Our lopsided system of justice marches on: Navarro sentenced for contempt of Congress
Oh, excuse me; I got that wrong. It just appears that’s the reason he was sentenced, because those on the left often commit the same offense – contempt of Congress – and pay no penalty. Sound familiar?:
Peter Navarro, who served in the White House under former President Donald Trump, was sentenced Thursday for flouting a House Jan. 6 committee subpoena.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Navarro to four months in prison and ordered him to pay a fine of $9,500.
“Flouting a House committee subpoena.” Have you ever heard of such a nefarious thing? Quelle horreur!
More [emphasis mine]:
A former adviser to the president on trade and manufacturing policies, Navarro was convicted in September of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for documents and a deposition from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The subpoena required Navarro to appear and produce documents in February 2022, and sit for a deposition in March 2022, but Navarro refused to provide the materials and testify. As a private citizen, he was indicted on June 2, 2022.
In announcing the sentencing decision, Mehta cited how Navarro had claimed a “two-tier system of justice” and described the Jan. 6 committee as a “kangaroo court.”
“I have made clear my confusion about his arrest when he could have been offered self-surrender… The idea that he is subject to a two-tiered system of justice when he’s sitting here with 4 very capable lawyers is a real head-scratcher,” the judge said. “The words executive privilege are not magical dust… it’s not a get out of jail free card. To not engage with the committee to work through the issues… to simply not engage, there’s no basis for it.”
Is this judge for real? Surely he’s aware that the DOJ has huge resources and those it charges must pay, and those “4 very capable lawyers” don’t come cheap. The decision to charge is the first disparity. That “kangaroo court” aspect was in full flower in the J6 defendants’ cases, because if the same thing had happened with the perps being on the left, they either would not have been charged or gotten a mere slap on the wrist. Anyone paying attention knows that, and also knows that if people are Democrats and they are in contempt of Congress they don’t get charged by the DOJ and they don’t go to prison. Also, of course, guilty verdicts for people on the right are a given if they are tried in a DC court – the supposedly clueless Mehta is in DC – whereas for people on the left it’s a different story.
None other than the WaPo pointed out back in 2022 (when Steve Bannon was the target) that prison terms for contempt of Congress are a real rarity:
Stephen K. Bannon could become one the first people sent to jail for contempt of Congress since the “Hollywood Ten” in 1948.
A federal jury in D.C. on Friday convicted the former White House chief strategist on two charges of refusing to comply with a subpoena to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump. Each of the two charges is punishable by 30 days-to-one-year in jail, as well as a $100,000 fine. Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 21.
Contempt of Congress is rarely prosecuted and even more rarely leads to jail time. Among the last people to be locked up for it were the 10 men known as the “Hollywood Ten” — movie writers, directors and producers who refused to tell the controversial House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) whether they were Communists.
That was close to 75 years ago and the politics were rather different, to say the least.
Can’t even imagine why Navarro would call the proceedings a kangaroo court or evidence of a two-tier system of justice.
So can they throw Hunter in the tank for say 4+4+4 (and counting) months?
Though in Demomath, that probably equals 0 months, or maybe 1 month, depending on the humidity in DC.
Did Holder go to jail?
Will Hunter go to jail?
NO, so yes it is a two tiered injustice system. No faith left.
Oh, the judge in the NYC trial by witchcraft of Trump is also a good example too. He was shut down by the judge.
Meanwhile, when federal agency chiefs are brought before congressional committees and refuse to answer questions or just outright lie, nothing happens to them.
Somehow, the demonkrats in Congress have the ability to bring contempt charges, followed by real jail time, on whomever they deem deserving of such a punishment.
Meanwhile, the dumbpublicans are unable or too stupid to do likewise.
The dumbpublicans on these congressional committees talk a tough line, but when it comes to actually doing something, they are AWOL.
Unless of course, they need to thwart someone like Trump or Kari Lake and bingo, they jump into action.
By the way, keep an eye out on the Texas border situation; Texas and the Feds are still fighting in court, but don’t be surprised if it gets hotter on the ground.
Technically a warlock but yes.
They never said which documents were bring requested
It was requested by an illegitimitely constituted committee but please tell me more about orange man bad
His real crime was challenging the covid narrative so the man who killed a million people through his negligence walks free
Justice? Justice?
‘You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.’
That’s where we are, indeed.
Justice continued ……
“You keep using that word …”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D9MS2y2YU_o&pp=ygUcaW5jb25jZWl2YWJsZSBwcmluY2VzcyBicmlkZQ%3D%3D
I am sick and very tired of sharing Constitutional America with many millions of dunderheads who are as ignorant as cows and as immoral as bulls. “A Republic- if you can keep it.” We cannot.
Who will bell that cat with the j20 rioters they dropped the charges
In August 2013, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia gave a Federalist Society-sponsored talk here in Bozeman, Montana. It was well attended.
Anticipating a Q&A session following the talk, with the assistance of someone I know who was close with Scalia I prepared a comment. In the event, I didn’t get to raise my point, but I had the printed comment on a piece of paper, so I was able to pass it to Scalia as he was departing, mentioning the friend’s name in the process. He said he’d read what I’d given him, but I never heard anything further (I’d included my email address).
So maybe my note was just a damp squib, but I think it contained a thought worth circulating. So here it is, in its entirety:
Given the litany and severity of preposterous rulings* and statements** by judges over the last several decades, I predict that the time is soon when some of these absurdities will simply be ignored by those to whom they formally apply — a modern realization of Andrew Jackson’s “Now let him enforce it” rejoinder to John Marshall, whether or not Jackson actually said it.
If you have a public response to my prediction, I’ll be interested. In any event, I hope you’ll circulate the prediction among your colleagues — and have them read Angelo Codevilla’s “America’s Ruling Class — and the Perils of Revolution.”
* Example rulings
– The way California’s Proposition 187 was strangled to death by federal District Judge Marianna Pfaelzer.
– Courtroom rulings of the state judge in the recent Zimmerman trial
– Ruling of Federal District Judge Shira Scheindlin in current NYC police-profiling case.
** Example statement
– Kagan’s “boatload of federal money” assertion.
J’accuse!
Paul Nachman
Bozeman, Montana
(Proposition 187 was the measure that was to deny state-funded public benefits to illegal aliens in California. It won overwhelmingly in 1994’s election and then over several years was nullified in the federal courts, with the connivance of Gov. Gray Davis.
Kagan’s “boatload of federal money” brainfart was during the Supremes’ 2012 hearing on the Obamacare law, the case wherein Chief Squish Roberts saved that abomination with his own legal chicanery.)
A ‘judge’ who perverts truths in order to deny them is a criminal. Mehta has convicted himself with his ‘ruling’.
We do not have a Republic. We have a third world banana Republic. The violence is coming a little farther down the road.
John Tyler:
You write:
Congress can find a person in contempt and then recommend that the DOJ bring charges. Do you really think the DOJ would bring charges against a Democrat for the same thing, especially when headed by a Democrat? Do you really think a DC court – where the charges would be brought – would convict a Democrat? Do you think that the GOP has not ever recommended that the DOJ bring charges for contempt against a Democrat?
For example, Eric Holder was cited for contempt but in 2012 the DOJ declined to prosecute, “Executive privilege.” The DOJ declined to prosecute Lois Lerner in 2015, after she had been cited for criminal contempt of Congress. Neither refusal was the fault of the GOP.
I am sick and very tired of sharing Constitutional America with…
Yep. My feelings exactly. This is not how this works. This is not how any of this works!
Bannon was reporting on the matter if memory serves
So why didnt the justice department open a case against holder
They have sought to jail bannon because he is a mortal enemy of xi and globalists in europe
Our lopsided system of justice marches on:
Navarro sentenced for contempt of Congress
OOOOPS . . .
Our lopsided system of “justice” marches on:
Navarro sentenced for contempt of Congress
There, fixed it for ya.
You can arm cartels you can fund a deadly a virus you can destroy subpoened documents no one can touch you
You can bd charged with offenses no one ever considered criminal like challenging election that law was that again?
Otherwise dems would have been guilty a hundred times over
https://twitter.com/AndrewKerrNC/status … 7820506479
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/amid-allegations-that-she-mismanaged-taxpayer-funds-fani-willis-requests-600k-for-new-cars/
https://twitter.com/BehizyTweets/status/1750605734042010009
Miguel cervantes:
The DOJ is loaded with Democrats, may of them leftist Democrats at that. The DOJ at the time was headed by Obama’s appointee, but an IG investigated and these were the findings.
Contempt of Congress is an offense? I’m surprised that anyone who knows anything about the machinations of Congress is NOT contemptuous.
People it’s never going to end with the far left. There will be a proclamation of devastation and elimination. We are going back to our roots. Liberal evil will go bye-bye, and morality and decency with return to the USA.
Reply to Neo, HERE
https://www.thenewneo.com/2024/01/25/our-lopsided-system-of-justice-marches-on-navarro-sentenced-for-contempt-of-congress/#comment-2720120
THE SOLUTION is the fact that DC and its Courts are the purview of Congress.
