The Frankish Reich

I'll bite. Any classified docs prosecution had one critical hole: intent. Remember Hillary and James Comey's press conference about why he recommended against prosecuting her? He said that it was a case of carelessness - something that could (under the law) support a prosecution, but something that, under the totality of the circumstances, shouldn't be prosecuted. And up till now that was really Trump's best defense too. Thousands of classified documents flow into the White House, there's always confusion (in Trump's case, self-inflicted chaos) when one president leaves and another comes in, mistakes are made, etc. IF (as reported) the audio tapes contain some admission/understanding by Trump that he took (and held onto) an extremely sensitive classified doc about Iran, and IF they also (as reported) contain something on the order of "I wish I had declassified that while I was still President because I can't do that anymore now that I'm not," well, there goes the simple carelessness/negligence defense. He'd still be left with something legalistic like this: "The authority to classify and, in turn, declassify documents is inherent in the President's Article II authorities. By taking (or ordering that the documents be taken) out of the White House and into his personally held papers, the President necessarily declassified that document (and the information contained therein); the law does not require any specific action/declaration of declassification. Therefore, even though Trump expressed regret about not issuing a formal declassification memo at the time he was president, this is of no legal effect; as a matter of constitutional law, the declassification occurred when he took the document into his personal possession. To hold otherwise would violate the Article II clause the the full executive power is vested in the President." Note that this is what Trump was already briefed on by his lawyers - it's the origin of the "if I even think to declassify it, it's declassified" comment. Which is stupid on its face because, well, Trump is not the brightest bulb who ever illuminated the Oval Office. But it's stupid in that it's a corruption of the untested, but not laugh-you-out-of-the-courtroom theory that I just outlined above. If Smith recommends prosecution, and if Garland brings a prosecution, it's hard to imagine a federal trial court judge buying that argument. But an appeals court? The Supreme Court? Who knows. Separate and apart from that: how reckless can you be with national security? Is this the guy anyone should ever want back in the position of ultimate responsibility for the national security of Americans?

Arugula is not to be equated with the loathsome kale. It adds a nice peppery fresh note to many dishes.

Jokic is an acquired taste. You watch him over the course of a season or even a playoff series, and you see exactly how dominant he is. Jimmy Butler is just a winner, plain and simple. I'd never count his team out. Spoelstra will be a HOF coach. Malone is a breath of fresh air in this era of bland, say-nothing-quotable coaches. I'm looking forward to it. I know the NBA bosses and the pundit class just loves to talk Lebron/Stef/Celtics, but these are two really disciplined and complete teams. But then again, I'm a guy who watches replays of how well Jokic sets a screen ...

Absolutely. Policy-wise (and competent governance-wise), in recent history I'd probably best be described as residing somewhere in between a (Bill) Clinton Democrat and a Mitt Romney Republican. Competence-wise, I think we had a very fortunate two-decade run of successful administrations from 1981 (Reagan) through 2000 (Clinton), followed by two decades of The Great Ineptitude from Bush 43 through Biden (so far).

I still can't understand why: 1. If I want to limit federal government spending, I must also support legislation requiring a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. 2. If I want strong immigration enforcement, I must also accept that Putin should be allowed to prevail in his little "border dispute" with Ukraine. 3. If I want a lower overall tax burden on workers and corporations, I must also accept a weakened IRS that allows people and corporations more leeway to cheat. I could do a list of about 100. And yes, I could do the same with the Democrats and their equally inconsistent basket of policies. American politics is broken. I'm an optimist by nature, and I don't think these crazy coalitions that give us these politics will last forever. But they will last at least for at least one more presidential election cycle ...

Just wait till Hailee Steinfeld puts the rainbow trucker cap on Josh. Then maybe all the wingnuts will finally abandon the Bills too.

And I think we have the answer now!

I FIND TRUMP'S MESSAGE FAR MORE PERSUASIVE. DESANTIS DOESN'T SEEM TO KNOW HOW TO USE THE CAPS LOCK. BUT IT COULD USE A LARGER FONT AND SOME ADDITIONAL EXCLAMATION MARKS. PROBABLY SOME "UNNECESSARY" QUOTATION MARKS TOO.

The case for Biden is not all that compelling. OK, we got that. But one of the main criticisms of Biden is the one we see in these threads. He's old! Who is really running this country? And at least when compared to Trump, the answer is: someone with at least a modicum of sound judgement and policy experience. In other words, if he's a bit too hands-off, that's a feature, not a bug. With Trump, we had a chaotic administration. Remember "my generals?" All fired or departed in frustration. Including one who called his boss "an idiot." Remember Rex Tillerson, Exxon CEO turned Secretary of State? Departed, calling his boss "a moron." (If I remember correctly, the offensive old scale had "idiot" below "moron," so I guess that was actually praise. Relative praise.) Honestly, we can go on and on. Just awful, dysfunctional, chaos. If the Republican primaries somehow magically give me Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, well, then we'll have a real choice.

