Commentary on the MSM’s failure regarding the USSC immunity case

It is inconceivable to many people that the USSC is taking seriously Trump’s ghastly argument that presidents have absolute immunity from any acts that break any laws, literally including overthrowing the government by force and assassinating political opponents. While this is the insane argument his attorneys are making to the USSC, Trump himself is publicly threatening to prosecute Biden for breaking laws once he gets back in power if his immunity bid fails. 

This immunity case is beyond insane. And so is the USSC for taking it up in the first place. The authoritarian Republican USSC has already failed dismally and betrayed us and the rule of law, regardless of what it decides. That assumes it ever does decide, which it does not have to do.

Also insane is mainstream media reporting that makes the USSC look like it is being mostly a neutral, nonpartisan institution instead of the hyper-partisan radical authoritarian Republican Party monster it really is. What the hell is wrong with the MSM? Subverted by corporate ownership? Brain rot from Jewish space lasers? Long COVID brain inflammation causing a massive IQ drop? Shaken journalist syndrome? Etc.? Etc.?

I am not alone in making this criticism of gross MSM incompetence in this case. The Nation writes:

The Media’s Coverage of Trump’s Immunity Case Has Been Appalling

By covering the Supreme Court’s hearing of Trump’s immunity claim as if the court were impartial and nonpartisan, the media has done the American people a serious disservice

The reports about what happened during the hearing, and how the Republican justices are likely to rule, range from credulous simplicity to outright gaslighting. The court will almost certainly take the extreme, unprecedented, and previously unfathomable position that Trump cannot be held criminally accountable for all of his actions—and the reason it is likely to do so is that the court knows the media will carry its water and normalize its ruling to a public that lacks the time and acumen to fully appreciate what it’s doing.

I’m not talking about Fox News or Newsmax, whose coverage I have not read or watched but assume it’s ranged from cultish to clownish, as it always does. I’m talking about the mainstream press, the so-called “liberal” press, which is taking its cue from the Supreme Court and trying to normalize the proposition that presidents should be immune from at least some crimes.

At oral arguments, the conservatives authoritarian Republicans (Germaine’s typo fix) on the court introduced the novel idea that a president may be immune to criminal prosecution for some acts—specifically, some “official” acts—that are performed in his (or her, theoretically) role as president. That idea runs counter to the very principle of the rule of law, but it’s one the Republican justices entertained in order to accomplish their central goal of preventing Trump from facing trial before the election. It’s also a convenient way for conservative authoritarian justices to foster the idea of an “imperial presidency”—one where conservative presidents are fully free to trample on civil rights and use maximal force to accomplish their “official” goals, unrestrained by the rest of society.

Instead of explaining how dangerous and unprecedented it would be for a president to be able to commit crimes without the possibility of future legal accountability, most press reports chose to act as if this were a normal and acceptable choice for the court and the country. And while this would be bad enough, it hasn’t been the media’s only failure. The media has also fallen for the whole bogus charade behind the case to begin with. The entire reason that Trump filed his immunity claim was so that the courts—including, ultimately, the Supreme Court—could delay his trial until after the election. And that’s why the Supreme Court took the case. It’s also why they waited until late April to argue it and why they’ll likely send it back down to the D.C. Court of Appeals for an additional hearing.

By covering the case as if the Supreme Court were impartial and nonpartisan—and as if it’s blithely unaware of its own delaying tactics—the media does the American people a disservice. Most of the coverage has felt like reading a report about the Chicxulub meteor, from the perspective of the placental mammals: “Today, a large rock in the sky seems poised to land on our humble planet. Whatever happens, the collision is sure to be spectacular and could well have a lasting impact on life on this planet, though our opposable-thumbed experts assure us that the future remains bright for all who survive.”

 

You can see the media’s various blinders in this report from The Washington Post titled “Supreme Court seems poised to allow Trump Jan. 6 trial, but not immediately.” First of all, the headline misses the point. The Supreme Court is not “poised” to allow Trump to stand trial… because they are in the process of delaying that trial indefinitely. The Post may as well write, “We’re all poised to die, but not immediately.”  

