BURNPIT: U.S. Politics, August 2022

the investigation is going to go all the way up to the 2024 election. progress will slow to a grinding halt as all the serious people agree that it's time to let the american people decide the fate of donald trump through our well known free and fair elections.

before that, if the republicans take the house, there will be 2 years of investigations into the evil DOJ, who were so evil that they whenever they notice donald trump committing crimes on television, they spend 900 years doing jack shit before moving the lever from "grinding halt" to "fuck all"

Things I have read here and there:

• There was at least one previous "picking up documents he wasn't supposed to take with him" mission to Mar-A-Lago earlier this year, under the auspices of the National Archives or something; it's entirely possible that at that time he lied about what he had, making it necessary to send in the FBI this time
• Worth remembering that just having these documents in his possession at all is a crime all by itself
• They had to do it more than 90 days before the next election (the midterms) because of The Rules (maybe just The Rules of Washington Comity, not clear on this)
• They wouldn't have done this if they weren't 99.9 percent sure they were gonna find what they were after, so somebody probably told them this stuff was there; combine that with the idea that if they had asked him in the past, he probably lied (see first point), and there's your grounds for a warrant

i do think that if trump makes it back into the white house, the DOJ is done. trump and the GOP will dismantle it at all costs. that was likely before, and now as close to certain as the future can get, i think.

my man try and take a W here and there

lol

it's probably good advice, haha. sigh.

(i just hope this isn't like when the Washington Generals get a W)

I realize they'd only do it to curry favor with the God-Emperor, and they'd probably be replaced with Blackwater mercenaries or something, but can we honestly argue that the Republicans abolishing the FBI wouldn't be a net positive?

that would be pretty sweet

I dunno, I read the outrage in his 'Truth' yesterday, and it seemed somewhat tempered by a little wariness, like "man I really wish they hadn't looked in that safe"

I have great things in the safe! People are always asking me, "What's in the safe?"

god, life moves too fast right now. didn't this just happen, last night? imagine being a normal person and not hearing about it then, because you were, i don't know, reading or spending time with the family or some bullshit. then you wake up, and this is how the entire thing is presented:

https://i.imgur.com/N8xNUyS.png

"son, wake up, get ready. fast. donald trump is under attack"

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-the-fbis-raid-of-mar-a-lago-could-mean-for-trump

And what about in terms of recency? If Trump took documents from the White House to Florida twenty months ago, would a judge want some reason to think that the documents are still there?

Yes. One of the requirements for the search warrant is evidence that the information will be there during the two-week period that the F.B.I. is authorized to do a search—the information is not “stale.” And that’s the term of art that people talk about. Is the information being presented by the F.B.I. to the court stale? What you are looking for is some evidence of recency. Why would (the material) still be in that location? Even if something happened eighteen months ago, that’s fine. But a judge might say, “What makes you think it is still in that location?” This is speculation, but you would think that there has to be at least one source who gave the F.B.I. information about what was there fairly recently, and that whatever they were looking for was in that location.

...

In the past six or seven years, we have learned that the government sometimes cares a lot about the handling of classified material. But, if that’s all it was, it seems possibly extreme to have that concern lead to the search of a former President’s home. When you heard that this might be the cause of the search, were you surprised?

That’s where I am trying to not get into what is really just speculation about what they are actually searching for. It could be sufficiently serious if there were classified documents that were taken, particularly depending on their nature. You could imagine them being quite sensitive. But let me just say: I didn’t have the reaction that this was tenuous or thin.

"So far, McConnell notably silent'.. huh, that says something

"son, wake up, get ready. fast. donald trump is under attack"

It was 2022. I was wonderin' what to do.
The closer they got, the more those feelings grew.

Lol

first they came for roger stone, and i said “great.” next, they came for alex jones and i said “good news.” then they came for donald trump and i said “this is also excellent”

— soul nate (@MNateShyamalan) August 9, 2022

Yeah I feel about this kind of like I feel about big pharma producing the COVID vaccines — if we're going to have these problematic institutions with long track records of demonstrably bad behavior and abuses, the least they can do is sometimes serve their nominal purposes.

Meanwhile:

The Affordable Care Act has survived many challenges in court, but the case of Kelley v. Becerra – now before a federal judge in Texas – threatens to undermine one of the most popular provisions in the law, which requires most health plans to provide coverage for preventive care with no copays.

If the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs, access to free birth control, cancer screenings, vaccines, PrEP (HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis), counseling for alcohol misuse, diet counseling for people at higher risk of chronic disease, and many more preventive services would be in jeopardy, according to the nation's leading doctors' groups, which have sounded the alarm.
...Plaintiffs in the Texas case argue that the preventive care mandates violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Some object to paying for health insurance plans that cover contraceptives, PrEP drugs, or other preventive care services that may violate their religious beliefs. Plaintiffs also object for economic reasons, arguing that the mandate to cover preventive services raises the price of insurance coverage.

