#all crimes are now basically legal for presidents in the US

[esmeraldaka]

Hum...

I am not american. Nor am a highly political person, and not a political blog (and never will be.)

But this? I'm livid. This is terrifying.

Wtf USA? That's how you end up with a dictator at the wheel soon.

Edit: this is objectively a really bad law, no matter who's the president. No one should be above the law. Also, I'm removing comments as I see them

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

every once in a while, i have an urge to sit down and write an entire essay about The Purge franchise, specifically through the frame of reactions from people who either have not watched the movies or watched them while pissing on the poor.

because oh my fucking god do those reactions send me into a violent tailspin of irrational anger.

"the purge doesn't make logistical sense"

okay so have you ever heard of fiction? the train in snowpiercer doesnt make logistical sense either. it doesnt have to because its a vehicle in which to tell a story.

"people wouldnt just commit violent crimes because its legal now."

no they wouldnt. do you know that the first movie takes place on the 6th purge? do you know that story about frogs and boiling water?

"no one would ever agree to this. politicians couldnt implement this."

yeah so the fourth movie - The First Purge - is actually a prequel that explains how and why it got implemented.

see as a result of a general economic crisis, a new political party called the NFFA (new founding fathers of america) came to power, and two years into their political term, they ran "an experiment" and that experiment was the purge. the first purge took place on staten island; residents were offered $5000 to participate which comprised staying on staten island and letting the government put a tracking chip in your arm. there was also the opportunity of making more money if they "participated further."

people didnt all agree with this. thats a whole ass thing in the movie and the protagonist literally leads protests against it. it is a controversial thing. the NFFA literally have a sociologist as the face of it, one who talks to news reporters and assures people she and the experiment are apolitical.

the experiment is also fucking rigged. the government really send in roves of neo-nazis to kill citizens as a way of showing how "successful" the experiment is. it was never an experiment.

"but why would people believe that the purge is a good policy?

have you ever heard of propaganda?

throughout the films, there are constant displays of the propaganda the NFFA use to keep the citizens believing in the purge.

the NFFA are constantly lying to the citizens about the actual truth about the country. they often talk about how the stock market is doing great as evidence of a stable economy. there are fake experts in white lab coats lying to you about the purge being a good idea.

these movies are not subtle. they tell you outright that the government is lying to the people.

jesus fucking christ, in the third movie, part of the plot is the fact that in response to corruption being revealed, people are turning against the purge and protesting. dante bishop is a goddamn anti-purge activist.

"crime rate year round wouldnt go down because of the purge, that doesnt make sense "

yeah no shit sherlock. thats literally a defining theme in the entireass franchise. the government is lying. they actually use the purge as population control because theyre fascists.

in the first movie, the NFFA claim the country is basically crime-free and that the unemployment rate is 1%. do you think james demonaco wrote that with the intention of you believing it to be true? have you considered that maybe you were meant to be like huh, thats suspicious?

the first movie is the least overtly political, but one of the defining themes is in regards to the performative nature of the purge and the way it is mythologised.

"all crime is legal. so what, can i commit tax fraud?"

the rules of the purge are made up of. the entire idea is performative. the NFFA are not beholden to these rules; if it benefits them (or if not doing so poses risk to them), they will arrest you for "crimes" you committed during the purge.

in the third movie, The Purge: Election Year, they change the rules because of the risk charlie roan poses to them. roan is a senator running for president on an explicitly anti-purge platform and there is a very good chance that she will win the election, so they revoke the immunity (its still illegal to murder them) granted to government officials during the purge because they plan to kill her.

the NFFA do not care what citizens do during the purge, as long as it is not threatening to them.

"how would they even know if you killed someone an hour after the purge ended?"

they wouldnt. they also wouldnt care.

see above.

"the purge is stupid. people arent inherently violent."

no. no theyre not. thats the fucking point of these films.

they are not subtle films. they come with a free portable toilet so you can watch them without pissing on the poor.

what did you think the plots of these movies were? if the movies were not directly engaging with the concept of the purge and what it actually means, what the fuck do you think the movies are about? do you think the movies are just 90 minutes of indiscriminate violence?

[cazort]

I have seen a post circulating that talks about US politics and basically insinuates that in the upcoming presidential election, Biden is "99% Hitler" and Trump is "100% Hitler" and it makes me so frustrated that people can't see this as the disinformation and anti-vote propaganda that it is.

I'm intensely frustrated with Biden for how he has acted too little, too late on the Palestine issue, and how the U.S. continues to send billions in arms to Israel. And yet I'm going to be voting for him, and the analogy above is hugely dishonest. There is a massive difference between Biden and Trump:

The Biden administration and Democrats have strongly and unambiguously protected abortion rights, whereas Donald Trump appointed three supreme court justices who overturned Roe vs. Wade, and Republicans have across-the-board passed draconian abortion restrictions far more conservative than even their base.

Biden and the Democrats are strongly pro-LGBTQ rights including trans rights, at a time when Republicans are threatening trans rights in every state they control, and when even mainstream, "center-left" publications like the NY Times have been publishing transphobic drivel.

The Biden administration continues to expand healthcare access and work to control costs whereas the Trump administration worked to undermine much of the coverage we had.

The Trump administration was hopelessly corrupt and dysfunctional, with turnover in most appointed positions, scandal after scandal. Trump committed crime after crime in plain view, and incited an insurrection when he lost the election and has continued to back conspiracy theories undermining the very foundation of our democracy. Biden has been a relatively straightforward, "what you see is what you get" politician over his whole career, with a sort of level of flaws and corruption that is more typical of politics.

Trump had unprecedented anti-immigrant stances and under him, life became much more difficult for immigrants to the US as well as for non-citizens living here legally. Biden's administration has tried and worked against tough resistance to reverse many of the worst immigration changes made under the Trump administration, including doing things like giving 320,000 Venezuelans temporary protected status as refugees, trying to halt the border wall construction, and increasing legal immigration across-the-board.

Biden's rhetoric has become more critical of Israel over time, Biden has called for regime change and the ousting of Netanyahu, and under Biden the US Ambassador finally stopped voting against a ceasefire resolution and only abstained. Whereas Trump and the Republican's rhetoric has retained entirely critical of Palestinians and not at all critical of Israel, and Republicans have consistently supported draconian restrictions such as bans on BDS and some even introducing legislation banning referring to the region as Palestine. And weeks back, when public sentiment was not as anti-Israel as it is now, several Democrats voted for scrutiny to the Israeli military aid, whereas only one Republican did.

I am highly critical of Biden and I too am appalled that he's still running and that we don't have a better candidate who even ran in the primary. But it's far from truthful to say there is only a 1% difference between Biden and Trump, and even more dishonest and inaccurate to call Biden "99% Hitler", that's crazy talk and it serves only one purpose: to demotivate people and suppress voting.

There is a huge difference between these candidates. They will affect my daily life and your daily life and they will affect the whole world and they will affect Palestine.

Do you want a better candidate? Do you want to vote for an idealistic third-party candidate as a protest vote?

Support ranked choice voting first. Then, if you are in a state like Maine or Alaska that allows ranked choice for the president, vote for your ideal candidates and place Biden however low you want and then omit Trump entirely.

But if you do not have ranked choice in your state, especially if you live in a swing state, vote for Biden. And make sure to also join a movement that advances ranked choice, ideally Total Vote Runoff (TVR) as that is the best system for ranked choice.