The Congress can change these laws, I think, by a mere majority vote.
If there is a latter day landslide in November, this too shall pass.
TJ;
It would take a conservative landslide. Till then, the Republicans are powerless to do it even if they wanted to.
And even if that were accomplished, it wouldn’t change the strong leftist lean of the DOJ. That would have to change, as well.
There really is only one solution.
He broke the law and then tried to make out it was politically motivated? This is going to be a popular move in the US now Trump is setting the precedent.
Will the plan be to check the political beliefs of all judges and juries and not convict anyone who has different ones?
He is guilty. He knows he is. He was warned where this would lead and I it is his responsibility.
The same applies to Trump.
You in the US need to defend the rule of law or soon lose it. Making out Trump and all his supporters cannot be tried is asking for big trouble.
Not that anyone actually expected you to understand what’s going on…but that’s a rather IMPRESSIVE comment…even for you!
Related:
‘Lenin’s Death and Stalin’s Schemes;
‘A century ago, the dead Soviet leader’s brain became a key player in the grotesque drama of “scientific Marxism.” ‘—
https://www.hoover.org/research/lenins-death-and-stalins-schemes
H/T Powerline blog.
Key graf (RTWT):
‘…Stalin’s succession plan was based on exploiting the legacy of the dead leader. Ilich [i.e., Lenin; Barry M.] was to be immortalized on a pedestal, equal to Marx. Staging Ilich’s body in an imposing Kremlin Square mausoleum in Moscow was integral to the plan. Stalin accordingly ignored the wish of Ilich’s family for a traditional burial next to his mother in Petrograd. Second, Stalin would position himself as the only true interpreter of both Lenin and Marx. Ilich’s voluminous and often contradictory writings were to be deposited in a “Lenin Institute” under Stalin’s control, enabling him to pick and choose those writings that advanced his own agenda. Third, as the true interpreter of both Lenin and Marx, Stalin could set the party line. Anyone who disagreed was guilty of “deviation” and “splitting the party.” If party reprimands did not cure the deviationists, there would later be the executioner’s bullet….’ [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
Would appear to be quite a few “deviationists” in the US of A.
Something like half the country. Probably over half.
“Biden” really has “his” work cut out for “him”.
I have no problem with contempt of Congress being enforced – it just needs to be enforced against everyone. I’d actually prefer a system where it is enforced against all to one where people feel free to ignore congressional subpoenas at will. (Remember too that Hillary destroyed 30k e-mails that were subject to a Congressional subpoena and — no consequence.)
To neo’s point about needing a landslide for the right – that won’t be happening anytime soon. If Ron DeSantis is too much of an establishment squish for Republican primary voters, the chances of victory, let alone a landslide, are small indeed. The right is much too small to win without expanding the base. The current Trumpy GOP doesn’t seem to have much interest in doing that. I think they’d rather lose and spend the years complaining about how much further left the administrative state has gone in recent years and how unfair it all is. Well, Democrats have held the White House for 12 of the last 16 years. It’s about to be 16 of the past 20 years. If you don’t like it, win an election, preferably with a candidate who has a skill set and attention span suited to reforming the administrative state.
DCL @ 2:42am,
I believe all here would be fine with his treatment if it were applied equally.
If you’re not aware, here in the U.S. many prominent Democrats, including the President’s son, have ignored congressional subpoenas and suffered no consequences, certainly not jail time.
We are not lamenting the implementation of justice.
We are lamenting unequal enforcement of justice.
More and more in the U.S. we see prosecution and punishment correlating with which party one supports. The woman holding the scales of justice has dropped her blindfold.
Will God save us from the so called “Concerned Conservative”(TM)” abusive boyfriends?
@Bauxite
Indeed, this would be my preference too.
However,
A: That does not preclude the ability or even need for people to reject Congressional bodies they deem corrupt or unduly partisan (as the J6 circus so obviously is).
and more importantly
B: That is obviously not what is happening or has happened, as you admit. So the question is: how the hell do we go about making it a reality? A recourse to human psychology and basic pragmatism would point to study of the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the need to retaliate.
But let it not be said I shall not give due credit to good points as I see them, even if they are made by those I disagree with.
But then things go downhill.
Most likely not. Which raises the question of “Why not?” Especially since the absence of the landslide is something you and many others have bamed on Trump while stating you will behave so as to bring about it.
Firstly: DeSantis by and large did not falter in this because he was seen as a “Squish”, though there are certainly those fanatical EverTrumpers insistent he was or some kind of Deep State agent. The complaints usually cited have more to do with execution and failures on the campaign trail, even moreso than with Haley.
I also blame Trump for this to some degree given his feud with DeSantis and how much of it was Trump’s fault, but ultimately DeSantis didn’t land.
Secondly: If the odds of victory are slim indeed, it is not primarily due to Republican Primary Voters. We’ve been through this many times before, and you have steadfastly refused to acknowledge a hell of a lot of evidence. Even when you have to flip the burden of proof and reiterate the Left’s standards that enough red flags to equip all the global AntifA cells are not enough to justify audits or investigation because they do not prove Trump won… which ignores that you don’t only investigate cases where you can prove the other side won, you investigate cases where there is clear chicanery.
You know how I’ve accused you of being a gaslighting bully? This is why.
Of all the MANY, many, MANY flaws with the “current Trumpy GOP”, “not expanding the base ISN’T one of them. Indeed, Trump capitalized on this by reaching out to blue collar union workers, would-be yellow dog Dems, Hispanics, and that great unicorn of Conservative American politics, Black Americans. Which is one reason why he won at all in 2016 and why he had such turnout in 2020.
You’ve been caught lying about the definition of Get Out The Vote in order to try and argue that Trump was inferior in that to Romney, but you can’t entirely ignore that.
Now, you might claim that many of these voters aren’t part of an expanded base and were just doing a crossover vote or two. Fair enough, however crossover votes are a key step towards expanding the base. You might also claim that they won’t show up to vote this year, and that’s a very big “We’ll See” (though you do not propose much in how to change that with your preferred candidates).
But you don’t seem interested in acknowledging these facts at all, since you instead favor conflating “expanded base” with you and your fellow CCs. While memory holing how Trump did indeed run to the center in both elections and set out a bunch of olive branches to you and your fellows such as putting Pence as his VP pick. (You also ignore how this backfired on him badly in favor of reiterating leftist talking points about how he acted “Tyrannically” without actually studying what the fuck that term means).
You gaslight, insult, demean, and lie to us and then hold out your hand demanding “Give Us, Give Us, Give Us.”
While the most you can say about the January 6th Political Prisoners is that supporting them is not Popular (according to the Church of Bauxite) and that if we worked outside the Right Wing Bubble we’d recognize that. Completely ignoring the fact that
Firstly: We can barely construct or maintain a Right Wing Bubble like you imply, because any where we go, we hear their narrative. Including from you.
Secondly: There are times when popularity is less important than doing what is right.
This is what we call projection, because it is quite literally what you are doing now. Have been doing for months.
Indeed, you have admitted you will do this. You intend to vote Third Party or not at all in spite of all the myriad problems you have acknowledged. That is the very definition of preferring losing and spending the time complaining rather than doing something. The difference is, as sloppy and inadequate as Trump etc. al.’s followups on voter fraud or other malfeasance were they were clearly based on something. Whether it was illegal post hoc legislative changes to counting, or “Suspicious” synchronized activities, or Milwaukee and places like it turning in abnormally, unrealistically high votes (in many cases exceeding the total number of registered voters), or the Great Black Hole of Maricopa County.
You on the other hand primarily stitch together a mixture of actual complaints about Trump with your gut feeling, conjecture, and outright lies. And as a result conclude it is not even worth confronting things like Biden etc. al.’s abuses at the Federal Ballot Box if they are doing it.
Indeed. And to those of us who can actually fucking count, that indicates this is a much deeper problem than simply Trump. Indeed, it indicates Trump was unusually effective at loosening that grip.
Ah, how trite. How pithy. How simple.
How very unhelpful.
A central problem with the administrative state is that no matter who wins elections, it can and will broadly ignore the results. Moreover, it will take even tepid acquiescence as endorsement. How many Obama Voters actually wanted Operation Fast and Furious? Or the growth of crime and racial tension? Or the humiliation of Putin slapping Obama about the head following the “Reset” appeasement/blood sellout of Georgia with an invasion of Ukraine?
But that doesn’t matter. Trump was and remains a highly, HIGHLY imperfect vessel. The amount of insipid, scattershot, and often inaccurate accusations you’ve made at him indicate I know of his many shortcomings from adultery to hypocrisy to unwarranted trust to flatterers better than you do. However, he also gave up a very cushy life among the elites where he was feted by left and right alike to run for President and as a result has been given as near to the Emmanuel Goldstein treatment as the left in the US can manage. And he is not alone, as the Truckers up in Canada can attest.
