B-Man

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin leaves Democratic Party, registers as independent https://www.foxnews.com/politics/west-virginia-sen-joe-manchin-leaves-democratic-party-registers-independent What will this mean for Chuckie's rest of the year in the senate ?

NY Magazine: Trump Prosecutors Contorted the Law JOHN SEXTON Over at New York Magazine, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig has a piece which attempts to be down the middle on the Trump conviction. On the one hand, Honig offers respect to the jury who he says did their job. On the other hand, he points out that there remain a lot of problems with this case, any one of which might be grounds for it to be overturned on appeal. Honig also mentions DA Bragg's decision to run for office based partly on his anti-Trump record. But his main issue with the case is the completely novel and unique legal approach which turned what were a bunch of misdemeanor business records charges that were already past the statue of limitations into 34 felony charges. That was a magic trick performed solely because the defendant was Trump. https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2024/05/31/ny-magazine-trump-prosecutors-contorted-the-law-n3789389 https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-but-prosecutors-contorted-the-law.html?utm_campaign=intel&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1 .

Political consultant Ken Mehlman’s latest weekly update includes this chart, which has got to be adding to Democrats’ panic over Joe Biden:

Tim Scott Levels CNN Anchor for Deceptively Misquoting Trump After 'Hush Money' Conviction Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) made a CNN anchor look foolish during a segment discussing comments regarding a jury’s decision to convict former President Donald Trump in the “Hush Money” trial. During the conversation, host Abby Phillip deceptively claimed that, if elected, Trump would use his position to seek revenge against his enemies. https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/05/31/tim-scott-levels-cnn-anchor-for-deceptively-misquoting-trump-after-hush-money-conviction-n2174903

IMPLICATIONS OF CONVICTION The trial of Donald Trump on jerry-rigged charges produced the foreordained outcome. Trump was found guilty by a Manhattan jury of 34 felony charges. It couldn’t have been otherwise. This was a show trial. It would have been more efficient — it would have saved a day or two in show time — if Judge Merchan had simply directed a verdict of guilt and sent the jury home when the parties’ rested. It would not have been more unconstitutional than having the jury pick from Column A, Column B, or Column C for the “other crime” that was vital to the case. Instead Merchan let the prosecution run wild. He constrained the defense. He all but stripped Trump’s defense to the charge of federal election misconduct to which Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty. He gagged the defendant. He excluded evidence that might have helped the defendant, say with respect to the allegation of misconduct under federal election law. He crafted jury instructions that adopted the show-trial theory of the case. And the jury performed predictably under the circumstances. In this case its role was ministerial. The guilty verdict on each of the 34 charges was for show. {snip} The Democrats are guilty of every sin they attribute to Trump. Election interference — this is how it’s now to be done, with a strong dose of humiliation, a patina of legality, and the threat of incarceration. The threat produces an erotic effect on the Democrats and their media allies, but that is not the point. The point is to take down a political adversary. The point is the electoral effect — the point is political. The Democrats lack confidence in their ability to defeat Trump at the polls. The point of the rigged trial is the rigged election, and not in the “who’s voting” or “who’s counting the votes” departments, although there is that too. The intended audience of the show trial is the few voters who occupy the middle of the road and could go either way in November. If they move them to one or two or three percent to Biden, as seems plausible and even likely, that is the point. This is the Democrats’ objective in the medium term. Intelligent readers can draw a straight line to infer the long-term objective. Every metaphor descriptive of what is happening here falls short of the moment. “Crossing the Rubicon,” “sowing the wind,” and so on, have a remote and clichéd quality that fails to capture what the Democrats have done. In political terms, one might think of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. But that is too remote as well. One has the sense that Democrats do not fully grasp what they have done. If the Democrats’ show-trial moves only enough voters to swing the election to Biden — a not implausible outcome that is what the case is all about — how can the outcome be acceptable to the many who understand what the Democrats have done. The show-trial bears seeds of alienation, discord, turnabout, and violence. That is the point buried in the clichéd metaphors. That is the implication of the conviction rendered in the show-trial. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/implications-of-conviction.php

Fighting back Examples of courage, decency and sanity at a time of madness MELANIE PHILLIPS At this terrible time for the Jewish people, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer weight of unreason and hatred and to feel that the entire world is against us. Well, it’s not. There are countless numbers of good people who are appalled by the onslaught within the west against Israel and the Jews. And there are Jews and others who are fighting back for decency and sanity. Here are a few examples. Just over a week ago, the Phoenix cinema in London screened a film about the massacre at the Supernova music festival during the October 7 Hamas-led pogrom in Israel, when hundreds of young music fans were mown down as they ran from the gunmen. A pro-Hamas mob naturally besieged the cinema in an attempt to stop the screening. But on this occasion, they didn’t have it their own way. The Israel supporters fought back and refused to allow them to control the streets. https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/fighting-back

https://www.twobillsdrive.com/community/topic/107762-if-you-had-john-edwards-sex-tape/#comment-9082714 Billstime bumping a 14 year old thread, just to help him jerk - off better. Banning is the best solution. .