[greatwyrmgold]

So, apparently Biden started building more of Trump's border wall back in October. Hardly anyone talked about it, partly because American liberals don't like bringing up similarities between Democrats and Republicans, partly because the war crimes in Palestine were distracting sensible people around the same time. But now that I know, I have stuff to say about it.

Biden promised not to build the wall, he said it won't do anything. His administration says we need to build more walls "in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas". Biden says he's only building any of it because he's legally obligated to, because Congress wouldn't undo the budget appropriations; he then waived dozens of federal laws so the construction wouldn't be slowed down by concerns or lawsuits about endangered species, pollution, indigenous burial sites, drinking water, etc.

One of the articles I read pointed out that barriers at the US/Mexican border have historically been a bipartisan project. Clinton ordered a few fences, Bush and Obama a bunch more. It wasn't a partisan issue until Trump built his campaign and political identity around The Wall; I guess it's not partisan any more, either.

Maybe Blue is still better than Red, but they're working hard to make that as much of a technicality as possible. The Democrats are at best spineless accomplices to the Republicans, and at worst willing collaborators. Some individual Democrats are worth supporting, but do your research.

"Vote Blue no matter who" just gives Democrats more leeway to get away with whatever they want, so long as they are infinitesimally less vile than Republicans.

Links to the news articles I read before writing this can be found below, if you're interested.

Probably the best summary from the articles I read:

An article with a completely different focus, which actually lists all 26 laws Biden is breaking waiving for the barriers' construction:

Two articles that are pretty similar to each other and the first article, but each focus on some different details:

There was technically a fifth article, but it was basically just quotes and talking points repeated ad nauseum in the other articles.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Radley Balko at The Watch Substack:

Donald Trump wants to deport 15 million people. He has now made that promise on multiple occasions. He made similar promises during his first term, when he said he’d deport 8 million people. Back then, he was thwarted by institutional resistance, other priorities, incompetence, and his general tendency to get distracted. But this time there’s a plan. It is not a smart plan, nor is it an achievable one. But it is an unapologetically autocratic plan. “You don’t even try something like this unless you aspire to have an authoritarian government behind you,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition told me. “You’re talking about soldiers marching through neighborhoods across the country, pulling families out of their homes.”

The Atlantic, New York Times and Washington Post have all looked at what Trump and the MAGA coalition have planned for immigration policy should he be elected again. Those stories all got some attention at the time, but not nearly enough to reflect the insanity of what he’s proposing. Perhaps it’s the sort of bluster Trump often spurts out in the moment, but never bothers to implement. We ought to take it more seriously. Trump has made 15 million deportations a central part of his 2024 campaign. And he’s stepped up the dehumanizing of immigrants he’ll need to get a significant portion of the country on board.

Even if Trump gets distracted, it’s likely he’ll put Stephen Miller in charge of the plan. Miller is the only non-relative senior staffer who served the entirety of the first Trump term. And Miller won’t be distracted. Ridding the country of non-white immigrants has been a core part of his identity for his entire life. Miller himself has long made clear that the distinction that matters most to him is not between “legal” and “illegal,” but between white and non-white immigrants. Both prior to and after joining the Trump campaign in 2016 and White House in 2017, Miller sent hundreds of emails to far-right outlets like Breitbart touting racist literature like Camp of the Saints, and links to unabashed white nationalist sites where writers argue that nonwhite immigrants are of lower intelligence, and are disease-ridden, parasitic, and predisposed to criminality.

(It shouldn’t need saying, but immigrants and their children contribute far more to the economy than they take from it, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, interracial IQ comparisons are based on a false premise and have few real-world implications, and provided there’s some basic screening at the border, there’s zero evidence that immigrants threaten public health.) In November, Miller offered the details of his plan in an interview with Charlie Kirk. Miller plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military. Miller’s deportation force would then infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door to door and business to business in search of undocumented immigrants. He plans to house the millions of immigrants he wants to expel in tent camps along the border, then use military planes to transport them back to their countries of origin.

[...]

Miller also wants to end birthright citizenship (more on that in a moment), and during the first Trump administration pushed a “denaturalization” program to strip naturalized immigrants of their citizenship. Last year, a coalition of MAGA factions put together “Project 2025,” their blueprint for a second Trump term. It’s basically a roadmap to autocracy. And they make no secret of the fact that they want to do away with legal immigration — and nonwhite legal immigration in particular.

The Project 2025 plan would end the only legal way for seasonal and agricultural workers to come to the U.S. to work. It would also effectively end the H1-B visas that allow immigrants to work in fields like tech, engineering, and medicine — most of whom come from India or China. They want to end humanitarian programs that grant sanctuary for refugees fleeing war or natural disasters, and suspend all visas to any country that the administration deems uncooperative in accepting deportations. They want to screen visa applicants for ideology, barring entry and terminating the visas of people Miller considers politically impure. Miller told the New York Times that the administration would also invoke a 1798 law that allows federal officials to deport immigrants without due process during wartime, taking the broad view that drug cartels are waging a war against the United States.

The Project 2025 plan also calls for cutting all federal aid to colleges and universities that provide financial aid to undocumented students, including DACA recipients — the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. It would cruelly tie all sorts of unrelated federal aid — including emergency aid after natural disasters — to state and municipal cooperation on immigration enforcement. The plan would require at least 70 percent of the staff of any federal contractor to be U.S. citizens — not legal residents, but U.S. citizens. As the Niskanen Center puts it, “the Mandate aims to demolish the American immigration system, coerce states and localities into cooperating with administrative schemes, and intimidate immigrants present in the United States.”

[...] Deporting even a fraction of 15 million people would also wreck the economy. Inflation would soar (especially when combined with Trump’s plan to slap a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on imports), and the U.S. would likely spiral into a recession, possibly a depression. Naturally, House Speaker Mike Johnson has expressed his enthusiastic support. Trump and Miller aren’t going to deport 15 million people in four years. It just isn’t possible. But the important thing — the thing that ought to be immediately disqualifying — is that they plan to try.

[...]

Trump’s plan would require deportation officials to go into cities, workplaces, colleges, and neighborhoods, find undocumented immigrants, and forcibly extract them. He did some of this during his first term, but it was sporadic and mostly for show. This would be on a much, much larger scale.

These will be people who for the most part are indistinguishable from legal residents and citizens, and whose only offense is to be in the country without documentation (which is a civil offense, not a criminal one). That means it’s a near certainty that a significant number of people who are here legally would be mistakenly detained. Some would be deported. And once they’re gone, they’d have to battle a backlogged and bureaucratic morass of an immigration system to get back in. Usually, refugee crises are brought on by large groups of people either voluntarily migrating from regions struck by war or natural disaster, or armies forcibly moving people en masse. Trump’s deportation plan would mean identifying the undocumented people in virtually every decent sized city, town, and county in the United States, detaining those people in some regional facility, transporting them to a bus station or airport, then flying, walking, or driving them across the border.