Plaintiff John Kelley, an orthodontist who lives in Tarrant County, Texas, "has no desire to purchase health insurance that includes contraceptive coverage because his wife is past her child-bearing years," according to the complaint. "He does not want or need health insurance that covers Truvada or PrEP drugs because neither he nor any of his family members is engaged in behavior that transmits HIV," the complaint continues. "Mr. Kelley is also a Christian," and is unwilling to purchase health insurance plans that subsidize certain types of contraception or PrEP drugs "that encourage homosexual behavior and intravenous drug use."

The plaintiffs are represented by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, who is known as a key strategist behind the Texas abortion law passed in 2021 that bans abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy.

That is such a flimsy bullshit claim of harm it's hard to believe that any judge would rule in its favor, but there are a lot of judges out there just itching to cause trouble for 'the libs', so it's odds on that this will get a favorable ruling in the lower court.

so not really hard to believe then since we've seen endless cases built on bullshit claims get the seal of approval from the SC

Where’s the tax returns -

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/08/09/politics/appeals-court-house-trump-taxes-opinion/index.html

i'm keeping my eye on maricopa and all of you are going to be feel really bad when you realize that's where it's all happening

xxxpost Yeah, reminded me of this, re Little Sisters of the Poor: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/18/whats-next-after-supreme-courts-birth-control-ruling/

it feels like the world is moving at 20x speed while the legal system continues to move at 1x speed

But Trump still could appeal, making the litigation unlikely to end at this time. The court said the judgment would not issued for seven days, giving Trump time to appeal. This litigation is separate from the House select committee's investigation into the January 6 riot.

and the lawsuit started in 2019. it's been 3 years!

it makes total sense, i understand why the legal system moves so slowly. i'm just noting that the two things - the entire judicial system, and real life - are completely out of step with each other at this point.

xp that's regarding the tax returns, which i expect to see after trump is dead. maybe

I mean justice moves slow unless ur poor, brown or marginalized but no one here needs me of all people to repeat that xp

they should get this judge on the case! she rattles these things off in a weekend https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-in-twitter-elon-musk-case-known-for-quick-work-11659791075

bad news for Democrats!

A few more months of Trump being targeted by law enforcement and he'll win the Black vote in 2024.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 9, 2022

ho ho that Dilbert, what a card

Chotiner: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/what-the-fbis-raid-of-mar-a-lago-could-mean-for-trump

Weissmann calls out an intriguing distinction in that article between 5th amendment protections against producing self-incriminating documents vs the FBI just taking them

BREAKING: Trump retains Rudy Giuliani to challenge FBI raid all the way up to the Supreme Courtyard by Marriott

— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) August 9, 2022

ride or die

bad boys 4 life

This seems to clarify a bit more:

New: The @FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in part because agents believed there was still more classified info there after @USNatArchives earlier retrieved 15 boxes of WH documents from the home.

Agents hauled away ~ 10 more boxes. W/ @learyreports @aviswanatha https://t.co/vX8H2aQOt5

— Sadie Gurman (@sgurman) August 9, 2022

So those 15 boxes were removed already, but they reportedly took 10 *more* boxes this time.

Makes sense based on previous speculation, though that "in part" leaves a lot of room for more questions.

Ten more boxes and the pee tape.

meanwhile, in innovation news

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2022/08/08/facebook-abortion-teen-dms/?sh=6f5deffe579c

That story is somehow even worse than I thought it would be. Local cops got a warrant for a 17 year old's Facebook messages to her mom in order to prosecute both of them. I'm not so surprised that Meta rolled over & gave up her data, more that the cops would pursue it so doggedly.

Breaking on Fox News: House Republican Scott Perry says FBI agents seized his cell phone earlier today — a day after federal investigators raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 9, 2022

god bless the Deep State

scott perry was one of the people who requested a Jan 6 pardon (for some mysterious reason...)

the mar-a-lago raid isn't supposed to have anything to do with the Jan 6 stuff. perry is also the leader of the house freedom caucus, which is just this really awesome group of people trying to make things better

Good lord, this better all be leading somewhere

one raid and they're all antifa lol https://t.co/nriQ0qTXAy

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) August 9, 2022

Trump broke the law. Should he face consequences?

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 10, 2022

petard, meet hoist https://t.co/b7A15XHurh

— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 10, 2022

fucking lmaoooo

anyway I don't wanna wildly speculate but fuck it, hear me out: what if he's feeding secret info to Russia? isn't it already widely accepted that he's already leaked military secrets to them? isn't the fact that he literally called Putin a genius when he started a war with Ukraine really fucking weird? could it be they found something on Alex Joneses phone prompting the feds to step in right away?

Maybe they found something in the first ten boxes.