Wow - so much to take in!! Thank you!
And don't underestimate your gifts. All good courtroom attorneys have it - when you get that "gut feeling" on how a case will go? It's that. There are things you can do to develop your allegedly tiny intuition into something more accessible and powerful. Ask @jeanne-mayell - she can guide you to resources.
The only thing I take a different view of is you mentioned Shitler's hostage exchange tactics. I disagree. He doesn't really have any - his go-to in every situation is to shoot the hostages.
well we can forget Bolton's book coming out as the Justice Dept. is suing him.
The publisher must be going insane. They paid Bolton an advance. At some point they're going to want it back. I'm wondering if people who paid for it aren't going to want it now, figuring they can use the money elsewhere. This book won't see the light of day until after the election, and by then, no one will care.
Serves Bolton right.
As I understand it -- and I'm sure @Allyn can correct me if I'm wrong -- the DOJ is suing Bolton himself, not Simon & Schuster. This article explains it better, but it looks like Bolton has to stop the publication, as the lawsuit itself won't.
I've also read (sorry, no source, can't remember where it was) that since the book is scheduled to be released next Tuesday, copies have already arrived to journalists and other reviewers.
I won't be giving Bolton a dime but I'll be interested to hear what bits make the rounds online.
@sistermoon That's an interesting point re who is being sued. Would like to hear the answer to that myself. I don't think we will haveto waste our money on the book, it will be discussed, analysed and quoted so often we won't have to! As far as I'mconcerned the man hadhis chance to do the right thing and chose money over honor. Now Mary Trump's book, maybe. The Trump's are a creepy family and I bet they have a lot of creepy tales to tell.
If anyone on here uses yahoo email be on the look out for new conservative publications in tour inbox. I have blocked three this week. Tried Unsupscribing but does't work.
Please excuse the lack of spaces in my post, my space bar is sticking andI'm out of air!
@sistermoon Well, what I read is that the WH claims it hasn't finished its work on the book, looking for all those traitorous passages that supposedly exist. So I don't know why they would be interested in anything other than blocking publication. If they can't block it, I'm thrilled even though he won't see any of my money.
The New York Times has received the book in advance before the book was to go out.
John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, says in his new book that the House in its impeachment inquiry should have investigated President Trump not just for pressuring Ukraine to incriminate his domestic foes but for a variety of instances when he sought to intervene in law enforcement matters for political reasons.
Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed willingness to halt criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey. “The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,” Mr. Bolton writes, adding that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.
Mr. Bolton also adds a striking new allegation by saying that Mr. Trump overtly linked trade negotiations to his own political fortunes by asking President Xi Jinping of China to buy a lot of American agricultural products to help him win farm states in this year’s election. Mr. Trump, he writes, was “pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
Mr. Bolton’s volume is the first tell-all memoir by such a high-ranking official who participated in major foreign policy events and has a lifetime of conservative credentials. It is a withering portrait of a president ignorant of even basic facts about the world, susceptible to transparent flattery by authoritarian leaders manipulating him and prone to false statements, foul-mouthed eruptions and snap decisions that aides try to manage or reverse.
Mr. Trump did not seem to know, for example, that Britain is a nuclear power and asked if Finland is part of Russia, Mr. Bolton writes. He came closer to withdrawing the United States from NATO than previously known. Even top advisers who position themselves as unswervingly loyal mock him behind his back. During Mr. Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korea’s leader, according to the book, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slipped Mr. Bolton a note disparaging the president, saying, “He is so full of shit.”
A month later, Mr. Bolton writes, Mr. Pompeo dismissed the president’s North Korea diplomacy, declaring that there was “zero probability of success.”
Mr. Bolton, however, had nothing but scorn for the House Democrats who impeached Mr. Trump, saying they committed “impeachment malpractice” by limiting their inquiry to the Ukraine matter and moving too quickly for their own political reasons. Instead, he said they should have also looked at how Mr. Trump was willing to intervene in investigations into companies like Turkey’s Halkbank to curry favor with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey or China’s ZTE to favor Mr. Xi.
