It was so nice to see you at the meditation dear Bluebelle.
I get hungry every time someone mentions the onion dip. ? The funny thing about onion dip and potato chips with bubbly is since I was a child, my parents would let us stay up till midnight on New Year's Eve and we'd watch the festivities on TV. My mother would make Lipton Onion dip and serve it with Wise potato chips and Andre champagne (yuk I would never drink that swill now though lol). That was a "big" deal to us back then because she'd let us have a little in a real champagne glass too. When I met my husband he told me his parents did the exact same thing at New Year's Eve too. So now we do the same thing (with a good bottle of prosecco).
The onion dip is still our favorite and brings back the best of memories for me, but unfortunately I think I overdid it during Christmas and New Year's this year with the onion dip due to my dairy sensitivities ( ? ).
Just musing on how the title of this thread is so apt. We are watching “The Great Unraveling” in real time. I hadn’t imagined that the business world would be a huge part of the unraveling. Everything is coming crashing down. “And great was the fall of it.”
But.
This is a person who has come back every time from abject failure. I hope this time it holds.
@jeanne-mayell there was also a prediction of Trump reaching out to his followers and his followers trying to reach out to him but they couldn't connect. I'll try to look for it.
@jewels The meaning of a symbol, in this case crows, is not static or absolute. It is subjective and varies. To Elaine, crows are bad. To @walden-ponderer crows are good.
Just to clarify, crows themselves are generally good, as a sign of a healthy microclimate, but crows as symbols are just like any other symbol -- their moral weight depends entirely on the message they are being used to convey. They are no more good or bad than the letter "T". If it stands for "Truth" it has one value; if it stands for "Trump" it has an entirely different character.
@jeanne-mayell there was also a prediction of Trump reaching out to his followers and his followers trying to reach out to him but they couldn't connect. I'll try to look for it.
Thank you!
- I see Trump in a pit, like a small stadium, his supporters stretching their arms down to him. His arm is stretched up towards them with a candle, trying to keep his following alive. (Jeanne Mayell). Predicted 9.30.20 for January 2021
@journeywithme2, I read that yesterday Pompeo tweeted several posts on his official government account suggesting that T should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting Arab-Israeli peace.
There are reports that the pardon list has been created and that it is very long and Rudy is on it.
That is going to be the next big media fixation, the releasing of the Pardon List.
Which brings us to these pressing questions:
-Will pardoned people face charges IF they were not charged with anything before the pardon was given?
-Can he pardon himself?
-Can he pardon family members?
-Can a pardoned person take the 5th at a state trial?
-Who is NOT on the list that will surprise us?
-Who IS on the list that surprises us?
-Does he have to specify what the pardon is actually for before it can count?
-Will a new law be created about presidential pardons?
-What late night program will have the best sketch about pardons?
Speaking of pardons, I read earlier that Comey has suggested pardoning Twitler if he's prosecuted. Infuriating!! Throwing around that allow the nation to heal crap. You know what will make this country heal? Putting every single person who betrayed her in prison.
After his last-minute bs letter that threw the election to Twitler, his opinion is as worthless as boobs on a bat.
-Will pardoned people face charges IF they were not charged with anything before the pardon was given?
That depends. First, pardons only extend to federal crimes, so they would still be on the hook for any legitimate state-level offenses. Second, Ford's famous pardon of Nixon included this bit:
[I have] granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.
He even said earlier in the pardon proclamation that Nixon had "become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States." Not that he had been formally indicted or was even under investigation, but that he had become liable to it. In other words, he was being pardoned in advance of any attempt to fully investigate or indict any of those possible crimes. However, the pardon is specifically limited to the period of his term of office, so anything he did before or after those dates was not covered and would have been fair game.
-Can he pardon himself?
-Can he pardon family members?
As for himself, it's an open question because it's never been tried, but the general consensus is that no, he can't, on the principle that a person can't legally be his own jury, and if he tries, it could and likely would be challenged before the SCOTUS, which may or may not have the power to invalidate.
As for his family members, that's a bit stickier. Technically he could, but if it could be proven that any illegal acts they committed were in service to or in support of his own crimes or worked to his benefit, those could also be challenged and possibly invalidated.