The Associated Press was the only mainstream, legacy media outlet I saw that framed the issue correctly. It wrote: “Since conservatives on the court gained a supermajority with the confirmation of three Trump appointees, they have cast aside decades-old precedent on abortion and [affirmative] action. Now Trump is asking them to rule that one of the fundamental tenets of the American system of government—that no person is above the law—should be rejected as well, at least as it applies to him.”

More troubling to me are the people who should know better. I cannot fathom what made NPR’s Nina Totenberg write a piece titled “Trump’s immunity arguments and the experiences of the justices who might support it,” because it sounds like she’s doing crisis management for the conservative authoritarian Republican justices.

The second paragraph offers a particularly wild recharacterization of the issue. She writes: “Perhaps it’s Trump Derangement Syndrome that led lots of legal eagles, from liberal to conservative, to believe that former President Donald Trump’s claim of immunity from criminal prosecution was preposterous. But it’s more likely that court observers didn’t properly account for the personal experiences of the conservatives authoritarian Republican justices.” 

Okay, first of all, Trump’s immunity claim is preposterous. It is not deranged to think that the 45th president should be subject to the laws just as his 44 predecessors were. 

The Supreme Court is poised to crown Donald Trump as king of America. That is the headline. That is the thesis that should be nailed to a church door.

The article is long and criticizes other MSM reporting that normalized Trump’s literally insane immunity argument. The MSM has failed and betrayed us badly. With cover like that, the USSC is probably going to get away unscathed by the crimes the radical Republicans have already committed by protecting the traitor Trump so far.

Gaza war protests go off the rails -- dumpster fire starts; Forced birth wars update

It looks like the protests against genocide in Gaza are turning into a deeply counterproductive dumpster fire. The students are now breaking laws and occupying campus buildings. The cops are gonna come in, crack some skulls and arrest people. The pro-Israel propaganda Leviathan is gonna smear the protesters as hard and viciously as it can. Attention will turn from Gaza genocide to Biden- and liberal-inspired antisemitism, domestic terrorism and tyranny. Trump will gleefully attack and smear Biden with everything that he, and his cadre of sleaze artists like Steve Bannon, can think of.

One exception to the self-immolation of the protest movement is at Brown University. The NYT reports: At Brown, a Rare Agreement Between Administrators and Protesters -- Brown students took down their tents on campus after the university in Rhode Island agreed to discuss their demands for divestment from support for the Israeli military. Demonstrators agreed to dismantle their encampment at Brown, which had been removed by Tuesday evening, and university leaders said they would discuss, and later vote on, divesting funds from companies connected to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

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The WaPo reports about the impacts of the forced birth law that goes into effect today in Florida:

When she walked into the abortion clinic Tuesday morning, Kristen thought she’d made it just in time.

The 22-year-old mother of two had learned just a few hours earlier that a new six-week abortion ban would go into effect in Florida on Wednesday. So she canceled all her plans and found someone to drive her, in hopes of ending her pregnancy before the deadline.

She was one day too late.

“We did an ultrasound and you’re over the state limit,” said Eileen Diamond, the director of Benjamin Surgical Services International, gently explaining to Kristen that the test showed she was eight weeks pregnant.

While the clinic could still provide abortions for women more than six weeks into their pregnancies until midnight, Diamond said, another Florida law requires all abortion patients to have an ultrasound at least 24 hours before their procedure. That meant the earliest Kristen could get an abortion was Wednesday, when her abortion would no longer be legal.

“Oh no,” Kristen said, tears rolling down her cheeks as she sat across a desk from Diamond in a consultation room. “No. No.”

As of Wednesday morning, clinics across the country’s third-largest state can no longer offer abortions to most patients who walk through their doors — forced to turn away any woman who is further than six weeks along, a point when many still don’t know they’re pregnant. The enactment of Florida’s new ban on May 1 is widely expected to be the biggest jolt to abortion access across the country since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.  

For Kristen, the nearest abortion clinic that will be able to help her is now in Charlotte — an 11-hour drive away.

“I can help you find an appointment in another state, but you would have to get there,” Diamond told her Tuesday.

Kristen shook her head. Then she looked at Diamond and laughed: With her financial situation, Diamond might as well have been suggesting she fly to the moon.

“I can’t afford three kids,” said Kristen, who like other women in this story spoke on the condition that only their first names be disclosed to protect their privacy. “But I’m not going out of state. I can’t afford to go out of state.”  

