Elections; 2024 by THG

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

No it's not, you fucking idiot.

You've made your entire life about Trump, therefore you see Trump in every mirror and under every rock.

Get some fucking help.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

6ixStringJack, your contribution to America's economy is approximately zero. That is typical for Trumptards. President Donald Trump carried 2,497 counties across the country that together generate 29% of the American economy, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. President-elect Joe Biden won 477 counties that together generate 70% of U.S. GDP.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/election-2020-democrats-republicans-ec
onomy.html

It is easy to find out why average Trumptards are worthless individuals by googling Which states have higher GDP? Democrats or Republicans? Not unrelated, Trump made his money by inheritance and by swindling, both his dead brother's family and renters in his buildings. He cheats on taxes, too. Trump is worthless like his Trumptards.

https://www.google.com/search?q=which+states+have+higher+gdp+democrats
+or+republicans

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, June 27, 2024 5:55 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

On Thursday, the Trumptards on the Supreme Court gutted the ability of government agencies to enforce regulations against those who break the law. While the case, SEC v. Jarkesy, might sound dry, the decision is a big deal: It allows wrongdoers targeted by the Securities and Exchange Commission—as well as a bunch of other federal agencies—to demand a trial by jury in federal court, upending the usual adjudication process before administrative law judges. The federal government does not have anywhere close to enough resources and personnel to take every case to a jury when it seeks to impose civil penalties. So the decision will chill enforcement throughout the executive branch, allowing more white-collar criminals, polluters, abusive employers, and other malefactors to slip through the cracks. And it all started with a little-known hedge fund manager from Texas named George Jarkesy — a Republican activist and conservative radio host bankrolled by billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban.

So who is the man whose case may have just kneecapped the executive branch in a decision that Justice Sonia Sotomayor bluntly characterized as “a power grab” by the judiciary?

Jarkesy managed the Houston-based hedge fund Patriot 28. He hosts a conservative radio show on which he has railed against government agencies like the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He also once argued that the Civil War was started because the North ran out of money. “They had taxed their people into oblivion. They had ran over their budgets, they were broke, and the South had money,” said Jarkesy. He was also no fan of former President Barack Obama, referring to him as “comrade Obama” and even writing a song called “The Bad Obama Blues,” where Jarkesy called him a liar and said, “the president spends like a maniac.”

More than a decade ago, the SEC fined Jarkesy for misleading investors. The agency alleged that Jarkesy’s fund “arbitrarily” inflated the value of certain holdings from 30 cents per share to $3.30 per share—“so that they could charge higher management fees.”

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/sec-supreme-court-case-geo
rge-jarkesy-elon-musk-mark-cuban.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 29, 2024 5:43 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What Kind of ‘Psycho’ Calls Dead Americans ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’?

By Adrienne LaFrance | June 28, 2024

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/what-kind-of-psycho-calls-dead-ameri
cans-losers-and-suckers/ar-BB1oZj3v

Perhaps you’ve noticed lately that Donald Trump, a man not known for subtlety, has been testing the limits of the Streisand effect. At one event after another—at a rally, then a fundraiser, in remarks on his social platform, and in at least one video that his campaign distributed online—Trump keeps reminding his supporters about his well-documented habit of disparaging America’s military service members as “dumb,” “losers,” and “suckers.” https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/14/turns-out-barbra-streisand-is-awar
e-of-the-streisand-effect-but-seems-confused-about-it/

“Think of it, from a practical standpoint,” Trump said before a crowd in Las Vegas earlier this month. “I’m standing there with generals and military people in a cemetery, and I look at them and say, ‘These people are suckers and losers.’ Now, think of it; unless you’re a psycho or a crazy person or a very stupid person, who would say that, anyway?”

As it happens, the American people have, by now, a very clear picture of the kind of person who would say such a thing.

Recall Trump’s infamous 2015 remarks about Senator John McCain, who was tortured during his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam: “He’s not a war hero,” Trump insisted. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Then there was the time in 2016 when Trump publicly mocked and belittled Khzir and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a fallen U.S. Army officer, Humayun Khan, who had been killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004. (Trump is “devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son,” Khzir said at the time.)

Then, in 2020, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported several instances in which Trump openly expressed disgust for America’s dead service members. There was the time in Arlington National Cemetery, on Memorial Day in 2017, when Trump was standing at the grave of Robert Kelly, a young Marine officer who had been killed in Afghanistan. Trump was visiting the cemetery with his then–Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general and father to Robert. As Goldberg first reported, “Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, ‘I don’t get it. What was in it for them?’”

During a trip to France the following year, faced with the prospect of visiting another cemetery, this time to pay respects to service members killed in World War I, Trump complained: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” (Trump’s loyalists have attempted to redirect attention to the weather that day, arguing that it really was too rainy for a visit.) And, as Goldberg first reported, “in a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for getting killed.”

In subsequent reporting, including his 2023 profile of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Goldberg uncovered additional incidents in which Trump disparaged American service members. At one military ceremony, for example, a wounded Army captain who’d completed five combat tours and lost a leg in an IED attack nearly tumbled over. Others, including then–Vice President Mike Pence, rushed to help the man. But Trump complained to Milley in a voice loud enough for several people to hear: “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

Trump has spent years attempting to deny these incidents—all while experienced journalists writing for multiple news organizations have corroborated The Atlantic’s initial reporting. But recently, Trump has become newly preoccupied with Goldberg (whom Trump mentioned by name and described as a “horrible radical left lunatic” at a rally last month) and with his reporting on Trump’s disdain for the Americans who volunteer to serve their country. And Trump seems preoccupied generally with denying his own record of disparaging service members. (Listening to his clumsy attempts to deny what he said, I can’t help but think of Hamlet’s Queen Gertrude—“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”—or at least the unraveling guilt of the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart.)

That Trump would lie is unsurprising. But his recent obsession is curious because it represents a rare instance in which he avoids doubling down on his own provocations. And it is revealing—presumably reflecting some sort of poll that has found that Americans don’t particularly like their war dead to be mocked by the once and prospective commander in chief. (I suppose it’s possible that on some level, Trump feels ashamed of what he said, but shame typically requires a baseline degree of self-awareness and empathy.)

