vendor for eventual disbursement to Trump as an individual and not to the Trump 2024 presidential campaign.

So it’s cool. Nothing to see here. Just the system working exactly as intended.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The most underappreciated aspect of the Trump era is the extent to which Trump demonstrated the inadequacy of law as a mechanism for protecting the government from unscrupulous presidents.

Did Trump run his presidential campaign, and then the United States government, as if they were criminal enterprises?

Yes. Incontrovertibly so.

That was the biggest takeaway from the Mueller report. Remember when:

* Trump wanted his attorney general to un-recuse himself from the Russia investigation. But he didn’t want a record of the instruction. So he called in a private citizen (Corey Lewandowski) and dictated a message for him to relay orally to the AG.

* This passage from the report is gold:

The President also asked [Don] McGahn in the meeting why he had told Special Counsel’s Office investigators that the President had told him to have the Special Counsel removed. McGahn responded that he had to and these conversations with the President were not protected by attorney-client privilege. The President then asked, “What about these notes? Why do you take notes? Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” McGahn responded that he keeps notes because he is a “real lawyer” and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing.

* And so was this one:

In January 2018, Manafort told Gates that he had talked to the President’s personal counsel and they were “going to take care of us.” Manafort told Gates it was stupid to plead, saying that he had been in touch with the president’s personal counsel and repeating that they should “sit tight” and “we’ll be taken care of.”

Point is: Trump runs his businesses as if they were criminal organizations and this extended to his time as CEO of the United States of America.

And there is very little the law can do about that.

If the American people choose to make a gangster president, then the American government will be run like a criminal organization. And no amount of lawmaking will be sufficient to prevent it.

Which is ultimately the problem with the Trump Watch. You can’t legislate morality for a society of nihilists.

If voters don’t care that Trump has built a system that—at least in theory—allows him to collect millions of dollars from foreign governments, then no amount of law will be able to stop this sort of influence peddling.

[KUTradition]

what’s the over/under on number of vance lies tonight?

[KUTradition]

We’re going to use tariffs very, very wisely. You know, our country in the 1890s was ... probably the wealthiest it ever was, because it was a system of tariffs. And we had a president — you know McKinley, right? You remember Mount McKinley? And then they changed the name. But one of those things. He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions, but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions. But we were a very wealthy country, and we’re going to be doing that now.

As is typical with most Trump claims, this one requires a fact check. McKinley was a member of the House — not president — when his proposal for massive tariffs was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890. And far from the economic boom Trump suggests it was, the tariffs were widely unpopular and contributed to major Republican electoral defeats in 1890 and 1892, followed by a depression known as the Panic of 1893. The 1890s also coincided with the end of the Gilded Age, a period known for extreme wealth inequality...

[jfish26]

September 30, 2024

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... er-30-2024

One hundred years ago tomorrow, former president Jimmy Carter arrived in the world in Plains, Georgia. According to the Atlanta Constitution of that date, he arrived just after the worst wind and rainstorm of the year passed off to sea. His home state of Georgia, along with North Carolina and Virginia, sustained significant damage, with railroad tracks and bridges washed out, crops damaged, and at least seven lives lost.

Today, almost a hundred years later, the destruction from Hurricane Helene continues to mount. At least 128 people have died in six states, and many more remain unaccounted for. Roads remain closed, and power is still off for more than 2 million people. In remarks to reporters today, President Joe Biden called the damage “stunning” and explained that the federal government is providing all the support it can. He noted that federal help was on the ground before the storm and when asked if there were more the government could be doing, answered no and explained that the administration had “preplanned a significant amount of it, even though they…hadn’t asked for it yet.”

Biden said this morning he will not tour the damaged areas until his presence will not disrupt emergency response operations. This afternoon, he said he would travel to North Carolina on Wednesday for a briefing and an aerial tour of Asheville, after ensuring the travel “will not disrupt the ongoing response.” He has also said he may have to ask Congress to come back into session before its mid-November return date to pass a supplemental spending bill. Punchbowl News political reporter Melanie Zanona noted that Congress left disaster aid out of the short-term continuing resolution to fund the government it passed before leaving town.

