"But a hell of a lot of us could be Jack Phillips, who will be hounded to his grave by these people.
"And this is why we will vote Trump."
For certain. If they can use the law in a way it's not been used before, and require an absurdly high bond few could ever pay - if they can do it to Trump they can surely do it to you, and don't you think they'll try if you, for example, decline to bake the Satan dildo cake?
That's the heart of Trump's appeal to his fans - he's taking the arrows that are ultimately meant for them. He's exposing how far "our democracy" will go to get him - and of course they'll subsequently use it to get the "deplorables."
Trump is giving us all a sneak peak of how it's going to work. Because, after perfecting these tactics against Trump, let's not think "our democracy" will retire them.
Combined with Biden's open borders chaos, the legal attack on Trump has convinced me to vote for Trump. I don't think Trump has the discipline to solve any national problems but at least he does not hate me. The Democrats do.
The question is, though: How many people in states that will make a difference are thinking the same way you are? A small number of key states are likely to decide this mess in 2024. Are there voters in those states who weren't going to vote for Trump but now will because of his treatment by New York? I honestly don't know one way or the other, but I guess we'll see. Maybe Trump gets a little boost in the popular vote because of this, but the popular vote don't win no elections.
The thing is Biden has alienated a slice of the far left by refusing forthrightly to condemn Israel, which no U.S. President of course could ever do. It still puts him in a false position. There are people that are confidently assuming that Michigan and Minnesota are in play as a result. I don't know about that, but his coalition is a crazy quilt of minority interests. If one panel falls off he could be more vulnerable than an incumbent should be.
But there are also former Trump voters who want nothing to do with him this time around. And some swing voters in those states who don't like either of these two terrible candidates and may just stay home. And some of those far-lefties who want Biden to condemn Israel will vote for him anyway if the other choice is Trump. I'm not saying Trump will win or won't won, only that old patterns, as you suggest, are changing. It's going to come down to which campaign finds and best understands the swing voters in those crucial states. All the rest is just emotionalism and gum-flappin'!
Because that ship has sailed, and the wokies have already made something sacred and heroic out of it.
"Plain old politics" is premised on a baseline core agreement on fundamental values and goals; it has to do with second-order questions about how we get to where we all agree we want to go. But now politics has become more profound, having to do with first-order questions of where we should go and what our values are.
I think that sometimes, it's sort of like you think the game is still checkers when it has moved onto chess—objectively, I mean: not what you want or I want, but what has actually happened. And neither you nor I get to unilaterally demand to make it checkers again.
And none of this has anything whatsoever to do with Jesus and the Gospel, which are not of this world; it's all entirely within the realm of everyday prudential concerns.
Disagreeing, and vehemently. All I see in this drama are selfishness, greed and a lust for power. Sure, those are conditions which afflict us in all times, but now we make virtues out of them.
And do you really think worshipping golden calves, prostrating oneself before the altar of Fear, or idolizing wicked men will lead anywhere other than Hell?
Also those first order questions do not belong in politics. They are properly the matter for religion and philosophy.
Well, as you probably realize, I don't have much in the way of lust for power or an interest in politics. So I have no motive to see it this way unless I considered it to be true, which I do.
Also, religious and philosophical questions ultimately do filter down to the level of politics on fundamental matters, because that's how you form a culture and a polity, a shared life with others. Even the liberal seperation of religion from politics is itself a type of religious or philosophical view.
And again, no one is worshipping anything, prostrating before fear, et cetera. I think that these are straw men of your own creation. People are just reading the lay of the land and making judgments in accordance.
Separation of church and state is a pragmatic measure since the two conflict with and corrupt one another (we know this through long history), though I suppose pragmatism is a philosophical choice too.
People aren't reading the layy of the land, but rather the lay of the nightmares they are spoonfed by the propagandists.
Yes, what we consider pragmatism is a philosophical decision. And as for whether it's the land or a nightmare, I guess that we just have a basic disagreement on that matter.
Agree that we've abandoned fundamental values and goals. The left these days is talking about "too much free speech." They're past the point of no return on things like this; we either meet them on that battlefield of their choosing, so to speak, or we just surrender now
That's right. Dreher asked last week what had happened to the Scots with their incredible speech codes, and I said they had just given up. We're not there yet here, thank God, but we're close.
I'm pretty sure that Texas wouldn't put up with it. Between our Bill of Rights and our federalist structure, we (in America) have certain advantages over here.
Also, it's not true that our Left and our Right want different things. Apart from a few remnant virtucrats like Rod the Right is every bit as coldly individualistic as the Left. "I want mine" is the mutual slogan of both.
That is not true at all. Much of the progressive left doesn’t want selfish personal desires satisfied; rather, it wants to see its vision of society imposed on all of us. Many people will vote for Trump out of a sense of self-defense against the social engineering schemes of the progressive left. You may believe they’re misreading the moment, but that’s what they’re actually doing; they’re not bowing down before a golden calf. You’re just looking at a few manic true believers among the MAGA set and judging everyone frightened by the Democrats as motivated by that same idolatry. That’s false.
I disagree very much with this. What do you think the sexual revolution is if not the unhindered satiation of carnal desires? And DEI reduces to "We minorities want our share of the pie".
This insight isn't even original with me. I've heard it various places, including on this blog. The priest at my church has alluded to this in a sermon: the Left wants sex without moral guidelines, the Right wants riches without moral responsibility.
In fact the two desires are orthogonal and don't conflict- certainly they dominate the private life of one Donald Trump! But giving either free reign is ruinous to society. Yet there is ample room for compromise and half loaves if one drops the "my way or the highway" thinking.
I find the fears often expressed on this blog utterly unrealistic, the product of propaganda disseminated by the owning class to scare the plebs
And yes, I live here too- but I stay well away from smooth tongue liars like Tucker Carlson and his ilk.
The Sexual Revolution certainly had its liberal roots in its ideological demand for personal liberty in all things. But it hasn’t ended there. We are now WAY beyond liberalism here. There is a palpable desire to refashion society to be almost sacramentally devoted to Pride and to the indoctrination of children into Pride etc. We are no longer simply being asked to acknowledge or tolerate gay people or those with other forms of sexual identity; rather, we are asked to make as much of it as we do of Christmas. Surely you have to have noticed that.
And DEI is an awful lot more than just asking for a piece of the pie. First, DEI rose into general societal awareness AFTER the first black president had completed two terms in office. Certainly, an electoral majority of Americans was willing to give the Ultimate Slice of the pie—twice—before DEI ever became widely understood as a phenomenon.
DEI is a second generation expression of the racial grievance industry. It aims not to level the playing field, but to start the playing with points already added to certain players or to otherwise make things unequal again to compensate for perceived prior inequalities. DEI is profoundly illiberal in its pursuit of EQUITY over EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.
"I find the fears often expressed on this blog utterly unrealistic, the product of propaganda disseminated by the owning class to scare the plebs"
After reading Rod for almost two decades and having learned quite a bit about you and your life experience through your commentary, the fact that you think you have a better understanding of the world than Rod amazes me.
You're just this guy from Michigan (who lives in Baltimore now as I recall) with a standard office job. You have absolutely no qualifications AT ALL. You're not even a good listener when it comes to the other commenters here.
Florida appallete defense attorney Steve Gosney has a great video on how this is an unconstitutionally large fine. The relevant case is a '98 case and the majority opinion was written by Thomas. In that case a man was carrying $350k worth of cash out of the country and didn't report it. There was no other alleged wrong doing, he just didnt properly report it. They government siezed the money. The Supreme Court ruled that was unconstitutional. The two-prong test for whether a fine is unconstitutional is this: is it even in part intended to be punitive, and is it proportional. There was also a lot of talk in the ruling about was anyone actually harmed by act being fined. That the guy failing to report the cash in no way harmed the government. Heres the video https://www.youtube.com/live/Z4Fzaa_3nl4?si=vya6HlZSz80_LzHk
I'm no lawyer but it looks like the legal chattering classes have, erm, caught up with me. All of this going after Trump smells like bills of attainder, which are unconstitutional in this country. You can't pass a law against an individual, and if this makes it to the Supreme Court Tishy-poo is cooked.
The other day, I was wondering if it would be possible to pass a law that bars Bill Gates, specifically, from owning any farmland in this country. So I guess not, then.
You mention "the legitimacy of American institutions," which is being damaged by the persecution of Donald Trump. Of course, nothing new here. I don't know what legitimacy we're talking about. For me, the last of it went out with Reagan.
Will the persecution help Trump? Maybe, but the Democrats will do all they can to steal the election, and they are much better at that than The Stupid Party is at fighting it. The Repubs are, as far as I can see, largely clueless about what is going to come down on them in the campaign or the election.
I've been meaning to read Alinsky's *Rules for Radicals*—not in order to actually use those amoral tactics, but just to better understand how the other side plays. "Know your enemy," like Sun Tzu said.
In California in November of 2024, a van loaded with ballots will leave Yreka (California) and miss it's turn-off on Highway 101. It will detour through Utah and show up in Oakland at 8:00 AM with 10,000 ballots. 9,997 will be for Adam Schiff, 2 for Steve Garvey, and 1 for Timothy Leary. Schiff will win the election by 19 votes.
American culture, discourse, and politics have been gradually eroded until now there is very little left except tribalism all the way down. (We really do seem to be living through some version of a Reformation combined with a cold civil war that could get hot before the end of this decade.)