Why he did so matters less than that he has (and for my two cents I believe it is a mixture of genuine patriotism and staggering ego and ambition), and that he has succeeded in trying to make headway into growing the GOP base in ways that Romney, McCain, and even W Bush did not.
And it is ironic how you preach and complain about how Trump and other loyalists of his do not do enough to appease you or cater to you (leaving aside how the question of what you define as “enough” is left wider than Trump’s Mouth is) while you also show remarkably little interest in outreach to the majority of the party that supports him, whether fanatically or grudgingly.
And you wonder why I do not take you as seriously as I did. There are consequences to being the equivalent of the psychologically abusive “significant other” gaslighting us and arguing the local organized crime syndicate shaking us down for protection money and acquiescence aren’t really as bad as they seem. While insisting that “Impropriety or the APPEARANCE of Impropriety” does not apply to those you prefer, just to us.
I suppose I should be glad that this post isn’t as Godawful as DCL (Bertie)’s is.
@ Rufus T Firefly I have heard the arguments but they don’t seem very convincing. You have a judicial system that is inherently political in both the role and selection of judges, so I suppose it is always a risk.
But are you seriously suggesting the only reason Trump is in court is because he is Trump and not because he actually did these things?
The fact he says these cases are political does not make them so.
Would it be better to approve the politics of not only judges and jurors but the whole police and prosecution service? Should only Republicans and/or Conservatives be allowed in court?
Or are you reaching the point where a figure such as Trump is beyond the law? Free to rape, lie, defraud and who knows what else?
And if so why on earth do you think the majority of Americans are going to vote for this?
@DCL (Bertie)
Time to first lie: 0 Sentences.
Even if you want to argue that Navarro did break the law (which I’ll be willing to grant for the sake of the argument) there is not the slightest inkling of doubt this was politically motivated, as our host pointed out. Navarro’s crime was not doing this while Hillary Clinton or Eric Holder.
The fact that you cannot acknowledge this does not speak well to you.
Oh, TRUMP set the precedent?
James Clapper blatantly perjured himself to Congress. Eric Holder did likewise. Hillary Clinton did too. All while Trump was mostly known as that “You’re Fired” guy from a Reality TV Show.
That’s strike two. This also ignores the fact that the January 6th Circus was provably a political witch hunt, just one member away from being an All Dem Show and responsible for suppressing inconvenient evidence exonerating many of the persecuted of crimes, thus violating their Brady Obligations.
Whatever crimes Navarro did or did not commit, he was completely correct to refer to the January 6tth Shitshow as an example of blatant political abuse of the judicial system and a two tiered justice system., and you do nobody any favors by pretending otherwise.
How about just to make judicial bodies (including Congressional ones) follow the damn law including legal obligations like the Brady Rule? Which again the January 6th Circus did not.
But not to Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, or their ilk. Shocking.
One doesn’t have to be a Trump Cultist in order to recognize the base injustice and disgusting hypocrisy of this. Indeed, Rufus is agnostic on Trump but he recognizes it. Heck, even Bauxite the premier anti-Trump advocate on this blog recognizes it.
The best you can argue is that we should sit down and accept being made second class citizens in our own country.
Too late. We’ve already lost it, Indeed, this travesty is case in point of how we already have. As is the Jan 6th fiasco refusing to try those members of the Congressional and DC Police that violated the rights of the protestors (or even those that were rioting) while throwing up a wall of silence around things such as the Sicknick Autopsy so their legislative allies could grandstand and abuse us further.
Indeed, prejudiced imposition of “justice” is often less just and more oppressive than the complete inability to impose justice because it indicates the authorities are above the law and masters of it rather than its servants, and that they can reach out to tailor and persecute those they wish and leave those they do not wish. Hunter Biden call your office.
Which is again why you do yourself no favors by posturing like this. And frankly given the corrupt and even literally criminal conduct of the Jan 6th Circus, I find it hard to fault people for not cooperating with a body whose existence is about politically motivated persecutions while covering up the abuses of the Biden administration.
EDIT for Part 2
Oh, isn’t that cute? He has heard the arguments but he doesn’t find them VERY Convincing (only moderately, then? Slightly?). Well, case closed. Let us all get on our knees and kowtow to the Decisive DCl, the Brilliant Bertie.
Ah, the classic “Your Skirt is Too Short” strategy.
Yes, our judicial system is inherently political, and this was recognized. Most frankly are, and this is made all the worse with Congress and DC. HOWEVER, that is also why there are SUPPOSED to be safeguards imposed, such as the Brady Rule. A Rule which by any objective measure the Jan 6th Circus violated, among with others.
Any person should have the right to point this out in the US, even if they be criminal and insane, since the Truth is an ironclad defense against defamation here. Which brings us to the issue of cooperating via subpoena. The problem being both the utterly hypocritical double standard at which that rule is enforced and also the aforementioned illegitimate conduct of the issuing organization and its behavior in the first place.
Correct. Which is also why I suggest you take your head out of your ass and start doing some research.
This is true. Which is why I don’t even have to cite Navarro or Trump in order to prove these cases are political.
Or at a minimum “appearing” improper and political.
And THAT’S Also important, because professional and legal standards are supposed to avoid not merely impropriety, but the APPEARANCE of Impropriety. Precisely because it was once recognized that the appearance of impropriety had a corrosive effect on public trust and freedom.
You say this as if the inverse has not already happened in many jurisdictions, including DC. Which is why your strawman falls flat, much like your posturing and attempts to play as the moral better do. Because apparently due execution of the law or at least meeting the minimum obligations of it are too much for the likes of DC.
No, but apparently you clearly are acting with the implicit understanding that those high ranking Democrats are. Hence why Hunter Biden is not being tried for his myriad crimes.
The “Submit to unjust, politically motivated, corrupt persecution via selectively enforced or interpreted laws, or you are a hypocrite or advocating for bad things” gamble is as fallow, stupid, and evil an argument as can be advance.d
SUPPOSEDLY they already did for Biden and co already. Which is part of the problem.
In the meantime, please research Operation Fast and Furious and then Shut the Fuck Up before you continue smearing the host of this blog.
The mask…it is slipping apace…
DCL (Bertie) in his pursuit of The Great Orange Whale thrashes the water of his kiddie pool and thrusts his pool noodle repeatedly at the leviathan.
When Trump is in the Oval Office and controls the DOJ and we have a Republican Congress hopefully Biden’s lackeys will find themselves in the same position as Navarro.
Well your country is nearly gone between freezing because windmills the invading armies that the tories wont stop their chinese and or arab masters will be nowhere as nice as the vikings or the romans
@omnes – well that comment produced a lot of odd and somewhat rambling stuff but I love this. Not got a clue what it means but it sounds great.
“ Well your country is nearly gone between freezing because windmills the invading armies that the tories wont stop their chinese and or arab masters will be nowhere as nice as the vikings or the romans”
The rest of your arguments can be summarised as…..
“We are convinced the Democrats are bad so that means we can do whatever we like.”
This will lead to more bad behaviour like Jan 6 and possibly far worse.
Again tell me about orange man bad
https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-documents-bolster-lab-leak-hypothesis
You gave up your reliable power because you believed in a fraud conjured up by michael mann
You had at least 30,000 terrorists roaming your streets now its probably in the hundreds of thousands
@DCL
Good, because you need to get used to it.
If you don’t have a clue what it means, then maybe you should take a sabbatical while you dig through and educate yourself. Neo has been blogging for years and years and has a deep and multifaceted backlog covering much of this stuff.
TL:DR, Miguel Cervantes is pointing out the multiparty consensus about “Green Energy” in the UK by and large does not work, and that’s paltry compared to the serial rape gangs that have been allowed to get away with literal murder and pedophilia with little in the way of rebuttal.
However, I view that as ultimately a deflection based on what MC thinks your nationality is rather than actually addressing the merit of your points (such as they are). So I objected.
If you have to Lie and Gaslight about what our arguments are, To us, it shows you have lost the argument and are frankly not interested in partaking in it.
In particular, I pointed out the unethical and often flatly illegal conduct of the January 6th Congressional Body that vindicates Navarro’s judgement of them if not his actions. You had no response to this, probably because you have no fucking clue what i was referring to or the legal obligations of Congressional Offices.
So you appeal to your own ignorance and then strawman us.
January 6th already led to the unjustified lethal shooting of a peaceful protestor (or at THE ABSOLUTE WORST someone trying to enter a building without authorization), political show trials, and perjury by government officials as American taxpayers are kept in conditions worse than that of many of the 9/11 Masterminds without due process of the law.
It’s already gotten worse. The fact that you do not understand that makes you a dishonorable idiot and a bad joke.
Take your head out of your asshole.
DCL @ 9:16am,
You ask, “Should only Republicans and/or Conservatives be allowed in court?
Or are you reaching the point where a figure such as Trump is beyond the law? Free to rape, lie, defraud and who knows what else?”