Now Is Not the Time to Be Centrist By Brandon Morse What happened to Donald Trump in New York was wrong. There is no way around that fact. The idea that a political party can weaponize our justice system and prosecute a citizen who is politically inconvenient to them is the stuff of dictatorial governments. We used to look down out noses at those countries for their backward thinking. And yet, here we are. The Democrat just did it to Trump in order to either halt or complicate his road to the White House in 2024. This isn't a small thing. If a political party can weaponize the justice system in order to protect its own interests and political power, then we've lost the Republic. There is no justice system, just an enforcement arm of the Democrat Party. This is a very big deal and yet, so many people on the Republican side of the aisle can't seem to wrap their heads around what just happened. On Thursday night, I wrote about how Asa Hutchinson and Larry Hogan both urged the same thing, to accept the verdict whether we like it or not. I want to reiterate something I said during the Hutchinson article. Now is not the time for centrism. Now is not the time to play the role of nice, calm Republican. Acceptance of this verdict isn't respecting the rule of law. This court was a sham. The judge, the prosecution, and the case itself are all radical leftist creations hell bent on destroying a political opponent through lawfare and a weaponized justice system. This was rigged from the beginning. Nothing about this has anything to do with the rule of law as it should be in America. It might have taken place in America, and in an American courtroom, but what happened in that courtroom is far from being anything American. The only thing this verdict or this trial is worthy of is condemnation and reprisal. Republicans should be gearing up to bring Democrats to court left and right in order help them understand that playing with fire results in painful burns. https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2024/05/31/now-is-not-the-time-to-be-centrist-n2174898

Donald Trump Was Found Guilty, and Not a Single Mind Has Been Changed By Joe Cunningham I am not exactly breaking news here. Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of... business fraud? Paying off a porn star? Having an affair? We're still not quite sure. Even some legal experts are dumbfounded. There's a claim of fraud, but the only person who seems to have been defrauded was Trump when his lawyer, Michael Cohen, stole tens of thousands of dollars from one of his businesses. Donald Trump had a scumbag for a lawyer and had an affair with a porn star. Congratulations, you convicted Donald Trump of being everything we knew he was personally - a privileged rich guy with poor judgment. Those are a dime a dozen in New York, much less across the rest of the country. But Trump's real crime was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the Democrats will never let that go. Since he won the GOP nomination in 2016, they have tried to put him in prison. Now, eight years later, they got him. Will it impact anything? Hard to tell. Nothing new was really learned from all this, except that you can now buy Trump prison merchandise from both sides of the aisle. I don't want to be too flippant, it's just exhausting. We've seen the poll numbers on whether a conviction will impact how people vote. It's basically a wash. The most recent polling shows nearly an equal number of people are more likely to vote for Trump or Biden based on a conviction, while two-thirds of American voters' decision remains unchanged. If you are more likely to vote for Trump despite the outcome, you were probably going to vote for Trump anyway. If you were more likely to vote for Biden because of the conviction, you were already highly likely to vote for him anyway. I do not think there are many undecided voters at this point. I think there are a lot of people who are going to wash their hands of this foolishness and stay home. I think Trump supporters are more motivated to donate and go out and vote, and I think Biden supporters are more motivated to scream about the polls being wrong when Trump gets a bump from this. https://redstate.com/joesquire/2024/05/31/donald-trump-was-found-guilty-and-not-a-single-mind-has-been-changed-n2174897

"Many global heads of state of democratic countries (France, Japan, Israel, etc.) have gone to prison.... The incongruity of the Manhattan case as the venue for Trump’s legal humiliation is that it did not represent his worst crimes, or close to it. The case was always marginal, the kind of charge you would never bring against a regular first-time offender. It was the sort of charge you’d concoct if the target is a bad guy and you want to nail him for something. This, too, is not without precedent. Al Capone’s conviction for tax evasion is the paradigmatic example.... The legal ramifications of this weakness will play out in some indeterminate, possibly terrible fashion.... Life isn’t fair, nor is the legal system...." Writes Jonathan Chait, in "Trump’s Conviction Means Less Than You Might Think/A lot depends on what happens next" (NY Magazine). Possibly terrible.... It's obviously terrible. It's only a question of which form of terribleness lies ahead. So Chait is openly saying the the legal system isn't fair and Trump was convicted for being "a bad guy." You want us non-haters to just accept that, as if it's a form of world-weary sophistication? No, you will have to bear the weight of the consequences of persecuting a political opponent. You should not get off easy. Posted by Ann Althouse https://althouse.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-conviction-of-former-president-is.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trumps-felony-conviction-means-less-than-you-might-think.html