Mr. Trump married politics with policy during a meeting with Mr. Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Osaka, Japan, last summer, according to the book. Mr. Xi told Mr. Trump that unnamed political figures in the United States were trying to spark a new cold war with China.
Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” Mr. Bolton says he would print Mr. Trump’s exact words “but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
A president may not misuse the national government’s legitimate powers by defining his own personal interest as synonymous with the national interest, or by inventing pretexts to mask the pursuit of personal interest under the guide of national interest,” Mr. Bolton writes. “Had the House not focused solely on the Ukraine aspects of Trump’s confusion of his personal interests,” he adds, then “there might have been a greater chance to persuade others that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ had been perpetrated.”
https://apple.news/Ae2yEFebnTD6QUZCqSBgOww
I admit that this isn't my usual area, but I did some research, and I believe that Trump will ultimately fail on this matter.
From what I understand, Trump is accusing Bolton of (1) violating his "non-disclosure" agreement and (2) failing to have the White House complete it's investigation as to what (if any) information that Bolton wrote about is "classified."
Both of these arguments are doomed to fail. Non-disclosure agreements cannot be used to cover up wrong-doing. (That would be like signing a "non-disclosure" agreement with Trump and then sit silently as he commits murder in the Oval Office. No judge alive would find that a person who witnessed such an act would be bound to the non-disclosure agreement.) Further, all other cases involving books written about past presidents were ultimately allowed to be published, because failure to do so constitutes a violation of Bolton's 1st Amendment Right to free speech.
But that is not the point. Trump filed this to delay the publication until after the election. Again, he made a grave miscalculation. His attorneys waited until a week from the publishing deadline to file their motion. No doubt they hoped that, by doing this, they can extend the time it will take to hear the case until after November 3, 2020.
Which is good strategy, of course. But they forgot one thing.
Bolton has already sent parts of the book as a preview for the publication.
So now we know that Trump tried to get China to help meddle with the 2020 election during a June 2019 meeting.
I doubt the Democrats will do anything other than investigate at this point. They already tried, and they know that no matter what, McConnell and his people will never vote to convict. But it doesn't matter anyway. As I stated before, the point of the impeachment was never to convict Trump (with Republicans in charge, it wasn't going to happen.) Instead, it was to show that Trump was trying to enlist foreign aid to make up a fake investigation against Biden.
The Democrats were smart. They knew what Trump would do in advance, so they planned accordingly. Now, if any country comes out with a press conference announcing an investigation into Biden, many people will automatically be suspicious, because they know what Trump has done. Basically, any information about Biden coming from a foreign government will come under scrutiny.
Things aren't looking good for Trump right now. His plan for re-election is done. Consider the following:
(1) The economy-we have worse numbers of unemployment since the Great Depression. All of Trump's plans to tout the "best economy ever" will ring hollow as millions of people will continue to file for unemployment and lose their homes. It happened on his watch, so he can't blame the Democrats.
Look out for Trump's tax case. If the Supreme Court does release them, then Trump's reputation as a successful millionaire is over. If he is extremely lucky, he will escape criminal charges. But given that New York has Cuomo as their governor, I don't think that is going to happen. ;)
(2) Race-Remember when Trump claimed that he was the best thing to ever happen to African Americans because they had the lowest rate of unemployment under him? Uh, yeah? As though African Americans would willingly trade low unemployment numbers in exchange for a law enforcement system that kills several of them and allows the officers to walk away without consequences! Trump never understood the grievances of the African American community, and they will be a voting block that will decimate him come November.
(3) Corona virus-We have now had more deaths from corona virus than we had from World War I. Further, we will probably lose close to 200,000 by October. Also, many states that reopened prematurely are now seeing spikes in their hospitalizations. And yet Trump said it was a "big hoax." He proposes drinking bleach, and he refuses to wear a mask.