In every possible sphere of public life, from our cultural and educational classes who have tied themselves to the mast of holy dogma and who MUST make one more Social Justice movie, play, musical, exhibit, book, no matter how sterile or repetitive, even if it leads to hemorrhaging cash; from our journalists now who campaign against free speech; to our political class who are like mayflies that exist as slaves to a day, ie. the eternal present of the social media news cycle—NOTHING matters to any of these people except publicly performing obedience to their tribe and its dogma, while doing anything, no matter how deranged, to show how much they hate the other tribe and want to destroy it.
The Letitia Jameses of America are never in doubt and will never change course no matter how destructive their actions may become—the Dems have become Ahab with the Trump as their Orange Whale, and never forget they have zero allegiance to the principles of the Constitution or republican government (equality before the law, due process, free speech, freedom of association, good-faith democratic debate) because they believe these things are racist and illegitimate, and because these things stand in the way of their power dreams.
Soviet America is here and there will be no going back to the American Republic.
Those of us who frequent the Ace of Spades HQ are familiar with the Mencken quote, “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
Hey, politics, like sports, is a domain where we all have to accept regular (mainly vicarious) defeats. But there's always another election like there's always another season.
Recep Erdogon said back in the 90s that Democracy was like a streetcar, you ride it to where you want to go, then you get off. Eventually (and I was there for it) he did just that.
Sure Turkey has elections, but thye have far fewer options than they did less than 20 years ago.
Keep in mind that the United States herself was founded on a violent revolution against the existing government. Do the Founding Fathers have a special place in hell?
The Founders published an exacting explanation of their cause, they served their units of government (the future states), and were under the command civil governance, they acted within then-acceptable laws of warfare (though as another poster notes there was some individual brutality- such is war). Individuals or conspiracies which act wholly on their own and commit atrocities (Tim Mcveigh; ISIS today in Moscow) are beyond the bounds.
It's not a clean definition, though, is it? I mean, whether we think of ISIS as a terrorist group or a Rouge state (back when it controlled territory), it's abhorrent; and whether the Founding Fathers were just a conspiracy of rebels or an eventual successful independent nation, their principals were admirable.
Ultimately, it's like the distinction between what is moral and what is legal. A state can act worse and more criminal than any rebel faction, and rebel factions can become independent states. The de jur state of things doesn't determine what group is more moral.
Well, did you endorse the Minutemen on April 19, 1775? They fired in British soldiers in performance of their duties, right? (Their duties, of course, being to take away their weapons that the ruling government deemed illegal for them to have).
Or when the British ordered notoriously inaccurate nighttime bombing on German cities to literally "terrorise the German populace"?
Or at Wounded Knee when the US Army opened fire on men, women and children, killing 200 (for which the Nation's highest honor, the Medal of Honor, was awarded to 20 soldiers for their brave killing of women and children?)
Is it terrorism to resist the invasion of your land by striking back at the invaders? I mean, we've called that "terrorism", even when those attacked are military forces, and we've called it "acceptable collateral damage" when our (or our allies) have killed non-combatants, even when the explicit reasons is to bring "shock and awe" or even "terror" to a nation's people.
What I'm against is any actor, state or non-state, using violence against non-combatants, either as an explicit tactic or as a known consequence of an attack on enemy combatants (e.g., dropping dumb bombs on a legitimate military target far in excess of what is needed to destroy that target when non-combatants are known to be in close proximity.)
So ISIS attacking concertgoers in Moscow is certainly impermissible...but American Minutemen shooting occupying British military forces is permissible. Likewise, dropping tons of ordinance in the carpet bombing of a city is impermissible, but derailing trains carrying weapons in occupied France is permissible.
The Nazis called the resistance terrorists, but they themselves were the terrorists. Of course, the line was often crossed in the killing of "collaborators", so it's not necessarily the group but each *action* that should be judged. No matter how just the cause, certain things should never be done; and no matter how studiously permissible one prosecuted violence, it is still wrong [EDIT: if the underlying cause is wrong--e.g., an aggressive invasion of another nation where there is no legitimate casus belli].
I'll leave you with quotes from Curtis LeMay, who oversaw mass bombings in WW II. He later led the SAC: He said "There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders."
And he later said this as well: “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”
I'm seeing speculation that ISIS is behind the Moscow attack.(Russia was instrumental is taking down the Islamic State). Of course it's too soon to know anything certain on this.
In other news Princess Kate has cancer (though nothing more specific on this)
It looks like Russia said on the 7th that they'd foiled an ISIS attack, and the next day the US embassy was like, "No, they didn't foil it—get out of there, Americans." The warning specifically mentioned concerts.
Or maybe Russia foiled another attack, but we knew it wasn't over yet. Something along those lines.
Diplomatic relations have not been severed nor ambassadors recalled.
It's a large, modern building about 5 miles from Red Square. On one side of the Embassy across the street sits the small Orthodox Church of Perpetual Surveillance.
Of course I just HAD to look that up. Google Earth DOES show a small church across the street from the embassy. The app labels the building as "Khram Devytai Muchenikov", which Google Translate renders as "Devithai Martyrs Temple". I could find no reference to either anywhere on the web. So I don't think you are kidding at all.
No its not - ISIS did NOT as yet claim responsibility. It is only the Western press who claimed that it did. Please find me a direct source attributable to ISIS where they claim responsibility. Doesn't it strike you odd that the West immediately knows who is culpibale? but 18 months down the line still hasn't figured out who blew up Nord Stream? You can be so very naiive when it comes to politics Rod.
I understand that some Chechens who joined Isis in Syria have returned to Chechnya. So my question is, are these Isis terrorists who committed the attack Chechen Isis terrorists, reprising their 2010 Moscow theater attack, with even bloodier results?
The Tajikistani hired guns of this atrocity have been apprehended just a hundred kilometers short of the Russian-Ukrainian border towards which they were heading. The primary interrogations on the spot are already on telegram channels - you can see one here: https://t.me/ukraine_watch/19101 complete with English subtitles. None of the perpetrators mention ISIS or Allah Akbar or anything. They just mention being hired for money (100,000 roubles). They claim they were approached on telegram channels but do not know who recruited them. This of course may be simply a cover story - we will know more in due course when the professionals work on them thoroughly.
The salient evidence thus far is that they were caught trying to get to Ukraine.
A few weeks ago the US and the UK issued warnings for their citizens to stay away from crowded places in Russia, including notably concert halls, and Victoria Nuland just prior to her resignation promised that Putin is in for some nasty surprises. Seeing footage of the shooting one can easily see that the ones who carried out the crime are professionals who know how to handle weapons. It is also a fact that Ukraine has long been trying to hire mercenaries from the ''stans'' offering money through facebook and telegram.
I find it very odd that ISIS has suddenly turned its attention to Russia - I would have imagined with all that is going on in Gaza, if it were a truly Islamist organization it would have its hands full there but it has hardly been mentioned at all..... so if it is truly ISIS - then what is ISIS exactly? an Islamist organisation or a mercenary army?
My informed speculation is that having failed to defeat Russia either economically or militarily, the last desperate attempt is to foment inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict in Russia. It won't happen - this is no longer the 90s or the early 2000s. Today Chechen Muslims and Orthodox Russians fight and pray side by side in the trenches. The Grand Mufti of Russia as well as all leading Muslim governors have already issued their condemnations. Inter-religious harmony in Russia is the best it has ever been and no one is interested in going back to the days when they were not.
But the latter is simply my theory - I will await further details from the competent Russian authorities. But one thing I can tell you, is that the Ukrainians better hope that it was really ISIS and that there authorities were not involved.
As someone who has no love for Donald Trump (he is everything I despise in a politician and in a man) I have to say Luntz is spot on: this will indeed get Trump elected. His base is a given, but a lot of people most definitely NOT part of his base are going to see this as destroying Trump simply because he's Trump. And Americans react viscerally when they see something that is egregiously unfair.
Don’t assume that the dems won’t be out in force visiting nursing homes ‘assisting’ the infirm in voting. It will be a squeaker if he wins. I have no faith in our elections anymore.
I'm no Trump fan but the NY persecution (not prosecution) of Trump on financial fraud matters is egregious by any standard. It's catnip for the progressive base without regard for law, justice, integrity or decency.
Firstly, the judge unilaterally declared Trump guilty with hardly a thought, and then imposed a ridiculously massive fine that, as you referenced in your post, encourages massive fines on the basis that regardless of the justness of it, they are harder to appeal.
Second, whether anyone has standing in the suit has been in question from the very beginning. A bedrock principle of our legal system is the concept of standing. I can't sue you (Rod) for libel or slander because you said something about Trump, Biden, or Bishop Deshotels that I don't like. Imagine if I could sue someone over something that doesn't affect me! We'd all be screwed. I don't have standing because I wasn't damaged. In the NY fraud case, who has sustained damages and therefore has the right to sue? Not Trump's creditors, who admitted as much, nor the state. It is as objectively vindictive as you're going to get in a politically tinted lawfare case. How I wish the left would understand it is digging its own grave with this, and stop blindly rationalizing anything and everything in the name of "stop Trump".