“They made up a story about me with suckers and losers,” Trump said at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., last weekend. “They made up this story about me, looking down at graves, saying ‘suckers’—they make it up. Suckers and losers. Who would? Surrounded by military people. There’s nobody that’s stupid enough to make that statement. Think of it. And I was president. I would have said that would have been justified for somebody to start taking swings at me as president. But they made it up. It’s a phrase that was totally made up by a third-rate magazine that’s going out of business, losing a fortune. I think it was The Atlantic. A magazine that nobody reads.” (The Atlantic is profitable and recently announced that it has more than 1 million subscribers.) “It’s horrible,” he later added. “Who would say it?”

Well, Trump said it. And over the past four years, several more journalists have reported as much. One day after Goldberg’s 2020 story appeared, Jennifer Griffin, a national-security correspondent for Fox News, found in her own reporting that Trump had “disparaged veterans.” One former senior Trump-administration official told Griffin that Trump said anyone who served in Vietnam “was a sucker,” she reported. “This former official heard the President say about American veterans: ‘What’s in it for them? They don’t make any money.’” Griffin also corroborated details first reported by Goldberg about how Trump did not want to include wounded service members in military parades. “Regarding Trump’s July 4th military parade, during a planning session at the White House after seeing the Bastille Day parade in 2017, the President said regarding the inclusion of ‘wounded guys’ ‘that’s not a good look’ ‘Americans don’t like that,’ source confirms,” Griffin tweeted.

Trump attacked her in response. “Jennifer Griffin should be fired for this kind of reporting,” he tweeted at the time. “Fox News is gone!” The Washington Post subsequently reported that “Trump believed people who served in the Vietnam War must be ‘losers’ because they hadn’t gotten out of it, according to a person familiar with the comments.” (The newspaper also noted that although Trump, in a tweeted response to the Atlantic story, claimed, “I never called John [McCain] a loser. I swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on,” he did, in fact, call McCain a loser in a 2015 interview, which you can watch for yourself.)

The New York Times similarly reported that its sources verified “that Mr. Trump resisted supporting an official funeral and lowering flags after the death of Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Vietnam War hero whose military service he had disparaged.” (Ultimately, Trump relented, and the flags were lowered.) And the Times reported that “people familiar with Mr. Trump’s private conversations say he has long scorned those who served in Vietnam as being too dumb to have gotten out of it,” as Trump had done. The Times further reported that “some also recalled him asking why the United States should be so interested in finding captured soldiers” who are prisoners of war.

This past October, John Kelly publicly confirmed, in a statement to CNN’s Jake Tapper, the details that Goldberg first reported. This came in the weeks following Goldberg’s profile of Milley, and Trump’s subsequent suggestion that Milley be executed for treason. Here is how Kelly put it:

Quote:
What can I add that has not already been said? A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all “suckers” because “there is nothing in it for them.” A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because “it doesn’t look good for me.” A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family—for all Gold Star families—on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are “losers” and wouldn’t visit their graves in France … A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason—in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.

And in his new book, The Return of Great Powers, the CNN national-security reporter Jim Sciutto quotes Kelly telling him that Trump “would often say, ‘Why do you people all say that these guys who get wounded or killed are heroes? They’re suckers for going in the first place, and they’re losers.’”

On November 9, 2010, Robert Kelly stepped on a concealed bomb while leading his platoon in Afghanistan. Donald Trump, meanwhile, was somewhere in between tweets promoting his television game show, The Apprentice, and a Fox News appearance during which he dangled the prospect of running for office.

Robert Kelly was 29 when he died. He was also a newlywed. And he was a friend and brother to many more who served in the military. In an obituary, Robert’s friends and family recalled his quick wit and strong sense of duty. They remembered the charm and persistence with which he pursued his first date with the woman who would become his wife. They noted his fondness for history and for ice hockey. And they described his deep love of country. “He went quickly and thank God he did not suffer,” Kelly’s father wrote to his friends after Robert died. “In combat that is as good as it gets.” The elder Kelly described the pain of his loss as “unimaginable.”

Trump has never served in the U.S. military. “Bone spurs” won him an exemption from Vietnam. He has never had to triple-check to make sure his uniform was in regulation, or taken a combat-fitness test. He has never watched his spouse walk out the door for the last time before deployment. He has never cared for a family member who returned from war with permanent injuries. And he has never received the unfathomable news that one of his children was killed in action. Millions of Americans have. But Trump is nothing like them.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 29, 2024 10:48 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What Kind of ‘Psycho’ Calls Dead Americans ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’?

The one who made it all up. Most likely a journalist at NYT.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Saturday, June 29, 2024 10:50 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

No it's not, you fucking idiot.

You've made your entire life about Trump, therefore you see Trump in every mirror and under every rock.

Get some fucking help.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
6ixStringJack, your contribution to America's economy is approximately zero. That is typical for Trumptards. President Donald Trump carried 2,497 counties across the country that together generate 29% of the American economy, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. President-elect Joe Biden won 477 counties that together generate 70% of U.S. GDP.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/10/election-2020-democrats-republicans-ec
onomy.html

It is easy to find out why average Trumptards are worthless individuals by googling Which states have higher GDP? Democrats or Republicans? Not unrelated, Trump made his money by inheritance and by swindling, both his dead brother's family and renters in his buildings. He cheats on taxes, too. Trump is worthless like his Trumptards.

https://www.google.com/search?q=which+states+have+higher+gdp+democrats
+or+republicans

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

I made most of the money I needed for the rest of my life by the time I was 32 years old.

I'm not going to apologize for being great with money, nor will I apologize for not being a mindless consumer like most of the rest of you are.

And I'm certainly not going to apologize for not slaving away for the rest of my life to live in one of our overtaxed, Democrat run shithole cities that are unaffordable to live in either. I moved out of Illinois and Wisconsin expressly for the purpose of avoiding the insane property and sales taxes that apparently go toward nothing. Have fun stepping over geeked out bums, illegal aliens and human shit on the way to work on Monday.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Saturday, June 29, 2024 11:52 AM

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ny-times-editorial-board-urges-bid
en-quit-race-did-trump-administer-premature-kill-shot

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
NY Times Editorial Board Urges Biden To Quit Race - Did Trump Administer Premature Kill Shot?

