The Frankish Reich

Nothing quite on the order of suspending the constitutionally mandated presidential succession model based on ... what? Unsupported allegations of (now refuted allegations) of election machine tampering? Unsupported allegations of voter fraud sufficient to change the results in one or more states? What if the Biden Administration were to run with this? Let's say they lose in the electoral college in 2024 but claim that various states suppressed the vote. Martial law! We'll need to have the military run America (who elected them?) until we sort this out. And who will "sort this out?" Why, that would be me, the "interim president." This - along with the diabolical fake electors scheme - was so far beyond the pale that either Republican supporters are simply ignoring the magnitude of the issue (but Hillary!) or they actually think martial law would be a good thing. Sometimes its hard to tell these days.

Flynn's conviction/pardon isn't such a big deal. What is a big deal: his open support for the idea of declaring martial law to keep Trump in the White House. Nobody - Nixon, Clinton/Gore (the contested election of 2000), Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War - nobody ever suggested such a thing before. It should absolutely disqualify him from any sort of public life, "convicted" or not.

The title here almost gave me a cardiac event - when I read it quickly I thought Damar needed CPR again ...

Oh, Trump had the right to pardon Flynn all right. Questions about pardons are legitimate, particularly when the pardon bypasses the normal bureaucratic process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy

Taking a step back here ... ... does child sex trafficking happen? Of course it does. Is it commonplace or a pervasive problem? No. A lot of what is dubbed "trafficking" is really just plain old "smuggling." The difference in law: "Smuggling" typically describes people being moved across borders because they want to be moved across borders. This is 99.9 (probably 99.999) percent of what we see. "Trafficking" involves taking a person across borders against their will, or then holding them after crossing in captivity for an illicit purpose. We saw a few things that would count as "trafficking" in the recent immigration waves, such as children being brought from Guatemala and then put to work cleaning meat packing plants. Occasionally there's sex trafficking too, but in my experience it is rare. I have dealt with the fallout of more raids on Thai massage parlors than I care to think of ("let's do a sting on the massage parlors" is always at the top of an investigator's list for some reason). After those raids the workers are always interviewed in that kind of "woke" way: "is someone telling you you have to do this? Do you feel free to leave if you want to?). And I have yet to see anyone say "i told them I want out and they threatened me and made me stay." Instead, it's always been "I'm here because I'm making more money than I could doing anything else." So a certain degree of skepticism is in order. EDIT: SF drug trafficking organizations use illegal Hondurans, many under 18, as street level dealers. The old DA wouldn’t prosecute them - theyre “trafficke” and forced into this! Thar just doesn’t fit the facts: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/san-francisco-drug-trade-honduras/ “Of the 25 dealers interviewed, most said they were not trafficked or were unaware of anyone being forced to sell drugs.”

What we will never know: did Flynn plead guilty and promise other things (not implicating Trump? First son in law Jared?) in exchange for a promised pardon? Note that Flynn also "forgot" to disclose that he was lobbying for the government of Turkey prior to his appointment to the tune of about half a million dollars - he filed the paperwork after his appointment. Ann all-around creep and grifter who has somehow - the only way I can think of is by pandering to the Q Anons - become a cause celebre for the nutcase fringe right.

I don’t think you understand what “entrapment” means in US law. Flynn had ALREADY LIED in January 2017 to Pence and Sean Spicer, claiming his calls to the Russian ambassador had nothing to do with sanctions. Trump himself tweeted that he fired Flynn for that reason. He did it again to federal investigators. Here’s a handy timeline: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna720671

Some weird Q Anon blogger: but they made Mike Flynn lie! Did they make him lie to Mike Pence too? Simple solution: tell the truth; it’s easier to remember.

All yesterday’s news. So … is the Persecution of Mike Flynn (or the Persecution Complex of Mike Flynn) responsible for making him the nut he is today? He used to be a serious person; now he’s calling for martial law. I don’t want him anywhere near the levers of power again.

Well that's a leap. Point taken on the prosecution. But in your search for the larger context, you miss the largest context - the context that this discussion is about. 1. Flynn lied. He lied to investigators. He also liked to the VP, which is why Trump fired him: https://www.vox.com/2017/12/2/16727988/trump-michael-flynn-fbi-lies-obstruction 2. Yes, the Government moved to dismiss in 2020. More accurately: the Trump/Barr Government moved to dismiss. Which was so bizarre that the judge ordered special briefings on exactly what was going on here: https://www.vox.com/2017/12/2/16727988/trump-michael-flynn-fbi-lies-obstruction Which one was politicized, the prosecution or the dismissal (and then pardon)? Maybe the answer is "both." That's in the eye of the beholder. But the fact remains: liar. Proven liar. And nutjob.