Very much the contrary. I think a lot more politicians of both colors should be “allowed” in court. And, after a fair trial, no longer free to impose their will and steal from us and the treasury.
@ Turtler – I can understand what Neo says – it is excellent and lucid writing.
The rambling comments down here however are a highly variable quality and I really haven’t a clue what a lot are trying to say – apart from “Red good Blue bad and anyone who disagree is an idiot”…..closely followed by some childish or abusive comment.
Meanwhile the core issue is you lot support Trump who lies and has little respect for the law.
as usual you missed the point about the record of these people like jack smith, and bob mcdonnell, about ronnie earle and tom delay, about patrick fitzgerald, and Conrad black, and Lewis Libby and who he regarded well like david Radler and Richard Armitage, furthermore you have seen fit to ignore how powerful players like the Al Amoudis, and the Bin Mahfouzs and Auchi the Baathist bagmanhave used lawfare to silence critics, As Steve Rogers said ‘I can do this all do all day’ Pity Michael Mann did the same to Tim Ball and Mark Steyn, so even when you win, you cannot recover the time and money, and in Steyns case, health lost fighting these unregenerate liars and worse,
@DCL
I highly doubt you can understand it, considering how quick you were to claim ignorance of the others and begin strawmanning them.
But in the interests of fair play and steelmanning, you should look through the rest of the blog because there’s a lot more of that clear, lucid writing detailing the abuses of the Jan 6th Subcommittee and its misconduct.
Firstly: Drop the crybully “woe is me, I am a victim” bullshit. Because that is what it is, bullshit. as well as childish and abusive conduct. The fact that it is worded with superficial politeness does not change what it is.
You came here looking for a fight, assuming (without evidence, as the MSM might say in other circumstances) that the Jan 6th Congressional Circus is a valid entity and that any refusal to comply with subpoenas must be criminal.
(This, as I detailed before, is a premise false on both grounds. Especially given what the Subcommittee was caught sitting on earlier, and the way parties in a legal dispute in the US are allowed to contest subpoenas within the law. To say nothing of ignoring them outside of the law).
Going off of these flawed premises you began forwarding insanely insulting, bad faith characterizations of others on this blog, assuming that they object to this selective prosecution and overreach purely because they want the system to be biased for their team, and proceeded to insult us, including the host, on these grounds.
You are still doing so.
And you wonder why you aren’t taken very seriously?
Acting like an ignoramus is understandable to some degree. We’re all ignorant of something. But acting as a dishonest, insulting fuckup is another, and while our host is quite gracious and even tempered this is a good way to get banned down the line. Especially backhandedly insulting the host.
Secondly: You’re not being called an idiot by me (at least; I cannot speak of others) because you disagree. You’re being called an idiot because YOU ADMIT YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT WE ARE SAYING and your conduct clearly indicates you are not familiar with the lengthy legal and legislative background behind this issues, but you decided to wade in here anyway in an insulting and bad faith manner.
That warrants the moniker of idiot, and frankly terms I view as far more harsh than that.
Oh how oh how do I describe this pile of libelous, abusing horseshit?
My core issues well predate Trump I’ve been arguing about things such as undue leftist bias in things such as the Iraq War Intelligence Postmortems for 20 years now. Indeed, in many ways Trump was an opportunistic convert to the Republican party, riding high on years of abuses by the likes of the persecution of “Tea Party” members.
Meaning your claim about what my “core issue” is is invalid on its face. Worse, it betrays you have such little grasp of us that you are reliant on insulting, usually inaccurate left-wing stereotypes.
(Remind me again why people responded badly to your crap?)
As for “has little respect for the law” you’re going to need to do a lot more than assert to prove it.
As for “lies”, Welcome to Politics. Are you new here? Because the “innocent, naive babe in the woods” act isn’t convincing coming from you.
You know who else got caught lying?
The Jan 6th Committee.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/capitol-security-footage-january-6-mccarthy/index.html
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/evaluating-jan-6-committees-evidence-full
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/aug/9/barry-loudermilk-j6-committee-failed-preserve-reco/
Among others.
There’s a reason why I mentioned the Brady Rule. Rather, several. For whatever McCarthy’s other flaws he blew the lid off a number of prosecutions based on the deliberate refusal to reveal exculpatory evidence to the defendants and their counsel. That’s a violation of the law and the Constitution.
But you apparently don’t know this, in spite of it being crucial to evaluating Navarro’s claims and understanding his actions. Why is that?
I logically don’t know, but I have my guesses.
Re: Turtler – There he goes again.
The assertion that I got “caught lying” about GOTV is completely absurd.
My only other response – we keep hearing about how Trump is expanding the base. Nonsense. Another name for the blue collar voters referred to is “Reagan Democrats.” Reagan was able to win those voters without alienating independents and significant remaining chunks of the Republican coalition. Trump is not. And the minority voters that Trump is supposedly winning? Maybe they’ll finally show up in high enough numbers this year to make up for the votes Trump is kissing away with his unhinged behavior. That didn’t happen in 2018, 2020, or 2022, but maybe this is the year.
@Bauxite
You should be used to this.
No, your attempt to deny what is written in plain text is completely absurd. And why I identify you as an abusive gaslighter.
It takes a while for me to dig back through the backlog to pull up the exact snippets, Neo fortunately helped simply this post by linking to our comments in another argument.
Let’s go through this in a truncated fashion:
—————————————–
In this thread and this specific comment, you went onto another Orange Man Bad Post, the most relevant of which i will quote, and those I deem particularly relevant I will emphasize. But I encourage anybody to please click the links and check them out so they can compare what I and Bauxite wrote for themselves and JUDGE for themselves.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/11/08/election-results-2/#comment-2707663
I pointed out that the “MAGA GOTV” operations — while much less organized and centralized than the likes of ORCA – had much greater results.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/11/08/election-results-2/#comment-2707756
This goes on for a while, but you proceed to try and mock me by changing the definition.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/11/08/election-results-2/#comment-2707797
Apparently realizing you couldn’t actually compete with my points about Get Out The Vote in terms of what it actually means (amounts of vote gotten out) you favored shifting the definition to vote share.
In spite of how vote share is a reflection of how many votes were gotten out by all sides (among other things), and that’s a poor way to judge MAGA GOTV.
I called you on this.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/11/08/election-results-2/#comment-2707817
You admitted you had shifted the goal posts to try and shore up your self-serving and dishonest definition of “Get Out The Vote.”
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/11/08/election-results-2/#comment-2707923
Which I called you out for again.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/11/08/election-results-2/#comment-2707932
(Especially since it’s worth noting that in terms of “actually winning the election” Romney and ORCA still performed worse than Trump did, so this is still a Heads I win, Tails you Lose battleground you chose).
——————————————–
Again, I invite anybody and everybody to look over the relevant comments and threads so they can judge as they desire, and decide whether or not my accusation of you as a lying gaslighted is “completely absurd.” Since I’m the one actually providing evidence, links, and “receipts” as the cool kids say.
Moving on from your past lies (and current lies about past lies) to your present
Once again with moving the Goal Posts.
Firstly: The “Reagan Democrats” were dubiously part of the Base to begin with, as HW Bush learned in 1992. They might have been on the verge of becoming such, but they weren’t.
Secondly and MORE IMPORTANTLY: they certainly weren’t part of the base for the lengths of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. So you’re blaming Trump for bringing in more voters but a smaller proportion than Reagan, without bothering to point out how your preferred “GOPe” candidates failed to win sizable support from the Reagan Democrat Blue Collar voters from 1992 to about the Tear Party revolution.
So the claim that Trump is “expanding the base” being “nonsense” doesn’t work. Unless you want to claim reclaiming those voters after a decade plus lapse is not significant.
Which is apparently what you’re resorting to.
Thirdly: You’re ignoring demographics. The US’s (legally counted) population in 1984 was about 233 million.
It was about 316 million in 2012 and 327 million in 2016. Meaning a huge portion of those new voters WEREN’T BORN during Reagan’s years and had no experience with him, and ironically many of the Republican’s older “Core” Voters were those that voted against Reagan.
No matter which way you slice it, Trump significantly drew in more voters to the party, far beyond what we’d expect from normal population growth or conventional GOTV. But you can’t actually admit that.
They didn’t help us nearly as much as we hoped, but there’s a bunch of reasons why Florida is a Red State now and while some of that owes to the abject humiliation of the 2000 recounts and even more owes to DeSantis, Trump and his outreach to Latinos and Blue Collar Retirees owes some of that.
It also points to the problem with the institutional Republican Party and Trump’s organization and how they’ve clashed. And I’ll freely admit some of those clashes are Trump’s fault. But far from all, and I’d hazard far from even most, as Governor Kemp’s two faced behavior shows (and after Trump spent much of 2016-2020 extending olive branches to the GOPe and other non-Trump segments of the Republican party like Kemp).
Maybe. We’ll have to see, won’t we? I find it hard to be optimistic in general.