Saturday, Jun 29, 2024 - 06:55 AM

Thursday night's presidential debate mortally wounded President Biden's political career, and now the New York Times has hammered a significant nail in the coffin -- publishing an editorial bluntly declaring that "the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election."

With this development, Biden's departure from November ballots is taking on an air of inevitability. At the same time, Team Trump is reckoning with what may have been a strategic error -- enabling a premature kill shot that could leave Trump facing a worse matchup.

Quote:
Americans Dread Vote Between Two Unpopular Candidates
Additionally, as Statista's Felix Richter notes, the debate was also unique in that it featured two candidates that are viewed as unfit for the job by large parts of the American public, albeit for very different reasons. While President Biden is widely viewed as too old for a second term (and apparently proved that view correct last night), former President Trump is the first convicted felon to run for the country’s highest office.

As a result of this unusual match-up, many voters feel like they’re caught between a rock and a hard place, as they have serious reservations about both candidates.

According to a recent poll by The Economist and YouGov, Biden and Trump are seen unfavorably by almost 60 percent of Americans, with a shocking 44 and 47 percent holding very unfavorable views of the incumbent and his challenger, respectively.

Of course, those numbers are largely driven by the extreme polarization of today’s political landscape, resulting in 92 percent of likely Democratic voters seeing Trump unfavorably and 94 percent of likely Republican voters holding a negative view of Biden, but there are reservations about their own candidate on both sides of the political spectrum as well...

ELECTION DREAD
https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/32508.jpeg

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/americans-dread-vote-between-two-unp
opular-candidates

"Independents", who are in reality undecideds, dread voting the most.

When people are in that highly charged emotional state, they make highly emotional decisions, usually to relieve their amped up anxiety.

If Biden bails and the DNC springs a new candidate into place, that candidate - whoever he or she is- will provide a relief valve for all of that FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) and those emotional undecideds will squirt is that direction, making an emotional decision simply to relieve extreme anxiety.

The Trump campaign will have to relieve that anxiety by making him seem a focused, honest, and stable candidate, and Trump ... is not the guy to do that. He plays to his audience, or who he THINKS is his audience, and blurts out ridiculous promises. But by hook or crook, he needs to woo those undecideds.

His campaign will also have to create a lot of FUD around whoever is the chosen replacement, whether its Kamala or Newsom or Whitmer, or someone else.

EDITED TO ADD: This was from the CNN Camp cowards thread.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Sunday, June 30, 2024 8:35 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What Biden owes his country if he stays in

By E.J. Dionne Jr. | June 30, 2024 6:14 a.m.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/30/biden-debate-democr
atic-party-2024/

President Biden’s lieutenants want to write off his dismal debate performance on Thursday as one bad night and are calling on Democrats to buck up and fight. But many in the party (and more in the world of commentary) think Biden should drop out and open the way for a new nominee, lest the president’s weakness open the door wide to the disastrous return of Donald Trump.

Neither view fully grasps the depth of the mess Democrats, and the country, are in. Biden defenders underestimate the potential long-term damage of the president’s debate performance, which was designed to show that the 81-year-old was up to the job and did just the opposite. But those who’d like to hurtle full speed ahead to an open convention vastly underestimate how hard it will be to pull off.

The voices most certain that Biden should leave the race include many who said long ago that Biden should not to run again. They feel vindication. Alas for Biden, they have reason to. The people most shocked by Thursday (and I’m one of them) were those who felt he was up for one more campaign and had proven his mettle in his State of the Union address and other outings.

It turned out that a debate is not like a prepared speech or the occasional interview. Biden had trouble landing even easy punches or executing well-prepared attack lines coherently. Heck, sometimes he struggled to finish sentences. This was not like the debate losses of former presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush.

The cascade of demands on Biden to hang it up was thus inevitable, and his team would be foolish to resort to catcalls against hand wringers and nervous nellies. People cannot unsee what they have already seen. Biden needs to own just how damaging that performance was.

But romanticizing a magical solution to the problem the party faces is a mistake, too. If Biden withdrew, the party would face two core decisions: first, whether to nominate Vice President Harris, and if not, whom it should pick from a list of hopefuls who could easily run to a dozen alternatives.

Unless Harris decided to stay on as the vice-presidential candidate, the up-or-down decision on her future would be deeply divisive. And a free-for-all compressed into a short period would limit the amount of vetting a nominee would go through and could reopen ideological conflicts that Biden was largely able to pacify. (These are Democrats, after all.) Sure, it could be exciting. It could also be chaotic.

It also doesn’t help Democrats to say that it’s Republicans who should look at Trump’s debate performance — his cascade of blatant lies, his refusal to answer questions, his plain lack of patriotism — and demand that he withdraw. Of course they should. But they won’t. The point is to defeat Trump.

So what should be done? I’m with those saying Biden needs a painful reckoning with himself over whether his best contribution to history now is to soldier on, or to help a leader from the next generation see his fight for the soul of America though. Biden has a formidable legacy rooted in a presidency characterized by responsibility, decency and real accomplishment. If his staying in the race allows Trump back into power, Biden will destroy that legacy.

But with Biden apparently determined to tough it out — the campaign put out a list of politicians reaffirming their support Saturday afternoon — the president’s future will be settled by the polls. If they show the debate caused Biden real damage, pressure on him to drop out will move from private alarm to public demands. If the numbers don’t change much, he’ll likely get through this.

If he does, he owes those who support him a clear strategy for undoing Thursday’s damage. He needs to do a series of televised interviews, including many in less than friendly settings. He’ll have to step up his campaign appearances, offering more speeches along the lines of his energetic performance in North Carolina on Friday.

He should make a major commitment to doing all he can to strengthen the campaigns of Democratic House and Senate candidates, the most vulnerable of whom have more reason than anyone to worry about the electoral impact of a weakened Biden. He needs to use last week’s demonstration of the Supreme Court’s radical right-wing activism to underscore the long-term impact of the choices voters will be making this November. If Democrats lose both the Senate and the White House, the damage to the judiciary over a generation will be catastrophic.