A ban of this magnitude will immediately upend abortion access far beyond Florida’s borders, with Floridians traveling to North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia, where clinics are already struggling to absorb patients from antiabortion states across the Southeast. And while abortion rights advocates are hoping voters will approve a measure in November that would lift the ban in January — restoring abortion access in Florida until roughly 24 weeks of pregnancy — tens of thousands of women will be affected between now and the new year, regardless of what happens in the election.

This is a example of callous Christian Sharia theocracy intruding into people’s lives in a major way. Christian theocrats have no regard for majority public opinion that they disagree with. Only what God wants is what counts. That is authoritarian theocracy, pure and simple. It is here and now, not in the future or in another country. 

It is long past time for all tax breaks for all religion in the US to be repealed. Religion plays hardball politics, so it should play with the same rules that the rest of us have to play with. 

Best POTUS ever…

First, nobody is perfect. So, it isn’t wise/recommended to base your opinion of someone on one act (or non act) they’ve committed (granted, exceptions exist [see Hitler]). 

What I’m saying is, nobody can be all things to all people. It’s just impossible. And when someone tries to be that, that person is usually looked upon with suspicion; someone who can’t be trusted. 

Don’t get me wrong; getting along with as many people as you can is to be commended, especially if you don't want to be seen as a jerk. So yeah, finding some kind of middle ground is a tough row to hoe. 

So, considering the above, do you have a favorite (albeit likely flawed in some way) President of the United States? (Other countries can use your own presidents as examples.) Give your reasons why you picked that person.

(by PrimalSoup)

Another analysis of the New York state election fraud trial: It is boring and about business integrity

A NYT opinion (not paywalled) by a New York City attorney, former Manhattan assistant district attorney Rebecca Roiphe, discusses the election fraud/hush money trial from the point of view of a person who has actually enforced the laws Trump is being charged with violating:

Now that the lawyers are laying out their respective theories of the case in the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in New York, it would be understandable if people’s heads are spinning. The defense lawyers claimed this is a case about hush money as a legitimate tool in democratic elections, while the prosecutors insisted it is about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election.”

Yet this case is not really about election interference, nor is it a politically motivated attempt to criminalize a benign personal deal. Boring as it may sound, it is a case about business integrity.

It’s not surprising that the lawyers on both sides are trying to make this about something sexier. This is a narrative device used to make the jurors and the public side with them, but it has also created confusion. On the one hand, some legal experts claim that the conduct charged in New York was the original election interference. On the other hand, some critics think the criminal case is a witch hunt, and others claim it is trivial at best and at worst the product of selective prosecution.

As someone who worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and enforced the laws that Mr. Trump is accused of violating, I stand firmly in neither camp. It is an important and straightforward case, albeit workmanlike and unglamorous. In time, after the smoke created by lawyers has cleared, it will be easy to see why the prosecution is both solid and legitimate.

It would hardly make for a dramatic opening statement or cable news sound bite, but the case is about preventing wealthy people from using their businesses to commit crimes and hide from accountability. Manhattan prosecutors have long considered it their province to ensure the integrity of the financial markets. As Robert Morgenthau, a former Manhattan district attorney, liked to say, “You cannot prosecute crime in the streets without prosecuting crime in the suites.”

Lawmakers in New York, the financial capital of the world, consider access to markets and industry in New York a privilege for businesspeople. It is a felony to abuse that privilege by doctoring records to commit or conceal crimes, even if the businessman never accomplishes the goal and even if the false records never see the light of day. The idea is that an organization’s records should reflect an honest accounting. It is not a crime to make a mistake, but lying is a different story. It is easy to evade accountability by turning a business into a cover, providing a false trail for whichever regulator might care to look. The law (falsification of business records) deprives wealthy, powerful businessmen of the ability to do so with impunity, at least when they’re conducting business in the city.

Roiphe's opinion goes on to point out that prosecutors and New York courts have interpreted this law with its general purpose in mind. Because of that, the element of intent to defraud has a broad meaning. It is not limited to the intent of cheating someone out of money or property. And, as common with white collar crime cases, circumstantial evidence is often used to prove criminal intent. 

