US Politics Thread 2021-24

[Gorpet]

Originally Posted by August

The US President is starting to sound a lot like another guy who vilified an entire people:





He had better not expect Republicans to get in the cattle cars so obligingly.

Tally Ho.

[Gorpet]

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

I thought is was more like an Army Navy Game.

From the politicians point of view it is.And when the two beat themselves to death. It's will be time for Mileys Rainbow Warriors.

[Gorpet]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung quotes three American high profile law experts regarding whether or not to sue the Donald.
-------------------
Donald Trump's handling of classified documents has many parallels to the confidential emails on Hillary Clinton's private server. There was never an indictment then. Why should this be different now? Three legal experts provide different answers.

The search for truth in the USA has probably never been as difficult as it is today. The political polarization is so immense that even proven experts have great difficulty maintaining their credibility as neutral observers. This is currently very evident in the investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against Donald Trump. Among other things, it accuses the former president of having withheld highly secret documents from his private club Mar-a-Lago in Florida and hiding them from investigators. The house search on Aug. 8 strengthened those suspicions. But is that enough to indict a former president and possible future presidential candidate?

"Yes," says Harvard professor emeritus and constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe. "The violation of the Espionage Act is extremely serious and extremely clear," says Barack Obama's former mentor. "The only question is when this indictment will occur." It's also quite likely that Trump will be held accountable for obstruction of justice, he says. "After lying to the government about possessing these highly classified documents, he stored them in unsecure locations."

There's no question that instead of turning the documents over to the National Archives or back into the custody of the intelligence community, Trump moved countless boxes of files from the White House to his private Florida residence - a club where foreign guests also come and go - after his term ended a year and a half ago. The former president handed over some of the documents voluntarily, and another only after pressure from a court subpoena. On June 3, a lawyer signed a statement on behalf of Trump's office saying that "to the best of her knowledge" all documents requested by the FBI had been turned over. However, the Aug. 8 house search exposed this as a sham. Even in Trump's personal office, investigators found documents subject to the highest level of secrecy. For Tribe, it is therefore clear: Trump stole these documents from the state and hid them from investigators. For that, he must be held accountable.

Alan Dershowitz, however, has a very different opinion. He, too, is a Harvard professor emeritus and describes himself as a Democrat. "I didn't vote for Trump twice and I wouldn't vote for him a third time." Dershowitz believes the FBI's evidence is sufficient for an indictment. But even so, he believes a prosecution is wrong based on the current facts. For former presidents or future presidential candidates, he says, different requirements apply: "You don't indict them unless the evidence is so overwhelming that both political parties agree."

"An indictment of Trump has to pass the Nixon test and the Clinton test," Dershowitz says. In the Watergate affair of the 1970s, he says, the president's offenses were so serious and the evidence so overwhelming that the Republican Party had to drop Richard Nixon. At the same time, he said, Trump cannot be impeached today after Hillary Clinton got off scot-free with the negligent handling of her emails. "Otherwise, we become a banana republic where a dictator says, 'For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.'"

Indeed, there are some parallels between Trump's handling of classified documents and the Clinton affair. During her time as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, she used personal email servers through which she communicated on business. Among the 30,000 messages the eventual presidential candidate turned over to the State Department in 2014, FBI investigators found 110 emails containing information that was classified at the time they were sent. Of those, 8 correspondences contained information that was considered "top secret" and 36 contained information that was considered "secret."

Clinton's lawyers themselves sorted out what they considered to be relevant emails for investigators. The remaining messages were then deleted. The FBI, however, found no evidence that this triage was not done honestly. Clinton's handling of highly classified information was "extremely careless," but ultimately the facts were not sufficient to support an indictment, then-FBI Director James Comey said after the investigation concluded. Specifically, the evidence was insufficient to prove Clinton engaged in intentional and willful misconduct in handling classified information.