Imagine what it would take to evacuate the entirety of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. Imagine the number of buses and you’d need, the number of holding facilities, and everything you’d need to staff and equip those facilities. You’d need security. You’d need medical staff and food services. You’d need bathroom and shower facilities. You’d need janitorial staff, bus drivers, and pilots. Now imagine moving a population equal in size to the populations of those cities, but spread out all over the United States. In addition to Miller’s tent encampments along the border, you’d also need detainment facilities in every major city to hold immigrants as they await transport. Sanctuary cities would resist letting the administration use space in their jails. But even in cooperating jurisdictions, there wouldn’t be nearly enough available space. In his Atlantic piece, Brownstein consulted with experts who made the dystopian suggestion of housing immigrants in warehouses and abandoned shopping malls.

Currently, removals are handled by the Enforcement and Removals Operations (ERO) division of ICE. At the moment, that office has 7,600 employees. Last year, ERO removed about 142,000 people with a budget of $4.7 billion. If we apply these numbers to Trump’s 15 million plan, and spread it out over a 4-year term, Trump would need the ERO or an equivalent agency to increase its capacity by a factor of about 26. So the office would need to increase to more than 200,000 employees, and a budget of $122 billion. But that’s just the “muscle,” or the people who carry out the removals. ICE also has investigators, administrative staff, and attorneys who argue immigration cases in court. Overall, ICE has about 20,000 employees, with a budget of $8.5 billion. If we assume the current staffing and budget would need to expand at scale with the number of removals, Trump’s deportation plan would need 530,000 employees. That’s about 70,000 more staff than current active-duty troops in the U.S. Army.

The overall ICE budget would need to increase to $225 billion — 80 percent more than the current budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security, and 20 percent more than the Army’s 2025 budget. You’d also need to multiply the number of immigration courts and judges. Currently there are 69 immigration courts with 650 immigration judges. To keep the current ratio of courts and judges to deportations, you’d need more than 1,800 courts and over 17,000 judges. The current budget for these courts is $981 million. That would need to jump to $26 billion.

Radley Balko wrote an insightful column on the costs of Donald Trump’s fascistic mass deportation plan, as it would be very costly to the economy and would require tons and tons of people to carry out.

[the-bi-writer-blog]

“Both sides are the same”

Where I grew up, kids were taking the bus 2 hours each way just to get to school. The state has a few well-off cities, but rural poverty remained.

When I was 18 a close friend’s mom pulled me off of her couch, handed me pamphlets, and showed me how to go door-to-door. She was running for local government after having been an educational advocate for over a decade.

As an educational advocate she had seen first hand how imbalanced our educational system was, and so she set out to change it.

She ran as a Democrat, because Republicans don’t give a single solitary shit about school funding, or equality, or protecting the rights and finances of the middle class.

Unfortunately, that same year there were what I call “gay scare laws” on the ballot and her opponent endorsed them.

Which is to say, the Republican that she was running against was specifically supporting a measure that would change the state constitution to forbid gay marriage. They wanted that in the fucking state constitution.

Meanwhile, my friend’s mom is over here advocating for financial and educational policies that will protect, ya know, regular people who aren’t super rich. She was endorsed by labor unions, nurses, pillars of the community.

And you know what?

Even though her platform was specifically aligned with the financial interests of 95% of the eligible voters in the state she lost. She fucking *lost*

In hindsight, there were likely more factors at play than I understood at 18.

But the fuck of it all (and the thing I will *never* forget) is how in that election cycle, Republicans specifically created a proposed gay marriage ban (that they knew would never pass) *just so that they could harness homophobia to their own ends.*

(And yes, I’m still mad about it.)

“Both sides are the same.”

When I was 19, I worked at a low-cost medical clinic that - very pointedly and intentionally - did *not* require documentation to prove citizenship/legal status.

It was hard (if not impossible) for undocumented folks to access Basic Fucking Healthcare so we just…didn’t fucking ask.

And then, George Bush. George goddamn fucking W. Bush came along and ***made it illegal to provide health care to undocumented people.***

To be clear, the government knows that these undocumented people are living in the US and picking our crops for low wages in bad conditions and the *least* we could do is offer citizenship and healthcare, **but they made it fucking illegal* -

And I cannot describe to you the shade of red I saw that day.

(FWIW, the clinic largely ignored this and carried on. Last time I checked, they were still caring for people in need and very pointedly not looking too closely at anyone’s IDs.)

“Both sides are the same.”

I mean, one of the sides was providing accessible healthcare to vulnerable populations, and the other was declaring it a federal crime.

And in the first example, one side was running on financial and educational equality, and the other was running on, to put it bluntly, the vast appeal of homophobia.

“Both sides are the same.”

When did you last talk with an advocate in real life? When was the last time you shut down social media and googled volunteer advocacy in your community instead? When was the last time you truly listened and considered the opinions of those who have been carrying this work on our backs for years???????

There are many, many more examples, these are just two personal ones off the top of my head. They are, however, *not* outliers.

It is reasonable to say that American foreign policy is reprehensible and needs an **immediate** overhaul.

But even if that’s the one (1) and only issue you care about: the next president will likely nominate up to 3 Supreme Court justices, which will serve for life.

(I cannot emphasize that last part enough. This election will also sway the direction of the Supreme Goddamn Court for decades???????)

Now back to foreign policy: which of our two (yes, there are ONLY 2) options will make it more likely for our foreign policy to change in a meaningful and lasting way?

Is it the one who openly plans to gut our rights??????? Or the one who - at the very least - will not make it fucking illegal to disagree with her??????

How will you protest without the basic fucking right to peaceful assembly?

How will you speak out when free speech protections are gutted?

Will it bother you - even a tiny bit - that Trump already has a high death toll due to his mishandling of the COVID crisis, and that he will immediately add to that if given a chance?

Will you sleep well at night when the criminalization of abortion gets worse?When women face ridiculous barriers to voting (google something like “trump ID voting law” for more info.)

What about when you disabled neighbors starve and die in their wheelchairs, alone in their apartments, because they did not have the resources or help they needed.

(Will you start caring if you know that I’m one of them? That I’m *exactly* that vulnerable, and could pass away too?)

Just to be clear, that last part isn’t hysteria or hyperbole. It is history. Recent history.

Several years ago England absolutely gutted their benefits & funding for disabled folks, pretty much overnight.

In the weeks after, disabled folks were dying by the hundreds in what I can only refer to as domestic genocide.

Would you care about the intentional eradication of a people group, if you didn’t get Social Media Points for it?

Would you be willing to pull up your sleeves and dive in to the complex, nuanced work of getting off your ass and taking care of your neighbors?

Or are you going to keep on trucking and keep on trusting that your moral compass will keep you warm and safe at night, as long as you never have to acknowledge the casualties of your own ignorance???

Anyway, I’m done. Fucking vote. That’s all I have the energy to say.

(Okay to screenshot and re-post, but please don’t tag me if you do. These are important conversations to have but I Do Not Have the spoons to interact about it, so feel free to take on that task if you want.)

[spurgie-cousin]

US govt was not my favorite class in high school by a long shot but I legit did not know until 5 minutes ago that he as a now convicted felon can still run for president and apparently even still sit as president(???), the only thing he might not be able to do is vote for himself? I’ve been assuming this whole time that if he got convicted he couldn’t run or hold office.

Someone well versed in politics please help me understand because between learning this and literally everything else the current administration is doing, I’m ready for the whole system to just be forcibly dismantled and rebuilt. Fire everyone and start over I’m so tired

yea SILLY ME for immediately thinking a convicted felon couldn't be president, idk why I assumed US politics would ever work in a sensical way 😭😭

as the second anon mentions, basically the short answer as to why he can do that is 1. there's legal precedent and 2. there's nothing that explicitly states he *can't* run for president after being convicted of 34 counts of financial crimes. so really it all depends on his sentencing.