Prosecutors will ask jurors to use their common sense to infer what Trump’s intent might be for filing lots of false documents. Roiphe says that in similar trials, New York jurors often conclude that a defendant must have created a false paper trail for a reason. She asserts that jurors can conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump’s lies were intended to seek to commit a crime(s) or to cover one(s) up because as she puts it, “documents don’t lie.” In this lawsuit, Trump is accused of filing 11 false invoices, 12 false ledger entries and 11 false checks and check stubs, allegedly with intent to violate federal election laws, state election laws and/or state tax laws (34 separate felonies).

From Roiphe’s experienced insider point of view description of the case, it seems that Trump probably will be found to have committed fraud by most neutral jurors. At present, Trump’s main defense is that he was merely trying to avoid embarrassing his family, not trying to violate any law. The wild card here is one or more MAGA jurors who will probably vote to acquit Trump regardless of the evidence or “common sense.”

Trump is not even trying to deny the 34 documents were false. He did that. Period. He is arguing that the false documents were filed to protect his family. Nearly all MAGA people would probably accept his lie as truth and vote to acquit him.

I am a happy liberal but am I one of the rare ones?

 Consider:

Multiple psychological studies have reported that conservatives, on average, have greater levels of subjective psychological well-being than liberals. The differences were small in size, but those studies consistently found conservatives to be more satisfied with their lives, happier, and in better self-reported health compared to liberals. One of the explanations for this finding was that conservatives tend to be more satisfied with the social system and this alleviates the negative psychological consequences of perceiving societal inequalities.

More detail:

https://www.psypost.org/are-conservatives-happier-than-liberals-new-comprehensive-research-offers-fresh-insights/

Liberals, especially liberal women, are significantly less likely to be happy with their lives and satisfied with their “mental health,” compared to their conservative peers aged from 18-55. This is the big takeaway from the 2022 American Family Survey, a striking new poll from YouGov and the Deseret News, which found that liberals are about 15 percentage points less likely to be “completely satisfied” with their lives.

Two family factors have a lot to do with this ideological gap: marital status and family satisfaction. Given that conservatives aged 18-55 are about 20 percentage points more likely to be married, as well as 18 percentage points more likely to be satisfied with their families, the lesson here is obvious. Marriage and family are strongly linked to happiness and to personal mental health in particular. 

More detail:

https://ifstudies.org/blog/why-are-liberals-less-happy-than-conservatives

Academic research consistently finds the same pattern. Conservatives do not just report higher levels of happiness, they also report higher levels of meaning in their lives. The effects of conservatism seem to be enhanced when conservatives are surrounded by others like themselves. However, in an analysis looking at ninety countries from 1981 through 2014, the social psychologists Olga Stavrova and Maike Luhmann found “the positive association between conservative ideology and happiness only rarely reversed. Liberals were happier than conservatives in only 5 out of 92 countries and never in the United States.”

Yet more detail:

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/03/how-to-understand-the-well-being-gap-between-liberals-and-conservatives/

In the midst of an ongoing mental health crisis that is especially affecting children and youth, I found this headline interesting: “Conservative teenagers are generally happier than their liberal peers, study finds.” A group of Columbia University researchers studied the depressive attitudes of twelfth-graders from 2005 to 2018, comparing those aligned with conservatism and those with liberalism. They concluded that “conservatives reported lower average depressive effect, self-derogation, and loneliness scores and higher self-esteem scores than all other groups.”

In an extensive and deeply sourced article for American Affairs, Columbia University sociologist Musa al-Gharbi adds that “conservatives do not just report higher levels of happiness, they also report higher levels of meaning in their lives.” He writes that this pattern is “ubiquitous, not just in the contemporary United States but also historically (virtually as far back as the record goes) and in most other geographical contexts as well.”

https://www.denisonforum.org/daily-article/are-conservative-teenagers-happier-than-their-liberal-peers/

SNOWFLAKE'S PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS:

Regardless of the studies, both Liberals and Conservatives are so uptight about the other, I have a feeling neither side is any happier than the other side. Just a general observation.

I just know that I am fairly happy with my life. What about YOU?

The face of rising American radical right authoritarianism

A Slate article articulates it quite well:

A Supreme Court Justice Gave Us Alarming New Evidence 

That He’s Living in MAGA World

The Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in Trump v. United States, a challenge to special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Donald Trump for election subversion related to Jan. 6. The former president argues that he has absolute “presidential immunity” for the “official acts” he undertook while attempting to overturn the election, rendering the prosecution against him largely unconstitutional. Despite the total lack of any known constitutional basis for this theory, the Supreme Court’s conservatives received it favorably, suggesting that they will further delay and undermine Trump’s eventual federal trial.