Above all, Biden and those around him need to understand that this is not about them, their touchiness over who has underestimated the president in the past or who is loyal and disloyal. Every decision he makes from now on, including whether he remains in the contest, must prove he means what he says about the grave danger Trump poses to our democracy. His legacy depends upon it, and the country needs to be able to depend upon him.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 30, 2024 1:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Neither view fully grasps the depth of the mess Democrats, and the country, are in.

Biden* and Democrats are the mess that the country are in.

It's about to be cleaned up.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Sunday, June 30, 2024 2:34 PM

We're only about 2 weeks away now from 10 straight months of Trump dominating Biden* in the polls.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Sunday, June 30, 2024 4:12 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The DNC can't force Biden out. Biden has to agree to go.

And the only person who can convince him to go is his wife, Jill.

And Jill probably isn't thinking of the good of the country, or even the good of her husband, she's probably thinking...

Jail time for our son

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Monday, July 1, 2024 4:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG (June 24th):
Check out Rasmussen; bullshit. Real Clear Politics is bought and paid for as well. They have Trump leading Biden 0.9 points. I don't think so.

RCP has Trump up by +2.0 on the aggregate in a 2-way race; +2.9 in a 5-way race.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs
-biden
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs
-biden-vs-kennedy-vs-west-vs-stein

FiveThirtyEight has Trump up by +1.4.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/nati
onal/

On June 25th, Biden* was up on Trump +0.2 at FiveThirtyEight.

On June 27th, before the debate, Trump was up +0.2 on Biden*.

I didn't expect to see any bumps this early, particularly at FiveThirtyEight. I wonder how much that Trump lead will expand by mid-July.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, July 1, 2024 9:19 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Your Grandkids Won’t Save You (Hunter Biden's children have worse judgment than Hunter)

The youngest Bidens have an earnest yet terrible idea for how to salvage his campaign.

By Luke Winkie | July 01, 2024 6:02 PM

The president has apparently been ambling around Camp David with his extended family, wondering what went so wrong. Biden is aware that he appeared to be phasing in and out of reality on CNN’s dais, and his clan has offered a variety of suggestions about how to move forward. An idea, as reported by the New York Times, came from one of the president’s seven grandchildren. In order for Biden to remind the country that he is awake, lucid, and capable of walking from one end of the room to the other, perhaps he should break bread with Instagram influencers — maybe by doing the “Savage” dance on TikTok or some such thing.

More at https://slate.com/life/2024/07/biden-campaign-debate-grandchildren-tik
tok-instagram.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, July 1, 2024 9:29 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Donald Trump may never see the inside of a criminal courtroom again.

The Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling that Trump — and all presidents — are immune from prosecution for their “official” actions immediately gutted some of the central allegations that special counsel Jack Smith leveled against Trump a year ago, when he charged the former president with conspiring to subvert the 2020 election. And it may eventually sink the rest of them, too.

Constitutional experts digesting the breathtaking scope of the opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts over a vociferous dissent by the court’s liberal justices, said there’s still a narrow window for Trump to face trial, but it almost certainly can’t happen before the 2024 election. And if Trump wins that election, he’s expected to immediately unravel the case by ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges — or perhaps even by attempting to pardon himself.

The partial win for Trump comes as his separate federal prosecution in Florida — for hoarding classified documents after leaving office — appears to be languishing under the slow pace of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon, a Trump appointee, appears poised to push the trial well past the 2024 election.

And Trump’s criminal case in Georgia for allegedly seeking to corrupt that state’s election results in 2020, brought by local prosecutors, has been paused by a state appeals court amid a bid to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from the case.

In Manhattan, Trump was convicted in May of 34 felonies stemming from a scheme to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. He will be sentenced on July 11, though he’s unlikely to receive jail time for those charges because they are low-level felonies. In contrast, the grave felony charges in all three of Trump’s other cases would likely carry substantial prison time if Trump were ever brought to trial and convicted.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/01/supreme-court-immunity-trump-
case-election-00166057

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, July 1, 2024 10:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Your Grandkids Won’t Save You (Hunter Biden's children have worse judgment than Hunter)

The youngest Bidens have an earnest yet terrible idea for how to salvage his campaign.

By Luke Winkie | July 01, 2024 6:02 PM

The president has apparently been ambling around Camp David with his extended family, wondering what went so wrong. Biden is aware that he appeared to be phasing in and out of reality on CNN’s dais, and his clan has offered a variety of suggestions about how to move forward. An idea, as reported by the New York Times, came from one of the president’s seven grandchildren. In order for Biden to remind the country that he is awake, lucid, and capable of walking from one end of the room to the other, perhaps he should break bread with Instagram influencers — maybe by doing the “Savage” dance on TikTok or some such thing.

More at https://slate.com/life/2024/07/biden-campaign-debate-grandchildren-tik
tok-instagram.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Yes. Please. Make this a thing that happens.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, July 1, 2024 10:48 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump may never see the inside of a criminal courtroom again.

The Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling that Trump — and all presidents — are immune from prosecution for their “official” actions immediately gutted some of the central allegations that special counsel Jack Smith leveled against Trump a year ago, when he charged the former president with conspiring to subvert the 2020 election. And it may eventually sink the rest of them, too.

Constitutional experts digesting the breathtaking scope of the opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts over a vociferous dissent by the court’s liberal justices, said there’s still a narrow window for Trump to face trial, but it almost certainly can’t happen before the 2024 election. And if Trump wins that election, he’s expected to immediately unravel the case by ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges — or perhaps even by attempting to pardon himself.

The partial win for Trump comes as his separate federal prosecution in Florida — for hoarding classified documents after leaving office — appears to be languishing under the slow pace of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Cannon, a Trump appointee, appears poised to push the trial well past the 2024 election.

And Trump’s criminal case in Georgia for allegedly seeking to corrupt that state’s election results in 2020, brought by local prosecutors, has been paused by a state appeals court amid a bid to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from the case.