And what I'm saying is this: your personal experience doesn't matter. Neither does mine. Or anyone else's. We do not assess public health measures based on anecdote.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-25/flight-of-affluent-taxpayers-catches-up-with-new-york?sref=htOHjx5Y tl;dr Federal tax revenues up about 15% in the last couple years. NY State tax revenues down 17% People do vote with their feet. (Not sure if this belongs here or in one of the NYS threads, but there was some discussion here about New Yorkers leaving for Florida ...)

Anecdata rules!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wagner-chiefs-feud-with-russian-military-cracks-putins-image-of-control-488ac37 This is a dangerous time for Putin, and a dangerous time for the world. Given the ineptitude and lack of morale in the regular Russian military, Putin outsourced the hard work to a thoroughly corrupt mercenary group, Wagner. He's created a monster that he can't control now. Is Prigozhin gunning for his job as dictator of Russia? Or just trying to make Putin his puppet? It doesn't seem to be a feud orchestrated for foreign observers since there would be no apparent benefit to Putin by exposing him as weak and ineffective. And what does Prigozhin think the remedy is? About 4 years of a North Korea style dictatorship. Can't make this crap up. The attack on Ukraine has accomplished two things: - it has revealed (just like the events of the collapse of the Soviet Union 32 years ago) how dysfunctional the Russian state really is, including their much-feared military prowess. Finland, Poland, the Baltics: all of them may rest assured that the chances of being overrun by Russian land forces are basically nil. - it has also revealed that Putin's stranglehold on Russian institutions may not be as strong as we thought. That's paradoxically dangerous in the short term: he could be willing to escalate with nuclear weapons in a desperate attempt to hold onto power, or some even more corrupt and insane Prigozhin type could either take over or begin to exert political as well as military power.

Demanding a trade to the Rams in 3, 2, 1 ...

Hey, they're called optional OTAs, and Dion decided to come even though he'd be showing off his bad offseason body. He doesn't have a history of being a Marcel Dareus or Kelvin Benjamin. Again, it's May, and I have no reason to doubt he'll be in good football shape in 100 days.

Yep, PFF loves Damien. They had him rated in the high 80s (that's pro bowl caliber) and even 90 ("elite") in a couple seasons. They like Singletary, but more as a mid-70s guy (kind of generic NFL starter quality). As for PFF, I've said it before: yes, take it with a boulder of salt. But Beane's free agent acquisitions have always gone in one direction: dumping a PFF lower-rated player in favor of a PFF higher-rated one. So either the Bills' internal scouting is sympatico with PFF, or they're using PFF analysis themselves. Sometimes it doesn't work so well (was Saffold an upgrade over anyone last year?), but the pattern is there.

Agreed. To his credit, flat-out lying doesn't come naturally to him, which puts him at a disadvantage. If you go back to his initial congressional campaigns, he really wasn't distinguishable from, say, Marco Rubio policy-wise; not as far to the conservative side as Cruz, but with some elements of that too. Which is probably an advantage in a general election, but first you gotta make it through the primaries, and that will be a challenge.

We don't really need another DeSantis topic. But since we have one ... ... his problem, the entire Republican Party's problem, is Trump. He's allowed Trump (and his amibition) to push him into positions that make him a far less appealing candidate on the national stage. Trolling the libs gets you attention in the new Republican echo chamber. It doesn't help you win the states you'd need to win to actually become President. I like the resume. I think he's smart. I don't mind that he isn't a glad-hander -- we've had a few of those recently (Bush 43, Trump, Biden), and I don't see any of them going down in history as great Presidents. I'm fine with a more introverted, cerebral candidate. But I'm not sure that a more introverted, cerebral candidate pretending to be something he's not is electable.

Except that season when he came in too skinny after COVID. This is what OTAs and training camp are for. I suspect he'll be in good LT shape by the second weekend in September.

My favorite was when the newly-minted Antonin Scalia School of Law (ASSOL) finally said that acronym out loud.