Third, the idea that it was some criminally egregious overinflation of assets is laughable. Apparently Trump's creditors didn't think so (see above, "standing"). These banks have very well-paid and intelligent analysts who can evaluate the value of properties and turn down deals that are a concern. How naive would someone have to be to believe Trump secured hundreds of millions in loans on the basis of, "Hey, we'll just take your word for it on the collateral, here's a few hundred mil..."? The last time you got a mortgage on a home, did the bank say, "We totally trust you're paying a fair price and aren't going to get an appraisal"? Didn't think so. Property values are inherently subjective, and anyone who has ever bought or sold a house subjectively stretched or compressed the value of their property to get the best deal. Is that fraud? Of course not. And if the people lending to you agree to lend based on the value you gave them, then they believe, obviously, that it is within the realm of defensibility, whether or not they agree with the exact amount.
So there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this case in particular is a joke, and the Left is way out over their skis but too ignorant and arrogant to notice they're about to sail right off a cliff. They're making it obvious these institutions and offices are a joke to them, nothing more than political billy-clubs they'll gladly use to torment Americans like the totalitarian wannabes they are. I don't like Trump, but if he wins and they're left crying about their delusional dark fantasies of gulags and mass executions (just like Trump did in his first term, right?), they deserve that and much more.
“law, justice, integrity or decency” are not concerns of our new left. It has always been their plan to ruin Trump financially. Rush predicted this in Trump’s first term. This is about power and revenge for the left. It’s bloodlust. And it won’t stop with Trump, Musk, or a baker in Colorado.
Speaking as a leftist, I am fearful of the counter repressions, the reprisals, once the Republicans are in power again; increasingly, one party gets stupid and breaks the rules including that of restraint, and then the other party gets back power and does likewise in payback. Both sides of morons refuse to see that *whatever* new rule breaking and law making they use against their opponents, those opponents will do likewise, often adding to breaking and making.
I have noticed this since the 90s. It just gets worse every decade with both parties pointing to the other’s previous misdeeds for their new misdeeds. Our ruling class is made of short sighted morons.
I know, right? I would consider myself economically lefty and socially sane. In high school I was a liberal against the Iraq War—and where are the anti-war Democrats now? (And of course, these freaks who wanna steal and chop up little children weren't around back then.)
This is how the Irish Troubles got started. One side does something reprehensible, the other ups the ante, and back and forth until people were being killed, buildings were being bombed (a cousin of ours in Ireland was standing outside the department store where she worked when it was blown up), etc....
As I've said before, we need a peacemaker that doesn't involve gunpowder and bullets.
And as I understand it, the "crime" was saying Mar A Lago as worth too much, but NY valued it at 18 million, literally a price a vacant lot would not sell for in that area.,
In Real Estate, you give a value to your lenders. It can be the most you think your property would sell for. They do due diligence. Then they decide whether to loan to you or not. All loans were paid back. The judge ruled Trump guilty - Stalin style - without a trial, then the trial that was held was over how much the penalty would be. There is actually no proof of any crime.
Edit to put this disclaimer: I'm a DeSantis supporter.
<<And if Trump and the Republicans have a lick of political sense, they are going to make that connection in their public rhetoric, and keep making it all the way to election day.>>
I love how you keep talking Election Day. As if it matters. I always ask, yet never receive a satisfactory answer: historically, name one totalitarian regime (and we’re there) that has voted itself out of it. I’m all ears.
What matters is 11/3 and 1/6, and because discussion of them is completely taboo, they shall forever remain unscrutinized except in kooky extremist circles.
Do you think “they” will let Trump near the White House? Cmon.
Look how Mike Johnson is handling the budget and border. This is the opposition! It’s business as usual!
A few points need clarification . . . if not education:
"It does seem incredibly disproportionate to impose a fine so massive, especially as it severely restricts Trump’s right to appeal." - In fact and as a matter of law Trump's right to appeal the judgment entered against him has nothing to do with posting or not posting a bond. Trump's lawyers can file his appeal at any time, regardless of whether a bond is posted. The bond is required before the appellate court can enter a stay in execution on the judgment. That the amount of the bond is "so massive" is the consequence of the amount of the judgment and fixed by law. The judgment is the amount found at trial to represent the damage the People of New York State suffered as a consequence of Trump's business practices, enhanced by a punitive amount designed to act as a deterrent against future actions and actors If the amounts are excessive, or if the verdict is in error, the appellate court will order the return to the defendant of all amounts paid in to the Court. The same rules apply to any person doing business in New York State.
This leads to a second misconception: "The essence of Trump’s argument on appeal is that the supposed harm he caused was minimal at best — all his lenders were repaid — and that the penalty levied against him was therefore wildly excessive." If that's the argument Trump's lawyers themselves use on appeal, they're going to lose. The harm caused to Trump's lenders is not the issue before the court. Rather the law seeks to reclaim from the defendant the losses incurred by the People of New York for underpayment of taxes and penalties for failure to abide by the commercial laws and practices of the state. The penalties could be, and were, enhanced to serve as a deterrent to anyone in the future contemplating such a course of action. Once again, these sums can be reduced as excessive by the appeals court, but whether or not the lenders lost any money is irrelevant.
Lastly, "it will be very, very easy for Trump to claim on the campaign trail that the System is taking away his property to punish him for being Donald Trump." No doubt many see this as so. But had Trump been acquitted of all charges, it would have been very, very easy for his opponents to claim on the campaign trail that the System was allowing him to keep his ill-gotten gains, rewarding him for his illegal behavior simply because he was Donald Trump.
Either the law treats everyone the same, regardless of name or station, or it is no longer the law a free people deserve.
Either there is a rule of law that applies equally to everyone regardless of station or there is no protection from predation for anyone. Under the federal system established by the Constitution, the sovereign state of New York passed laws for the regulation of business practices in its jurisdiction. Each state did the same, though the Uniform Commercial Code, a set of laws enacted and amended by the states, serves as a common law (not to be confused with the common law.) Here we are dealing with one of those exceptions enacted by the New York legislature. So the law is the law, and if the judge in the case applied it correctly, the appellate court will confirm his judgment. If he erred, the appellate court will reverse or return it to him for further action. That shouldn't be too hard to see, even without glasses.
This certainly sounds reasonable. But I wonder which other NY citizen has been prosecuted for being a predatory borrower? There must be at least a few others where this law has been applied equally.
A good point. There must be some record somewhere, though I am neither a New York resident nor a licensed New York lawyer and wouldn't know where to begin to look.
There is none. The statute in question has ONLY been used (and was intended for use) in concrete consumer fraud situations. That doesn’t apply here, although a literal reading of the language in the statute COULD let Engoron get away with this outrage.
So Biden's clear and consistent retention of classified documents, dating from when he was a Senator and VP (not as president when he could, like many others before him, such as Clinton, Reagan, Bush etc) has been shown by Special Prosecutor Hur as proven. And such documents were found in at least 7 different locations, hardly secure, in an open garage for ex. Biden not prosecuted by Trump prosecuted. That is not equal treatment.
From what I understand the particular law that James is using was intended to address misrepresentations in installment sales contracts for appliances. No other instance of use for RE loans granted to solvent lenders when the loans were repaid in full.
Sorry Jim not convinced. I am a former banker (in NY among other jurisdictions).
That's not my call; that job belongs to the appellate courts of New York, applying New York laws to the acts the trial court found the defendant violated.
No the job belonged to Ms. James and Judge Engeron. And they have proven themselves to be manifestly corrupt in their duties. I hold absolutely no trust in the appellate courts in NY, btw. Consider many cases in NY where criminals are not prosecuted but heroes like Daniel Penny are prosecuted.
C'mon, use some common sense. Show me an example of any NY court (recently) administering justice fairly.
Let me add one more thought about the law. Although I will leave it to the appellate courts of New York to decide if their law has been fairly applied by the trial court in Trump's case, I do have some concern for the precedent it sets with regards to the current, polarized electorate. It is not difficult to imagine a local prosecutor in a Republican jurisdiction deciding to seek indictment of Joe Biden for violating one of their statutory crimes. Assuming a jury finds evidence that Biden did violate the law and returns a guilty verdict (and Biden is out of office, there being a precedent against criminal prosecution of a sitting president) I would rather see him receive the same punishment given any other person convicted under the law than to give him a pass simply because he was the president once upon a time. But if there is no or insufficient evidence, I would not want to see partisan politics exert pressure on any trier of fact to achieve a politically satisfactory verdict. I've said before that impartial courts and a system of laws fairly and equally applied is the cornerstone of any free country. There should be no regard to station or wealth, race or religion for anyone to consider, these things at a minimum being beyond such consideration.
And Hillary was the worst offender, because of the number of documents and their location on a non-government server. Unlike Biden or Trump, no one would have to walk onto her property to retrieve them.
Considering that Trump had been operating his real estate empire in New York for 40 (FORTY) years with no particular problem from the authorities and in line with common practice among his peers, who also have not faced such scrutiny, it seems to me there’s a problem here.
A law unenforced over time becomes a dead letter in fact if not in law. Consider all those leftover 18th and 19th century statutes that one occasionally hears about—things like it’s illegal to wear blue on Sundays (or whatever) that addressed specific problems a century and a half ago that are simply not problems now. But they COULD be enforced by a jerk DA.
Enforcing this law because Trump bragged to his bank, which politely ignored him while it did its DCF analysis, would be similarly unjust.