In Manhattan, Trump was convicted in May of 34 felonies stemming from a scheme to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. He will be sentenced on July 11, though he’s unlikely to receive jail time for those charges because they are low-level felonies. In contrast, the grave felony charges in all three of Trump’s other cases would likely carry substantial prison time if Trump were ever brought to trial and convicted.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/01/supreme-court-immunity-trump-
case-election-00166057

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Must be rough, buddy. I know how sure you were that Trump was going down before the election.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, July 1, 2024 10:56 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Originallyfrom here
The Thread of Court Cases Trump Is Winning
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=65711

Quote:
originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
6 Takeaways From the Supreme Court’s Decision on Trump and Presidential Immunity
By Elie Honig, a former federal and state prosecutor and a contributor to CAFE
Supreme Court

We now have the Supreme Court’s immunity decision and — wow.

In large part, it’s what we expected and forecast in this space. But the Court’s opinion expands presidential power (and bolsters Trump’s legal defenses) substantially more than anybody reasonably predicted.

There’s a lot here, so let’s break down today’s decision. Here are the biggest takeaways.

Criminal immunity exists. This is, in itself, a headline. We’ve recognized civil immunity — protecting federal officials from lawsuits for their official, on-the-job actions — since the 1982 Supreme Court decision Nixon v. Fitzgerald. But, until today, it remained an open question whether there even was such a thing as criminal immunity. Now we know: There is.

Criminal immunity is not “blanket” or “absolute” — but it’s pretty darn broad. This has mostly been a problem of nomenclature. It’s easy to scoff at a claim that a president is immune (absolutely!) for everything he does from the moment he takes the oath of office at noon on January 20 until his term ends four years later. But, in reality, Trump’s team made no such argument to the Supreme Court, though it did (unwisely) float it below. Rather, his team argued for a more limited form of criminal immunity, which the Supreme Court has now accepted and then some. He’s immune, in many circumstances (more on this in a moment) — but no president or former president has all-encompassing, “blanket” coverage.

It all depends on whether the president’s actions were official or unofficial. As expected, and roughly parallel with civil immunity, a president is criminally immune for official acts taken within the scope of the job. But there are two crucial kickers here.

First, the Court will construe the job description quite broadly in the president’s favor. According to the decision, the boss is immune for anything within “the ‘outer perimeter’ of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are ‘not manifestly or palpably beyond his authority.”

Second, while a president cannot be indicted for his official acts, a prosecutor cannot even introduce evidence of any official act as part of a prosecution. So, for example, in DOJ special counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 election subversion case, the Court made clear that Trump’s contacts with the Justice Department (to try to arm-twist prosecutors to investigate and find election fraud) are within the scope of the job and cannot play any part in Smith’s presentation of evidence of the jury, even if necessary to explain the entire sequence of events in a coherent manner.

A president (probably) cannot order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and get away with it. As we discussed in a recent column, the SEAL Team Six hypothetical — and Trump’s claim that he could be indicted only if he was first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate — oversimplified and distorted the actual legal issue at hand. I wrote then, “Count on the Supreme Court blowing past the impeachment argument and rejecting it out of hand. But that won’t end the inquiry. Look for the Court to consider, and potentially to create, a criminal-immunity test based roughly on whether conduct falls within or beyond the president’s official job responsibilities.” That’s essentially what has now happened.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor argues that the Court’s ruling would permit a president to order an assassination without consequences, but I respectfully dissent from that dissent. I don’t see any way a court concludes that such a plot would be an “official act” within the scope of the job. I might be wrong; we don’t know. Justice Sotomayor is right to at least highlight the dilemma.

This trial will not happen before the election. It’s over, folks. The chances of a pre-election trial on Smith’s 2020 election indictment have now slipped from “unlikely but possible” to flat-out zero. That’s because the Court sent the case back down to the district court with instructions to hold a hearing to determine which acts are within or beyond the scope of the presidency. Okay, so can’t Judge Tanya Chutkan hold that hearing in the next couple weeks and get this thing back on track for an early fall trial? Nope. Because the Supreme Court went out of its way to specify, several times over, that Trump has the right to appeal the trial judge’s determinations on this issue before the trial. That’ll blow this case out until well after the November 2024 election.

All four Trump criminal cases are in trouble to varying degrees. Smith’s 2020 election case won’t happen before the election — or maybe even in 2025, given that he can go through the whole appeal process again — and his indictment will look like Swiss cheese once all the official acts are removed. Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s election-subversion indictment was already circling the drain on its own demerits, and now it faces the same immunity problems as Smith’s case. Trump also has claimed immunity in Smith’s federal classified-documents case and, while it’s tough to imagine how he could be immune for conduct that occurred entirely after he left office, Trump will have a renewed argument that he obtained the government documents in the first place as part of his job as president. Even the Manhattan hush-money conviction now stands in doubt. Watch for Trump to argue that some of the evidence admitted against him — including conversations he had with White House adviser Hope Hicks, while he was in office in 2017 — is entitled to immunity and was wrongly admitted at trial. It’s all a big mess, far more so now than it was yesterday.

We all cherish the slogan “No person is above the law.” But now we need to add a rejoinder: “Except, in large part, the president.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-immunity-decision-elie-h
onig.html

I don't know what this means, and would require some examples of what is, and isn't, immune for the office of the President.

Does this mean that a President can coerce social media to conform to official narrative? (Biden)
Does this mean a President can order the military to assassinate an American "enemy combatant" abroad, without Trial? (Obama)
Does this mean that the President can order torture? (GWB)
Or hide evidence of malfeasance, or prosecute whistleblowers?

I'd really like to see what this means, in detail, and not from TDSers.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 12:59 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Presidential official duties:

The powers and responsibilities of the office, as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, include appointing high-ranking officials of executive agencies and departments and members of the federal judiciary (subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate), serving as commander in chief of the U.S. military, making treaties with foreign governments, and signing or vetoing legislation passed by Congress.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/presidents-of-the-United-States-22268
56

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 6:45 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Must be rough, buddy. I know how sure you were that Trump was going down before the election.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

The probability that Trump wins is still only 50/50. 6ix has always placed the probability at 100%, but it is not.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/

Website 538 doesn't break out the probability that Trump wins all of Texas' electoral votes, but I'd guess it is 100% because the vast majority of Texans are angry poor white trash. They don't see themselves as trash, but then they don't see that they have difficult lives because of their health problems caused by smoking, drinking, overeating, recreational drug use and they have financial problems caused by overspending and inability to hold a job and they have family problems caused by their lack of self-control. Trashy people always are convinced that the President caused their problems and could solve the problems. It is never trashy people causing their own problems, at least in their own minds.

