Although much happened yesterday, I don't think we can fairly say that there was an explosion of the sort that Bejamin Wittes seemed to promise. He now says that he made no such promise and that his readers read too much into one cryptic tweet.
Though the news may not have been explosive, we learned some very significant things.
Mueller has called in the IRS’ Criminal Investigations unit, a notorious bunch of hard cases who specialize in financial crime. Yes, this means that Mueller will have access to the Tangerine Nightmare's taxes.
At the very least, we will have confirmation or disconfirmation (probably the latter) of the claim that Trump's taxes exist in a state of perpetual audit. Everyone seems to forget that no audit in history has ever lasted more than 28 months. There was never any excuse for the refusal to release earlier taxes.
Pardons: We've been discussing the President's pardon power for some time now. Keith Olbermann offers a pretty hip discussion of the issue in the video embedded above.
Once again: The easiest solution would be for Mueller and Schneiderman to bring state charges against Manafort or some other underling, because Trump cannot pardon a state offense. Of course, if Trump pardons a federal offense, the person who has accepted the pardon can no longer take the Fifth when compelled to testify. However, if that person testifies falsely, Trump can simply pardon him again. It's a recurring nightmare!
If Trump resorts to such obnoxious and inexcusable behavior, will Congress finally toss him into the back seat and take him for a ride down Impeachment Avenue? It all comes down to the question of whether the Republican party would tolerate such obvious venality.
Olbermann seems to think that the GOP leadership has limits, but I am not so sure. You probably have already heard about this:
Paul Manafort's notes from a controversial Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign included a mention of political contributions near a reference to the Republican National Committee, two sources briefed on the evidence told NBC News.There is some dispute as to whether the word "donations" actually appears; the first reports mentioned that word.
The contents of the note, which have not been previously disclosed, elevated the significance of the June 2016 meeting for congressional investigators, who are focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.
It is illegal for foreigners to donate to American elections.
It is clear from this report -- and from many others -- that the rot extends beyond Trump and his pals; the entire party, including the never-Trump faction, is affected. Infected. The GOP leadership may have calculated that getting rid of Trump would expose too many other Republicans. If so, this congress has a motive to overlook all of Donnie's many crimes and indiscretions, however blatant and humiliating.
Whoever thought that we'd see the party of evangelical Christianity morph into the party of Russia? I can recall when "the Bible belt" and "the Borscht belt" were two different things!
We need a Constitutional amendment curtailing the presidential pardon power. I would not want to see that power eradicated completely, but clearly the president must no longer be allowed to pardon potential co-conspirators. When a pardon functions as a tool for the obstruction of justice, we've gone far past the intentions of the founders.
10 comments:
So he can't issue a state pardon! How is the New York State charity fraud case going? The NYS attorney general is investigating both the Trump Foundation and the Eric Trump Foundation.
Executive presidency is a crap system, but how about a constitutional amendment requiring that candidacy for the presidency requires passing a psychiatric test?
What are the arguments against? "Let the people choose who they want, even if he's insane and the stress of office is likely to unleash genocidal tendencies"?
But Joe ...the Borsht Belt is the Catskills. Jerry Lewis played there with his folks. Mel Brooks and Jackie Mason kibbitzed there, same with Shecky Green, Carl Reiner, Allan Sherman... and the notrious Lenny Bruce crafted his yolks at Kramer casino on Luzon Lake. I'm just sayin' there's no way that Borscht Belt and them snake-handlers are the same thing-- one of them had a sense of humour (oh and are now all wearing depends or a wooden box).
Totally off-topic: am I right that if a webpage uses a Google font then every time someone browses to it that company gets informed?
I've had it confirmed. When someone browses to a webpage that uses a "free" font from Google, yes, the company does get informed that someone using your IP has browsed to that particular webpage.
If you are stupid enough to use the company's "free" browser, Chrome, they probably get informed of a lot more, right away. If you don't, it probably takes them about a millisecond to work the "lot more" out by putting the current data you've sent them together with other data they're collecting and have collected.
Some youngsters who think they are so clued-up are even installing VPNs on top of Chrome! That's similar to employing a fox to guard a henhouse. You might as well encrypt your messages using a Caesar shift and think they're going to be opaque to the NSA.
How many fonts can you choose from if you want straightforwardly to make a non-shitty website that's readable using all the "popular" browser programmes?