And again as the second anon points out, Trump is going to appeal his convictions to buy more time, the sentencing could take months. I think jail time is not as likely as probation, but it would be kind of funny to see him get hauled to jail from the white house.

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON – Hunter Biden, the president’s son, was indicted on charges he failed to pay his income taxes, Justice Department special counsel David Weiss announced Thursday.

The announcement came months after a plea deal over tax and gun charges collapsed. Under the agreement, which a federal judge rejected, Hunter Biden was set to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018.

Biden is charged in a California federal court with three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanors. He engaged in a scheme in which he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed taxes from 2016 through 2019, and also evaded tax assessment for 2018 when he filed false returns, according to the indictment.

From 2016 to 2020, Biden spent money "on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes," according to the indictment.

Separately, Weiss has charged Hunter Biden in Delaware with three federal gun charges, basically alleging he lied about using drugs when he bought a revolver in 2018. Biden pleaded not guilty to the charges Oct. 3.

"Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought," said Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, in a statement.

"Now, after five years of investigating with no new evidence -- and two years after Hunter paid his taxes in full -- the U.S. Attorney has piled on nine new charges when he had agreed just months ago to resolve this matter with a pair of misdemeanors," Lowell said.

Biden faces a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison if convicted on the tax charges, the Justice Department said in a press release. It noted that actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than maximum penalties.

Congressman Jason Smith, who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement that the new charges further confirm the need for Congress to conduct an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden "in order to uncover all the facts." The charges address years in which Hunter Biden earned millions of dollars by selling access to a family brand that was built on Joe Biden's political career, he said.

What are the tax charges?

While failing to pay his taxes, Biden allegedly spent millions on an extravagant lifestyle. In 2018, for example, he made about $383,000 in payments to women and spent about $151,00 on clothes and accessories, according to the charges.

Biden faces two felony charges of filing a false return and one felony charge of tax evasion. The six misdemeanor counts are for allegedly failing to file returns or pay his taxes when required.

Prosecutors have said Hunter Biden took in $2.4 million in income in 2017 and $2.1 in 2018 through Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, a Chinese-development firm, as well as domestic business interests and legal services.

Leo Wise, an assistant U.S. attorney, said at a July court hearing that an accountant prepared Biden's taxes both of those years, but his corporate and personal taxes were not paid. During this period, Hunter Biden made large cash withdrawals and covered other expenses like car payments on a Porsche, Wise said.

Hunter Biden told the court a "third party" paid the back taxes along with interest and fees pursuant to a personal loan he has not begun to repay.

Why did the judge reject the plea agreement?

Prosecutors had recommended probation for the two misdemeanor tax charges in the plea agreement, despite each carrying a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison. The agreement over the gun charge anticipated a pretrial diversion program that would wipe the charge off Biden’s record if he complied.

House Republicans called the agreement a “sweetheart deal” for lack of jail time.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected the deal because of a dispute between prosecutors and defense lawyers over what it meant. Biden's lawyers argued that he would be protected from prosecution in future cases, but prosecutors denied that.

[barks-hideout]

So, I said that someday I’d upload ref sheets for my marvel ocs, but I never guessed that it’d be all at once 💀💀💀

here’s a summary of each (heads up folks, I’m pretty sure I wrote the sequel to The Bible)

Marley Underwood: She’s just a fangirl character I made for Smokey. I like to imagine she runs a blog or something dedicated to her. She likes to hang around the arcade that Cami works at, who is rather fond of the kid.

Captain StinkBomb: He’s an experiment like Rocket, being number 89R14. He snuck off the Higher Evolutionary’s ship and fled to Counter-Earth, where he lived his life as a small farmer in the woods. That was until the guardians showed up and CE blew up. He, obviously, was upset and blamed the guardians for what happened. Now he lives his life as a space pirate until Rocket met him and they became friends.

Chris Caleb/The Brown Recluse: I made a post a few months back with his story and spider suit, but basically, Chris was an orphan bitten by a radioactive brown recluse. Because of the untreated spider bite, he developed gangrene, but because of the mutation, any part of his body that rotted off instantly regenerated. He was adopted by my universe’s Doc Ock and became a superhero, all though, most of the crimes he stops are usually his dad’s.

Dom Lee Cho/The Sun God’s Disciple (hero name is still a WIP, would love better suggestions): I don’t have too much of a story, but basically, Dom was chosen to be next in line as a disciple of Haemosu, which is the Korean Sun God. His father, who was the previous disciple, was murdered by a jealous follower of Haemosu. Dom is hesitant to take the title, insert something about generational trauma and legacy, yeah…it ain’t much, but it’s honest work.

Miguél Rodriguez/NightVision: So, Miguél is basically an ex-con who is trying to get his life back together. He gets a job at Crystal Corporations, a tech company trying to change the world as we know it. One day, while cleaning up, Miguél finds mysterious crystal shards in the trash behind the facility and decides to take them back to his apartment so he and his roommate, Archer Dodge, can mess around with them. Realizing that the crystals have powers stored in them, Miguél takes this as a sign to become what he’s always wanted to be, a superhero. He and Archer work together to create NightVision and Miguél becomes a sorta micro celebrity in NY. His boss, a shady businessman named Giovanni, finds this out and coaxes Miguél into working together, making Miguél a poster boy for Crystal Corp. Giovanni, like any shady white guy businessman, is basically stealing Miguél’s hard work and claiming it to be his own, and when Miguél tries to call things off, Giovanni blackmails Miguél into staying with the company through Miguél’s criminal records. Miguél breaks things off and his crimes are exposed (I’m still wondering about the crimes in question) and Giovanni becomes the new “hero.” Looking more into Crystal Corp and its business practices, Miguél realizes that Crystal Corporation is using these crystals for Evil Shit (tm) so now it’s up to Miguél to take down the company, which he does, but Giovanni dies in the process. This leads to Miguél having an opportunity to become the new president of Crystal Corp. He rejects this, however, and gives the title to the Giovanni’s assistant, Sook Lee Cho (who happens to be Dom’s sister omgggg)

CatFish: There isn’t much of a story to CatFish yet, but here’s what I have so far. CatFish, legal name Kenny Campbell, was a kid growing up in the ghettos of Detroit. He lived with his single mom, who was an asshole to him, and never really cared for him, especially when he started questioning his gender identity. Because of this, CatFish would always get involved with gang violence and other legal trouble. This continued until an attack on the US was made from HYDRA, and a 10 year old CatFish was met with Dr. Edward White, who claimed he was part of a rescue team that was trying to help the children in the war. Of course, Kenny was actually experimented on and became the way his is now. While living his life in Project K wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, he’d rather be there under the command of Dr.White rather than go back to his mom, wherever she was. I mean, Dr.White was even nice enough to let Kenny transition, so how bad could he possibly be?