But particularly not when we have a sizable troll segment that insists on gaslighting us, regurgitating Leftist propaganda, and generally pissing in our ears and telling us it’s raining while complaining about how victimized and put upon they are.
Ironic how you complain (and not without reason) about Trump imposing loyalty tests on others but are quite happy to outright gaslight people who won’t agree with you twisting the meaning of GOTV metrics, AND are happy to ignore the self-admitted skullduggery by people in Trump’s administration who were not loyal to him. Indeed, you have (understandably) used that as an argument against Trump before, and once I can’t object to. But it makes the attempt to double dip by condemning Trump for taking steps to try and avoid more backstabbers hypocritical and unseemly.
But you’d be more than capable of teaching a masterclass in hypocrisy and unseemly behavior, Bauxite. Especially since your moral outrage seems not to extend to people held without trial on January 6th, even when the Committee got caught hiding exculpatory evidence for people like the Buffalo Shaman. Because apparently you don’t like them (which is your right) and you think that sort of treatment won’t be applied to you, so we should simply “pick our battles” because Orange Man Bad. The irony that you don’t see how that kind of nonsense alienates people of the base like myself and potential new converts may be lost on you, but not on myself and others.
There he goes again.
@Bauxite
And there you go again saying nothing of value. What’s the matter? Can’t actually defend your own statements?
You claimed that it was “absurd” for me to say you were caught lying about the definition of GOTV. I obviously disagreed. But rather than simply go “NO U” and assert without evidence like you did, I provided links and quotes from both of us, so people who do not know or trust us may evaluate themselves.
You then tried to claim it was ludicrous to say Trump was growing the base because many of them were Reagan Democrats, “conveniently” ignoring how the very term underlines how that they were specific cross-party voters who largely abandoned the Republican Party for about 20 years after Bubba Clinton beat Daddy Bush.
And so on and so on.
If you’re not prepared to defend your own claims, why even bother posting?
If you don’t want to be seen as a backstabbing, gaslighting bully and liar, up your game and show how you are not. Or just stop posting.
I’m not perfect, but I at least work hard to argue my cases.
CC™:
There you go again.
Drop your harpoon into the deep and hope that The Rachel will pick you up.
You have been well and truly fisked, again.
hes as clever as joe walsh, not the guitarist for the eagles, but the former possum congressman, from illinois, who keeps insisting he’s against Hamas, but opposes the strongest opponent of that and other militant Islamists in Donald Trump
turtler – I’m not going to read and respond to an unedited book. It’s not worth my time. And I’m not going to respond any further to someone who can’t differentiate between a difference of opinion and a “lie” justifying identification as an “abusive gaslighter.”
Your arguments and rationalizations are not facts. I’m not a “liar,” a “gaslighter” or in any way “abusing” you or anyone else because I don’t find them persuasive. Frankly, your act is ridiculous. If you want to debate, I’m up for it. But I’m not up for this nonsense.
CC™ leaves the field after redefining terms.
Cue “Brave Brave Sir Robin” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
@Bauxite
BULLLSHIT. You obviously can, and will, when you believe it is worth your time. You did so by replying to me.
You just apparently tire out quickly (Which I can respect) or when the counter evidence is too strong (which I can’t).
As for “unedited book”, I plead guilty. However, it has both its strengths and weaknesses. Starting with the fact that it is a good way to counter bullshit with evidence. See: Brandolini’s Law.
Quaint. Bauxite plays the crybully coward.
The problem, simpering dumbfuck, is that the definition of what Get Out The Vote Means and how to measure it is not a “difference of opinion.” Or at least, not a difference of OPINION in the way you presented it (since obviously there can be differences in gauging it based on raw number of ballots/voters vs proportion of votes per capita).
But you were trying to argue that Romney’s numerically inferior and smaller per capita number of votes was better than Trump’s result. Which is blatantly false. And you know it was blatantly false because of the very specific way you framed it, as proportion of the vote rather than proportion of voterS or numbers of them.
This isn’t a difference of opinion. This is you being a dishonest, gas lighting liar.
And being called out on it.
When they are based on facts, they are.
Especially given how the only justification you had for your interpretation of GOTV was rationalizations. Inaccurate rationalizations.
You weren’t merely saying “I don’t find them persuasive.” Because I can respect that.
You were lying and trying to act like I was an idiot for not obliging with your objectively false metrics of counting Votes Gotten Out and acting like that was a strength of Trump’s. And I can’t and won’t respect that.
Then it shouldn’t be so hard to prove me wrong. And yet you fail to. Why is that?
It obviously isn’t because you don’t view countering my claims as use of your time. You responded to this.
No, you very clearly are not up for a debate. Because this “nonsense” – including the mustering of figures and long form quotations – is an important part of actual debate.
And you fail miserably at it, and resort to bad faith attacks.
I’m not up for your cowardly, dishonest bullshit, and I am not going to pretend it is something other than what it is.
The fact that you speedily went about face and began trying to re-parse your claims as “differences of opinion” (when that wasn’t what it was, they were alleged statements of fact mixed with condescension and affected airs of superiority incredulous that anybody else could think differently) speaks to how you realize you dun fucked up on some level. As does your decision to quit the field. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But it’s amusing to see how drastic and quick the change was. Probably because you didn’t expect I’d be willing or able to dig up and quote the old text.
Bauxite at 12:28 PM
Bauxite at 1:17 PM:
In cases like this, if you’re not explaining, you’re losing.
clearly there was no criminal offense on navarro’s part, the only obstruction was on the part of the Sham commitee, which hid voluminous quantities of video evidence from the courts, from the sham media, et al, as I pointed out they want to silence Navarro and Bannon, who challenged the ruinous lockdown narratives, the latter was a bridge for Jimmy Lal’s evidence of Chinese corruption of the political system, of which Hunter is the smallest ice floe, in the Balding Papers and Marco Polo, the most proximate to power,
Evidence of Dominion’s shortcomings are slow appearing, of course seeing how omnipresent such systems are in ballot tabulation across the world
Interesting comment thread today. I sometimes get annoyed with Turtler’s wall of text comments but not today. Many good points.
The right is much too small to win without expanding the base. The current Trumpy GOP doesn’t seem to have much interest in doing that. I think they’d rather lose and spend the years complaining about how much further left the administrative state has gone in recent years and how unfair it all is.
What utter nonsense ! The Bulwark must be your go to source.
@Mike K
Thank you kindly, and sorry about that. It is a great weakness and strength of mine, as many habits are. I would like to change it, but have not figured out a good way to do so, especially given the strengths of incorporating all parts of a comment or comments into my own to reply in detail.
This thread demonstrates some of the worst elements of Trump support.
Unquestioning faith in the leader and scattergun, occasionally foul mouthed and often offensive comments aimed at those who dare think differently.
Trump is a liar – repeatedly. A sex offender by his own admission – that p•••y comment is too offensive to repeat here. He is addicted to the utterly childish name calling his fans on here engage in. His policies are a fantasy of over the top promises with little grasp on the real world. And finally his ego. Trump is all about Trump. Nothing else really matters to him. He is no Conservative just an orange clown playing a clever game to get adulation.
And yet you still support him. And whatever foulness he is engaged in you will still support him.
Many good conservatives will not. Trump will lose the next election. But he will claim he won.
You need to dump him before the Dems ditch Biden. But Trump is so ridiculous even Biden will beat him.
so re gotv, marc elias was at the forefront of the balloting avalanche, enabled though consent decrees from settlement, law changes etc, he also was the lead partner at Perkins and Coie, handling the Danchenko dossier, the real life version of Wurmold’s stack of papers from Our Man in Havana, Graham’s prescient in some ways tale, and rather derivative in others, the other lawfare partner was Michael Sussman, he handled Crowdstrike and other matters like the Georgia Tech lab on dezinforma, is it a coincidence, that Perkins and Coie, moved their major operations behind the bamboo Curtain, I don’t think so,
Of course to put forth a ballot stuffing effort that was warned against in the Baker Carter report, well that would require Force Majure, well Fauci’s special recipe really served that function, as did the lockdowns that were demanded from Chris Murray of the University of Washington and Ferguson of Imperial College, Fauci was there to urge said praxis as well as did Birx
you will continue digging all the way to China, a description of how behavior happens in the suites of NBC CBS and Epstein’s Island to say he least,
@DCL
And also much of the worst elements of Trump demonization. Including by you.
Not by me. I have regularly admitted Trump lies, exaggerates, or misspeaks. And often times likely does not even realize he is doing so. One reason why I supported Cruz in the 2016 primaries and leaned DeSantis until now.
I just realize a few things.
Firstly: Trump hasn’t lied half as much as he has been lied About.
Secondly: this follows a pattern of demonization and disinformation going back literal decades. I was alive to remember the BusHitler years, for instance.
Thirdly: If and when Trump steps out of line I can count on a hostile media to come down on him. I cannot rely on the same regarding Biden, Obama, or their ilk.
This is Not theoretical, as Fast and Furious shows.