For Tribe, it's clear that the FBI was following the letter of the law politically independently then and continues to do so now. "All of the claims that Trump is being targeted more harshly than Clinton are a mere distraction from the actual facts." The confidential information on Clinton's email servers ended up there by mistake, he said. "And she never refused to turn it over." Dershowitz, who has repeatedly defended controversial figures such as O. J. Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange and Trump, however, distrusts government institutions. "The Justice Department generally overdoes things," he said. He was a lawyer in the case of the "Pentagon Papers" on the Vietnam War, he said. "The government said the publication of those papers would be enormously damaging to U.S. security. The Pentagon Papers were published, and they caused no harm."

Which Harvard professor should we believe? Tribe, who called Trump and individual supporters "terrorists" on his Twitter account for subliminally threatening social unrest should impeachment occur? Or Dershowitz, whose argument bolsters Trump's narrative of a political vendetta, helping to further erode public trust in American institutions?

Perhaps David Laufman is right. "Comparisons to the Clinton case are premature because we don't have all the facts yet," says the former head of counterintelligence and export control at the Justice Department. In his role at the time, the lawyer oversaw the investigation into the email affair. It was a unanimous decision, he says: "There was a consensus that prosecution was not warranted in the Clinton case."

However, based on the details already known in Trump's case, Laufman says, "Secret documents were withheld even after a court subpoena was issued. These are far more serious factors than the facts uncovered in the Clinton investigation." Already, he said, the public details are pretty damning for Trump. "And they're going to get more damning as we learn more," he said.

"No one else but Trump would have been handled with such merciful kid gloves," Laufman adds. And if the former president ends up being indicted, he said, he will have the opportunity to defend himself in the U.S. and cross-examine the government's witnesses. "That's how our criminal justice system works. He's not above the law. He's not above the Constitution."
-------------------------

I'm lining up somewhere between Laurence Tribe and David Laufman.

I prefer the way's of your ancestors. Short ,Sweet and to the point.

[Gorpet]

Originally Posted by August

The US President is starting to sound a lot like another guy who vilified an entire people:





He had better not expect Republicans to get in the cattle cars so obligingly.

Damn that is good. These old politicians are micming and living as the conquerors of the past.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

The truth is that the GOP has a demographics problem, namely you can't vote from Heaven.

...and if you do vote from heaven the vote mysteriously gets cast for a democrat. That, and the fact the democrats feels voting is sort of like the movie Minority Report, they think you'd vote for them so somebody does it for you.

[mapuc]

A translate article about the upcoming Midterm Election in USA.

Something crazy has happened in the US
- Trump and his followers should be nervous

Just six months ago, it was considered completely impossible.

But with two months to go, something crazy has happened in the US.

Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party actually have a real chance of not being all but wiped out in the November midterm elections.

The polls have long been in the Republican Party's favour.

A long pandemic, a failing economy, sky-high gas prices, inflation run amok. The explanations were many.

And in the spring, it looked like Joe Biden and the rest of the party would lose their majority in both the Senate and the House. With a bang.

Biden would thus be left with no real chance of getting policy through Congress. A so-called 'lame duck'.

But several things now point to something quite different.

One signal came the other day in the state of Alaska.

Here, former Republican governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin lost in a surprise upset to Democrat Mary Peltola in a special election for the state's only seat in the House of Representatives.

"We'll have to watch for several things in the time ahead. Just look at Alaska. We have a case where a Democrat got the votes of many who would normally vote Republican," says editor-in-chief of Kongressen.com, Anders Agner.

"Sarah Palin was massively supported by Trump with huge funds and the seat had been Republican for many years. Yet Trump-backed Palin lost. That trend must be extremely troubling for Trump," Anders Agner says.

"Things have very much changed."

On the whole, the Democrats and Joe Biden are significantly better off.

The pandemic is less of an issue, gasoline prices have fallen and the US Supreme Court has abolished the right to free abortion at the federal level and left the decision to the individual states.

"Abortion looks to be a big issue in the midterm elections. It has mobilised voters - and that's usually a good sign for the Democrats when more people vote," says Anders Agner.