Amar Bucciarati: Born in a small town in Spain, Amar was either always bullied or babied for his blindness. He couldn’t go out without a ball to the face, or a kick to the shin, and he couldn’t stay in without his family trying to coddle him and do everything within their power to “cure” him. He couldn’t stand it. All he wanted, just once, was to be treated like a normal person. When he was 8, his town was attacked by HYDRA, and was left alone in the rubble of his home until Dr.White came to help. He was experimented on and developed telekinetic abilities. With these abilities, Dr.White taught him how to become stronger, and use his skills for spatial awareness to help him see. Since then, Amar has been nothing but loyal to Dr.White, and will always be White’s most faithful soldier.

Dr.Edward White: So, this is the moment you all’ve been waiting for. So, Edward was born in Tennessee as the younger brother to Chris White.

Growing up, Eddie was always an outcast, often being seen as “weird and creepy” compared to the charm of his brother. Home life wasn’t any better, with an abusive father and an exhausted mother, Eddie was always seemed invisible. He found one thing he loved, which was science. He always flourished in school, and was on his way to change the world. He became obsessed with the idea of superheroes, and wanted to,not be them, but make them. This obsession made his family rather…uneasy. Everyday Eddie would always talk about how he wanted to experiment on people, studying the human body and it’s limits, even going so far as to take live animals and “work” on them. This continued all the way up into his adulthood, being a successful geneticist and biologist, while his brother became a famous football player and was married to his wife, Clara, a nurse. On April 12th, 2005, Clara have birth to a beautiful baby girl, which the couple decided to name Camellia Anabelle White, the first name being after the flowers they were so lovingly given to them during their honeymoon in Japan. Eddie couldn’t explain it, but he felt such a deep connection the moment he laid eyes on his niece, one that he knew he wanted to keep. When Camellia, shortened to Cami, was growing up, her and Eddie became inseparable. Eddie would always teach her how the world works and take care of her when babysitters or her parents couldn’t, and would always indulge in listening to whatever his niece was fascinated with at the time.

The two would often visit an open field filled with colorful flowers and waste the day away with bliss until it was time to go home. If he wasn’t by Cami’s side, Eddie was at work. He would continue to conduct his superhero experiments at a little facility called HYDRA. If he wasn’t there, he was posing as a scientist for the government, and feeding the information back to HYDRA. One year, Dr.White got word on the possibility of certain people having a certain chromosome mutation that would grant the person superpowers, these people were known as “Mutants.” When the US found out about their information being sold to other parties, there was talks of war looming over the world. Eddie knew this, and used it as an opportunity to start funding a facility that was designed to continue the education of children in case war was coming, this building was known as Project K. Still hiding as a weasel for HYDRA, Dr.White was assigned a new task, “Make sure the war happens.” He and other scientists would start causing havoc amongst parts of the US, trying to provoke the government into war. Looking at all the people that were affected by the destruction that was being, Dr.White got an idea. “With the new research we’ve gotten on superhuman abilities, why not run experiments on the children of the war?” It sounded insane, ludicrous, but Eddie had an explanation. “People are always hesitant to war, but the children? The children would go out and fight anybody that took away their homes and families without hesitation! As for our opponents? What kind of monsters would they be if they were to hurt such sweet and innocent souls?” As crazy as Eddie was, he was also a genius. This was when Project K became a breeding ground for mutant experiments, where damages would be done, Dr.White would take the children, and run experiments on them. This pattern continued until White was given another idea. What’s stopping him from bringing Cami into the mix? August 19th, 2011, Cami was left at home with a babysitter, staying up late to watch her dad play in the championship game. She wanted to go, but her parents all wanted to keep their daughter out of the presses. Both Cami and her babysitter watched the game, cheering for the girl’s father…until an explosion went off in the center of the field, then another in the crowd, and another, and another, until the cameras shut off and the TV cut to static. Cami, being only 6, didn’t understand what was happening or why her babysitter was making such frantic calls to her parents. She only realized what happened when a tearful Uncle Eddie came home, but her parents didn’t. Eddie took her in to Project K, a few months after the funeral, and ran tests on Cami. The first thing Eddie needed was a blood sample from Cami to look into her DNA for the now known X-Gene. Unfortunately, she wasn’t compatible, not at first. Eddie remembered research he’d done on mutants and called back to a serum that would make people with a recessive X-Gene into a dominant one. He spent weeks perfecting the formula, and finally out Cami under the needle, or needles. He ran test after test on her, putting her body through straining tasks that not even adults could handle (if you’ve seen Deadpool, YOU KNOW)

Finally, Cami gained the ability to control fire, and what a glorious flame it was. Eddie continued getting kids and running tests on them, the facility now more productive than ever with the new serum being used, and started training the children to use their new abilities for combat. This was when he would then send out kids 12+ to their first battles in the now ongoing war, dubbed WWX. This wasn’t enough for Eddie, however, he wanted to aim even higher, and so, started running tests on his top soldier, Cami included, to push them to their genetic limits. These new types of mutants were called “Provectus,” meaning advanced in Latin. With the difference between them and normal mutants being that they now have a new subset of their original powers. This sparked another building called “Provectus Mundi,” or “Advanced World” in English. Where it was Cami and 9 other kids being held as the most dangerous of Dr.White’s army. Eddie and Cami’s relationship would continue to strain until a 15 year old Cami was snooping through old files in her uncle’s lab and found an audio recording of the night where her parents died, the night where Dr.White killed them. Eddie attempted to explain himself, manipulating her into staying quiet, but Cami wasn’t having it. She burned Eddie alive, leaving him disfigured so severely, that he had to replace parts of his body with tech. This lead to Cami wanting nothing to do with her uncle, refusing to listen to him any chance he got. Which, in turn made Eddie upset. In his mind, what he was doing was all out of love. After a mission, it was reported that Cami was MIA and Eddie was LIVID, going off in the rest of his niece’s team. This disappearance caused him to go off the deep end, becoming more violent and aggressive than normal, even at his angriest. He even went as far as to give himself mutant abilities just for a chance of growing strong enough to find Cami. This time period was also when he started research on another concept that had been swimming in the back of his mind since the beginning, the multiverse. He finds Cami in the current MCU timeline and starts building his own machine to successfully travel through the multiverse, finally being able to see his niece again. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily work. With Cami finding her strength and beating the ever loving hell out of Eddie, getting other mutants to slowly take apart the original Project K. Before his last breath, Eddie looked his niece in the eyes and squeaked out his last words

“I love you…so much Camellia…”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 16, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, Tamar Hallerman and Bill Rankin of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, investigating the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election in that state, heard yet another recording of former president Trump pushing a key lawmaker—in this case, Georgia House speaker David Ralston—to convene a special session of the legislature to overturn Biden’s victory.

One juror recalled that Ralston “basically cut the president off. He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails.” Ralston, who died last November, did not call a special session.

This is the third such recorded call. One was with Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, and another was with the lead investigator in Raffensperger’s office. Ralston had reported the call, but it was not public knowledge that there was a recording of it.

Hallerman and Rankin interviewed five members of the grand jury, which met for 8 months and heard testimony from 75 witnesses. The jurors praised the elections system, and one said, “I tell my wife if every person in America knew every single word of information we knew, this country would not be divided as it is right now.” Another said: “A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later…. And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.”

The special grand jury recommended Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis indict people involved in the attempt to overturn the election. The cases are now in her hands.

