United States, Where do you go now?

[old man emu]

Today is a momentous day in the history of the United States. Today the Supreme Court of the United States declared the country a dictatorship by placing the leader of the country above the Law, a place that no other citizen can be placed while there is a dictator as leader.

 

While it's true that the requirement that the people vote for whom will be their country's leader remains, that will be the last opportunity they have to influence the actions of the person so elected. And we have seen how the weird system employed in the USA is open to manipulation.

 

President Biden spoke to the people following the announcement of the Court's decision. It is a fine speech with a frightening content. (There is a bit of a delay before Biden begins, due to the programming.)

 

 

 

[red750]

From MSN News:

 

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) waded into legal waters on Monday just moments after the conservative-majority Supreme Court gave Donald Trump — and the current president and presidents who will follow him — a stunning amount of immunity from criminal prosecution.

 

As multiple legal scholars noted, the 6-3 ruling opened the door for presidents to engage in criminal activity that could be construed as official activities by the nation's chief executive.

 

According to Boebert, the ruling is a setback for President Joe Biden which led multiple commenters on X to dig beneath the surface — deeper than the Colorado Republican did — and point out what she failed to grasp.

 

David Smith sarcastically pointed out, "Sure, whatever. I am hearing he may issue an “official” EO to declare convicted felons cannot be presidents. 

 

Biden is not ruthless. SCOTUS just said so. King Joseph of Scranton will also suspend the 2024 elections indefinitely and give himself another 4 years. Thank you SCOTUS"

 

"So he can do whatever he wants. Biden could have all the Republicans deported," Michelle Lynn helpfully pointed out.

 

With that in mind. Caroline Meade was raring to go, telling Boebert, "Biden is immune! Time for action."

 

"You go and educate yourself and your childrenFailed mother, " Porto G recommended.

[old man emu]

A word to Republicans: Be careful what you wish for.

[old man emu]

Something that the SCOTUS did last week, but didn't get much attention here, was that it over-ruled a decision made 40 years ago, which is known as the Chevron case. The Chevron doctrine stems from a unanimous Supreme Court case involving the energy giant in a dispute over the Clean Air Act. That ruling said judges should defer to the executive branch when laws passed by Congress are ambiguous.

 

To give an example, let's look at pilot licencing medicals. Let's use the Federal Aviation Authority as the agency of the executive branch involved here, since we are talking about the USA. Let's say that the Director of the FAA, after careful consideration and referring to the advice of aviation medicine specialists, introduces a rule whose aim it is to ensure a pilot has to be medically fit to pilot an aircraft. The question is, what does "medically fit" mean. It's ambiguous. According to the Chevron doctrine, a judge dealing with a matter where a pilot claims that the definition of "medically fit" is ambiguous, but the FAA claims that, according to its criteria, it is not ambiguous, then the judge is supposed to accept the FAA Director's authority to make the rule, based on the expertise of qualified advisors.

 

What the SCOTUS did was to say, "No. The Court will be the final arbiter of the question." One wonders how much expertise the members of SCOTUS have in the filed of aviation medicine. 

 

This decision of the SCOTUS, applies to all laws and regulations made by an agency of the Federal government. I don't know if it applies at the State level, but probably does given the appeals system. 

Federal rules impact virtually every aspect of everyday life, from food standards, to the cars people drive, to the air they breathe and homes they live in. President Joe Biden’s administration, for example, has issued a host of new regulations on the environment and other priorities, including restrictions on emissions from power plants and vehicle tailpipes, and rules on student loan forgiveness, overtime pay and affordable housing. 

 

Those actions and others could be opened up to legal challenges if judges are allowed to discount or disregard the expertise of the executive-branch agencies that put them into place. The decision of SCOTUS in this matter opens the floodgates to anarchy, as we are well aware of the dislike Americans have for government intervention in their lives.

[red750]

Experience,and expertise count for nothing. It's Donald's way or the highway. Hundreds of experts will be sacked and replaced by brown noses, and look out if you are a journalist who reports or comments on it. Donald will be after you. Talk about dictatorship. 

[red750]

[old man emu]

Now Trump has used that SCOTUS decision to appeal the New York fraud conviction. Sentencing has been delayed until September.

[Jerry_Atrick]

We are witnessing the crumbling of democracy. This, and now Europe is moving to the far right (Italy already there, European elections there, French first round, and of course, but who would have guessed, Holland).