Oh please.
You got caught shilling for the January 6th Committee, ignoring its dire and ugly track record, denying the legal precedent of Americans to contest subpoenas, and back handedly insulting everyone who thought differently before outright demonizing us as people who simply want to create a police state.
You got called out for your disgusting, insulting behavior. With varying levels of effectiveness and harshness, but the blunt reality is you brought this on yourself.
Thank you for pointing out just about the only thing everyone on this blog agrees about.
Unfortunately for you, it also describes YOURSELF.
Blood libeling bullshit liar.
No you simpering shithead, the “grab them by the pussy” comment was not admitting to sex offenses, and thus he is not a sex offender.
And while the quote *is* offensive and in monstrously poor taste, as a matter of race and law we have a rational obligation to discuss it honestly.
So here it goes. From a source I imagine Bernie respects.
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321.amp
Snippet here, with emphasis.
Now is this creepy and unethical? Yes. And I have never denied it. And rarely enough Trump gave a full throated public apology. But there’s a reason he hasn’t been charged with sex offenses. Because it is discussing consenting acts, and why legal attempts to bring him to trial or even civil suit on the issue have crashed and burned.
And note, our host has talked about this before, and hardly in an uncritical Trump Cultist fashion but while still repudiating your stance.
So keep digging that hole in your credibility.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2016/10/12/on-grabbing-someone-by-the-pussy-and-consent/
https://www.thenewneo.com/2016/10/08/trumps-bragging-locker-room-talk-the-october-surprise/
Oh, but YOU are not?
After all, all you did was demonize and strawman everyone who disagreed with you about a blatant injustice.
So in addition to being dishonest and an idiot, you were apparently comatose from 2016-2020. My sympathies.
I am not one of Trump’s die hard cultists. He is not the Messiah. He is not worthy to be Emperor, let alone God-Emperor. He has very real failings that helped manifest in failures in his first term. But he had a generally successful, pragmatic first term that is in stark contrast to leftist propaganda that he was the new Hitler, Mussolini, or Bush, a puppet of Putin when he wasn’t on the verge of starting nuclear apocalypse with Putin.
Can the U.S. do better? I sure as hell hope so. But it can do much, Much worse. Because that is what is happening right now.
Dubious given the sacrifices he put through to get here and weather it, but even if so… You know what? I don’t really care beyond the point which it harms the US and the free world, which we clearly disagree about.
We have a malignant, corrupt narcissist who is far worse than Trump in office now, and we were preceded by an even worse man who made postures at being a crypto-Muslim and certainly kept the faith with unreformed anti-American terrorists like Ayers, Dohrn, and the Iranian Mullahs.
And even if I granted that were true, am I supposed to care so long as the Orange Clown does a better job of being a President (including the bounds of constitutional law) than the alternative?
And who do you propose we support instead? Quit throwing shit at the wall hoping some sticks like a poorly trained Monkey and actually come up with alternatives.
Because your demonization will not work. Nothing you have said is anything we haven’t heard but worse from the likes of Obama and Biden.
Your arguments up to this point do not work because your lies and poor grasp of the source material renders you easy to debunk.
So it sounds like in the absence of facts and the absence of the law, you bang on the table like the incompetent or desperate lawyer from the joke. Go on. Tell us what Candidate(s) we should support instead, oh learned idiot who could not even get the Access Hollywood transcript correct unlike the regulars here.
And who is a good conservative? And why should I believe some clown giving unfiltered leeway to the January 6th Kangaroo Court is?
We will see. But in any case, who do you propose would have a better chance? Haley?
And maybe he will be right. After all, the events of 2020 require a truly deranged faith in the civil virtues and honesty of the City Fathers of Milwaukee and the Leftist Bureaucracy in Pennsylvania to believe without reservation.
And there is a difference between being a Good Conservative and a Dupe.
Leaving aside the assertion without evidence and the lack of any attempt at argumentation to prove it…
“Ditch Trump.”
Ok, For Who?
And what should we expect – nah, DEMAND – of this savior in exchange for this trust?
You see little ape of the BBC, it is easy to sit on the sidelines throwing shit and libel like you do. It is hard to actually propose a solution. Let alone getting to brass tacks in any kind of detail.
It can be done, and I am willing to extend the chance to you.
But I do not expect you to actually take this chance, given your bad faith, incompetence, and ignorance.
DCL:
You demonstrate your lack of understanding once again, as well as your mischaracterization of the attitudes of almost everyone here about Trump. At the moment I have about two and a half thousand posts on this blog about law, and over one thousand about Trump. Many of the law posts describe in great detail the decline of our legal system, and chart its increasing bias. Many of the Trump posts contain criticisms of him. Many of the people here preferred DeSantis as a candidate this year. But nearly all of them will vote for Trump if he is the nominee. Biden and company have been far far more destructive to this nation and the world.
Sorry Neo but I respectfully reject what you say. Repeating the assertion of bias over many posts does not make the proposition any more true. This a constant cherry picking of examples and incidents dies not amount to a substantial case.
It also doesn’t deal with the core issue.
Trump is not being treated unfairly by tgd legal system. In fact if he wasn’t so wealthy and powerful he would have found his legal problems far worse.
Reading through your intellectual journey has been fascinating and helped me understand some of the current threads in US political thinking. You write well and can pull together many threads to present a persuasive narrative.
But your journey has brought you to supporting a man you know is immoral. You are well aware that he lies and abuses anyone who disagrees with him. Looking at your older posts you seemed to be well aware of the shambles around Trump and his weak grasp on many of the complexities of politics.
And yet your journey has ended with supporting a man who lies about losing the last election, makes open threats to his opponents and sucks up to foreign dictators while badmouthing US allies.
The US is throwing away the rights and freedoms given to them by previous generations. To Conservatives here in the UK this is utterly baffling but it is clear that is the course you are set on.
Good luck – you are all going to need it.
@DCL
Don’t say sorry if you don’t mean it. And frankly I have not seen anything from you, “Bertie”, that you have an iota of respect in your body.
What parts? All of it, including that Biden and co have done far more damage to the world? Can you even say you are a conservative at that point?
Once again the dishonest little turd tries to play word games.
You are correct in as much as repeating the assertion of something over years does not make it any more true. This is correct regarding Neo, myself, and you (for instance your blather about Trump being a sex offender).
So what matters is evidence. Unfortunately for you, the evidence, as our host has compiled and commented on, is utterly damning. And you have made absolutely no attempt to address or even acknowledge. The Jan 6th committee should have been broken up when it was proven they violated their obligations under the Brady Act, among others. Dinesh D’Souza deserves an apology for what happened to him, as does that Democrat who had his divorce proceedings mysteriously unsealed when confronting an up and coming Obama.
You respond to none of this, as such you let it stand.
This is fucking retarded on a massive scale.
How many “cherries” can be picked before it becomes clear you are not merely dealing with a small cherry bush but an entire grove? An orchard?
Moreover, documenting and quantifying case studies is THE VERY ESSENCE of building a substantial case. and in these metrics Neo has done infinitely better than you have.
But please, please tell me what in your oh so expert, learned opinion a “substantial case” amounts to? Can you even define it? Or is this more “NO U” kneejerk reactions?
Pig ignorant and fucking stupid as well as dishonest.
Trump isn’t “the core issue.” Claiming he is over and over again will not change Anything. Even as a young lad I observed many of the telltale examples of this targeting Dubya Bush in the first decade of this millennium. That was often repeated in part against Romney and McCain and Palin, at least one of whom you probably prefer to Bad Orange Man.
As I mentioned before, Trump is largely a symptom of American politics, and particularly disgust and dissatisfaction with left wing abuses of our civil culture and flouting of the law. Treating him as the core issue in American politics is utterly misguided.
Gaslighting doesn’t change reality beyond making you a gaslighter. And Trump has been treated unfairly on multiple metrics, including the demonization of his legal assistance and attempts to suppress exculpatory evidence. And of course being targeted by those over powered ghouls in the National Archives who insist (in spite of many bipartisan slap downs and instructions to the contrary) that they are the final word on what a former President can and cannot keep.
And that’s frankly the tip of the iceberg given things like FISA.
You say that like it is supposed to be a Good thing. It is not. Trump may be an egotistical orange monkey and Limo Liberal, but he is also wealthy, not prone to substance abuse (and thus not likely to be roofied and set up), and connected.
Many “mere mortals” like Mark Steyn, George Zimmerman, and the January 6th Defendants have been utterly pauperized by the system and various process crimes and abuses of the legal system. Many struggle to feed the conflict and many more have gone under. That is as chilling an effect on freedom as any and it is NO COINCIDENCE that many actual dictatorships like Singapore resort to these measures when they are inclined to avoid outright bloodshed or political imprisonment.
“…… except for this, where I unilaterally assert I know better than the American with a legal education who has been finely parsing this stuff for years.”
Decided to type the silent part out for you, “Bertie.” How arrogant, condescending, and rude are you?