(4) Corruption-Ah, yes! The usual "give me what I want, or I will make you suffer." Trump did not invent this tactic (I seem the recall the "Bridge Gate" incident in New Jersey a few years ago), but he uses it so much it has become expected. He has pressured Ukraine (and now China, apparently), for their help in the 2020 election. We know he asked for Russia's help in the 2016 election (WikiLeaks, anybody?). We know he tried to withhold aid to blue states when they badly needed ventilators, saying they didn't "praise him" enough. He apparently is trying to do it to Bolton now, as news has just came out that the Justice Department is considering filing criminal charges against Bolton for his book.
Needless to say, all Democrats need to do is ask any voters who are undecided one simple question: Would you rather have Trump and endure four more years of scandal, or would you rather have Biden? This tactic actually helped Trump back in 2016, when the FBI published that letter about Hillary a few days away from the election, thus casting the specter that, if Hillary was elected, then her time as president would be mired with a criminal investigation. Undecided voters then went for Trump because they were suffering from "Clinton fatigue." But come November, the tables have turned, and the majority of the country want Trump gone. Period.
(5) Conservative judges-this is a wait-and-see matter, but if the US Supreme Court rules against the anti-abortion party in the Louisiana case, then Trump is in big, big trouble. The conservatives already lost the gay-rights case this week, and no cases are going to be heard regarding the 2nd amendment before November, so conservatives are disheartened. If the abortion case goes against them (and it should, based on existing case law), then conservatives will wonder why they should vote for Trump again, seeing as their strategy for a conservative invasion of the courts are not going as they expected.
As I stated in an earlier post, a decision on DACA is going to hurt Trump either way. If Trump loses, then the conservatives will have no hope going into election that Trump's take-over the Supreme Court helped them. They will feel apathic and depressed. And if Trump wins, then the Hispanic community, the African American community, and the Asian community will have a larger incentive of voting against Trump in November. With everything going on, immigration is not a large concern right now (not even to Republicans, who happily sat by and watched children being separated from their families just so they could enjoy a strong economy)
Personally, I think it terrible that so many fellow citizens are willing to sacrifice the happiness and health of millions of children just for a few extra dollars on a paycheck. Well, the immigrants are gone, and yet our economy is bad again. I guess immigration really wasn't the reason Americans were losing jobs!
Long story short-Trump will delay Bolton. That's all he can do at this point. But even if Bolton is delayed from publishing his book, he can still talk about it. So sit back and watch the fallout! Because we are watching the ultimate disaster movie! (I'll get the popcorn!)
I'm concerned about something I read on a not-the-most-reliable site (so I won't post a link). It concerns me because it discusses the 12th Amendment - which is all about the electoral college and tie breakers. I looked up the amendment, and sure enough, if the electoral college is too close to call, the matter goes to. Congress. Each state delegation gets 1 vote, regardless of the size of the state. This can happen if the margin is close and one of the candidates contests every state's electoral votes.
Because some state delegations may not be Dem majority, it's unclear how several states would vote in this instance, but you know the GOP - they'll win by hook or by crook. The test balloons in GA and WI have flown well for them, they know what to do to steal the big election now.
Señor Smallhands McDouchebag and his coterie of snakes in a basket masquerading as politicians are doing everything they can to steal this election. I'm increasingly concerned that while there will be more mail-in voting, a lot of those ballots are going to be lost, discounted or destroyed, especially in the key swing states.
There is a possibility that Sr. S. McD could lose the popular vote, lose the electoral college and STILL walk away with the presidency.
I know many on here have seen him gone by July. In the past I used to see him gone too, but I haven't had that pleasure in over a year. (I thought he'd be gone before 2018.) My visions of the future tend to be more dark than many on here, and I admit to being a born pessimist, but I'm really worried.