Everyone has an opinion; everyone thinks he/she/they knows/know what to do, should be done, must be done for the party of preference to win. Neither party has, IMHO, a truly viable candidate. If I ruled the world, both candidates would be tossed out to be replaced with candidates who can have a growed-ass discussion about this country. One where both candidates actually answered the questions as asked. Is that asking too much? Apparently.
Feckless Loser and Biden both strayed from the path of truth when speaking, Biden's faults were pretty much exaggeration and hyperbole. Feckless, on the other hand, went far beyond that. Not only did Feckless Pinocchio not answer any of the questions asked, there was some serious lying going on. The man spouted so much bullshit I was able to smell it in my kitchen where I was sitting at my laptop fact-checking as fast as I could. There were moments of magnitudes of lying that even the most dedicated MAGA drone had to know he wasn't telling the truth. PolitiFact, run by editors and reporters from the Tampa Bay Times, an Independent paper and FactCheck, operated by The Annenberg Public Policy Center both provide concise and reliable fact-checking services. I highly suggest you check out both sources. I think you'll find one candidate LIED more than the other. Would you actually trust a guy who has no grasp of facts with "the football?
Meanwhile, in the middle of the country, Oklahoma has fired a shot across the bow of the Constitution just like Louisiana and the ten suggestions, only bigger.
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| Ryan Walters |
Just making a political point, you know, the left they can be offended, they can be mad, they can be upset, but what they can’t do is they can’t rewrite history. We are going to show the countless citations. The Bible was cited more than any other document in the 1600 1700s political writing; it is clearly a momentous historical source. We will bring it back to our schools. You know, we will continue to battle. We feel very confident in President Trump‘s nominees to the US Supreme Court that if we can -, if we get sued and we get challenged, we will be victorious because the Supreme Court justices he appointed actually are originalists that look at the Constitution and not what some left-wing professor said about the Constitution. So we feel very confident in moving forward and winning every legal case.
In continuing their slash and burn attack on the same Constitution they are sworn to uphold, they provided Feckless Loser with a path out of his legal morass. Thus spaketh the High Court:
In a 6-3 decision, the conservative wing of SCOTUS created, in essence, a royal presidency, meaning that ANYTHING a president does while serving in office can be declared within the scope of presidential authority. In case you've never seen what a decision looks like, this is the start of the dissent section. If you follow the above link, that gives you the whole decision; just keep scrolling until you find the dissent portion.
In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote: (highlights are mine)
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE KAGAN and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, ante, at 3, 13, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.
There's a whole lotta legalese after that, but later in the dissent, Sotomayor write:
Not content simply to invent an expansive criminal immunity for former Presidents, the majority goes a dramatic and unprecedented step further. It says that acts for which the President is immune must be redacted from the narrative of even wholly private crimes committed while in office. They must play no role in proceedings regarding private criminal acts. See ante, at 30–32.
Even though the majority’s immunity analysis purports to leave unofficial acts open to prosecution, its draconian approach to official-acts evidence deprives these prosecutions of any teeth. If the former President cannot be held criminally liable for his official acts, those acts should still be admissible to prove knowledge or intent in criminal prosecutions of unofficial acts. For instance, the majority struggles with classifying whether a President’s speech is in his capacity as President (official act) or as a candidate (unofficial act). Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea of murder. That is a strange result, to say the least.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Justice Sotomayor explained the dissent:
Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done,The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
This means, apparently, that Feckless Loser's call to Brad Raffensperger demanding Georgia come up with 11,780 votes to give him the win was within his presidential powers and is okay. It means he can call for an insurrection to remain in power, because he is immune from prosecution for that act of sedition. And he really could walk into the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone without fear of arrest, much less losing any votes. As he said on January 23, 2016:
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."
According to SCOTUS, if he were president, that would be correct. And we pretty much know he wouldn't lose any votes.
I have long maintained that January 6th was nothing more than a test run, a trial balloon, to determine how Feckless could go in overturning an election, suspending the Constitution, and declaring himself king/emperor/president-for life/ maybe even a god. We now know, according to SCOTUS, he can do precisely that.
Today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what the president can do. The power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.
Be that as it may, unless he has a cataclysmic health event, Biden will be the nominee. His re-election is doubtful. Large swaths of the electorate are completely turned off by the choices and will sit this one out. That almost guarantees a GOP victory. And once he's in office.... America will become a very different place. Count on that.
And here you thought I was an alarmist.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
Enjoy Fourth of July.
There may not be another one.
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| Mendakota 2023/photo by sjschwaidelson |
WP - Good analysis for the most part. However, with the regard to the debate, you are too easy on Biden. He is clearly and embarrassingly not up to the task of completing a second term. He will only get worse and no amount of spin or rationalization on the part of the Dem's, will change that fact. His inability to counter DT's lies, which were spouted with authority, is a distinct liability. You are right that very bedrock of any democracy is the Rule of Law, which must remain sacrosanct. No one should be above or below the law in this country, which btw, is clearly based on Anglo-American Common Law and not Biblical Law ( what next Sharia law?). In fact, only 3 out of the 10 Commandments (depending upon which version you choose), are actual criminal offences. The idea that US law, is in anyway based based upon the 10 Commandments doesn't square with the facts. Sadly, we are left with no viable choices in this election. We are back to the 1930's, with Biden, by not stepping down is allowing a dictatorship to take shape. Ed.
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