The answer is THREE. These are ONE standard serif (Times), ONE sans-serif (Arial-Helvetica), and ONE slab serif, (the monospaced Courier). The wonders of modern technology and freedom!
And how many times has anybody other than me ever pointed this out on the internet? The internet and the present stage of capitalist society that has produced it absolutely stink.
The story about an area of Frankfurt being evacuated because of an undefused British bomb from WW2 sounded fishy to my ears as soon as I heard that "heat-detection technology" was used to find people who were staying in their houses and either hadn't heard or hadn't obeyed the evacuation order. The people-detection devices were operated from police helicopters. And I don't just mean that the company that produces the devices has used the story to promote its wares. Such advertising is a typical feature of most news stories.
It's been reported that residents among the 60,000 evacuated who were slow to leave when ordered to do so may be prosecuted.
There were similar reports during flooding in England this year. Not about prosecution, but about loyal "officials'" valiant attempts to "persuade" reluctant people to follow orders.
Frankfurt also opened "shelters", although I haven't confirmed of what kind.
It's pretty clear that war is being prepared. I don't derive that conclusion just from the events, but also from the themes being pushed in the reporting of the events.
That's not all. Guess what? The evacuated area includes the head office of Germany's central bank, where half of the country's gold reserves are stored.
It's common for a bomb from WW2 - British, Russian, or German - to get discovered and defused in Germany. It happens every two weeks or so. Today's course of events seems remarkable in several ways.
The BBC article contains seven references to "experts" and if I read another article like that I may well vomit over my keyboard. The level of passive stupidity that the media treat people as possessing is getting ever greater.
If Trump took an illegal 20 year annual write off based on a debt from the 90's, then the 7 year clock does not start until the 20 year write off ends. So Trump could be liable for an illegal write off from the 90's.
Joe
I hope you are keeping quite for something big. Have a happy labor day.
Anon, there is no "something big." Well...there have been a few ideas for various "big" pieces, but the truth is, I needed a bit of a vacay. From Trump.
Honestly, I still wake up and realize: "Donald Trump is president. That guy we've been making fun of since the 1980s is president."
The right-wingers keep thinking that this is about party or policy or ideology. That would be the case if Pence or Cruz or someone like that were president. But Trump? When he was a Democrat, we thought he was a gauche, vulgar idiot. Even when he supported Clinton, Hollywood modeled various villains on Trump (as in "Batman Returns," "The Devil's Advocate," and so forth). When Trump turned into a right-wing conspiracy theorist, we thought he was an even BIGGER idiot.
It's one thing to have the country in the hands of someone I consider detestable for ideological reasons. I'm used to that. I'm also used to having the country run by a president whose personality rubs me the wrong way. (Obama, for example. Both Bushes.)
But Trump is different. The man is not just repellent, not just wedded to a vile ideology. He's an OAF.
Worse, he's supported by a hard core contingent of conspiracy buffs. People think that his core supporters are motivated by racism, but that isn't it. In my view, conspiracism is the key "ism" in play here. Since some people have referred to ME as a conspiracy theorist, I sometimes feel like I'm one of the many Frankensteins who contributed to the creation of this monster.
Of course, I am an example of an endangered species -- a left-wing conspiracy buff. Sightings of my kind were once fairly common, back when books about the JFK assassination sold well, but now we are rare. People often mistake the left-wing conspiracy theorist (well-known example: Mark Lane) with the right-wing conspiracy theorist (well-known example: Alex Jones). But we're talking about two different species. Hell: Two different genera. Two different genera who have long been at war with each other.
And my side lost. We're almost extinct.
Joe sometimes I think we are twins separated at birth. You write, very well, what I feel. After the election I was sick, I know I feel loss deeply but this time it was different. I hated dump for a long time, but that's not it. I love Hillary, but not that either. What hurt me most is the fact that citizens are willing to demean their country and government to this level without any interfaces from conscience or patriotism. What hurt me also the left,my tribe. They betrayed the working class, the fabric of their existence to put that in office. They did it out, let me just put it as crass as possible, bc of job security. Their job security. They don't really believe anything they say but it's a job. Clinton is the one who's most likely to accomplish as much as possible those ideal than any other politician, with or without their help once she is in office.That's why they hated her so much. Also the idea that a hostile government interfering in our election treated like entertainment by most people in the country. Is it something in the water? What's the he'll is going on? Well I am certainly looking my mind, but at least my conscience is not lost.
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