There is an article describing what has gone wrong in some Americans' minds:

People need this ‘essential’ cognitive ability—and fewer have it than ever before, says psychologist: ‘It’s a major concern’
Published Wed, Jun 26 2024, 9:47 AM EDT

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/26/technology-reliance-causes-loss-of-cog
nitive-ability-psychologist.html

“We are at risk of losing this essential capability that I call receptivity,” says Davis. “It’s the ability to have good judgment, to have insight about people, and it’s a major concern.” “It’s a cognitive ability that you need to actually exercise in order to not lose it.”

I not sorry to say that Trumptards lost the cognitive ability and they aren't getting it back even if Trump wins.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 12:44 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term

Conservative elites are doubling down on white identity politics.

By Zack Beauchamp | Jul 2, 2024, 10:21 AM CDT

A new book on “anti-white racism” — The Unprotected Class, by Claremont Institute fellow Jeremy Carl — illustrates this trend clearly.

Carl got friendly interviews on Donald Trump Jr.’s web show and on Fox News during primetime.

Carl’s book centers on the claim that “anti-white racism is the most predominant and politically powerful form of racism in America today.” What mainstream scholars of race call “white privilege” is, in his view, a series of “informal evanescent cultural legacies.” By contrast, anti-white discrimination “is increasingly legal and formal.”

This discrimination is, for Carl, primarily the product of a pernicious ideology popular among elites (nonwhite and white alike). “Anti-white racism is the all-but-official ideology of our ruling regime,” he writes — and they have acted in such a way as to ensure that whites are increasingly shunted to the bottom of America’s social hierarchy.

Carl’s arguments for this view resemble a funhouse mirror version of American racial history: roughly the same series of events, but with the roles of victim and perpetrator reversed.

Conservatives have complained about “reverse racism” for decades. What’s new is not just the aggressiveness of Carl’s claims and others like them, but their direct connection to radical policy proposals — and the fact that people in positions of power appear to be listening.

Close Trump allies are planning a second-term overhaul of anti-discrimination law, one that would “dramatically change the government's interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color.”

More at https://www.vox.com/politics/357963/republicans-white-identity-politic
s-newsletter

Download Jeremy Carl’s The Unprotected Class for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Jeremy+Carl+The+Unprotected+Class

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 1:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Must be rough, buddy. I know how sure you were that Trump was going down before the election.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
The probability that Trump wins is still only 50/50. 6ix has always placed the probability at 100%, but it is not.

Yes. It is. Barring any insane actions on the part of somebody like you, and you know exactly what I'm talking about, it's a 100% chance that Trump wins the election in November.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 1:45 PM

New CNN Poll has Trump up +6 points today. CNN starting to look like Rasmussen here.

On RCP, Trump is now up +2.7 points in a 2 way race:

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs
-biden

... and Trump is now up +3.9 points in a 5 way race:

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs
-biden-vs-kennedy-vs-west-vs-stein

We're now flirting with "outside the margin of error" for Trump if RFK, Jill Stein and Cornell West don't all drop out.

And remember kids... This is just the popular vote contest. Things look far worse for Biden* and Democrats if you look at the battleground states.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 1:49 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term

The racists at Vox probably shouldn't have spent the last 8 years writing nothing but their pro-racism propaganda.

That shit is coming home to roost. People don't abide Democrats' bullshit when they're putting groceries on their credit cards.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 2:30 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term

The racists at Vox probably shouldn't have spent the last 8 years writing nothing but their pro-racism propaganda.

That shit is coming home to roost. People don't abide Democrats' bullshit when they're putting groceries on their credit cards.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

Since before you were born I have heard these same sentiments from those who feel discriminated against in favor of nonwhites. WRONG! They are stupid, lazy, white assholes. That is the true reason their lives are not going as well as they imagine deserving. And so they vote for Trump who is the only President who will fix the injustices inflected on angry poor white trash such as yourself, 6ix.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 6:13 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Supreme Court Assumes Joe Biden Won’t Abuse Its Horrific Immunity Ruling

By Samuel W. Buell and Darrell A.H. Miller | July 02, 2024 12:13 PM

Ironically, the court’s ruling depends entirely on the assumption of the good behavior of the current president, Joe Biden. It’s as if the Supreme Court cannot imagine that Joe Biden would — for example — instruct the Justice Department to arrest members of the Supreme Court for corruption and then crow triumphantly about it on social media.

For any criminally inclined chief executive, the court put the cherry on top of the sundae by directing lower courts to interpret the scope of “official duty” very broadly and stating that, no matter the charged crime, a trial court may not allow a jury to even hear of a president’s criminal actions if they fall within the broad and indeterminate category of “official” conduct.

The court has written an opinion for a president who respects limits. It’s a tacit recognition that the current occupant of the White House will not abuse his power to remain in power.

Trump has loudly advertised his authoritarian ambitions. He has said that he will be a dictator, but only on Day 1. He has promised to turn the entire executive branch into his instrument of personal vengeance. Once respectable right-leaning think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, with their 2025 plan, are creating both the administrative infrastructure and (more importantly) lists of personnel to populate a one-party dictatorship.

Because the difference between a president and a despot now is almost entirely dependent on the character of the person in the Oval Office, the Supreme Court has crystalized the choice this election — American democracy and the rule of law are on the ballot come November.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/supreme-court-immunity-con
gress-president-trump-dictator.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 6:27 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Precedent? We don’t need no stinkin’ precedent.

Stare decisis has really taken a beating over the past few years. Here's a non-comprehensive list of longstanding precedents the Supreme Court has tossed aside recently:

• Loper Bright overturned Chevron, a 40-year-old precedent.

• Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade, a 50-year-old precedent.

• Shelby County overturned key parts of the Civil Rights Act, a 50-year-old law.

• Students for Fair Admissions overturned affirmative action, a 60-year-old practice.

• Corner Post overturned the statute of limitations for contesting administrative rules, a 75-year-old precedent.

• Jarkesy overturned the SEC's use of internal tribunals, a 90-year-old precedent.