 

Canada is veering there as well. It looks likely Britain and Australia are the outliers, but wait a minute - haven't the polls suggested Dutton is ahead of Albanese? Does this translate to LNP ahead of Labor? If so, wow! That didn't take long despite Labor handling the economy into a softer landing than LNP policies would have.

 

Daily, democracy is now appearing to no longer be listening or representing people; Thus can be for many reasons, but the reality is people will get what they vote for. 

 

The rhetoric and political discourse is not inconsistent to that pre world war 2, if not as openly taking aim at sectors of society. It's ironic the world is richer than it has ever been, yet the masses are getting very restless. 

 

The salient question of this thread is where does one go to bunker down and ride it out?

Edited July 3 by Jerry_Atrick

[nomadpete]

22 minutes ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

The salient question of this thread is where does one go to bunker down and ride it out?

Don't go to Tasmania.

It's already being run into the ground by a egotistical liberal government.

Besides, there aren't any spare houses, we're full up.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I'll be there shortly 😉

 

(The first to respond don't come is usually the best to go to)

[old man emu]

This won't please Donny: Presidential immunity, in whatever form it is expressed, ONLY applies after a person has been sworn in as President. 

 

IN the New York fraud matters, the acts which the jury found to have been fraudulent, were carried out even before Election Day. Therefore, at the time the acts were carried out, Trump was a common citizen, subject to the criminal laws of the State and the Federal jurisdictions.

 

What Trump did in buying off Daniels was of the very same category as if any other married man paid off a sex partner to keep the partner from spilling the beans. As a certain celebrity meerkat would say, "Simples."

[rgmwa]

11 minutes ago, old man emu said:

IN the New York fraud matters, the acts which the jury found to have been fraudulent, were carried out even before Election Day. Therefore, at the time the acts were carried out, Trump was a common citizen, subject to the criminal laws of the State and the Federal jurisdictions.

I think what they are trying to argue is that Trump signed the cheques to repay Cohen after he became president (official business), so that incriminating fact couldn't be admitted in evidence in the trial and therefore the case should be thrown out.  I don't think the judge will buy that.

 

[red750]

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday predicted that the Supreme Court decision granting Donald Trump complete immunity for “official” acts while in office could backfire in a matter of weeks.

 

“The very bad news for Donald Trump in this decision today, and for candidate Trump ― very, very bad ― is that Mike Pence is going to walk into a federal courtroom, raise his right hand, take an oath to tell the truth and testify against Donald Trump in this case in September,” he predicted.

 

O’Donnell said the court granted Trump absolute immunity on a single paragraph (his conversation with the attorney general) in his indictment in the case regarding Jan. 6, 2021. The court ordered an evidentiary hearing for the rest of the case to determine if those other acts are official or unofficial, and therefore protected by immunity or not.

 

He said Judge Tanya Chutkan will oversee that hearing, which will be “exactly like a prosecution” as special counsel Jack Smith calls witnesses and lays out his evidence.

 

“You’re gonna see this incredible Jan. 6 hearing on steroids, possibly for six, eight weeks, September [to] October, maybe,” he said.

[red750]

I didn't save the page so can't post it or go back and check the details, but one report I read said there is only one Democrat who is rating higher than Donald, by about 3 points, but they are not interested in standing.   ----------------->

 

 

Michelle Obama.

[old man emu]

Do the words Hell and handbasket come to mind?

 

Isn't it commonly said that a civilisation can only be destroyed from within?

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, rgmwa said:

I think what they are trying to argue is that Trump signed the cheques to repay Cohen after he became president (official business)

Trump conspired with others to buy off Daniels before he became President. Looking closely, I can't see an offence in that conspiracy, unless it can be proved that the conspiracy also included fiddling the books which is the fraud offence. I think that the timing of the payment is critical, because that payment sets the whole fraud offence in motion. If Trump had reneged on making the payment after he was elected, then there would have been no need for the fraud. 

 

Ironically, Trump has a history of making promises to pay, and then not paying. For once he does it and the smelly stuff hits the air circulator. 

[red750]

Was what Bill Clinton supposedly did with Monica Lewinski in the Oval Office 'presidential business'?

[spacesailor]

Funny business. 

With a cigar! .

But , what woman wouldn't clean that stained dress .

Just pack it up for evidence.  

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

22 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

Funny business. 