Yesterday, prosecutors in New York met with Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress whom Trump allegedly paid $130,000 to keep their sexual liaison quiet. Also yesterday, Trump fixer Michael Cohen testified before a grand jury about the hush-money payment. Cohen’s testimony suggests that Manhattan district attorney Alvin L. Bragg is considering an indictment on a felony charge for misrepresenting the nature of that payment.

Trump has a new lawyer in that case, Joe Tacopina, who has been making the rounds on television shows to insist that Trump isn’t guilty. Tacopina’s job isn’t easy, and he is not necessarily helping, telling MSNBC’s Ari Melber that Trump didn’t actually lie about the hush payment when he lied about it because he was not under oath and he didn’t want to violate a confidentiality agreement.

Also in New York, Trump has asked a judge to delay the $250 million civil case against him, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization, for manipulating asset valuations to get bank loans and avoid taxes. New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought the suit, said the defendants had had plenty of time to prepare and that Trump is trying to move the case into the election season, at which point he will insist it must be delayed again.

Katelyn Polantz, Paula Reid, Kristen Holmes, and Casey Gannon of CNN reported today that the federal grand jury investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents has interviewed dozens of Mar-a-Lago staff, from servers to attorneys. Special Counsel Jack Smith continues to try to get Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to testify after prosecutors learned that on June 24, 2022, Trump and Corcoran spoke on the phone as Trump had been ordered to produce the missing documents and the surveillance tapes of the area.

Prosecutors want Corcoran to have to testify despite the attorney-client privilege he claims, using the “crime-fraud exception,” which means that discussions that aided a crime cannot be kept secret.

In the face of this mounting legal pressure, Trump took to video to demand: “The State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the deep staters.” Then, he said, his people need to finish the process he began of “fundamentally revaluating [sic] NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” “[T]he greatest threat to Western civilization today is not Russia,” he said, but “some of the horrible USA-hating people that represent us.”

This speech was not simply a defense of Russia and its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. In his attempt to undermine the legal cases against him, Trump has endorsed the “post-liberal order” whose adherents reject the American institutions that defend democracy. In their formulation, American institutions they do not control—“the State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all of the rest,” for example—are corrupt because they defend the ideas of equality before the law, a free press, religious freedom, and so on. They must be torn down and taken over by true believers who will use the state to enforce their “Christian nationalism.”

In that formulation, the FBI and the Department of Justice are persecuting good Americans who were trying to protect the country on January 6, 2021. And yesterday, Zoe Tillman of Bloomberg reported that Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., sent a letter on October 28 last year to Chief Judge Beryl Howell warning that as many as 1,200 more people could still face charges in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Today, the House Republicans announced an investigation, run by Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), into the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. The January 6th committee asked Loudermilk to talk to it voluntarily to explain why he gave a tour of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021, a time when the coronavirus had ended public tours. One of the people on that tour showed up on a video the next day threatening lawmakers.

Loudermilk told Scott MacFarlane and Rebecca Kaplan of CBS News that Americans have “very little confidence” in the report of the January 6th committee, “[a]nd there’s good reason. I mean, you even consider what they did to me, the false allegations that they made against me regarding the constituents that I had in my office in the office buildings—accusing me of giving reconnaissance tours.”

Loudermilk, who chairs the House Administration subcommittee on Oversight, says his committee will work “aggressively” to explain why Capitol security failed on January 6 and will seek interviews with people involved, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). He says his panel will “be honest, show the truth, show both sides.” Representative Norma Torres (D-CA), the top Democrat on the panel, notes that Loudermilk has not informed the Democrats even of the dates on which the committee is supposed to meet.

Politico’s Heidi Przybyla today reported on a February 2023 “bootcamp” for Republican staffers to learn how to investigate the Biden administration. The camp was sponsored by right-wing organizations including the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is led by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and other right-wing leaders and which raised $45 million in 2021 alone. Sessions included “Deposing/Interviewing a Witness” and “Managing the News Cycle.”

At one of those investigations yesterday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who sits on the Homeland Security committee, said she intended to divulge classified information, saying: “I’m not gonna be confidential because I think people deserve to know.” She claimed that drug cartels had left an explosive device on the border; U.S. Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz later posted a picture of the “device” and said it was “a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn’t deemed a threat to agents/public.”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to administer.

Today, Sanofi, the third major producer of insulin in the United States, announced it will cap prices for insulin at $35 a month. Sanofi, Eli Lilly, and Novo Nordisk produce 90% of the insulin in the U.S. The producers have faced pressure after the Inflation Reduction Act lowered the monthly cost of insulin to $35 a month for those on Medicare.

—LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[From comments :: “Wild how Putin just assumed Trump would win one way or another and Ukraine would have been an easy acquisition. NATO and our State Department would have been dismantled.Scary to think this evil is still so prevalent in our government with the help of Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon lurking around the back doors.”]

[askshivanulegacy]

There's a comment in there about placing presidents in a different category of justice than literally anyone else in the country, and it's chilling. It is ABSOLUTELY anathema to what the founders of this country wanted, which these Supreme Court nutjobs so heavily referenced.

A child could see that.

If this stands (and it shouldn't) then there's literally no such thing as "abuse of power" when it comes to the president.

If (on paper) the president cannot abuse his power by definition, then it follows that no order given can be unlawful. This means that anyone working for the government, including the military, has no legal recourse from the standpoint of refusing unlawful orders. Unless they themselves wish to flirt with breaking the law and facing the consequences, they'll be bound to follow these artificial, pseudo-lawful orders. Such contrived lines of order and hierarchy could mean there's no such thing as war crimes anymore, not as long as someone was following orders.

They're dismissing testimony now, simply because people are federal workers. The basic, happenstance job identity of people now magically makes their involvement "official," completely ignoring the concept that one major abuse of authority is to use your position to make underlings do non-official and inappropriate acts for you. For example, it's against the law for a military officer to order an enlisted person to do grocery shopping for him. But if the military officer is now the president, and that enlisted person is a federal worker, now it's "allowed" because no one cares. Because they won't take the federal worker's testimony.

I wanted to give this thing the benefit of the doubt, but the Supreme Court is filled with kangaroos. They called the president his own branch of government. An idiot could tell you this is false.

It's more important than ever for all federal workers, to include the military, to think for themselves, and understand, on a deeper level, what it is they do.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that whatever you think of anything else, Trump Cannot Be President Again.

The "rip apart democracy and install an autocrat" group was not Ready for him in 2016. They didn't think he'd win.

They're ready now. They're teeing up for a second Trump president. Whatever your favorite current Thing, it would be worse under Trump, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they're going to try to make sure that they stay in power forever, by any means necessary.

SCOTUS basically just said, "If Trump sends the Army in to murder protestors, that's okay. If Trump assassinates a political rival with the armed forces of which he is the Commander In Chief, that's an official act, and there's no recourse."

Anything he can even vaguely justify as "an official act" - including installing people in the Justice Department to support his coup, including pressuring his VP to support his coup - is no longer a crime.

This isn't just me saying this, btw. Here's Robert Reich, lifelong public servant (and yes, dad of @samreich, since I know what's important to y'all):

Finally, the Republican-appointed justices have given a dangerous amount of discretion to presidents — broad enough, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, to protect presidents from prosecution for bribes and assassinations. A president already has the authority under the Insurrection Act to order troops into American streets. After today’s ruling, those troops would be under the command of a person who would almost certainly enjoy absolute immunity for the orders he gives them.

This is unbelievably terrifying.