Pious garbage from liberals who are all of a sudden solicitous of the universality of the law after years of ignoring Democratic politicians’ outrageous violations (from Lois Lerner onwards) fall on deaf ears here. I’m far too well bred to articulate my true feelings here, but rest assured that there will very likely be a whirlwind to be reaped come November.
"Rather the law seeks to reclaim from the defendant the losses incurred by the People of New York for underpayment of taxes and penalties for failure to abide by the commercial laws and practices of the state."
Huh?
Property taxes are not determined by commercial loan applications. Municipalities are quite capable of their own assessments. PS: And it is customary for assessed values to be far under market values. My own home is worth $200,000 more than its assessed value for tax purposes. Am I guilty too?
Property taxes were a consideration, though. An undervalued property pays less in property taxes. For this reason the NY AG charged Trump with inflating the value of his property to achieve favorable loan rates and undervaluing his property to pay less taxes. The property taxes were, I believe, the lesser amounts of those damages the AG claimed for the state.
Trump had no power to force any municipality to undervalue his properties. Yes, if he thought the assessments were high he could appeal them - all municipalities have tax appeal boards. But ultimately the responsibility for assessment values lay 100% with the municipalities; the only way the NY AG charges could be true would be if there was some collusion with Trump by the municipal officials, i.e. by some kind of bribe.
Unless that can be proved the New York position is bullshit.
Then why was the gov of NY assuring the business community that they would not be in any danger of prosecution? Why would they be nervous in the first place if this was all above board like?? LOL
Very good point. I'd forgotten that tidbit. The leftists are broadcasting their corruption. They are so confident. It's like they know they can't be touched; that power will never return to their opposition.
"Trump's lawyers can file his appeal at any time, regardless of whether a bond is posted. The bond is required before the appellate court can enter a stay in execution on the judgment."
Without a stay the appeal is nearly useless.
"...if the verdict is in error, the appellate court will order the return to the defendant of all amounts paid in to the Court..."
Can the appellate court order the State to return sold property?
Re: Masterpiece Cake Shop. Apparently the left (and, truth be told, sensible people everywhere) aren't really opponents of confectionary censorship when it suits them:
No, I feel sorry for a kid growing up with parents who thought it would be cute to name him that. It's nice to know that we can always count on Walmart to have no standards, though.
Somewhere around that time, I saw in comments about how in their work as a nurse, a number of children who had been named absolutely awful, demonic things had gotten taken away from their parents... She continued on that the children didn't get taken away for being named such horrible things, but that the parents themselves were awful people who were terrible to their kids. It was an interesting thing to consider.
Aw, wait, so the kid didn't get a cake from Walmart? That makes it even sadder. And yeah—naming a kid like that should in itself be considered a form of child abuse, probably indicative of other bad things going on.
(I have a very strange sense of humor when being "funny"... lots of understating the absurd "straight". Highly misunderstood, hard to reproduce online.)
I think that foreign-born parents should really, really consider consulting with a native before they name their children. And all parents should think about how a name isn't a chance for their own self-expression, it's something the kid will have to live with.
Couldn't tell ya. I heard about it from a substitute teacher who did roll call in a high school class. He was smart: he skipped her name when he saw it, then asked if he skipped anyone. The girl raised her hand, and he asked her for her name. That's how he got the pronunciation right.
I am unaware of 'creative names' being a fad of Afro-Caribbeans or of direct immigrants from Africa; they use either Christian or Islamic or traditional African names. I can't exclude the possibility, but I'd say the statistical likelihood is low.
Therefore she was most likely African-American, which means a pre-Civil War arrival of her ancestors.
There's a comic - a black man with a very weird name - who had a bit about how unmarried black women under 20 shouldn't be allowed to name their children without a grandmother or something approving it.
My sister had a friend (ghetto culture girl) who had twins and named them something like Jonathan and Johnnathan. Lord have mercy, but then the one of them had some medical issues, and being as they were born on the same date, even the hospital was getting the kids' records mixed up.
I'm reminded of an atypically funny Saturday Night Live skit, probably from the 1990s, where Nicholas Cage plays an office worker who can't understand why people think his last name is "Asswipe" when he pronounces it "Oz-we-pei."
Ha! When I was teaching once in awhile a kid would swear "Jesus Christ!" I would then run to the window, look up in the sky, and say "Where? Where?" Only once in any class was there a repeat, they all got it.
Same thing happened to my wife in a hospital in the Baltimore area. When she got home that night, and told me the nurse’s reaction, she was in tears (of laughter).
I admit I’m feeling really optimistic about Trump winning the election after these headlines.
I kept thinking ‘are you trying to get him elected’ when I saw them. Trump has his commercials right here.
I really haven’t paid attention to the ins and outs of any of these cases, but the NY ‘we are going to seize your properties’ seems extraordinarily vengeful and petty.
It’s one thing to be able to say something is a fair penalty and believe that justice was served for a specific crime. But I don’t think anyone outside of ideological Leftists can say that in this case.
I find it disheartening that a lot of this could have been avoided had we had leaders that weren’t compromised by big money and the desire for power.
Why is it so impossible to believe that people are truly upset and frustrated by the effects that globalization has had on their local communities? I know way too many people who left Michigan in the early part of this century because businesses were moving out, not in. And that was way before the recession in 2008. We never got the boom that other areas of the country had at that time. It was bad. Really bad. A lot of us had no idea what GWB was talking about when he was suggesting the economy was good. It seemed very delusional at the time.
>>>I find it disheartening that a lot of this could have been avoided had we had leaders that weren’t compromised by big money and the desire for power.
And this is true for both parties as it ain’t about ideology or beliefs, but getting and keeping the brass ring, which is why people often insist that the economy is fabulous when for most people it is not. That and the reality that the better off you are the better the economy always is. Since most politicians are better off, they are already insulated from their bad judgments.
1. That quote from Ruth Marcus is something! She usually is a lib/left hack.
2. Real estate deals are perpetual arguments about how much this and that property is worth. That is part of the game. Criminalizing that is beyond absurd, especially when no one is defrauded, when obligations are paid in full.
3. Trump has about $3 billion worth of Truth Social stock coming in. That should help him post the bail on that ridiculous fine so he can appeal. It also makes the "Trump is broke" stuff look silly.
I completely agree with the larger point. Anyone with a functioning brain without TDS can see all this Democrat political lawfare is an outrage.
He can't sell stock for 6 months. Standard limits for IPOs. Again, not to be difficult, but such matters are strictly defined in finance and securities law.
The funny thing is, New York State has claimed they were overvalued, but will then attempt to get the maximum price at any sale. If Trump were smart he would get his billionaire friends to get into a bidding war over them. That is, if he has any friends.
"But a hell of a lot of us could be Jack Phillips, who will be hounded to his grave by these people.
"And this is why we will vote Trump."
For certain. If they can use the law in a way it's not been used before, and require an absurdly high bond few could ever pay - if they can do it to Trump they can surely do it to you, and don't you think they'll try if you, for example, decline to bake the Satan dildo cake?
That's the heart of Trump's appeal to his fans - he's taking the arrows that are ultimately meant for them. He's exposing how far "our democracy" will go to get him - and of course they'll subsequently use it to get the "deplorables."
Trump is giving us all a sneak peak of how it's going to work. Because, after perfecting these tactics against Trump, let's not think "our democracy" will retire them.
Combined with Biden's open borders chaos, the legal attack on Trump has convinced me to vote for Trump. I don't think Trump has the discipline to solve any national problems but at least he does not hate me. The Democrats do.
I share your reasoning and your conclusions.
I mean, that's it. Trump and the Republicans will basically leave me and my family alone. The left never will.
The question is, though: How many people in states that will make a difference are thinking the same way you are? A small number of key states are likely to decide this mess in 2024. Are there voters in those states who weren't going to vote for Trump but now will because of his treatment by New York? I honestly don't know one way or the other, but I guess we'll see. Maybe Trump gets a little boost in the popular vote because of this, but the popular vote don't win no elections.
The thing is Biden has alienated a slice of the far left by refusing forthrightly to condemn Israel, which no U.S. President of course could ever do. It still puts him in a false position. There are people that are confidently assuming that Michigan and Minnesota are in play as a result. I don't know about that, but his coalition is a crazy quilt of minority interests. If one panel falls off he could be more vulnerable than an incumbent should be.
But there are also former Trump voters who want nothing to do with him this time around. And some swing voters in those states who don't like either of these two terrible candidates and may just stay home. And some of those far-lefties who want Biden to condemn Israel will vote for him anyway if the other choice is Trump. I'm not saying Trump will win or won't won, only that old patterns, as you suggest, are changing. It's going to come down to which campaign finds and best understands the swing voters in those crucial states. All the rest is just emotionalism and gum-flappin'!
he may or may not have the discipline, but if he puts a guy like Stephen Miller in as AG or head of DHS we'll all be better off.
If I want a savior who takes on the sins of the world I'll stick with Jesus the Christ, thank you.
Why can't you folks just do plain old politics, sausage making and all,and not try to make something sacred and heroic out of it
Because that ship has sailed, and the wokies have already made something sacred and heroic out of it.
"Plain old politics" is premised on a baseline core agreement on fundamental values and goals; it has to do with second-order questions about how we get to where we all agree we want to go. But now politics has become more profound, having to do with first-order questions of where we should go and what our values are.
I think that sometimes, it's sort of like you think the game is still checkers when it has moved onto chess—objectively, I mean: not what you want or I want, but what has actually happened. And neither you nor I get to unilaterally demand to make it checkers again.