With a cigar! .

But , what woman wouldn't clean that stained dress .

Just pack it up for evidence.  

spacesailor

She was just keeping his autograph.

[rgmwa]

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

Trump conspired with others to buy off Daniels before he became President. Looking closely, I can't see an offence in that conspiracy, unless it can be proved that the conspiracy also included fiddling the books which is the fraud offence. I think that the timing of the payment is critical, because that payment sets the whole fraud offence in motion. If Trump had reneged on making the payment after he was elected, then there would have been no need for the fraud. 

 

Ironically, Trump has a history of making promises to pay, and then not paying. For once he does it and the smelly stuff hits the air circulator. 

As I understand it. Cohen made the payment initially and they all conspired to cook the books. That was just a misdemeanour. The crime was doing so to influence the election and/or avoid tax  which is what they got him on. However the only real evidence they had that he was directly involved were the cheques he signed as president to reimburse Cohen (and cover Cohen’s tax bill), falsely recorded as legal expenses. If they can now block the cheques from being used as evidence he may get off. 

[old man emu]

32 minutes ago, rgmwa said:

The crime was doing so to influence the election and/or avoid tax

Influencing the election, i.e. keeping Trump's 'reputation' clean for the god botherers, would not have been an offence at a State level. What was an offence was the conspiracy to cook the books for tax avoidance. 

 

It really is a complicated web that I don't think we have been given the necessary information to untangle. I suppose the really salient point is the date when  the fraudulent book entries were made.  That is proof of the making of false records. If that occured before Trump was sworn in, then he has no immunity. 

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, Marty_d said:

She was just keeping his autograph.

Written with lead from his pencil.

[red750]

Yale history professor Timothy Snyder shared a warning on X (formerly Twitter) about what will happen if presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump wins back the White House in the 2024 election.

 

“Unless Trump loses, America ends,” he wrote in his first of a five-post thread.

 

Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism and the author of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” said the U.S. Supreme Court has “made this clear” with its ruling on Monday that Trump has total immunity for “official” acts carried out when he was president.

 

“As has Trump himself. Over and over,” he added.

 

“Our enemies know this. Which is why they all, without exception, support Trump,” Snyder cautioned in further posts. “We have no excuse not to know this. And once we know it we can act. Each of us doing what we can, trusting one another, making contact.”

[red750]

Former President Donald Trump's niece Mary responded Thursday to veiled threats of a bloody right-wing revolution and found the irony in a recent Supreme Court ruling.

 

Mary Trump responded to Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts' recent appearance on a far right cable station in which he warned conservatives would be "taking the country back" in a revolution that would only be bloodless "if the left allows it to be."

 

"That’s a threat and an open declaration that they’re coming for the America we know and love," wrote Mary Trump. "They’ve obviously forgotten who they’re dealing with."

 

Mary Trump admitted she was shocked by the Supreme Court ruling allowing presidential immunity for official acts — a move dissenters admitted left them fearful for American democracy.

But also, she was not shocked.

 

"It completely tracks that the Court would hand down a decision this misguided and un-American," wrote Mary Trump. "After all, they’re so out of touch with the American people, so enamored of their own unfettered power that they have devolved into an illegitimate supermajority of myopic solipsists."

 

Mary Trump also admitted to a sense of irony that Trump was granted immunity for acts that served his country for one simple reason.

 

"Donald, the person to whom they’ve been extended, has never done anything, whether criminal or not, in service to his country," she wrote.

 

"His crimes themselves have always been self-serving, one way or the other, and these crimes, and the commission of more in the future, are what the Supreme Court has sanctioned."

 

Mary Trump then issued a rallying cry against a conservative movement she argued was too absurd to be infallible.

 

"We need to dump some metaphorical tea in the metaphorical harbor and declare our independence from the ignorant, cruel, and dangerous right-wing zealots who are on a mission to strip our rights and our country away from us," she wrote.

 

"Such brazen contempt for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the American experiment motivates me to do everything I can to make sure Donald and his followers are never able to make good on their threats. It’s why I stand with President Biden and Vice President Harris and will spend every day between now and the election working to make sure they’re re-elected in November."

[red750]

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump—who has pledged to be a dictator on "day one" if elected to another four years in the White House—is reportedly preparing to exploit the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Monday that current and former presidents are entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution.