It's odd that a supposedly conservative court has been so eager to make so many radical changes to settled law, no?

https://jabberwocking.com/precedent-we-dont-need-no-stinkin-precedent/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 8:51 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Assassination Hypothetical Isn’t Even the Scariest Part of the Supreme Court Immunity Ruling

By Frank Bowman | July 02, 2024 4:38 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/trump-2024-supreme-court-i
mmunity-ruling-be-afraid.html

Much has been made of the fact that, under Roberts’ opinion, a president who ordered the military to assassinate a political rival would enjoy at least presumptive immunity for their official acts. But this lurid hypothetical, though an accurate description of Roberts’ new rule, can too easily be dismissed as paranoid hyperventilation. Far more troubling is that Roberts’ construct of presumptive presidential immunity for all official acts plus absolute presidential immunity for any pardon grant opens the door to a regime of impunity for presidentially sanctioned crime and oppression by the entire executive branch:

1) Following an offer from the president’s son of a lucrative private-sector job, the head of the National Park Service illegally grants the president’s family and favored political supporters control of all lodging and concessions in the parks. Son and NPS head — pardoned.

2) In response to pressure from the chair of the president’s national political party, the head of the Bureau of Land Management adopts a policy that only companies headed by presidential donors will receive oil leases on federal land. Party chair and BLM chief — pardoned.

3) Border Patrol officers, at the president’s direction, set up mass open-air detention camps for undocumented immigrants in which the inhabitants are provided insufficient food and only tarps for shelter, are given no medical care and no access to courts to contest the legality of their detention, and are beaten senseless if they protest. Pardoned.

4) National Guardsmen, ordered by the president to peaceful demonstrations against administration policies and told to “rough ’em up,” maim, and kill protesters. Pardoned.

In every such case, the president who ordered, sanctioned, or benefited from the crime would enjoy at least presumptive immunity under the court’s new rules for any official acts taken in conjunction with the criminal act. His family, political allies, and criminal subordinates would receive the complete immunity afforded by a pardon. And the president would have absolute immunity for pardoning his relatives and minions. Impunity from the law is the defining feature of autocracies and kleptocracies around the world. The Supreme Court just welcomed impunity to America.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 2, 2024 9:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How white victimhood is shaping a second Trump term

The racists at Vox probably shouldn't have spent the last 8 years writing nothing but their pro-racism propaganda.

That shit is coming home to roost. People don't abide Democrats' bullshit when they're putting groceries on their credit cards.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
Since before you were born I have heard these same sentiments from those who feel discriminated against in favor of nonwhites. WRONG! They are stupid, lazy, white assholes. That is the true reason their lives are not going as well as they imagine deserving. And so they vote for Trump who is the only President who will fix the injustices inflected on angry poor white trash such as yourself, 6ix.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

You're 30 years old and you still live in your mom's basement.

You don't know shit.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Wednesday, July 3, 2024 6:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Who Pays Tariffs? And How Do We Know? Trump’s Tax Plan

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/opinion/tariffs-trump-china-taxes.h
tml

Imagine yourself as a small-business owner who produces something — say, plastic lawn ornaments — for American consumers. (One of my uncles actually was in that business.) Then for some reason, politicians propose imposing a tax of 25 percent or more on all sales of pink flamingos, garden gnomes, etc.

What will you do if that tax comes into effect? Will you pass the tax increase on to your customers, or will you try to keep consumer prices unchanged and absorb the tax yourself?

Well, you’ll certainly tell politicians that your customers will end up paying, and you’ll probably be telling the truth. Your costs, in effect, will increase, and your profit margin probably isn’t high enough to absorb the tax, even if you wanted to.

Now change the story a bit: You’re not an American small-business owner; you’re a Chinese company selling stuff to the United States — and the tax in question is a tariff, a charge levied on goods imported from China. Why should the answer be any different? Normally, we’d expect the tariff to be passed on to U.S. consumers.

Donald Trump, however, loves tariffs and insists that they are paid by foreigners. So leading Republicans, who increasingly seem to be using George Orwell’s “1984” as an instruction manual — whatever the leader says is true — have taken to claiming that tariffs (and only tariffs) are a tax on business that doesn’t hurt consumers. “The notion that tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers is a lie pushed by outsourcers and the Chinese Communist Party,” a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee recently declared.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-17/trump-s-promised-ta
riffs-will-push-up-costs-for-american-households?sref=qzusa8bC

But how do we know that consumers really do pay for tariffs? I just tried to convince you with a thought experiment; I could also point to the fact that a vast majority of economists believe that tariffs are primarily paid by consumers.
https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/china-us-trade-war/

But not everyone finds thought experiments persuasive, and many people distrust economists. So can I offer any more direct evidence?

Why, yes, I can, thanks to a guy named Donald Trump, who imposed some high tariffs on China in 2018 and 2019, giving us an opportunity to see what happened to prices — basically what economists would call a natural experiment. There have been some careful statistical analyses of the effects of the Trump tariffs, listed in the Quick Hits below. But I thought it might also be helpful to offer a quick and dirty overview.

Here, courtesy of Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (now the chief economist of the State Department), is the recent history of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods and vice versa:

A chart showing U.S.-China tariff rates toward each other and the rest of the world.
Credit...Peterson Institute for International Economics

The average U.S. tariff on imports from China rose in 2018 and ’19 to about 21 percent, from about 3 percent, an increase of 18 percentage points. The only way that could not have raised prices for American consumers would have been for Chinese companies to have cut their U.S. prices by a similar amount. But they didn’t: The average price of imports from China fell only around 2 percent, and even that small decline might have been a continuation of a long-term trend of falling Chinese export prices:

A chart showing a price index for Chinese imports over time.
Credit...FRED

So we have an 18-point rise in tariffs offset by only a 2 percent decline in Chinese prices net of tariffs. That sure looks as if American consumers bore the great bulk of the burden.

OK, in fairness, I should mention a caveat to this conclusion. The United States is a big country, sufficiently so that if it imposes tariffs on a broad range of goods, it can improve its terms of trade, the prices of its exports relative to its imports — that is, if other countries don’t respond with tariffs on U.S. exports. (This goes under the unhelpful name of optimum tariff theory.) In practice, this would work via a rise in the value of the dollar if the U.S. reduced imports, which would lower the dollar prices of the goods we still import. And this effect wouldn’t be confined to the prices of imports from the countries subject to high tariffs: A tariff on Chinese goods could end up reducing the prices of goods we buy from, say, Germany. So it wouldn’t show up in these charts.