And none of this has anything whatsoever to do with Jesus and the Gospel, which are not of this world; it's all entirely within the realm of everyday prudential concerns.
Disagreeing, and vehemently. All I see in this drama are selfishness, greed and a lust for power. Sure, those are conditions which afflict us in all times, but now we make virtues out of them.
And do you really think worshipping golden calves, prostrating oneself before the altar of Fear, or idolizing wicked men will lead anywhere other than Hell?
Also those first order questions do not belong in politics. They are properly the matter for religion and philosophy.
Well, as you probably realize, I don't have much in the way of lust for power or an interest in politics. So I have no motive to see it this way unless I considered it to be true, which I do.
Also, religious and philosophical questions ultimately do filter down to the level of politics on fundamental matters, because that's how you form a culture and a polity, a shared life with others. Even the liberal seperation of religion from politics is itself a type of religious or philosophical view.
And again, no one is worshipping anything, prostrating before fear, et cetera. I think that these are straw men of your own creation. People are just reading the lay of the land and making judgments in accordance.
Separation of church and state is a pragmatic measure since the two conflict with and corrupt one another (we know this through long history), though I suppose pragmatism is a philosophical choice too.
People aren't reading the layy of the land, but rather the lay of the nightmares they are spoonfed by the propagandists.
Yes, what we consider pragmatism is a philosophical decision. And as for whether it's the land or a nightmare, I guess that we just have a basic disagreement on that matter.
Agree that we've abandoned fundamental values and goals. The left these days is talking about "too much free speech." They're past the point of no return on things like this; we either meet them on that battlefield of their choosing, so to speak, or we just surrender now
That's right. Dreher asked last week what had happened to the Scots with their incredible speech codes, and I said they had just given up. We're not there yet here, thank God, but we're close.
I'm pretty sure that Texas wouldn't put up with it. Between our Bill of Rights and our federalist structure, we (in America) have certain advantages over here.
Also, it's not true that our Left and our Right want different things. Apart from a few remnant virtucrats like Rod the Right is every bit as coldly individualistic as the Left. "I want mine" is the mutual slogan of both.
That is not true at all. Much of the progressive left doesn’t want selfish personal desires satisfied; rather, it wants to see its vision of society imposed on all of us. Many people will vote for Trump out of a sense of self-defense against the social engineering schemes of the progressive left. You may believe they’re misreading the moment, but that’s what they’re actually doing; they’re not bowing down before a golden calf. You’re just looking at a few manic true believers among the MAGA set and judging everyone frightened by the Democrats as motivated by that same idolatry. That’s false.
I disagree very much with this. What do you think the sexual revolution is if not the unhindered satiation of carnal desires? And DEI reduces to "We minorities want our share of the pie".
This insight isn't even original with me. I've heard it various places, including on this blog. The priest at my church has alluded to this in a sermon: the Left wants sex without moral guidelines, the Right wants riches without moral responsibility.
In fact the two desires are orthogonal and don't conflict- certainly they dominate the private life of one Donald Trump! But giving either free reign is ruinous to society. Yet there is ample room for compromise and half loaves if one drops the "my way or the highway" thinking.
I find the fears often expressed on this blog utterly unrealistic, the product of propaganda disseminated by the owning class to scare the plebs
And yes, I live here too- but I stay well away from smooth tongue liars like Tucker Carlson and his ilk.
The Sexual Revolution certainly had its liberal roots in its ideological demand for personal liberty in all things. But it hasn’t ended there. We are now WAY beyond liberalism here. There is a palpable desire to refashion society to be almost sacramentally devoted to Pride and to the indoctrination of children into Pride etc. We are no longer simply being asked to acknowledge or tolerate gay people or those with other forms of sexual identity; rather, we are asked to make as much of it as we do of Christmas. Surely you have to have noticed that.
And DEI is an awful lot more than just asking for a piece of the pie. First, DEI rose into general societal awareness AFTER the first black president had completed two terms in office. Certainly, an electoral majority of Americans was willing to give the Ultimate Slice of the pie—twice—before DEI ever became widely understood as a phenomenon.
DEI is a second generation expression of the racial grievance industry. It aims not to level the playing field, but to start the playing with points already added to certain players or to otherwise make things unequal again to compensate for perceived prior inequalities. DEI is profoundly illiberal in its pursuit of EQUITY over EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.
If you stay away from Carlson you have no basis to call him a large other than a presumption that whoever told you he was liar wasn't lying.
"I find the fears often expressed on this blog utterly unrealistic, the product of propaganda disseminated by the owning class to scare the plebs"
After reading Rod for almost two decades and having learned quite a bit about you and your life experience through your commentary, the fact that you think you have a better understanding of the world than Rod amazes me.
You're just this guy from Michigan (who lives in Baltimore now as I recall) with a standard office job. You have absolutely no qualifications AT ALL. You're not even a good listener when it comes to the other commenters here.
Rigged system proves Trump right by rigging system against him. Sounds like a good headline to me.
Florida appallete defense attorney Steve Gosney has a great video on how this is an unconstitutionally large fine. The relevant case is a '98 case and the majority opinion was written by Thomas. In that case a man was carrying $350k worth of cash out of the country and didn't report it. There was no other alleged wrong doing, he just didnt properly report it. They government siezed the money. The Supreme Court ruled that was unconstitutional. The two-prong test for whether a fine is unconstitutional is this: is it even in part intended to be punitive, and is it proportional. There was also a lot of talk in the ruling about was anyone actually harmed by act being fined. That the guy failing to report the cash in no way harmed the government. Heres the video https://www.youtube.com/live/Z4Fzaa_3nl4?si=vya6HlZSz80_LzHk
I'm no lawyer but it looks like the legal chattering classes have, erm, caught up with me. All of this going after Trump smells like bills of attainder, which are unconstitutional in this country. You can't pass a law against an individual, and if this makes it to the Supreme Court Tishy-poo is cooked.
The other day, I was wondering if it would be possible to pass a law that bars Bill Gates, specifically, from owning any farmland in this country. So I guess not, then.
Nope. It's one of the things that makes our system as great as it is.
You mention "the legitimacy of American institutions," which is being damaged by the persecution of Donald Trump. Of course, nothing new here. I don't know what legitimacy we're talking about. For me, the last of it went out with Reagan.
Will the persecution help Trump? Maybe, but the Democrats will do all they can to steal the election, and they are much better at that than The Stupid Party is at fighting it. The Repubs are, as far as I can see, largely clueless about what is going to come down on them in the campaign or the election.
I've been meaning to read Alinsky's *Rules for Radicals*—not in order to actually use those amoral tactics, but just to better understand how the other side plays. "Know your enemy," like Sun Tzu said.
In California in November of 2024, a van loaded with ballots will leave Yreka (California) and miss it's turn-off on Highway 101. It will detour through Utah and show up in Oakland at 8:00 AM with 10,000 ballots. 9,997 will be for Adam Schiff, 2 for Steve Garvey, and 1 for Timothy Leary. Schiff will win the election by 19 votes.
American culture, discourse, and politics have been gradually eroded until now there is very little left except tribalism all the way down. (We really do seem to be living through some version of a Reformation combined with a cold civil war that could get hot before the end of this decade.)
In every possible sphere of public life, from our cultural and educational classes who have tied themselves to the mast of holy dogma and who MUST make one more Social Justice movie, play, musical, exhibit, book, no matter how sterile or repetitive, even if it leads to hemorrhaging cash; from our journalists now who campaign against free speech; to our political class who are like mayflies that exist as slaves to a day, ie. the eternal present of the social media news cycle—NOTHING matters to any of these people except publicly performing obedience to their tribe and its dogma, while doing anything, no matter how deranged, to show how much they hate the other tribe and want to destroy it.
The Letitia Jameses of America are never in doubt and will never change course no matter how destructive their actions may become—the Dems have become Ahab with the Trump as their Orange Whale, and never forget they have zero allegiance to the principles of the Constitution or republican government (equality before the law, due process, free speech, freedom of association, good-faith democratic debate) because they believe these things are racist and illegitimate, and because these things stand in the way of their power dreams.
Soviet America is here and there will be no going back to the American Republic.
Those of us who frequent the Ace of Spades HQ are familiar with the Mencken quote, “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
I'm a normal man and I'm tempted AS HELL !!!
But there'a special circle in a Hell for those who foment political violence. Imagine being companioned by Robbespierre and Lenin for eternity.
LOL. Ok, then, in order to not go down in history 'companioned' by Lenin, I'll just sit here and accept defeat.
Thanks for saving me from a fate worse than death.
Hey, politics, like sports, is a domain where we all have to accept regular (mainly vicarious) defeats. But there's always another election like there's always another season.
Recep Erdogon said back in the 90s that Democracy was like a streetcar, you ride it to where you want to go, then you get off. Eventually (and I was there for it) he did just that.
Sure Turkey has elections, but thye have far fewer options than they did less than 20 years ago.
Sure. I read Ace too but I take things like the Mencken quote as a part of his sardonic style. Not as an actual call to violence.
Please don’t be a sophist.
Keep in mind that the United States herself was founded on a violent revolution against the existing government. Do the Founding Fathers have a special place in hell?
I think the revolutionaries who tar'd and feathered the Loyalists might be there.
Well, that was pretty evil.