[greatwyrmgold]

I just want to vent about my dad on a website I know he doesn't use. (He's a Reddit/Facebook man.)

These are two texts from our D&D group's groupchat. In it, Dad reacts to finding out that WotC hired the literal Pinkertons to intimidate someone who got sold the wrong trading cards by criticizing the guy who the Pinkertons intimidated.

This is typical for my dad. When these tales of corporate misdeeds happen, Dad always defends the corporations. If they are not breaking the law, he takes that as evidence that they're in the right. If they are breaking the law, he tries to downplay the severity of the crime. He's a corporate bootlicker, and I don't think he realizes it.

This bootlicking is a bit ironic, since my dad is a "Don't Tread on Me" libertarian. Well, if you asked he'd say he had disagreements with the Libertarian party, but he's never explained exactly what those disagreements are. Which is actually pretty similar to his relationship with the Republican party; Dad will say he holds Democrats and Republicans in equal disdain, but he's complained long and often about Democrats with their gun control and Obamacare and taxes. By contrast, the worst thing he's said about Donald Trump is that he doesn't protect gun rights.

Now, I don't think Dad actually agrees with the alt-right. He's voiced support for minority rights and stuff, even if it's in a milquetoast "We've basically achieved equality, and also the government shouldn't stop businesses from discriminating because the free market will put them out of business" way. But when he talks about politics, he doesn't complain about conservatives. He complains about liberals.

And he talks about politics a lot. My dad might espouse disinterest in the country's political parties, but he has strong opinions about politics. His political discussions, which he made sure to include me and my brother in, are a big part of why I care about politics as much as I do—and to his credit, he encouraged us to think for ourselves instead of just following his politics. I too was a dumbass libertarian for a while, but when I was presented with new evidence, I could change my mind.

But, well. Having a politically-opinionated dad, while being politically-opinionated in the opposite direction is a bit of a problem. And in case you didn't pick up from the way I described my dad defending WotC and also have not noticed any other political post I've made on this blog, I am firmly opposed to capitalism in general and capitalists fucking over employees (or other individuals who annoy them) in specific. So there's a bit of tension there. And I don't know what to do with it.

So far, I've mostly tried to avoid it. That's successful most of the time, but not all the time. Everything is political; even if my dad wasn't the kind of guy who talks with his kids about the president's health care policy or California gun control, politics would come up sooner or later. The friend in the group chat wasn't trying to be political; he just relayed an interesting news story relevant to the group's shared interests. But corporate malfeasance is a political issue, whether you want it to be or not. Politics are gonna come up.

I guess I could argue with him, point out that WotC's actions are morally bankrupt, no matter how legal they are. Question why making a video about some cards that you bought is grounds for getting goons sent to your house. Hell, maybe I should do that, push back against shitty political ideas. But what would the result of that be? I'd get mad, my dad would get mad, neither of us would change our minds, and it's not like the rest of the group would care.

For now, I guess I'm venting my frustrations on Tumblr. I hope that's a healthy outlet.

[thewickedbohemian]

Another TV show idea poll

and no I didn't just make this one because of the circumstances and it having a political idea with a better president

Either way;

Some additional notes that couldn't fit in the poll blank

the faerie lawyer thing would be intended to provide a law counterpart to shows like Lucifer where supernatural-being-in-semi-disguise helps the cops and/or a fantasy counterpart (but that doesn't mean all its cases would be fantastical sometimes the fantasy would be reserved for the B-plot) to She-Hulk's whole superhero law thing, and I thought there's some obvious reasons why a faerie would be a good choice for the kind of supernatural being at the center of a lawyer show and not just all the puns you could make in potential title or tagline or w/e about "fair folk". Also my idea for this show is part of why I'm glad Elsbeth's eponymous show is a detective show as if she was still lawyering she'd be similar-enough-for-people-to-call-ripoff to my vision of this show's lead

the "gimmick" of the political dramedy wouldn't be just that the president's neurodivergent it would be that they're the sort of same kind of "quirky neurodivergent specialist" or w/e you often see in cop or medical procedurals (like to politics what someone like Shawn Spencer or Morgan Gillory would be to crime-fighting or someone like Gregory House, Shaun Murphy (at his best-written) or Oliver Wolf would be to medicine) and might even have no first-lady-or-gentleman if I can find an appropriate position for the slowburn to happen with to keep The Dynamic going

the token NT kid would be kinda the "viewpoint character" or at least audience-surrogate or w/e and every other member of the family would be a different variety of autistic (potentially ranging from someone who'd have what I grew up calling Aspergers whatever you call it now and basically be the super-smart STEM-inclined hyper-executive-functioned archetype you see a lot on TV and Sheldon's meant to caricature to someone nonverbal who uses the same sort of thingie as JJ from Speechless and everything in between)

if you didn't see my other posts about the idea with the multiversal video store basically the idea is when protagonist has parent win Nobel Prize for discovery of multiverse travel, protagonist decides to use that to save the Blockbuster-esque-but-independent video store she works at (my idealistic mind hoping this would make video stores cool again/come back again) by tracking down movies and TV from parallel universes (as who wouldn't want e.g. a version of a thing you already like where the gay subtext was allowed to be text) but sometimes the retrieval isn't as easy as it seems and the show would balance that with workplace animated-sitcom stuff with the whole thread of dealing with the fame that comes from this and the prize-win

the speechie teen drama is intended to have a bit of a Glee-at-its-best vibe (as best it could without the songs to sustain it) inspired by both me being a Gleek who did speech team in high school during its peak years and how apparently Chris Colfer was also a speechie and said in an interview that speech and debate for him was kinda what glee club was for Kurt

[scottguy]

Rich white privilege is pure injustice.

We have two legal systems... one for the poor that's super strict and sends people to jail for a long time for minor property or drug crimes.

The second legal system is for the wealthy that gives just fines for inhumane behavior, such as breaking child labor laws, unsafe working conditions, or polluting the local community - all things that actually hurt multiple people far more than any simple drug possession.

If you're rich, you can keep justice at bay with endless appeals on minor technicalities using all the lawyers you can afford. (Trump is a perfect example of that.)

All justice and punishment are put on hold for YEARS while the criminal appeals his (obvious) crimes all the way to the Supreme Court hoping for a sympathetic judge to ignore reality.

Finally, of course, white, powerful politicians, like Jim Jordan, can break and ignore laws with impunity. No one enforces any ethics behavior. There's no real mechanism. The worst that happens is that you get fired / expelled.

Mitch McConnell broke his oath to uphold the constitution by refusing to do his job and fill the Supreme Court vacancy. He cheated American voters of the representation VOTERS WANTED, and he just got away with it.

The press treated his dereliction of duty as if it was JUST a clever strategy to refuse to meet his ethical legal responsibility and cheat American voters. (We should have taken to the streets and had a national strike.)

Trump broke the emoluments clause - one of our most BASIC rules in the most crucial laws of all in the US, our constitution, a law designed to protect us from corrupt presidents.

Yet, no one of significance said a word! Just like McConnell, breaking his oath was met with a shrug. (Probably because corruption for personal gain in American politics is simply business-as-usual. So, fellow corrupt politicians didn't want to rock the boat by calling it out. )

Breaking your oath to the country should be first met with political impeachment, then conviction, and, finally, because those two consequences are purely political, followed by actual criminal trials.