And yet, the hurricane has become the latest topic of disinformation for MAGA Republicans. Social media today is full of accounts claiming that the federal government is not responding to the crisis in western North Carolina because it prefers to spend money in Ukraine and on undocumented immigrants. Newsmax host Todd Starnes claimed that FEMA’s “top priority is not disaster relief” but to push diversity, equity and inclusion. “So, unless you’ve got your preferred pronouns spraypainted on the side of your submerged house—you won’t get a penny from Uncle Sam. Western North Carolina is just too Conservative and too Caucasian for FEMA to care.” The House Judiciary Committee posted that “Joe Biden was at the beach.”

These posts echo Russian disinformation, and Trump was on board with it. Touring Valdosta, Georgia, today, as a private citizen where people are still without power amidst the devastation, Trump said he had spoken to Elon Musk to get his Starlink satellites into North Carolina; FEMA has already provided 40 of the systems to North Carolina. He claimed that Georgia governor Brian Kemp is “having a hard time getting the president on the phone. They’re being very non-responsive.”

Kemp himself told reporters that Biden had called yesterday. “And he just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’” Kemp told him, “We got what we need, we’ll work through the federal process. He offered that if there’s other things that we need just to call him directly, which I appreciate that.” South Carolina governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, called it “a great team effort…the federal government is helping us well, they’re embedded with us. There is no asset out there that we haven’t already accessed.”

Republican governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin told reporters that he was “incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and cooperation from the federal team at FEMA.” Asheville, North Carolina, mayor Esther Manheimer told CNBC “We have support from outside organizations, other fire departments sending us resources, the federal government as well. So it's all-hands-on-deck, and it is a well-coordinated effort, but it is so enormous….”

FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg responded to a post claiming that FEMA was refusing to help certain Americans, saying: “This is a lie. We help all people regardless of background as fast as possible before, during and after disasters. That is our mission and that is our focus.”

In contrast, numerous posters today noted that Trump repeatedly withheld federal aid from Democratic governors—including that of North Carolina—after disasters in their states. After the Trump campaign organized a fundraiser for victims of the hurricane, David Frum of The Atlantic reminded readers that in 2019, Trump was fined $2 million and three of his children were ordered to take classes as a penalty for taking for their own use funds from charities they ran.

When a reporter asked President Biden and Democratic North Carolina governor Roy Cooper to respond to Trump’s accusation that they are ignoring the disaster, Biden responded: “He's lying. And the governor told him he was lying…. I've spoken to the governor, spent time with him…. I don't know why he does this. And the reason I get so angry about it, I don't care about what he says about me, but I care what he communicates to the people that are in need. He implies that we're not doing everything possible. We are…. I assume you heard the Republican Governor of Georgia talk about that he was on the phone with me more than once. So that's simply not true. And it's irresponsible.”

Economist Paul Krugman noted: “We’ve all become desensitized, but it’s amazing how at this point the Trump campaign rests entirely on denouncing things that aren’t happening—[an] imaginary bad economy, imaginary runaway crime and now an imaginary failure of Biden and Harris to respond to natural disaster.”

Just corrosive, casual, effortless lying. Lying like they breathe.

And these lies have consequences: Mr. and Mrs. Rube, told by their propagandist controllers that the federal government is doing nothing to help...may simply not seek help that is available.

More grimly, just you wait for how the Trump campaign will use Helene in the worst-possible-faith.

You will see lawsuits alleging that Harris used the tremendous, towering powers of the Vice Presidency to disenfranchise rural NC voters.

You will see hate groups pick up the signal and move into NC (not such a far convoy from Springfield, OH) to "protect" voters and poll workers (from brown and black people, they will not say out loud, or maybe they will).

You will see the Supreme Court entertain an argument that a natural disaster this close to the election somehow means that its results should be disregarded for one specific purpose.

Onward.

In Florida, though, Governor Ron DeSantis says his state does not need more federal help. “We have it handled,” he said. DeSantis might be eager to downplay the damage to the state in part because in May he joined other Republican leaders in an attack on Biden’s actions to address climate change.