Christie: 1. Doesn't stand a chance. 2. Was an effective governor or what (at the time) looked like a pretty ungovernable state. How exactly he got tax reform through the Democratic machine there is kind of a miracle. 3. Did himself in with his mafia-style political retribution tactics. Maybe that's how he got (2) done after all. 4. Is at least not afraid of Trump, but in the way that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. 5. Really needs to get on the debate stage, but if he does, expect Trump to say "I'm out." I remember a time (2014?) when The Fat Man was the Republican frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. Seems like eons ago.

He did plead guilty, and here "Tracy Beanz" brushes that aside with a "well, we all know that the false statements charge is one often used for purposes other than intended." (?) And, of course, Trump fired Flynn, who is now suing for Flynndication, which will no doubt reveal all sorts of other Flynndiocy. Oh, and consider his defender here, Q Anon fellow traveler "Tracy Beanz" (Diaz): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531 Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the “anon” genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz’s blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News. “A bunch of us decided that the message needed to go wider so we contacted Youtubers who had been commenting on the Q drops,” Furber said in an email. Diaz, a small-time YouTube star who once hosted a talk show on the fringe right-wing network Liberty Movement Radio, had found moderate popularity with a couple of thousand views for her YouTube videos analyzing WikiLeaks releases and discussing the "pizzagate" conspiracy, a baseless theory that alleged a child sex ring was being run out of a Washington pizza shop. As Diaz tells it in a blog post detailing her role in the early days of Qanon, she banded together with the two moderators. Their goal, according to Diaz, was to build a following for Qanon — which would mean bigger followings for them as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/children-sex-trafficking-conspiracy-epidemic/620845/

Technical point, but: He pleaded guilty. Not an "Alford plea" of no contest without an admission of guilt. So yes, it is correct that he admitted guilt before a judge.

Spanky McFapfap say what?

5:12

I try to ignore you. Believe me, I try! But I just can't. You harass me in my dreams.

Groomer. https://rockcelebrities.net/the-story-of-ted-nugents-underage-girlfriend-pele-massa/

A rare moment of agreement. DeSantis, however, is like the GM with a single-minded focus on beating the Chiefs, only to wind up with a roster that matches up really poorly with the Eagles in the Super Bowl. I know the common wisdom is you run to the extreme in the primaries and then tack back hard to the middle in the general, but there's extreme and then there's too extreme ... Trump has warped the Republican Party to such an extent that it will only come back to its roots after he's vanquished once and for all.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66113460 Misinformation, disinformation, whatever you want to call it, it's happening. And a lot of people eat it up without taking even a few minutes to see if it all adds up.

He is going to deny entry of all "communists and markers" to our cunny. Oh, and he's for ethanol mandates, and apparently Ron DeSanctus (?) hates Iowa methanol. Can't wait for the modern-day Lincoln-Douglas debates between Joey and Donny. We can't do better? Seriously discussing invoking martial law in a brazen attempt to stay in office is just a tiny bit different, isn't it?

He may try to grab 'em by it, but I think these days he's the one being denied access to the cunny.

I'm quite sure Elon will allow you to post that. Elon will just work with the CCP to make sure no on in CHINA can read that. Oh, and perhaps help them to track down whether you are a Chinese student in America posting treasonous opinions. Other than that, he's an absolutist!

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/elon-musks-absurd-socialist-pledge/ Thank God he's just agreeing to the CPC socialist pledge and not hiring Dylan Mulvaney as a Tesla test driver. If he did that we'd have to boycott him.

Think for a moment about the ridiculous hot-takism of your first response. It was the typical right wing Twitter monkey response: "Ooh, the Biden Administration talks a good game about complying with our treaty obligations, but they're HYPOCRITES! They are selling Ukraine cluster bombs which are outlawed by a treaty." Then, when informed that the article clearly says that the United States is not a party to that treaty, the response becomes "Ooh, look at you libs, coordinating your canned responses to my obviously ignorant take." You know what? I don't coordinate anything. At least two people here apparently have a skill called "reading comprehension" so they arrive at the same result. That is that nature of Twitter discourse today. And so the real story is: NYT (a center left publication) says that although the USA is not a party to the treaty banning cluster bombs, many other countries are. International human rights activists think the USA should follow the spirit of the treaty even though we're not a party. The Biden Administration rejects that idea; we won't be bound by a treaty we didn't sign. It's a Biden "American sovereignty" position, which the right typically thinks is the correct position - we won't let other countries dictate our policies. But because it's Biden, it must be bad. Or something.