Yes, especially because it could be fatal.
The Founders published an exacting explanation of their cause, they served their units of government (the future states), and were under the command civil governance, they acted within then-acceptable laws of warfare (though as another poster notes there was some individual brutality- such is war). Individuals or conspiracies which act wholly on their own and commit atrocities (Tim Mcveigh; ISIS today in Moscow) are beyond the bounds.
It's not a clean definition, though, is it? I mean, whether we think of ISIS as a terrorist group or a Rouge state (back when it controlled territory), it's abhorrent; and whether the Founding Fathers were just a conspiracy of rebels or an eventual successful independent nation, their principals were admirable.
Ultimately, it's like the distinction between what is moral and what is legal. A state can act worse and more criminal than any rebel faction, and rebel factions can become independent states. The de jur state of things doesn't determine what group is more moral.
Are you endorsing terrorist acts?
Well, did you endorse the Minutemen on April 19, 1775? They fired in British soldiers in performance of their duties, right? (Their duties, of course, being to take away their weapons that the ruling government deemed illegal for them to have).
Or when the British ordered notoriously inaccurate nighttime bombing on German cities to literally "terrorise the German populace"?
Or at Wounded Knee when the US Army opened fire on men, women and children, killing 200 (for which the Nation's highest honor, the Medal of Honor, was awarded to 20 soldiers for their brave killing of women and children?)
Is it terrorism to resist the invasion of your land by striking back at the invaders? I mean, we've called that "terrorism", even when those attacked are military forces, and we've called it "acceptable collateral damage" when our (or our allies) have killed non-combatants, even when the explicit reasons is to bring "shock and awe" or even "terror" to a nation's people.
What I'm against is any actor, state or non-state, using violence against non-combatants, either as an explicit tactic or as a known consequence of an attack on enemy combatants (e.g., dropping dumb bombs on a legitimate military target far in excess of what is needed to destroy that target when non-combatants are known to be in close proximity.)
So ISIS attacking concertgoers in Moscow is certainly impermissible...but American Minutemen shooting occupying British military forces is permissible. Likewise, dropping tons of ordinance in the carpet bombing of a city is impermissible, but derailing trains carrying weapons in occupied France is permissible.
The Nazis called the resistance terrorists, but they themselves were the terrorists. Of course, the line was often crossed in the killing of "collaborators", so it's not necessarily the group but each *action* that should be judged. No matter how just the cause, certain things should never be done; and no matter how studiously permissible one prosecuted violence, it is still wrong [EDIT: if the underlying cause is wrong--e.g., an aggressive invasion of another nation where there is no legitimate casus belli].
I'll leave you with quotes from Curtis LeMay, who oversaw mass bombings in WW II. He later led the SAC: He said "There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn’t bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders."
And he later said this as well: “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”
Another poster? I have a name Jon.
Sorry. Issues with posting by phone.
Yay! Morons! :)
I'm seeing speculation that ISIS is behind the Moscow attack.(Russia was instrumental is taking down the Islamic State). Of course it's too soon to know anything certain on this.
In other news Princess Kate has cancer (though nothing more specific on this)
Apparently we warned them two weeks ago?:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-embassy-warns-imminent-extremist-attack-moscow-2024-03-08/
It looks like Russia said on the 7th that they'd foiled an ISIS attack, and the next day the US embassy was like, "No, they didn't foil it—get out of there, Americans." The warning specifically mentioned concerts.
Or maybe Russia foiled another attack, but we knew it wasn't over yet. Something along those lines.
Apparently US embassy did warn them - so far no more updates as to the terrorists are / were.
I found myself mildly surprised that we still have an embassy in Russia.
Diplomatic relations have not been severed nor ambassadors recalled.
It's a large, modern building about 5 miles from Red Square. On one side of the Embassy across the street sits the small Orthodox Church of Perpetual Surveillance.
I had to do a double take; that name sounds oddly plausible. "He is always watching you. . . ."
Of course I just HAD to look that up. Google Earth DOES show a small church across the street from the embassy. The app labels the building as "Khram Devytai Muchenikov", which Google Translate renders as "Devithai Martyrs Temple". I could find no reference to either anywhere on the web. So I don't think you are kidding at all.
ISIS has claimed responsibility
I'm seeing some preliminary reports that it was terrorist Ukrainians.
It was ISIS. I am certain of this.
It definitely fits the ISIS MO.
No its not - ISIS did NOT as yet claim responsibility. It is only the Western press who claimed that it did. Please find me a direct source attributable to ISIS where they claim responsibility. Doesn't it strike you odd that the West immediately knows who is culpibale? but 18 months down the line still hasn't figured out who blew up Nord Stream? You can be so very naiive when it comes to politics Rod.
ISIS has since claimed responsibility.
I understand that some Chechens who joined Isis in Syria have returned to Chechnya. So my question is, are these Isis terrorists who committed the attack Chechen Isis terrorists, reprising their 2010 Moscow theater attack, with even bloodier results?
https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/caucasus/chechnya-russia/isis-returnees-bring-both-hope-and-fear-chechnya
The Tajikistani hired guns of this atrocity have been apprehended just a hundred kilometers short of the Russian-Ukrainian border towards which they were heading. The primary interrogations on the spot are already on telegram channels - you can see one here: https://t.me/ukraine_watch/19101 complete with English subtitles. None of the perpetrators mention ISIS or Allah Akbar or anything. They just mention being hired for money (100,000 roubles). They claim they were approached on telegram channels but do not know who recruited them. This of course may be simply a cover story - we will know more in due course when the professionals work on them thoroughly.
The salient evidence thus far is that they were caught trying to get to Ukraine.
A few weeks ago the US and the UK issued warnings for their citizens to stay away from crowded places in Russia, including notably concert halls, and Victoria Nuland just prior to her resignation promised that Putin is in for some nasty surprises. Seeing footage of the shooting one can easily see that the ones who carried out the crime are professionals who know how to handle weapons. It is also a fact that Ukraine has long been trying to hire mercenaries from the ''stans'' offering money through facebook and telegram.
I find it very odd that ISIS has suddenly turned its attention to Russia - I would have imagined with all that is going on in Gaza, if it were a truly Islamist organization it would have its hands full there but it has hardly been mentioned at all..... so if it is truly ISIS - then what is ISIS exactly? an Islamist organisation or a mercenary army?
My informed speculation is that having failed to defeat Russia either economically or militarily, the last desperate attempt is to foment inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict in Russia. It won't happen - this is no longer the 90s or the early 2000s. Today Chechen Muslims and Orthodox Russians fight and pray side by side in the trenches. The Grand Mufti of Russia as well as all leading Muslim governors have already issued their condemnations. Inter-religious harmony in Russia is the best it has ever been and no one is interested in going back to the days when they were not.
But the latter is simply my theory - I will await further details from the competent Russian authorities. But one thing I can tell you, is that the Ukrainians better hope that it was really ISIS and that there authorities were not involved.
As someone who has no love for Donald Trump (he is everything I despise in a politician and in a man) I have to say Luntz is spot on: this will indeed get Trump elected. His base is a given, but a lot of people most definitely NOT part of his base are going to see this as destroying Trump simply because he's Trump. And Americans react viscerally when they see something that is egregiously unfair.
Don’t assume that the dems won’t be out in force visiting nursing homes ‘assisting’ the infirm in voting. It will be a squeaker if he wins. I have no faith in our elections anymore.
I can testify personally to the harvesting of nursing homes.
I'm no Trump fan but the NY persecution (not prosecution) of Trump on financial fraud matters is egregious by any standard. It's catnip for the progressive base without regard for law, justice, integrity or decency.
Firstly, the judge unilaterally declared Trump guilty with hardly a thought, and then imposed a ridiculously massive fine that, as you referenced in your post, encourages massive fines on the basis that regardless of the justness of it, they are harder to appeal.
Second, whether anyone has standing in the suit has been in question from the very beginning. A bedrock principle of our legal system is the concept of standing. I can't sue you (Rod) for libel or slander because you said something about Trump, Biden, or Bishop Deshotels that I don't like. Imagine if I could sue someone over something that doesn't affect me! We'd all be screwed. I don't have standing because I wasn't damaged. In the NY fraud case, who has sustained damages and therefore has the right to sue? Not Trump's creditors, who admitted as much, nor the state. It is as objectively vindictive as you're going to get in a politically tinted lawfare case. How I wish the left would understand it is digging its own grave with this, and stop blindly rationalizing anything and everything in the name of "stop Trump".
Third, the idea that it was some criminally egregious overinflation of assets is laughable. Apparently Trump's creditors didn't think so (see above, "standing"). These banks have very well-paid and intelligent analysts who can evaluate the value of properties and turn down deals that are a concern. How naive would someone have to be to believe Trump secured hundreds of millions in loans on the basis of, "Hey, we'll just take your word for it on the collateral, here's a few hundred mil..."? The last time you got a mortgage on a home, did the bank say, "We totally trust you're paying a fair price and aren't going to get an appraisal"? Didn't think so. Property values are inherently subjective, and anyone who has ever bought or sold a house subjectively stretched or compressed the value of their property to get the best deal. Is that fraud? Of course not. And if the people lending to you agree to lend based on the value you gave them, then they believe, obviously, that it is within the realm of defensibility, whether or not they agree with the exact amount.