 

Citing unnamed advisers to the former president, Axiosreported Tuesday that if Trump is reelected in November, he "plans to immediately test the boundaries of presidential and governing power, knowing the restraints of Congress and the courts are dramatically looser than during his first term."

 

"They're screaming the quiet part, and yet Democrats are mostly focused on renominating a sundowning 81-year-old losing to him in key swing state polls," The Lever's David Sirota wrote in response to Axios' reporting, referring to President Joe Biden.

 

Facing mounting calls to drop his reelection campaign following his disastrous debate performance against Trump last week, Biden said in an address following the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States that the ruling means "there are virtually no limits on what a president can do."

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump—who has pledged to be a dictator on "day one" if elected to another four years in the White House—is reportedly preparing to exploit the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling Monday that current and former presidents are entitled to sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution.

Citing unnamed advisers to the former president, Axiosreported Tuesday that if Trump is reelected in November, he "plans to immediately test the boundaries of presidential and governing power, knowing the restraints of Congress and the courts are dramatically looser than during his first term."

"They're screaming the quiet part, and yet Democrats are mostly focused on renominating a sundowning 81-year-old losing to him in key swing state polls," The Lever's David Sirota wrote in response to Axios' reporting, referring to President Joe Biden.
Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.

Facing mounting calls to drop his reelection campaign following his disastrous debate performance against Trump last week, Biden said in an address following the Supreme Court's decision in Trump v. United States that the ruling means "there are virtually no limits on what a president can do."

"I know I will respect the limits of the presidential power, as I have for three and a half years," said Biden. "But any president, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the law."

 

Among the steps Trump—who celebrated the ruling—intends to take swiftly upon assuming office following a possible November victory, according to Axios, are setting up "vast camps" to "deport millions of people," moving to "fire potentially tens of thousands of civil servants" and replace them with "pre-vetted loyalists," and centralizing "power over the Justice Department," which the former president has repeatedly threatened to wield against his political opponents.

 

Trump has also pledged to gut environmental rules—which the Supreme Court also targeted in recent rulings—and ram through climate-wrecking drilling projects, moves backed by the powerful oil and gas industry that's helping finance his campaign.

 

"Thanks to Monday's Supreme Court ruling, Trump could pursue his plans without fear of punishment or restraint," Axios reported.

 

While Trump made his support for such actions clear well before the U.S. Supreme Court's Monday ruling, the decision is likely to embolden the twice-impeached former president who, since leaving office, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on election-subversion charges and convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

 

The high court's ideologically divided 6-3 decision in the immunity case has already impacted both legal proceedings, with Manhattan prosecutors agreeing Tuesday with the former president's request to delay his criminal sentencing on the 34 felony charges as the judge on the case examines whether the Supreme Court's ruling has any bearing on the conviction.

 

In the separate election-subversion case, the Supreme Court's ruling further pushes back a trial as the judge now has to determine which of the actions described in the indictment qualify as "official" duties that—according to the high court's right-wing supermajority—are entitled to "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution.

 

"So, yes, all this will delay Trump's trial. In that sense, he gets what he craved," Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote Monday. "But the implications are far worse for the structure of American self-government."

 

"We read sonorous language in the majority opinion that 'the president is not above the law,'" Waldman added. "But just in time for Independence Day, the Supreme Court brings us closer to having a king again."

 

"The Framers of the Constitution, wary of reestablishing the monarchy they overthrew, carefully limited the chief executive's powers. And six justices just crowned him king."

 

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent against Monday's decision that the Supreme Court's majority has effectively endorsed assassinations of political rivals, orchestration of a military coup to remain in power, and the acceptance of bribes in exchange for pardons as legitimate and unprosecutable uses of presidential authority.

 

"The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably," Sotomayor wrote. "In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law."

 

Slate legal journalist Mark Joseph Stern echoed Sotomayor, writing that "it is unclear, after Monday's decision, what constitutional checks remain to stop any president from assuming dangerous and monarchical powers that are anathema to representative government."

 

"The immediate impact of the court's sweeping decision will be devastating enough, allowing Donald Trump to evade accountability for the most destructive and criminal efforts he took to overturn the 2020 election. But the long-term impact is even more harrowing," Stern wrote. "All future presidents will enter office with the knowledge that they are protected from prosecution for even the most appalling and dangerous abuses of power so long as they insist they were seeking to carry out their duties, as they understood them."