And it's not like Trump is in his prime. Remember: - Maybe we can put the light inside you to kill the COVID virus - Identifying his accuser as his ex-wife, Marla, when shown a photo in his deposition - Saying things as absolutely delusional as "Beau died in Iraq" like this: COLLINS: Well, we wanted to give you a chance to acknowledge the results. TRUMP: We have elections that were horrible. If you look at what happened in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, if you look at what happened in Detroit, Michigan, if you look at what happened in Atlanta, millions of votes, and all you have to do is take a look at government cameras. You will see them, people going to 28 different voting booths to vote, to put in seven ballots apiece. I mean, and they’re all on camera. There is absolutely no support for this "people going to 28 different voting booths to vote" thing. It is a figment of his imagination. People tend to give Trump too much credit here: "he's lying, because if you repeat a lie enough times, people will believe it." Or my favorite excuse: it might not be literally true (there is no government camera video of someone visiting 28 different voting booths), but it is true in a general sense that some people probably voted multiple times. This is the old line "take him seriously but not literally." Or it could be that America's King Lear really has lost it, and really has convinced himself that he's seen video showing someone go to 28 different polling stations and submitted 7 ballots at each one. You could apply those excuses to Biden too - there's probably a lot of Democratic voters who think Beau died in Iraq because he's said it, with such apparent emotion, so many times. Both senile? Both cunning liars? Both ... both of the above?

Don't be so sure. I was a "hold my nose and vote for Biden" guy in 2020, so there's no enthusiasm there. I would never, ever vote for Trump. The whole January 6 ploy - not just the raid on the Capitol, but the whole cynical ploy to essentially ignore the certified electoral college votes and throw things back to the states - was indefensible. It was dangerous, it came close to working (Mike Pence saved us?), and it would have forever destroyed the American tradition of the peaceful, orderly transfer of power. I have no idea what would have happened if it had worked, but it could certainly have resulted in a real fracturing of the United States. This is not something to play with. It is something I honor. DeSantis would have to tack hard to the center in a general election to win my trust. Before he got started on the whole trolling the libs thing, my impression of him was generally favorable. Trump is in his head now, and he's got to get back to the guy he used to be.

So ... to be serious for a bit. Here's the case I see (as a guy who has voted for Republicans in Presidential elections) for DeSantis. A little free political consultant advice (and I predict he WILL do this before too long, after firing his current campaign leaders). - he's young. Trump is old, Biden is older. So accentuate that. Have him doing active things. Not riding a golf cart. Doing whatever it is he does. He played baseball, right? Get him out there with kids playing baseball or something. He's lost weight. He'd look remarkably young and fit compared to his ancient competitors. Whatever. Not Twitter audio only. That actually negates his strengths. It didn't work for technical reasons, but it was a stupid thing to do anyway because it doesn't play to his strengths. - his wife is attractive, media savvy. The kids are cute. Play the old JFK card. Your family humanizes you (since you are often ridiculed as a kind of Republican Al Gore, too robotic to make personal connections). Relaunch the campaign with the family onstage. Don't use them to troll (that horrible ad with the kid building a wall out of blocks), use them to humanize. Your kids aren't Hunter and Don Jr. getting sloppy seconds with Gavin Newsom's monstrous ex. They are ... likable. - that whole trolling Disney, scooping up migrants in someone else's state and moving them north at Florida expense ... yeah, that's reacting to Trump, trying to outflank him on the outrageous meter. You will never win a fight with Trump by trying to be more outrageous than him. You have a success story to tell with Florida. All that stuff may be fun, but it detracts from telling your story. Stick to it. - Play up the military background. Trump likes to act like a tough guy. We know he didn't serve. You did. Admirably. As a JAG officer assigned to some very sensitive national security work. You wouldn't be so cavalier with our nation's security. Play that up. Always and everywhere. You are also smart. There's a weird anti-intellectualism in the Republican Party now, or at least you've been convinced that there is. I'm guessing most people would prefer that the President be smart. Trump is a marketing genius, but he's not smart. Biden has always been ... challenged, and now he's really old. Don't dumb things down. Play to your strengths. So far DeSantis is all reaction, no action. Put Trump on the defensive. Give me a reason to vote FOR you, not just against Trump. Don't be the NFL coach who's so worried about game planning to negate your opponent's strength that you forget to focus on your own strengths. You're welcome, Ronnie.

There's about a dozen Republican would-be presidents (Cruz, Rubio, Walker, Christie, Carson, Pence .... we can go on and on) who learned the hard way: not hitting back at Trump is the surest path to irrelevance. DeSantis needs to grow a pair. Right now the only case he's making for himself is "I'm Trump Jr." There's already a Trump Jr. He's smart, he has a pretty appealing resume (at least in the abstract, until he turned himself into the Troll of the Everglades), he shouldn't be so frightened.

I agree. This one is just weird. He's convinced himself that Iraq burn pits caused his son's death, so much so that he states it like Bible truth. A combination of old age and heartbreak.