Manhattan Jury Finds Former President Guilty in Bookkeeping Case by Victoria Taft Donald Trump was found guilty today of 34 counts of falsifying bookkeeping records. There was already little doubt when this trial began on April 15, 2024, with jury selection that this collection of Manhattanites would find Donald Trump guilty. Manhattan voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. As the trial dragged on for weeks, keeping the 2024 GOP candidate on the sidelines, it became crystal clear that Judge Juan Merchan was the prosecution's plus-one to this party. Merchan was all-in on the prosecution's confusing, Jenga-like legal theory of the case and did all he could to hold up the rickety superstructure https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/05/30/verdict-in-trump-case-n4929403

Our Revolutionary Times COMMENTARY By Victor Davis Hanson Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies. Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization. Since the 1960s, universities have always been hotbeds of left-wing protests, sometimes violently so. But the post-October 7 campus eruptions marked a watershed difference. Masked left-wing protesters were unashamedly and virulently antisemitic. Students on elite campuses especially showed contempt for both middle-class police officers tasked with preventing their violence and vandalism as well as the maintenance workers who had to clean up their garbage. Mobs took over buildings, assaulted Jewish students, called for the destruction of Israel, and defaced American monuments and commentaries. When pressed by journalists to explain their protests, most students knew nothing of the politics or geography of Palestine, for which they were protesting. The public concluded that the more elite the campus, the more ignorant, arrogant, and hateful the students seemed. The Biden administration destroyed the southern border. Ten million illegal aliens swarmed into the U.S. without audit. Almost daily, news accounts detail violent acts committed by illegal aliens or their surreal demands for more free lodging and support. {snip} Americans are also reappraising their attitudes toward time-honored bureaucracies, the courts, and government agencies. The public still cannot digest the truth that the once respected FBI partnered with social media to suppress news stories, to surveil parents at school board meetings, and to conduct performance art swat raids on the homes of supposed political opponents. After the attempts of the Department of Justice to go easy on the miscreant Hunter Biden but to hound ex-president Donald Trump for supposedly removing files illegally in the same fashion as current President Joe Biden, the public lost confidence not just in Attorney General Merrick Garland but in American jurisprudence itself. The shenanigans of prosecutors like Fani Willis, Letitia James, and Alvin Bragg, along with overtly biased judges like Juan Merchant and Arthur Engoron, only reinforced the reality that the American legal system has descended into third-world-like tit-for-tat vendettas. Finally, we are witnessing a radical inversion in our two political parties. The old populist Democratic Party that championed lunch-bucket workers has turned into a shrill union of the very rich and subsidized poor. Its support of open borders, illegal immigration, the war on fossil fuels, transgenderism, critical legal and race theories, and the woke agenda are causing the party to lose support. The Republican Party is likewise rebranding itself from a once-stereotyped brand of aristocratic and corporate grandees to one anchored in the middle class. Even more radically, the new populist Republicans are beginning to appeal to voters on shared class and cultural concerns rather than on racial and tribal interests. The results of all these revolutions will shake up the U.S. for decades to come. More at the link: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/05/31/our_revolutionary_times_151029.html .

Wrong thread Goose You just proved this one. The Iron Law Of Dem/Woke/Commie Projection: Accuse Your Opponent Of What You Are Doing https://www.twobillsdrive.com/community/topic/253011-the-iron-law-of-demwokecommie-projection-accuse-your-opponent-of-what-you-are-doing/page/8/#comment-9082425

Well, well, what do you know. ‘The Apprentice’ Producer Bill Pruitt Admits He Can Never Prove Donald Trump N-Word Tape Exists by Kristina Wong Bill Pruitt, one of several producers of the 90s reality TV show The Apprentice, which starred Donald Trump, admitted in an essay, published Thursday, that show tapes that allegedly captured Trump using the n-word would “never be found.” Pruitt, in his essay — which the far-left news and commentary website Slate.com published — regurgitated his nearly decade-old allegation that Trump used the n-word about a black contestant in a discussion with producers that was taped. Not only did Pruitt acknowledge that his entire account of what Trump and others said was “not verbatim,” he admitted without any explanation that he has come to believe the alleged tapes of Trump using the n-word would “never be found.” https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/05/30/the-apprentice-producer-bill-pruitt-admits-he-can-never-prove-donald-trump-n-word-tape-exists/ He's a liar, but the lemmings here swallowed it happily. .

.

.