Welcome to American politics. And politics in general. Did you by chance miss John McCain being the Republican Presidential Candidate? A man who knowingly endangered the lives of others with his actions and betrayed his loyal Veep pick and the citizens of his state?
I am past the point of looking for saints in American executive politics. I wish for a decent man. And failing that I will take an adequate one who does not have this country.
And by the standards of immorality among the American elite, Trump is downright tame. He is one of a few people who risked backlash by breaking with Epstein and his Camarillo and helped the victims’ legal representatives to the best of his knowledge. This is objective Fact, and nothing you blather here can take that away.
https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-victims-attorney-talks-about-donald-trump-claims-1857298
No I am not, though he is too prone to doing that he is not prone to doing it with ANYONE who disagrees with him as Joe Robinette Biden and Barry Hussein Obama, to name just two, are.
Indeed, and most of us here have never denied Trump is a deeply imperfect man and no sage philosopher (though given the atrocities and misdeeds of some self proclaimed sage philosophers that is less damning than one might think). But for better or worse sage philosophers are in short supply on the GOP ballot and even fewer of them have the grit, charisma, or resources to fight organized smear teams and threats.
Evidence not presented. Moreover, lies are conscious untruths. Good luck finding evidence Trump knows he lost the election.
Especially since while his legal team have been a shambles and often incompetent (Rudy in particular has fallen far) they didn’t have to be super lawyers in order to point to what can be AT best characterized as utterly suspicious and unprofessional.
Citation needed fuckhead.
Compared to Obama or Biden? Don’t make me laugh.
Let us make it very clear what you are and what you support.
You support a proven liar. A man who has imprisoned many of his political opponents on facetious charges or at best for minor charges that do not warrant the inhumane conditions and length they have been kept to. You support a man who has lied about everything from the number of grandchildren he has to his involvement with his childrens’ business to the fact that it was his late wife (whom he cheated on) that was the drunk driver in the accident that killed her, not the other driver. A man who hounded that innocent driver TO DEATH to appear more sympathetic to a pliant press.
You defend an indefensibly corrupt, unethical, venal man whose egotism manages to outstrip Trump but with almost none of his positive accomplishments. You defend a man who has walked hand in glove with Obama and is working with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to midwife another abortion of an “Iran Deal.” A man respected so little by his nominal subordinates that Austin went into surgery without bothering to tell the man who the Constitution says is Commander in Chief (an odd parallel to Milley’s perfidy claiming he would notify the PRC of a nuclear strike under Trump’s Presidency). A man who even Obama scathingly noted would fuck up everything and who has been caught fondling children on camera in unseemly ways.
A man who has no great love for America and is happy to midwife its domestic enemies, including large scale indulgence of the Neo-Maoist scum carrying Stalinist icons called Antifascist Action as they engage in domestic terrorism.
You present no alternative to this monster wrapped in human skin or his partners in crime. You cannot even articulate honestly how Trump is worse than he is. You have Nothing Of Value To Contribute.
And how do you think that is happening, chowderhead? Friendly reminder about Obama’s Pen and Phone.
I am not surprised it is utterly baffling to someone who does not do research as you clearly do not, and whose logical and argumentative skills are so weak. And yet look around you. How has UK Conservatism fared with you? What is the last UK Conservative leader you have been proud of? Let us compare results and talk of things such as Brexit and Rotherham and the DISGUSTING abuses of your police, shall we?
I would thank you if I had any reason to believe you were sincere, though there is little you have written that does anything but stink of rank insincerity.
So as it is I will simply tell you that you need even more luck than we will. Unless of course you opt to join the “winning side” and sell what remains of your soul. Which seems fitting for someone prepared to carry water for Obama and Biden. After all, how much ink did you spill about a Scottish edgelord being persecuted more cruelly than the Literal Fucking Nazis Did for the crime of teaching a dog to give the Hitler Salute? How much did you complain about the Mayors of London and their endorsements of totalitarian terrorism?
You and your brand of faux-civility and demonization shall not be missed by me. And while it is a truism that we get the governments we deserve, let us hope that we prove to deserve better than that.
In any cases tend to your own country. It needs it even more than the U.S. does.
PS: Gaslighting the host that they can’t trust their own lying eyes is usually viewed as the very OPPOSITE of respect.
DCL: thanks for taking the trouble to comment here. Our cousins’ perspective is always interesting, even if we don’t agree. I see that Turtler has tried to translate Miguel’s point for you. Let me also take a crack at it. Miguel is saying that people who live in glass houses (the UK) shouldn’t throw stones (presume to criticize the United States from an assumed position of superior wisdom and sagacity).
Turtler alluded to the Rotherham grooming (rape) gangs; I’ll reference the murder and beheading of Drummer Rigby by Muslim terrorists on the streets of London. More recently, we could point to the mass marches through London and other (formerly?) British cities in support of Hamas, the intimidation of poppy-sellers in train stations and other venues, and the mobbing and desecration of the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day. Or the case of the man who was arrested for objecting on social media to the display of Palestinian flags on High Street. I understand that I could be arrested in the UK today merely for repeating or excerpting Winston Churchill’s passage about Islam from “The River War”–a great book that describes how England used to deal with jihadists.
We think you have a problem. To paraphrase the question that Michael Anton asked American conservatives in his famous 2016 essay on “The Flight 93 Election”: What exactly have British conservatives conserved?
P.S. We very much appreciate your newspapers in the UK running stories that the U.S. media won’t touch. Good show.
@Hubert I’d say you are too kind, honestly. I haven’t seen DCL do much beyond engage in character assassination, abuse, gaslighting, and dishonesty. Which is why I compare “Bertie” to the abusive partner who thinks that because he voices his actions in an even tone with superficially polite words he is God’s Finest Creature. The fact that they claim to have read Neo’s blog for so long and journey yet “respectfully” reject the sum total of her observations and implicitly call her delusional is galling for me.
I am not one for feigned politeness or faux civility. Especially not to an abuser who cannot even fully imitate either.
Also the fact that some Fleet Street papers and bloggers will carry stories the US Media won’t just makes his willful ignorance (and it IS Willful) of things like Obama, Biden, and co all the more galling and irritating. In any case, I have no reason to thank someone for engaging in what I believe to be manifestly poor faith and engaging in demonization of those they do not define as “Good Conservatives.” Especially without even having the dignity or spine to tell us what we should do instead to meet DCL’s vaunted “approval.”
(As if we are obliged to meet the approval of someone who is at least doing their level best to imitate a malignant narcissist in order to try and conserve and protect America, its freedoms, and its culture. Any more than people in history were obliged to await for a perfect or even half-decent figurehead in order to object to naked injustice.)
I certainly have no reason to give him credit for the good show shown on occasion by some UK papers.
DCL (non Bertie) once again demonstrates what a cloth-headed fool is like, with added stubbornness. Neo presents facts, and he “respectfully rejects what you say.”
In contrast to Bertie Wooster, DCL can’t admit or conceive that he is wrong. No Jeeves can save DCL. Does DCL have a moral compass or a good heart? A mystery; hatred of The Great Orange Whale does that to people.
miguel @ 1:15pm,
I’m a big fan of Joe Walsh (the guitarist). Life’s been good to him so far!
Turtler: I’m genuinely interested in DCL’s answer to my question, since he/she purports to be a conservative. Figured I’d be more likely to get an answer if I asked it in a civil way.
I’ve never succeeded in changing someone’s mind by yelling at or insulting them. Also, it takes a lot of energy and I’m lazy.
turtler –
(i) In 2012 Romney won ~61M votes, amounting to 47.2%, turnout was 58.6%.
(ii) In 2016, Trump won ~63M votes, amounting to 46.1%, turnout was 60.1%.
(iii) In 2020, Trump won ~74M votes, amounting to 46.8%, turnout was 66.6%.
That’s from Wikipedia, but as far as I know, those are the facts.
As near as I can tell, your argument is that Trump’s 2020 GOTV effort was successful because it netted him more votes than any previous Republican nominee, 13M more than Romney and nearly 12M more votes than he received in 2016. My argument is that Trump’s GOTV effort was unsuccessful because he lost the election and still won a smaller percentage of the vote than Romney in 2012.
I am not persuaded by your argument and you are not persuaded by mine. So be it. Frankly, reasonable minds can differ. I am genuinely mystified by your name-calling, crude language, and generally boorish behavior.
Can’t even imagine why Navarro would call the proceedings a kangaroo court or evidence of a two-tier system of justice.
Maybe he foresaw today’s $83.3 million dollar judgment against Donald Trump.
@Hubert
I am moderately curious too, but only so much. Ultimately asymmetrical politeness can only go so far x and while others have spoken about the right or left wing bubbles DCL seems firmly stuck in the latter. I disagree with Bauxite and others plenty, but they could identify the partisan and corrupting influence of the Jan 6th Committee plenty.