-Can a pardoned person take the 5th at a state trial?
Yes, because a state trial is an entirely separate legal matter and would be based on separate charges in a completely different jurisdiction. However, any statements made post-pardon for the federal charges - whether the statements are public or part of testimony obtained in any other case - could be used in a state trial as evidence.
-Does he have to specify what the pardon is actually for before it can count?
Based on the precedent of Ford's pardon of Nixon, no, and there may have been (I haven't looked, so can't say for sure) other less-well-known cases by other Presidents.
-Will a new law be created about presidential pardons?
There's not a lot Congress could do. Pardon power is specifically granted by the Big C, and changing in any way would probably require an amendment.
I just want to add that both the granting and acceptance of a pardon are basically tacit confessions that the person did in fact commit crimes. It also means that the person pardoned could be compelled to testify in any federal case pertaining to any federal charges levied against anyone else for criminal activity that may be related to the pardoned crimes, and they cannot plead the 5th. I specify federal cases because as noted above, state crimes are separate issues.
This commentary in the Boston Globe today explains why I will never go along with the new GOP spin that they don't want to convict Trump because they care about country unity. When I have read that latest spin job over the last few days, I've rolled my eyes and hoped that other democrats and progressives do not fall for it.
I am all for unity, but I want them to come out and admit they lied, they made lying a thing, they fabricated alternative facts which they then spun repeatedly and in that way, they divided the country. And Donald Trump and his lying enablers must be held accountable legally and criminally.
I am all for unity, but it was the GOP that created the disunity in the first place, and they have to fix that, not us. They can fix that problem by admitting they lied and by stopping the lying. They have to make reparations and face the legal consequences. And they must then tell their disillusioned followers the truth.
We will always have differences between the parties, but the sharp divide that has nearly brought our country to civil war was caused by GOP lies and brain washing.
But no, I am not for looking the other way and not prosecuting a dangerous fascist violent dictator who nearly toppled the U.S. democracy, and will continue to work to topple our democracy if he isn't held accountable.
Suddenly the party that broke the country wants unity?
@tgraf66 Suddenly, the party that broke the country wants unity By Yvonne Abraham Globe Columnist,Updated January 13, 2021, 7:02 p.m.
Unity. Seriously?
One after the other, the president’s defenders rose to the podium in the House chamber on Wednesday, trying to head off an inevitable vote for impeachment with one of the most transparently cynical gambits in recent memory.
We can’t impeach a president who incited a violent insurrection in which five people died, they argued, because it would further divide us, and what the nation needs now is to heal, to move on, to come together. Not by holding the inciter-in-chief accountable for sending a deadly mob to the Capitol and forcing some of these very legislators to flee for their lives, but by yet again letting him escape any consequences for his heinous actions.
The very leaders who refused to accept the results of a free and fair election, who themselves trucked in the falsehoods and debunked conspiracy theories about a stolen vote and oncoming tyranny — the lies that fueled the Capitol assault — were now preaching the gospel of unity. And they did it with straight faces.
It was gaslighting raised to an art form.
For example, Madison Cawthorn, the newly elected congressman from North Carolina, urged Democrats to “vote against this divisive impeachment and realize that dividing America will not save this republic.”
That is pretty rich, given that MAGA diehard Cawthorn was all-in on the effort to overturn the results of the presidential election, even helping to whip up the mob at the rally before the insurrection. His first tweet after winning his House seat was “Cry more, lib.”
Here’s the thing about unity: To achieve it, you have to believe in a common good. And most members of this Republican Party have demonstrated over and over that they simply don’t.
Nowhere was that more vivid than in the secure location to which hundreds of legislators and staffers fled after the president’s goons breached the Capitol last week.
There, the ringleaders of attempts to undermine our democracy huddled with their colleagues, all of whose lives had been put at risk by the lies they’d been telling just moments before. Video from inside the crowded room shows the malefactors looking nonchalant. They were also maskless, in the midst of a pandemic. When one of their colleagues tried to hand them masks, they refused, smirking.
“It wasn’t all Republicans, just the organizers of the revolt,” said Representative Seth Moulton, who was one of the last to arrive in the room where hundreds took refuge. “They were clearly proud not to be wearing masks.” (continued)