Dahlia Lithwick: Justice Alito trotted out this theme that was kind of bone-chilling: He said “we all want” a “stable democratic society,” and nothing could be worse for democracy than holding a president to account, because that will “lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy.” As if democracy requires giving immunity to criminal presidents because otherwise they won’t leave office. This was when I went through the looking glass—it literally felt like “don’t make me hit you again” democracy.

Pam Karlan: That was the moment where I felt like saying, “That’s what just happened!” This is not something that might happen in the future. It’s what already happened! And if you let people get away with it, what you’ve said to Donald Trump is, “If you win the 2024 election, don’t bother leaving office in 2029—just stay there.” I mean, that’s really what the Supreme Court would be saying: There’s not going to be any crime if you try to stay there. It wasn’t just through the looking glass. I thought, Did you hear what just came out of your mouth?

Mark Joseph Stern: This was a great example of Alito being fully brain-poisoned by Fox News. This is been happening for years; he used to ask famously great questions, but these days it’s just culture war grievances and stuff that falls apart upon even a little bit of scrutiny. He’s losing his edge. And that was clear in this bizarro question saying that actually, a functioning constitutional democracy requires us to let presidents off the hook when they engage in a criminal conspiracy to steal elections.

But it was also clear during his next round of questions with Michael Dreeben, who represented Jack Smith. Alito had Dreeben walk through the layers that protect a president from a frivolous or vindictive prosecution. Then he dismissed each one out of hand. So Dreeben said: First, you need a prosecutor who’s willing to bring charges; then you need a grand jury to indict; then there’s a criminal proceeding in open court where a jury of his peers decides whether he’s been proved guilty. And Alito just laughs it off as though it’s a big joke. Because we all know Justice Department attorneys are hacks who’ll do whatever they want, right? And a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich—nobody believes a grand jury will do anything worthwhile. And then, oh, sure a jury of his peers, like that’s going to do anything.

This is the justice who is, by far, the most friendly to prosecutors and hostile to criminal defendants in case after case. Who could not for the life of him find a violation of the right to trial by jury or due process. But when the defendant is Trump, he suddenly thinks this entire system of criminal prosecution is such a bad joke that the Supreme Court has to step in and essentially quash this prosecution, because we can’t trust the system to work. The system that is incarcerating so many other people whose convictions Sam Alito just rubber-stamps.  

Karlan: There was shock to it, but notice what’s underneath all of that. Which is Alito saying we’re worried about vindictive prosecutions and we haven’t seen any of this up until now, that no president has prosecuted the president who came after. For all of what Alito was saying to be true, he has to believe that this prosecution itself is vindictive. Which means he has to have bought Trump’s narrative of the case. And when he does this with Dreeben, he’s attacking the deep state, which is career-line prosecutors. Remember, Dreeben’s entire career has been as a nonpartisan civil servant who’s gotten up there and argued cases on behalf of the Bush administration, on behalf of the Trump administration, on behalf of the Obama administration.  

I mean, what Alito did is essentially say: “I’m living in MAGA world.” Which views this case as a totally bogus prosecution ginned up by totally bogus people as part of a vindictive prosecution by Joe Biden. And Alito is also implicitly saying that if Donald Trump gets reelected, you just know he’s going to prosecute people vindictively too. He really has lost faith in the entire system. Or at least he’s prepared to lose faith in the system enough to decide this case in Trump’s favor.

Well ladies & germs, there you have it. Full-blown American style radical right authoritarianism in all of its glory coming at you from the highest court in the land, the USSC. Unless you are a MAGAite, the hypocrisy, irrationality and sheer malice in it cannot be ignored, justified or denied. It is all right out in the open. But, if you are a MAGAite it is automatically ignored, justified and denied by default.

It is starting to seem reasonable to think that Trump is going to avoid facing justice in all of the federal trials. The authoritarian radical right Republican USSC is actually thinking about protecting him. 

Q: Is this actually a clear example of radical right Republican authoritarianism coming from the USSC, or is it merely idle, inconsequential chit-chat, or something else?