"A few months ago, the Democrats looked like they were going to get one. Now that picture has completely reversed," he says, elaborating:

"Trump and the Republicans must be nervous

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

When I read it I thought I'm going to translate it and post it in our US-Politics thread and hear what my friends has to say about it.

Markus

[Onkel Neal]

[mapuc]

After having read this article I fear that America has come one big step close to a civil war-Yes maybe it's me who interpreter things wrong-I hope so

Danish TV2News writes:

Trump labels Joe Biden an enemy of the country at voter rally

Donald Trump verbally lashed out at Biden at a voter rally in the US state of Pennsylvania on Sunday night.

A roaring crowd turned out in the small Pennsylvania town of Wilkes-Barre to hear former President Donald Trump speak on Sunday night.

And the accusations against the Democrats and current President Joe Biden were fierce and delivered at high frequency.

- He is an enemy of the country. You want to know the truth. The enemy of the country is him, Trump said of President Biden.

The accusations came in response to Biden, who in a speech earlier this week warned against Donald Trump and the far-right Republican Party, which he called dangerous to the country's democracy.

- Republicans and the Maga movement (Make America Great Again, Donald Trump's 2016 campaign slogan, ed.) are not the ones trying to undermine democracy.

- It is us who are trying to save our democracy, plain and simple. The danger to democracy comes from the far left, not the right, Trump continued.

"The FBI threatens freedom"

The controversial former president also lashed out at Joe Biden's administration after the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided Trump's home in the state of Florida a few weeks ago.

This is despite the fact that the work of the US Department of Justice and the FBI is not linked to who is in the White House, writes the AFP news agency.

But Trump calls the search an abuse of power.

- There can be no clearer example of the enormously serious threats to American freedom than just a few weeks ago, when you witnessed one of the worst abuses of power by a government in American history, Trump said.

Although an election for the US presidency is not imminent, campaigning has begun in the US.

The midterm elections will get underway in November. Here, Americans will elect a portion of the country's parliamentarians for the next four years.

Democrats currently hold a majority in the House of Representatives, while they narrowly hold power in Congress's other chamber, the Senate, where they typically get the support of two independents and Vice President Kamala Harris's deciding vote.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Markus

[MaDef]

This is despite the fact that the work of the US Department of Justice and the FBI is not linked to who is in the White House, writes the AFP news agency.

I call BS on that one. Who do you think Appoints the Director of the FBI & the Attorney General (Department of Justice)?

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by mapuc

After having read this article I fear that America has come one big step close to a civil war-Yes maybe it's me who interpreter things wrong-I hope so

Danish TV2News writes:



Markus

Ah, journalists just can't or won't hide their politics.
from within the article

The controversial former president

Like the Big Guy currently occupying the oval office isn't controversial?

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by em2nought

Ah, journalists just can't or won't hide their politics.
from within the article

Like the Big Guy currently occupying the oval office isn't controversial?

It's not only strong and harsh words from Trump and his supporters-Biden and his supporters are also using strong and harsh words.

Now I write- I haven't seen anything similar in US-politisk where both side-Left and Right are so divided-I then expect some of you will tell me it's not uncommon near an election.

Markus

[mapuc]

My worries wasn't all that wrong

Two in five Americans say a civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade

Two-thirds of Americans (66%) believe that political divisions in this country have gotten worse since the beginning of 2021, compared to only 8% who say the country has grown less divided. Few see things improving in the coming years: 62% expect an increase in political divisions.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/poli...omewhat-likely

Markus

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by mapuc

My worries wasn't all that wrong





https://today.yougov.com/topics/poli...omewhat-likely

Markus

I believe we can impart some fault of this division to the news media. The media is nothing short of awful.

[Rockstar]

BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION RESUMES UNDER PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN
The Biden administration laid out its plans to rev up work on completing Donald Trump’s signature project.

https://theintercept.com/2022/09/18/...p-border-wall/

Ryan DevereauxRyan Devereaux
September 18 2022, 6:30 a.m.