Politicians are routinely breaking their oaths now in order to circumvent democracy. Nothing serious has happened to them! Seditionists are still in office being treated as if they deserve respect.

We need to pass laws making breaking your oath, as a legislator or office holder for our country, punishable in criminal court (after a 2nd legal trial)

Corruption for personal gain has been a long-standing problem for all governments everywhere.

But this corruption ....

... as a means of circumventing democracy ....

is new and extremely dangerous.

We can't rely, like we have for the past 250 years, on politicians just choosing to do the right thing, because it's good for their country.

Trump led politicians down the path of putting themselves ahead of United States democracy.

Disrespecting our democracy used to be considered unthinkable!

But now such behavior has become commonplace due to the traitorous precedents set by Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and certain members of our Supreme Court.

(via mhnt4rnd8sda1.jpg (JPEG Image, 924 × 960 pixels))

[words-make-people]

The all-out assault on the U. S. Constitution that promulgated with the legislation passed by the Supreme Court on 07/01/2024 started with the Bush/Cheney administration as I state in this book.

Al-Islaam, Patriotism And The New World Order (lulu.com)

“Unitary executive”

In an article entitled “Fear and loathing” by Leonard Pitts a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald newspaper he states the following concerning George W. Bush’s assault on American Civil Liberties: “Another president, perhaps. MAYBE THEN IT WOULD be easier to look the other way, give a tacit nod to the abrogation of constitutional freedoms as a wartime necessity. After all, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War and history does not begrudge him for it, given that he faced an enemy massed almost literally within sight of the White House. But this is not President Lincoln we're talking about. It's not even President Franklin D. Roosevelt, succumbing to post Pearl Harbor hysteria and interning thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry.

No, we're talking about President Bush - King George, if you will - and last month's New York Times bombshell that a few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 he secret authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on phone calls and e-mails of hundreds if not thousands of U. S. citizens.

THIS HAPPENS TO be against the law, and a good law at that. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was written after revelations that the government spied on and used dirty tricks against civil rights activists and war protesters who had done nothing more sinister than exercise their constitutional right of dissent. Before it can bug any American suspected of international crimes or conspiracies, the government must, under the FISA, first obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in closed session.

With the proverbial stroke of a pen, Bush has obliterated that protection. If the government believes you have a terrorist connection, it is now empowered to snoop on your international phone calls or e-mails without court approval. King George and his enablers argue that this is necessary to give investigators the agility they need to pursue terrorists. It is a seductive argument. One is appalled to imagine the Statue of Liberty blown to smithereens while those who might have saved it are dithering over legal papers. SO YEAH, ANOTHER president and you might almost buy it. But this is the same president who has, over the last five years, repeatedly demonstrated utter disregard for the rights, freedoms and basic intelligence of the people he serves.”

The Bush administration was used by the Jahcubite or the forces of darkness. The President was only a tool in a grander more sinister plan to destroy Human freedom and dignity and this will be continued no matter who is in the White House unless the grass roots awaken. The secret programs put in place by the Bush/Cheney administration to expand the Surveillance Authority of the government after 09/11/2001 was only part of this strategy.

Under Bush and Cheney phone companies were forced to allow illegal wiretaps on phones of U.S. Citizens due to this and other unknown measures put in place by the Bush/Cheney administration to mine data from citizens. With these measures the Bush/Cheney administration circumvented the FISA courts and taped phone calls and eavesdropped without warrants.

In the Preface for the book “Worse than Watergate” by John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon he states: “Secrecy is the first refuge for incompetence.”  Government under a virtual gag order became the standard operating procedure for the Bush/Cheney white house. This secrecy has resulted in the most abusive use of secrecy in the modern presidency and it started long before 911. The Bush administration went so far as to employ an Executive order abolishing the 1978 law which provides public access to presidential papers. (“Worse than Watergate”by John Dean) Under the Bush administration, 15.6 million new documents were classified in 2004 alone. These actions had nothing to do with protecting the nation but had everything to do with Bush and Cheney’s dreams of a “Unitary executive” – an executive branch much more powerful than it was every envisioned by the founding fathers.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)

Al-Islaam, Patriotism And The New World Order (lulu.com)

A slightly altered version of the above quote by Benjamin Franklin one of the greatest Americans ever is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

            I am convinced that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Payne, Ben Franklin, John Adams and all of the signers of the Constitution would be appalled at the destruction of liberty and the raping of the Constitution that is currently going on in the United States of America today.  If we continue to amend the constitution and pass an excessive amount of laws that are opposed to the constitution we will soon live in a totalitarian, fascist country. Power must be returned to the people, the constitution, the bill of rights, and the rule of law must prevail. (Al-Islaam, Patriotism and the New World Order, by Hassan A. Shabazz, page 48)

[thatstormygeek]

I'll admit I'm surprised. The pig president hasn't seen a lot of direct consequences, despite a lifetime of flagrant infractions against law and basic human decency.  Part of this is because we have a legal system designed to punish marginalized people and use their bodies for profit, while keeping wealthy and powerful people shielded from consequence. The pig president proved that out for decades by committing crimes both flagrant and secret, both petty and grave, day in and day out, perfectly assured that nothing would ever happen, and indeed for decades nothing ever did happen. But now a unanimous jury has found him guilty of 34 felonies, which is a lot as felonies go, and his cultish political party thinks that's a scandal, not because they believe it is a dangerous corruption for politicians to commit dozens of felonies, but because they believe it is a dangerous corruption for anyone to bring an appropriate consequence for it. If somebody living in poverty gets their bones ground by the gears of what we call justice, that's just law and order, baby, but if any consequence ever befalls a wealthy and powerful guy for no better reason than a bunch of crimes and a lifetime of flagrant corruption and abuse, well that sets a dangerous precedent, and a bunch of very expensive haircuts perched atop professionally confused faces will gravely intone is this the sort of country we want to be?

And the members of the pig president's cult will also tell you that his convictions help him, because these convictions stand as proof that he is being persecuted (and therefore by proxy they are being persecuted), so these convictions will be additional justification for abusing and menacing most of the rest of us, which is what they were already planning on doing anyway. The justification they are planning on using for this violence and abuse is their moral authority, which they credit to themselves as a natural and indestructible inheritance. They don't just have moral authority. They are the moral authorities. They've convinced themselves of this. They've convinced the expensive haircuts and the professionally confused faces of it. They've convinced most politicians of it. They've managed to convince a lot of us of it—this idea that these supremacist bullies are not only actually fundamentally good and decent people, but are the fundamentally good and decent people, through whom decency and goodness must be defined and mediated. They even fooled the pig president. ... In their demand for reputational immunity, they and their pig of a leader are accommodated in the halls of power and influence by the same politicians and institutions and haircuts and professionally confused faces that bestow upon them unending legal immunity, and by many of the rest of us, too, who all instinctively extend assumption of moral authority to those who have proven the most contemptuous of both morality and authority, in much the same way that assumptions of patriotism are extended to those who most hate this country's laws and people. The result of all this is a group of people who are the most legally protected, politically overrepresented, and societally coddled people on the face of the planet, all of whom despite their dominating supremacy see themselves as persecuted victims. They are victims not because they are actually persecuted, but because of the ongoing defiant existence of the people they persecute, and a growing (if tentative) societal determination to treat all people with dignity and respect.