So there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that this case in particular is a joke, and the Left is way out over their skis but too ignorant and arrogant to notice they're about to sail right off a cliff. They're making it obvious these institutions and offices are a joke to them, nothing more than political billy-clubs they'll gladly use to torment Americans like the totalitarian wannabes they are. I don't like Trump, but if he wins and they're left crying about their delusional dark fantasies of gulags and mass executions (just like Trump did in his first term, right?), they deserve that and much more.
“law, justice, integrity or decency” are not concerns of our new left. It has always been their plan to ruin Trump financially. Rush predicted this in Trump’s first term. This is about power and revenge for the left. It’s bloodlust. And it won’t stop with Trump, Musk, or a baker in Colorado.
The same can be said about Latitia James' persecution of the NRA.
Speaking as a leftist, I am fearful of the counter repressions, the reprisals, once the Republicans are in power again; increasingly, one party gets stupid and breaks the rules including that of restraint, and then the other party gets back power and does likewise in payback. Both sides of morons refuse to see that *whatever* new rule breaking and law making they use against their opponents, those opponents will do likewise, often adding to breaking and making.
I have noticed this since the 90s. It just gets worse every decade with both parties pointing to the other’s previous misdeeds for their new misdeeds. Our ruling class is made of short sighted morons.
Agreed.
BTW I was leftist years ago, and I haven't changed. It is the political environment that changed and turned me into a marginal rightist.
I know, right? I would consider myself economically lefty and socially sane. In high school I was a liberal against the Iraq War—and where are the anti-war Democrats now? (And of course, these freaks who wanna steal and chop up little children weren't around back then.)
Did Trump prosecute Hillary? Did anyone prosecute the Clintons for their clear dealings with the Chinese? How about Eric Holder?
I'm waiting for evidence of the supposed reprisals from conservatives. Not seeing them.
Maybe they're afraid of getting suicided.
This is how the Irish Troubles got started. One side does something reprehensible, the other ups the ante, and back and forth until people were being killed, buildings were being bombed (a cousin of ours in Ireland was standing outside the department store where she worked when it was blown up), etc....
As I've said before, we need a peacemaker that doesn't involve gunpowder and bullets.
And as I understand it, the "crime" was saying Mar A Lago as worth too much, but NY valued it at 18 million, literally a price a vacant lot would not sell for in that area.,
In Real Estate, you give a value to your lenders. It can be the most you think your property would sell for. They do due diligence. Then they decide whether to loan to you or not. All loans were paid back. The judge ruled Trump guilty - Stalin style - without a trial, then the trial that was held was over how much the penalty would be. There is actually no proof of any crime.
Edit to put this disclaimer: I'm a DeSantis supporter.
<<And if Trump and the Republicans have a lick of political sense, they are going to make that connection in their public rhetoric, and keep making it all the way to election day.>>
I love how you keep talking Election Day. As if it matters. I always ask, yet never receive a satisfactory answer: historically, name one totalitarian regime (and we’re there) that has voted itself out of it. I’m all ears.
What matters is 11/3 and 1/6, and because discussion of them is completely taboo, they shall forever remain unscrutinized except in kooky extremist circles.
Do you think “they” will let Trump near the White House? Cmon.
Look how Mike Johnson is handling the budget and border. This is the opposition! It’s business as usual!
And shall remain so.
I try to resist this level of cynicism. But I must admit it’s getting harder and harder.
A few points need clarification . . . if not education:
"It does seem incredibly disproportionate to impose a fine so massive, especially as it severely restricts Trump’s right to appeal." - In fact and as a matter of law Trump's right to appeal the judgment entered against him has nothing to do with posting or not posting a bond. Trump's lawyers can file his appeal at any time, regardless of whether a bond is posted. The bond is required before the appellate court can enter a stay in execution on the judgment. That the amount of the bond is "so massive" is the consequence of the amount of the judgment and fixed by law. The judgment is the amount found at trial to represent the damage the People of New York State suffered as a consequence of Trump's business practices, enhanced by a punitive amount designed to act as a deterrent against future actions and actors If the amounts are excessive, or if the verdict is in error, the appellate court will order the return to the defendant of all amounts paid in to the Court. The same rules apply to any person doing business in New York State.
This leads to a second misconception: "The essence of Trump’s argument on appeal is that the supposed harm he caused was minimal at best — all his lenders were repaid — and that the penalty levied against him was therefore wildly excessive." If that's the argument Trump's lawyers themselves use on appeal, they're going to lose. The harm caused to Trump's lenders is not the issue before the court. Rather the law seeks to reclaim from the defendant the losses incurred by the People of New York for underpayment of taxes and penalties for failure to abide by the commercial laws and practices of the state. The penalties could be, and were, enhanced to serve as a deterrent to anyone in the future contemplating such a course of action. Once again, these sums can be reduced as excessive by the appeals court, but whether or not the lenders lost any money is irrelevant.
Lastly, "it will be very, very easy for Trump to claim on the campaign trail that the System is taking away his property to punish him for being Donald Trump." No doubt many see this as so. But had Trump been acquitted of all charges, it would have been very, very easy for his opponents to claim on the campaign trail that the System was allowing him to keep his ill-gotten gains, rewarding him for his illegal behavior simply because he was Donald Trump.
Either the law treats everyone the same, regardless of name or station, or it is no longer the law a free people deserve.
You think the law is being applied fairly now, do you?
I’m just gobsmacked by Jim’s erudite explanation of the principle of equal treatment under the law as illustrated by this latest Trump case.
I know leftists take this kind of sophistry as Truth, but I’m blind to how they get there.
I must be in a thick far-right bubble.
Either there is a rule of law that applies equally to everyone regardless of station or there is no protection from predation for anyone. Under the federal system established by the Constitution, the sovereign state of New York passed laws for the regulation of business practices in its jurisdiction. Each state did the same, though the Uniform Commercial Code, a set of laws enacted and amended by the states, serves as a common law (not to be confused with the common law.) Here we are dealing with one of those exceptions enacted by the New York legislature. So the law is the law, and if the judge in the case applied it correctly, the appellate court will confirm his judgment. If he erred, the appellate court will reverse or return it to him for further action. That shouldn't be too hard to see, even without glasses.
This certainly sounds reasonable. But I wonder which other NY citizen has been prosecuted for being a predatory borrower? There must be at least a few others where this law has been applied equally.
A good point. There must be some record somewhere, though I am neither a New York resident nor a licensed New York lawyer and wouldn't know where to begin to look.
So you've got hundreds of words worth of opinion and not the first clue.
If so you shouldn't venture an opinion, with respect.
There is none. The statute in question has ONLY been used (and was intended for use) in concrete consumer fraud situations. That doesn’t apply here, although a literal reading of the language in the statute COULD let Engoron get away with this outrage.
So Biden's clear and consistent retention of classified documents, dating from when he was a Senator and VP (not as president when he could, like many others before him, such as Clinton, Reagan, Bush etc) has been shown by Special Prosecutor Hur as proven. And such documents were found in at least 7 different locations, hardly secure, in an open garage for ex. Biden not prosecuted by Trump prosecuted. That is not equal treatment.
From what I understand the particular law that James is using was intended to address misrepresentations in installment sales contracts for appliances. No other instance of use for RE loans granted to solvent lenders when the loans were repaid in full.
Sorry Jim not convinced. I am a former banker (in NY among other jurisdictions).
That's not my call; that job belongs to the appellate courts of New York, applying New York laws to the acts the trial court found the defendant violated.
No the job belonged to Ms. James and Judge Engeron. And they have proven themselves to be manifestly corrupt in their duties. I hold absolutely no trust in the appellate courts in NY, btw. Consider many cases in NY where criminals are not prosecuted but heroes like Daniel Penny are prosecuted.
C'mon, use some common sense. Show me an example of any NY court (recently) administering justice fairly.
Let me add one more thought about the law. Although I will leave it to the appellate courts of New York to decide if their law has been fairly applied by the trial court in Trump's case, I do have some concern for the precedent it sets with regards to the current, polarized electorate. It is not difficult to imagine a local prosecutor in a Republican jurisdiction deciding to seek indictment of Joe Biden for violating one of their statutory crimes. Assuming a jury finds evidence that Biden did violate the law and returns a guilty verdict (and Biden is out of office, there being a precedent against criminal prosecution of a sitting president) I would rather see him receive the same punishment given any other person convicted under the law than to give him a pass simply because he was the president once upon a time. But if there is no or insufficient evidence, I would not want to see partisan politics exert pressure on any trier of fact to achieve a politically satisfactory verdict. I've said before that impartial courts and a system of laws fairly and equally applied is the cornerstone of any free country. There should be no regard to station or wealth, race or religion for anyone to consider, these things at a minimum being beyond such consideration.
Then you should be against the Mar a Lago documents case, since Biden and Hillary both intentionally kept classified material illegally.
And Hillary was the worst offender, because of the number of documents and their location on a non-government server. Unlike Biden or Trump, no one would have to walk onto her property to retrieve them.
Here's a query for you: Would NY state or city have brought any of these cases against Trump if he had not run for and won the presidency 2016?
From where I sit, it seems obvious that they wouldn't have. But I would be curious to hear your view.
Considering that Trump had been operating his real estate empire in New York for 40 (FORTY) years with no particular problem from the authorities and in line with common practice among his peers, who also have not faced such scrutiny, it seems to me there’s a problem here.