MYLES TRAPHAGEN DIDN’T need a government presentation to tell him that border wall construction was kicking back up. He saw everything he needed on a recent visit to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and the Coronado National Forest, near the town of Sasabe in southern Arizona.

As the borderlands coordinator for the Wildlands Network, Traphagen had visited the area many times before. It was among the sites he examined in an extensive report published in July documenting the environmental impact of the border wall expansion under President Donald Trump — President Joe Biden paused the construction shortly after his inauguration.

“It’s feeling like it felt during border wall construction with Trump.”
Traphagen spotted a new staging area and water holding tanks under construction. Fixed to the wall were new signs citing an Arizona trespassing law. A security guard at the scene told him construction was resuming. Later, a Border Patrol agent ordered him to leave the area.

“It’s feeling like it felt during border wall construction with Trump,” Traphagen told The Intercept. “I hadn’t felt that on the border in a year and a half, and now it’s like, oh, ****, here we go again.”

Six days after Traphagen’s visit, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that work on the border wall that began under Trump is revving back up under Biden. In an online presentation Wednesday, CBP — the largest division of the Department of Homeland Security and home to the Border Patrol — detailed plans to address environmental damage brought on by the former president’s signature campaign promise and confirmed that the wall will remain a permanent fixture of the Southwest for generations to come.

The resumed operations will range from repairing gates and roads to filling gaps in the wall that were left following the pause on construction that Biden initiated in January 2021. The wall’s environmental harms have been particularly acute in southern Arizona, where CBP used explosives to blast through large swaths of protected land — including sacred Native American burial grounds and one-of-a-kind wildlife habitats — in service of Trump’s most expansive border wall extensions.

Starting next month, contractors will return to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona to resume work on the wall, senior CBP officials said in a public webinar. In the months since Biden’s pause began, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas approved several so-called remediation projects related to the border wall. The first plan that CBP presented for public comment was in the Tucson sector, the Border Patrol’s largest area of operations and site of Trump’s most dramatic and controversial border wall construction.

IN EARLY 2020, the press was invited to watch as Border Patrol and Department of Defense officials blew apart chunks of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, south of Tucson, to make way for Trump’s wall. The display followed months of protests, as the administration tapped into a rare desert aquifer that feeds Quitobaquito Springs, an oasis that the Hia-Ced O’odham people have held sacred for thousands of years.

Two Hia-Ced O’odham women were later arrested, strip-searched, and held incommunicado after praying and protesting at the construction site. Earlier this year, one of the two women, Amber Ortega, was found not guilty of the charges after a federal judge ruled that the prosecution violated her rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The controversial work, which included construction on federally designated wilderness, was permitted under the Real ID Act. Created in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the act grants DHS the authority to waive any law, including bedrock statutes meant to safeguard the environment and areas of cultural significance, to build border barriers in the name of national security.

When CBP collected public comment on its proposed plans earlier this year, the vast majority were focused on Arizona, with most addressing the wall’s impact on wildlife migration and its exacerbation of flooding dangers. “Many comments specifically noted impacts to the Mexican gray wolf, jaguar, Sonoran Desert pronghorn, bighorn sheep, ocelot, javelina, mountain lion, bear, and other wildlife,” CBP noted in a summary report on its Tucson Sector feedback. “Some commenters suggested removing barrier and leaving flood gates open to address potential impacts.”

In the plans laid out last week, CBP said it would finish drainages and low-water crossings in southern Arizona and in some cases reengineer border wall designs to allow for water flow. Two contracts have already been awarded for work in the state, the agency said, adding that the work in Arizona would include filling “small gaps” in the border wall that remained following Biden’s pause. CBP described similar operations along the border in other states.

When asked if CBP envisioned a day when the barriers might be removed, the agency said it did not.

“At this point in time,” said Shelly Barnes, the environmental planning lead for the Border Patrol’s infrastructure portfolio, “there are no current plans to remove sections of the barrier.”

[mapuc]

...and from the Bidens supporter front there's nothing but....silence

Markus