DeSantis signed into law a new Florida measure that erased any references to climate change in state law, where they had been included in a 2008 climate change and renewable energy package then backed by the state’s Republicans. The new law prohibited cities and counties from approving restrictions on energy policy, relaxed regulations on natural gas pipelines, and state and local governments from taking environmental concerns into consideration in their investing policies. DeSantis also rejected more than $350 million in federal funding for initiatives to promote energy efficiency, and $320 million for reducing vehicle emissions.

"Funny" isn't the right word, but it's sure gonna be something when all of us duped WEF globalist sheep end up footing the bill for making the federal government the insurer of last resort for all of these morons.

To say nothing of the incredible amount of wasted taxpayer money that goes into cleaning up climate disaster after climate disaster after climate disaster, with materially no forward-thinking mitigation measures of any kind.

Onward.

Like DeSantis, the authors of Project 2025 claim that those working to address climate change are part of “the climate change alarm industry,” which is “harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”

In fact, the U.S. economy is booming in part thanks to the climate change initiatives begun under the Inflation Reduction Act, which have prompted both domestic and foreign investment in alternative technologies. Biden approached the need to address climate change as an opportunity to create good jobs, including union jobs, in the United States.

With those investments, economist Mark Zandi wrote yesterday that the U.S. economy is one of the best performing economies in the past 35 years. “Economic growth is rip-roaring, with real GDP up 3% over the past year. Unemployment is low at near 4%, consistent with full employment. Inflation is fast closing in on Fed’s 2% target—grocery prices, rents and gas prices are flat to down over the past more than a year. Households’ financial obligations are light, and set to get lighter with the Fed cutting rates. House prices have never been higher, and most homeowners have more equity in their homes than ever. Corporate profits are robust, and the stock market is hitting a record high on a seemingly daily basis.”

Zandi noted that there are “blemishes.” Lower-income households are struggling, there is a shortage of affordable housing, and the government is running large budget deficits. As always, things could change quickly. “But in my time as an economist,” he wrote, “the economy has rarely looked better.”

North Georgia, the area represented by MAGA Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is one of the areas that has been revitalized with new solar panel manufacturing funded by the Inflation Reduction Act. Yet Phil Mattingly and Andrew Seger of CNN reported on Friday, September 27, that while voters there like the strong economy, in this year’s election they say they still plan to back Trump, who has called Biden’s green energy initiatives a “scam” and vowed to claw back any money still unspent from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Aaron Zitner, Jon Kamp, and Brian McGill of the Wall Street Journal today called attention to this paradox, that people in counties that vote for Trump are significantly more likely than those that vote for Democrats to rely on federal government funding. This is in part because they are older and thus receive Social Security and Medicare, and in part because they live in areas hollowed out when industries there left. These are the areas the Biden-Harris administration have targeted for investment.

The authors note that these government-funded pro-Trump counties are clustered in the swing states that will decide the election. About 70% of the counties in Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina rely significantly on government income. So do nearly 60% of the counties in Pennsylvania.

Exactly. Governing for all Americans means that we spend disproportionately MORE money on places that disproportionally HATE the government.

Onward.

In other news today, in Georgia, Fulton County Superior Court judge Robert McBurney struck down the state’s six-week abortion ban, which prohibited abortions before many women know they’re pregnant, as unconstitutional. A government investigation recently showed that two Georgia women died after being unable to obtain abortion care in the state shortly after Georgia’s ban went into effect.

In a searing 26-page decision, the Republican-appointed judge wrote that the state cannot force a woman to carry a fetus that cannot live on its own. “Women are not some piece of collectively owned community property the disposition of which is decided by majority vote. Forcing a woman to carry an unwanted, not-yet-viable fetus to term violates her constitutional rights to liberty and privacy.”

Onward.

[KUTradition]

psych already echoing the nonsense

[Sparko]

If the collective cruelty minus the collective empathy is greater than zero, a society enters a nihilistic death spiral, with occasional blue state calming pools. But these calm spots are overrun by chaotic herds unable to control their fear. A bravery index balances this out in 2024. Speak truth to sadists.

[KUTradition]

local news here was just airing coverage of the hurricane aftermath, and rather than showing clips from Kemp’s news conference they showed trump’s…apparently not caring at all that they were amplifying his lies about Biden not being reachable

irresponsible and infuriating