But it’s a moot point because if America imposed widespread tariffs, other countries would do the same, partly as retaliation, partly just as emulation. So consumers would pay the tariffs after all.

Which consumers? Bear in mind that Trump’s economic program calls for a combination of tax hikes in the form of higher tariffs and tax cuts for corporations and high-income individuals. He has even floated the idea of replacing the income tax with tariffs, which almost certainly isn’t feasible, but we can ask what would happen if he collected as much tariff revenue as possible while cutting income taxes by the same amount. Here, according to Kimberly Clausing and Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute, is how that combination would affect Americans at different income levels:
https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/can-trump-replace-i
ncome-taxes-tariffs

A chart showing how a maximal tariff regime would affect Americans, by income.
Credit...Peterson Institute for International Economics

The net effect would be negative for 80 percent of the population, especially for the bottom 60 percent, while extremely positive for the top 1 percent. There are two reasons for this regressive outcome. First, lower-income families spend a higher share of their income than the rich, so they would be hurt more by what would amount to a large sales tax. Second, income taxes are disproportionately paid by the affluent — around half the population doesn’t pay income taxes at all, although they pay lots in other taxes, such as the payroll tax — so the benefits of cutting that tax would flow mainly to the top.

So who would pay the tariffs that Trump will almost surely impose if he wins? Not China or foreigners in general. Everything says that the burden would fall on Americans, mainly the working class and the poor.

Quick Hits

Thinking about a trade war.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/opinion/thinking-about-a-trade-war-
very-wonkish.html

The macroeconomic consequences of another Trump presidency.
https://www.economy.com/getfile?q=EA99E998-560D-4A12-85DE-3727A7EBE9A8
&app=download

The McKinley tariff, which Trump admires, was a disaster.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/6/18250469/1888-great-t
ariff-debate-mckinley

The impact of the 2018 tariffs.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.33.4.187

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 3, 2024 8:00 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Supreme Court guts federal agency power after Texas billionaire showers justice with gifts
Conservative business people have spent billions promoting and nurturing today's Supreme Court majority, and the investment is paying off.

By Chris Tomlinson | July 2, 2024

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article
/chevron-supreme-court-texas-crow-thomas-19549205.php

Texas billionaire Harlan Crow certainly got his money’s worth from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Thomas flip-flopped last week and joined the court’s majority in gutting the power of federal agencies, empowering federal judges and loosening protections for U.S. citizens. Americans will miss the “deep state” when it’s gone, and corporations run roughshod over the environment, public health and safety.

Last week, the Supreme Court overturned one of the most cited precedents of the previous 40 years, a doctrine called “Chevron deference.” In an air pollution case involving the oil giant, a unanimous court said judges considering scientific questions should defer to expert regulators when a law passed by Congress is vague.

In 1984, the court recognized that Congress cannot anticipate every potential application of a law. The court said federal judges had no business second-guessing agency experts if the regulation wasn’t arbitrary, capricious or manifestly contrary to the statute.

Government agencies responsible for consumer, environmental and public safety have relied on the doctrine to keep the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and others up to date.

Chevron deference was one of the most important principles in U.S. jurisprudence, cited by 17,000 lower court decisions and 70 Supreme Court decisions, including some written by Thomas. In 2005, he wrote a landmark decision, National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, addressing an agency’s application of a 1934 law to regulate cable companies.

“Chevron requires a federal court to accept the agency’s construction of the statute, even if the agency’s reading differs from what the court believes is the best statutory interpretation,” Thomas wrote. Judges should not rewrite regulations, he said.

Conservatives and corporate executives have long campaigned to overturn the doctrine. They complained it gave too much power to government bureaucrats, whom former President Donald Trump and others call the “deep state.”

Crow co-founded the Club for Growth in 1999 to promote limited government and overturn Chevron. In 2010, he gave the justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, $500,000 to start Liberty Consulting, a firm that handles anonymous political donations.

Since then, critics have blasted Thomas for failing to report Crow’s generous gifts of private jet travel and luxury vacations and help pay off Thomas’ $267,000 RV. In 2018, Thomas secretly joined Crow at a Koch political network conference, all expenses paid, where overturning Chevron was on the agenda.

Crow’s decades of grooming Thomas paid off. In 2020, Thomas renounced his Brand X opinion and joined Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision last week ending Chevron deference.

Conservatives celebrated and promised to use Loper Bright Enterprise v. Raimondo to dismantle as many consumer and environmental protections as possible.

“For too long, the administrative state has recklessly and arrogantly usurped power from the American people and their elected representatives to force big government power grabs that stifle economic growth and make a mockery of the separation of powers,” Club for Growth PAC President David McIntosh said in a statement. “Now more than ever, conservatives must unite to win in 2024 to ensure that radical liberals cannot pack the Supreme Court with progressive zealots who will snatch back this hard won victory for freedom.”

Texas energy companies stand to benefit more than most. Fossil fuel power plants, oil and gas drillers, and pipeline operators will challenge dozens of EPA regulations covering greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and pipeline construction. Most rules related to climate change are at risk.

The decision undermines public health laws that Congress cannot update fast enough to keep up with the latest science. Limits on microplastics, snake oil salesmen and health care spending are in the balance.

“Today’s ruling pushes aside the expertise and specialized knowledge of the public servants charged with administering extremely complex public programs like Medicaid and Medicare. We are very concerned that this may disrupt these programs and similar programs and hurt the Americans who rely on them,” Sarah Somers, legal director at the National Health Law Program, said in a statement.

The right wing Supreme Court majority has systematically dismantled the power of federal agencies, just as their financial backers intended. Federal judges will block common sense protections from corporate malfeasance unless Congress gives detailed, explicit permission.

Votes will count more than ever. The same conservatives who engineered this court also finance the politicians who made the current Congress the least productive in history. They spend billions to create gridlock and stop laws prioritizing citizens over corporations.

If you want a safer, fairer world, you’ll have to fight for it at the ballot box.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 3, 2024 2:14 PM