I was getting a bit confused re:him not being able to run again.
Jack Smith is also conducting the Jan 6 investigation. Within that remit there is the possibility that Trump could be charged with insurrection / sedition. Anyone convicted on those charges cannot run for any public office again.
It’s still a long shot that he’s going to be charged with that , but if they are serious about taking him out of the game then you’d imagine they’d be doing everything in their power to build that case.
I just shake my head at Trump calling Smith a ‘thug’…
It is incredibly juvenile, but I would piss myself laughing were an actual tough guy ever to punch Trump right in his disgusting arse-mouth.
Crosshairs?
It’s the thing I am typically left with after listening to him - the juvenility of it. “The unspecial counsel.” “Horeface”. “Club for NO Growth.”
He has the sophistication of a 7 year old. yet it works on such a large number of people. However, I did genuinely laugh first time I heard him call Murkowski, the senator from AK, “the disaster from Alaska” 
I’m coming across this with increasing frequency which to suggests it’s a growing line of thought and the conspiracy message is getting through.
I’d certainly like time to read up on it more and even look into the “alternate views”
Anyway, is he in jail yet?
Why a tough guy? someone looking like Vinegaard would be just as funny. Either one would probably go right through, with upstairs being a vacant Chaina vessel and all.
If you’re talking specifically about CC denial, it’s a relatively recent thing. Through the 80s and 90s the oil companies were running the disinformation campaigns were all familiar with, but oddly everyone seemed to understand them for what they were. They didnt gain traction until the GOP picked up the issue of denialism as a party platform.
It was so uncontroversial and widely accepted as a real thing as recently as the 80s that Bush Sr ran on a platform of addressing it, but it was in his Presidency that the issue started turning. He had a man called Joh Sununu in a senior position in his administration and he is considered the leader of the party’s turn towards denialism. By the end of Bush’s presidency he had coaxed Bush to starting to oppose action. By the end of the Clinton presidency 8 years later it was a full fledged pillar of the party to even deny its existence.
I am not sure of the reason for such an abrupt and complete turn, but I think you have to point to Gore being Bush’s opponent in 2000 and he was well known for prioritizing climate action even then. I think it is difficult to see it as anything other than a way to distinguish the candidates in what in retrospect was a really weird election that was fought over issues no one remembers now because of the issues that came to define his presidency (Amazingly, he ran as an isolationist with warnings about the foreign escapades Gore would get us into). And then once it became an article of faith for the party they just ran with it.
On the same subject , in today’s Guardian.
Spot on, that article. 
this is polarization of the “right vs left” in the media.
As an example of this here in Canada we have 4-5 political parties. Conservative, Liberal, NDP, BLoc Quebeqois, Green. Liberals (Trudeau, the circus clown) have been in power for the last 6 years and have done an excellent job of increasing our budget deficit and out-of-control spending. huge increases in “carbon tax” which have resulted in inflation on a double-digit scale for cost of living here.
The official opposition (Conservatives) agree that the climate change issues need addressing, nobody is arguing this. But Trudeau’s carbon taxes are simply making it that much more difficult to live in this country and isn’t doing a thing to fix the problem. We’re already one of the most taxen-laden country in the world.
What will get the Conservatives elected in the next round will be their promise to eliminate the carbon taxes and get spending under control. it’s not sustainable here. poor planning on immigration laws have created a housing crisis (too many people, not enough homes) and the astronomical cost of living have more people living destitute than I’ve ever seen. There’s entire streets in industrial parks. lined with RV’s and motorhomes running generators for power as people are now choosing to live in an RV instead of paying $3-5000/yr in property tax for a modest home.
maybe this is a thing in America, but not here.
It is an American phenomenon, but increasingly seeping out into the conservative/RW approach in related countries.
I can only assume you had no idea who George Monbiot is.
You are absolutely correct. Still don’t. It’s an op-ed piece. Political at best. Scientific, it’s not
I’m sorry to keep banging on about this but it seems that I was right the first time:
’ Another question that has arisen is what crimes would legally preclude someone from holding office. Among them are: “Concealment, removal, or mutilation generally,” which makes illegal the willful theft or destruction of any government document. Under federal law, committing that crime is punishable by up to three years in prison and disqualifies someone from holding any office in the country.
When law enforcement officials searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in August 2022, the warrant listed three crimes that may have been committed to justify the search of the former president’s residence. The law that bars someone from being president, U.S. Code 2071, was one of them.
Ultimately, however, in the indictment, federal prosecutors did not accuse Trump of committing this crime. None of the crimes that federal prosecutors formally accused Trump of committing would prevent him from being president.’
I can only assume then that it has never been the intention of the Special Counsel to use federal charges to preclude Trump from running. Knowing only too well what the reaction to charges would be from Trump and his supporters , he seemingly wanted to avoid the accusation that he was trying to ‘take him out’. Regardless , and predictably , that’s exactly what has happened anyway.
Trump can be found guilty of all of these charges, but if the indictment included some even more serious crimes that would bar him out of office and they failed to prove those his people would treat it as a victory. It would in the eyes of many outweigh the guilty verdicts, and demonstrate to many to that ones he was guilty of were political hit jobs.
I think Smith has looked at the strength of the charges he does have and just been smart on deciding he doesnt need to include anything else that doesnt rise to the strength of case he already has.
What are your feelings now towards the likelihood of charges emenating from the Jan 6 investigation ? This was always considered the (by far) hardest one to charge and the least likely.
Now that Smith has been able to get Pence , Meadows et al in front of the grand jury , do you think that calculus has changed ? I’ve been hearing from some pretty sober commentators that they now believe that charges have gone from being possible to probable.
Honestly no idea. There was a motion in the documents case last week about not disclosing certain aspects of that case due to its relation to other ongoing investigations, which many people interpreted as being related to Jan6. But again, resistance twitter is a very hopeful place.
But Barr is starting to float the idea that he sees a prosecution coming, contrasting the seriousness of that investigation vs the indictment in NY. Given he is a fact witness on it, and the timing of his resignation, his insight into that is probably solid.
A piece by Carol Leonnig over the weekend about the DOJ’s actions in the Jan 6th investigation has the “do something” twitter crowd up in arms calling for Garland’s resignation, but it doesn’t seem to actually say anything new.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/06/19/jan-6-investigation-trump-fbi/
Maybe I’m too heavily influenced by Marcy Wheeler’s reading of these situations, but I’m not seeing the reason for uproar with it. What it essentially says is despite pressure to peruse a top down investigation Garland chose to do a bottom up one, and one that is till ongoing and increasingly likely to result in charges.
Not mentioned in the piece is how many bad apples there are known to be in the FBI and so no consideration is given for how an AG might approach a case like this when he knows that special measures are required to minimize the chances it touches someone who will be inclined to undermine it.
A former FBI intelligence analyst from Dodge City, Kansas, who kept hundreds of classified documents at her home, including in her bathroom, was sentenced to nearly four years in prison by a federal judge in Kansas City on Wednesday for violating the same part of the Espionage Act that former President Donald Trump is accused of breaking.
Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article276608961.html#storylink=cpy
Interestingly, while there is evidence suggesting the defendant was disseminating this information, a charge notably absent from Trump’s indictment, that was not part of this indictment either.