I can make no rebuttal to the second sentence and I commend. As for the former, I think that makes sense to a point. But in my admittedly partial and flawed experience it is important to be able to stand upright for one’s own stance or oneself. This doesn’t mean being a douche (even if some might be), but while people tend to respect willingness to hear from other sides and consider their points they tend not to respect weakness, and for many after a certain point even politeness is viewed as weakness. And even if it wasn’t I have no reason to conflate the achievements of some with those of others just for sharing the same nationality.
I certainly view Neo’s approach as close to an ideal, and I think the way DCL “responded” to her by brushing her points off is illustrative.
I wish you the best with it and maybe something good can come of it.
CC™ can’t fathom why when it comes to Donald J Trump some folks can see the CC™ game.
I made some UK references just to test him, he has a categorical error blingspot the size of the Sargasso sea, I do wonder what Englishmen really think of their current predicament, the apparat that andrew marr described in his dark comedy ‘head of state’ really reasserted itself, the premise is the remainders (all they are not called that in the novel) are so desperate to hold on to power, that the lack of a live prime minister, is not an obstacle, Marr is a skydragon worshiper but he does understand the other side, which made it amusing when Hillary tried to disabuse him of this notion,
now this notion that independence is a bad thing, seems to have permeated other media, like the RAI Sky TV production Devils based on a novel by an Italian master of the universe type, which purports to show financial manipulation, in many of the crisis of the late 00s and early 10s, sort of House of Cards from a mostly London perspective,
the series has a protagonist, Massimo a brilliant young Italian financier and Dominic Morgan, an American in the Gordon Gekko vein who operates as a kingmaker from his perch in a London based NY firm,
@Bauxite
Which is broadly similar to what I described. And ignores the key point I made. That the true measure of GOTV is Votes Gotten Out, namely proportion of voters moved to vote. Which makes the “share of vote” interesting at best, misleading at worst (in spite of how important it is in other respects such as deciding the vote).
2016 is when Trump’s GOTV was comparable to Rommey’s in success.
And a particularly large share of the registered voters
The problem is that your argument crashes and burns because that isn’t the metric of GOTV, even if GOTV is important for what happens there (whether it is in terms of turning voter participation or suppressing it – as our friends the doyens of Tammany Hall showed).
MAGA GOTV was decentralized, chaotic, and sometimes foot-shooty. But it churned out gigantic voter turnout in comparison to Romney (let alone McCain) and their much more rarified and expert driven one. Indeed it (“supposedly”) failed in 2020 because of even larger scale Democrat vote mobilization in an environment highly favorable to them (in part “thanks” to Trump, both in terms of repulsion but even more so in terms of his fence sitting on the lockdowns and mail in balloting), and which probably includes some as of yet undetermined and probably undeterminable amount of fraud in the margin.
Moreover, by the standards of your own argument both Trump and Romney’s GOTV efforts failed (or at least one of Trump’s two ones did) because they lost the election, and Romney was able to grasp a supposedly larger share of a supposedly smaller voter turnout. Which brings us back to the Vote Proportion as a measure of success for GOTV, and the pitfalls I pointed to before when using that.
Again you were asking where MAGA GOTV in comparison to GOPe GOTV. The answer by your own statistics is “Right there behind the even larger amount of Dem GOTV.”
And you were simply ignoring that. And when called on your ignoring MAGA GOTV efforts, you resorted to fudging
the statistics and elevating THE LEAST RELEVANT STATiSTIC OF THAT SET in terms of GOTV yields to being the dominant one.
Put in comparison, this would be a bit like measuring how productive a new oven or head chef is in baking buns by comparing the proportion of buns you baked to those of all the bakeries in your area. Even if the one next door used their much larger budget to buy a much more expansive set of machines, hire a celebrity baker, and get in more employees. To say nothing of rumors that they are in a corrupt deal with the local supermarket to sell “ghost” bread and split the proceeds as a form of insurance fraud.
When put in that context the flaws in your statistical argument appear for what they are. Flaws. And the argument is not merely a matter of opinion but objectively wrong.
I am not saying Trump is some kind of messiah whose GOTV campaigns were perfect. They obviously are not. Nor am I saying we have nothing to learn from ORCA. But GOTV is about vote number and voter participation, not share of the vote, in the same way that we’d compare a bakery of bread to its own performance before and after a hardware or personnel change before we compare it to the competitors.
Reasonable minds can differ.
Someone claiming “why is your oven malfunctioning?!?! Where is the chef?!?” while the oven worked fine and produced more bread in this fiscal quarter than before but it had a (supposed) lower proportion of overall bread baked in this neighborhood (as possibly explained by higher customer turnout, the competitors next door hiring a new head chief/more employers/fudging the numbers for fraud) is not a reasonable conclusion.
It is a fundamental butchering of the statistics and math that even my by-no-means-Einsteinian grasp of math could understand.
This is not a “difference of opinion”, this is you not comprehending basic reality, as I have tried to demonstrate by showing how you were complaining about where the MAGA oven was baking bread when it was in fact keeping pace with demand better than whatever Romney did and the slip is best explained by Dem production (whether or real or fraudulent Does Not Matter).
This is also a pretty basic fact that brings up the question of “Fool? Knave? Knavish Fool? Foolish Knave?” And the fact that you refused to even consider this clear point did you no favors.
So no, my conclusion you were lying and gaslighting on the issue was not “completely absurd.” Even if it was wrong (which I am let us say not prepared to conclude yet) it did point to you using terrible logic and math to try and beat the Orange Man Bad gong.
This is rich considering you have been far more guilty of it than I am, and added to by botched reasoning and remarkable callousness. You tried to elevate the GOPe and what you admit were its failures in GOTV at the means of hammering on the Great Orange Whale and took issue with me pointing it out, to the point where you refused to engage with it and were incredulous that anyone could disagree with your conclusion in spite of your conclusion being objectively, mathematically wrong.
You have also been acting like a holier than thou sorts who has barely even tried to understand why your fellow commenters or other Republicans might be open to supporting Trump while you are not, arguing simply that they are stuck in a right wing bubble while you, almost uniquely if we are to believe your comments, are not. This is in spite of this being Neo’s blog and she talking about left wing coverage in general.
You also then generally reject even well meaning critique and are prone to being boorish, insulting, prejudice, and illogical like many of those you accuse (sometimes accurately, sometimes inaccurately). In addition to often reiterating the left’s propaganda points even well after they have been torpedoed.
I do not claim to be all competent, which is why I refrain from commenting on this. I also am not above agreeing when others make a point I view as valid. And I will make my case as best as I can.
@Bauxite Part 2
To make this even simpler and to pay credence to what merits your issues with Trump’s GOTV or electoral performance MAY have…
There’s more to baking bread than raw numbers of loaves produced, and proportion of loaves produced relative to one’s business competitors/partners IS important. And you can complain losing proportion of loves baked to one’s opponent(s) indicates a problem, such as flawed business decisions (such as not campaigning in the right places or being polarizing and controversial as a politician) or not using the same resources and space as efficiently as possible (such as not making as effective or mechanized a GOTV Machine as possible). Maybe it’s backlash from an ad campaign promising the moon and the biggest, bestest cakes and loaves only for customers to get disillusioned with that (I am fairly sure you can imagine the logical parallel).
But it’s not fundamentally a problem with the ability to bake enough bread loaves.
Which is the equivalent of what you were saying.
As the statistics we put together show, MAGA GOTV wasn’t the problem. It performed quite well and generally far better than its predecessors, especially in terms of raw volume and Republican voter turnout. But the opposition apparently gained ground in overall proportion by dint of getting out more votes/baking more bread.
No, no he didn’t. Because the % of vote is based on Republican voters vs. Dem +other Voters.
Romney underperformed Trump in both elections both per capita and in absolute numbers. The difference is that the Dems got out even more votes (leaving aside the legitimacy of said votes).
That IS a legitimate issue. You might even argue it’s a more important problem.
But it’s a different one from GOTV. You were doing the equivalent of questioning if the chief or oven could bake loaves at all, not if they were keeping pace with the Dems. Which is also why I identified MAGA GOTV as not really the issue, especially in comparison to other problems. MAGA GOTV turned in more than enough loaves to keep pace with almost any Republican candidate’s track record in history, the bigger issue was Dem turnout.
Which is a separate issue from assuming the oven can’t bake at all. Maybe you want to hire a new, even better head baker (IF you can find them; the equivalent of replacing Trump). Maybe you want to study the ovens and kitchen to see if they are acting as effectively as possible with their time and materials (the old Fordism account of studying your org and seeing how it can approve). Or maybe you want to invest and buy new ovens, utensils, and so on (overhauling the GOTV org and buying new computers and stuff).
And all of those are worth investigating (and my opposition to the former is based on how it is often argued for illogically and using faulty premises). But they’re different from “Where is that Chef? Aren’t they baking loaves?” Being annoyed at that doesn’t make one a Trump Cultist. Nor does questioning if you can find a better head chef.
You got the math wrong and then took issue with me for pointing out the flaws with your methodology.