A law unenforced over time becomes a dead letter in fact if not in law. Consider all those leftover 18th and 19th century statutes that one occasionally hears about—things like it’s illegal to wear blue on Sundays (or whatever) that addressed specific problems a century and a half ago that are simply not problems now. But they COULD be enforced by a jerk DA.
Enforcing this law because Trump bragged to his bank, which politely ignored him while it did its DCF analysis, would be similarly unjust.
Pious garbage from liberals who are all of a sudden solicitous of the universality of the law after years of ignoring Democratic politicians’ outrageous violations (from Lois Lerner onwards) fall on deaf ears here. I’m far too well bred to articulate my true feelings here, but rest assured that there will very likely be a whirlwind to be reaped come November.
"Rather the law seeks to reclaim from the defendant the losses incurred by the People of New York for underpayment of taxes and penalties for failure to abide by the commercial laws and practices of the state."
Huh?
Property taxes are not determined by commercial loan applications. Municipalities are quite capable of their own assessments. PS: And it is customary for assessed values to be far under market values. My own home is worth $200,000 more than its assessed value for tax purposes. Am I guilty too?
You are not making sense.
Property taxes were a consideration, though. An undervalued property pays less in property taxes. For this reason the NY AG charged Trump with inflating the value of his property to achieve favorable loan rates and undervaluing his property to pay less taxes. The property taxes were, I believe, the lesser amounts of those damages the AG claimed for the state.
Trump had no power to force any municipality to undervalue his properties. Yes, if he thought the assessments were high he could appeal them - all municipalities have tax appeal boards. But ultimately the responsibility for assessment values lay 100% with the municipalities; the only way the NY AG charges could be true would be if there was some collusion with Trump by the municipal officials, i.e. by some kind of bribe.
Unless that can be proved the New York position is bullshit.
I seriously doubt New York is relying on taxpayers’ sayso about the value of their real estate for tax assessments.
Then why was the gov of NY assuring the business community that they would not be in any danger of prosecution? Why would they be nervous in the first place if this was all above board like?? LOL
Very good point. I'd forgotten that tidbit. The leftists are broadcasting their corruption. They are so confident. It's like they know they can't be touched; that power will never return to their opposition.
As NS Lyons said, it isn’t hypocrisy, it’s just power. They sincerely believe in one law for themselves and one for the rabble.
Social engineers are like that. You don’t get to vote on their math. They’re either right or wrong, and since they’re right, we are to shut up.
The sooner we destroy the entire concept of social engineering the better.
The concept is like zombie: you think it's dead, and yet it keeps getting back up.
"Trump's lawyers can file his appeal at any time, regardless of whether a bond is posted. The bond is required before the appellate court can enter a stay in execution on the judgment."
Without a stay the appeal is nearly useless.
"...if the verdict is in error, the appellate court will order the return to the defendant of all amounts paid in to the Court..."
Can the appellate court order the State to return sold property?
Re: Masterpiece Cake Shop. Apparently the left (and, truth be told, sensible people everywhere) aren't really opponents of confectionary censorship when it suits them:
https://www.nydailynews.com/2008/12/16/happy-birthday-adolf-hitler-boy-with-nazi-leaders-name-denied-shoprite-cake/
Sigh, poor kid.
Don't worry, IIRC, another store did the cake. Wal-Mart, if I'm not mistaken.
No, I feel sorry for a kid growing up with parents who thought it would be cute to name him that. It's nice to know that we can always count on Walmart to have no standards, though.
Sorry, I was being a little sarcastic there!
Somewhere around that time, I saw in comments about how in their work as a nurse, a number of children who had been named absolutely awful, demonic things had gotten taken away from their parents... She continued on that the children didn't get taken away for being named such horrible things, but that the parents themselves were awful people who were terrible to their kids. It was an interesting thing to consider.
Aw, wait, so the kid didn't get a cake from Walmart? That makes it even sadder. And yeah—naming a kid like that should in itself be considered a form of child abuse, probably indicative of other bad things going on.
I think the kid did get the cake from Walmart!
(I have a very strange sense of humor when being "funny"... lots of understating the absurd "straight". Highly misunderstood, hard to reproduce online.)
That’s part of why Germany and, I think, a number of other countries, have approved lists of names.
I know of a girl named Shithead. It is pronounced Shi-thee-ad, which is beautiful. The hospital should have proposed an alternate spelling.
I never considered getting her birthday cake.
Damn.
I think that foreign-born parents should really, really consider consulting with a native before they name their children. And all parents should think about how a name isn't a chance for their own self-expression, it's something the kid will have to live with.
The mom and dad were African-American, which is really more American than I am. My family first arrived here in 1858.
Wait, then did they not know?
Couldn't tell ya. I heard about it from a substitute teacher who did roll call in a high school class. He was smart: he skipped her name when he saw it, then asked if he skipped anyone. The girl raised her hand, and he asked her for her name. That's how he got the pronunciation right.
How do you know when their ancestors arrived?
I am unaware of 'creative names' being a fad of Afro-Caribbeans or of direct immigrants from Africa; they use either Christian or Islamic or traditional African names. I can't exclude the possibility, but I'd say the statistical likelihood is low.
Therefore she was most likely African-American, which means a pre-Civil War arrival of her ancestors.
There's a comic - a black man with a very weird name - who had a bit about how unmarried black women under 20 shouldn't be allowed to name their children without a grandmother or something approving it.
My sister had a friend (ghetto culture girl) who had twins and named them something like Jonathan and Johnnathan. Lord have mercy, but then the one of them had some medical issues, and being as they were born on the same date, even the hospital was getting the kids' records mixed up.
Let me tell you all about what we went through naming our son!
I'm reminded of an atypically funny Saturday Night Live skit, probably from the 1990s, where Nicholas Cage plays an office worker who can't understand why people think his last name is "Asswipe" when he pronounces it "Oz-we-pei."
It’s like “Keeping up Appearances”…”its ’bouquet’ Spelled bucket
I love the Bill Cosby stand up joke where his son thought his name was Jesus Christ…always swearing at them.
Ha! When I was teaching once in awhile a kid would swear "Jesus Christ!" I would then run to the window, look up in the sky, and say "Where? Where?" Only once in any class was there a repeat, they all got it.
Sometimes when I express a thought that exasperates someone, they say “Jesus Christ”—and I say, “Yes, exactly!”
U live in MD by chance?
No, why do you ask? I'm not closely related to the VA former congressman BTW, though I did manage to get one of his bumper stickers.
Same thing happened to my wife in a hospital in the Baltimore area. When she got home that night, and told me the nurse’s reaction, she was in tears (of laughter).
If that was about 10 years ago and the nurse had that name and was in her 30s it might be the same person, just relocated.
It's a small world. My brother was sitting in a beer hall in Munich and one of the customers from his US hardware store came up to him.
I admit I’m feeling really optimistic about Trump winning the election after these headlines.
I kept thinking ‘are you trying to get him elected’ when I saw them. Trump has his commercials right here.
I really haven’t paid attention to the ins and outs of any of these cases, but the NY ‘we are going to seize your properties’ seems extraordinarily vengeful and petty.
It’s one thing to be able to say something is a fair penalty and believe that justice was served for a specific crime. But I don’t think anyone outside of ideological Leftists can say that in this case.
I find it disheartening that a lot of this could have been avoided had we had leaders that weren’t compromised by big money and the desire for power.
Why is it so impossible to believe that people are truly upset and frustrated by the effects that globalization has had on their local communities? I know way too many people who left Michigan in the early part of this century because businesses were moving out, not in. And that was way before the recession in 2008. We never got the boom that other areas of the country had at that time. It was bad. Really bad. A lot of us had no idea what GWB was talking about when he was suggesting the economy was good. It seemed very delusional at the time.
>>>I find it disheartening that a lot of this could have been avoided had we had leaders that weren’t compromised by big money and the desire for power.
And this is true for both parties as it ain’t about ideology or beliefs, but getting and keeping the brass ring, which is why people often insist that the economy is fabulous when for most people it is not. That and the reality that the better off you are the better the economy always is. Since most politicians are better off, they are already insulated from their bad judgments.
Three points on the Trump situation:
1. That quote from Ruth Marcus is something! She usually is a lib/left hack.
2. Real estate deals are perpetual arguments about how much this and that property is worth. That is part of the game. Criminalizing that is beyond absurd, especially when no one is defrauded, when obligations are paid in full.
3. Trump has about $3 billion worth of Truth Social stock coming in. That should help him post the bail on that ridiculous fine so he can appeal. It also makes the "Trump is broke" stuff look silly.
I completely agree with the larger point. Anyone with a functioning brain without TDS can see all this Democrat political lawfare is an outrage.
My wife sees it and she’s a Biden voter and very anti-Trump.
I hope an EX-Biden voter.
He can't sell stock for 6 months. Standard limits for IPOs. Again, not to be difficult, but such matters are strictly defined in finance and securities law.
I think his Board of Directors can give him a partial exemption. Not sure though.
I wish Trump would just dynamite his own buildings to deny them to these jackals. Then he could dynamite Frank Luntz's comical toupee...
The funny thing is, New York State has claimed they were overvalued, but will then attempt to get the maximum price at any sale. If Trump were smart he would get his billionaire friends to get into a bidding war over them. That is, if he has any friends.
"And this is why we will vote Trump."
Absolutely!