2024 US Presidential Election

Message 749 and Message 752 do not address the issues raised by Tag in Message 685.--Percy

I've not been watching much news for the past 50 years. And those 50 years adds up to a lot of news. And I'm different from most people, undoubtedly including you, in that I get news from multiple sources, so I can compare. Most people only watch news from the viewpoints that they like, and ignore the rest. And some of what I see cuts through the haze of normal reporting, and cuts right to the heart of the matter of bias. Home | Media Research CenterSure, it's conservative, so the left will knee-jerk dismiss it. But they tend to show FACTS, like the percentages of mainstream anchors and reporters who contribute money to the Democrat party. Or the percentages of time the mainstream media spends on negative or positive coverage of presidents and congressmen. It can simplify my interpretation of the honesty in the mainstream news media. There are also statements like this, worth repeating again in this message;

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...now only a historically low 32% of Americans say they trust media to be fair and impartial.

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This FACT also tends to streamline all research in how I form opinions about the news media. As I alluded to earlier, when I saw Fox News last Thursday at 6pm, it took me less than one hour to see them report the mob attack at the southern border, and then watch ABC News cover it up.You know more than I do about the inner working of the news media? Where do you get your information? That's a nice theory, a nice dream, but it's not reality. Fox News has been showing video of Letitia James back in 2018 ranting about how Trump wasn't a legitimate president, how she's going to get him. You didn't know about that?

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“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” she said in an interview with NBC News. “We want to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law.”

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“Donald Trump’s days of defrauding Americans are coming to an end,” she would add. “We can spot a carnival barker.”

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“I will shine a light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing,” she said. As Law&Crime’s Ronn Blitzer reported just before the calendar turned to 2019, concerns were expressed that these comments by James were basically a template in how to create grounds for a selective prosecution case. Those fears are now being validated.

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Attorneys for the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which agreed to dissolve in December, are now highlighting James’ anti-Trump commentary to their advantage.

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“Newly elected New York Attorney General Letitia James ran on an anti-Trump campaign where she expressed grave antipathy and animus toward Mr. Trump,” they said, according to CNN. “Attorney General James has referred to President Trump as an ‘illegitimate President’ […] and has vowed to ‘use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well.'”

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Trump Foundation attorneys say “politically motivated claims for equitable and injunctive relief are unwarranted on the facts and the law.”

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There's more there, I won't c/p it all. Everyone knows that a lot of Trump's business dealings over his life have been on the shady side. So have those of just about every past president, and every past and present member of Congress. THEY DON'T GET INVESTIGATED. Ever hear of Nancy Pelosi's riches, that she's somehow amassed with her congressional salary? Letitia James, or the California Attorney General, don't seem interested in investigating her, do they?Ever hear of the 8th Amendment?

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"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

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Three phrases there, the first two seem to be noteworthy, do they not?Now for a few more cuts from an MSN link;

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Consider the $83 million penalty in the Carroll case. The first $18 million supposedly represents how much Carroll is due in direct “compensatory” damages for the reputational harm she suffered from Trump’s defamation. That alone is wildly extravagant, more than three times what actor Johnny Depp, who obviously had a much more financially significant reputation to protect in the first place, was awarded when former wife Amber Heard defamed him. The jury awarded Carroll another $65 million in “punitive” damages, meant not as compensation for her actual suffering but just to further punish Trump.

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Then there’s the financial fraud case. Trump acted dishonestly in multiple ways while securing business loans. Yet as noted by almost every salient observer, not even the banks suffered any losses from Trump’s conduct, so the real “victims” were the overall banking and financial markets. Under a semi-reasonable theory, the markets suffered losses at the margins, diffused through the whole economy, because Trump’s gaming of the system arguably nabbed resources that others might have enjoyed. To penalize Trump by $355 million (plus interest) for this offense is akin to assessing a $50,000 fine on a non-injury-causing jaywalker.

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[bolded mine]MSN

You keep mistaking your opinions and biases for facts. I think you have a poor handle on what it is that you do know. I think she called him an illegitimate president, in the sense of the way he conducted himself and his presidency, not in the sense of not being duly elected. Are you really citing a Law & Crime article whose primary source was attorneys for the Donald J. Trump Foundation that was dissolved by court order after the discovery of ethical and legal violations?After the New York Times investigation and the Trump Foundation fiasco there was plenty of suspicion worthy of investigation. I don't think that's true, about everyone knowing, I mean. I think a great many Trump supporters believe he can do no wrong. Investigate away. I'm in favor of all wrongdoers being held to account. As I understand it, Judge Engoron based the amount of the award on the lower loan rates he obtained (by inflating the value of his properties) and the lower insurance rates he obtained (by understating the value of his properties) and the business these frauds allowed him to conduct that wouldn't otherwise have been possible. Specifically Trump was found liable for gains he made by falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements, conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, and conspiracy to falsify business records. Actually the original article is from the Washington Examiner: Trump may have transgressed, but his $464 million bond is grossly excessive--Percy

Yes, her political opinions of him as she conducts herself as an Attorney General, a part of the legal system. Yes, what I cited was what I believe are facts, regardless of the source. Are you really citing a New York Times investigation? Do ya think there could be a comparable number of Joe Biden followers who believe HE can do no wrong? Me, personally, investigate? C'mon man. It's the legal system's job. Decisions of what to investigate and not to investigate aren't a perfectly defined part of the legal system. They are political, as Letitia James, Fanni Willis, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Arther Engoron and who knows how many others have made crystal clear. He mainly based his amounts on his hatred of Trump. The amounts are unconstitutional when compared to other amounts fined in other cases throughout the history of the U.S. And I've heard no one at Fox News mention the 8th amendment - I thought about that all by my own self. Since I know that the Constitution is about more things than just the "General Welfare" clause, and the 14th Amendment. What does that matter, if it contains logic and facts?

Source please. What is the context?
Sources for the other quotes please. Source and evidence please. Irrelevant. The judgement was not bail and the fine is not excessive as that is what it had been found he earned by ill-gotten means. If someone steals $1 billion they should be able to keep the majority of it? Disgorgement of ill-gotten gains is deeply enshrined in US jurisprudence.

Of course it's her political opinion of Trump, but not as Attorney General. It's from her political campaign video from when she was running for Attorney General. You didn't cite any facts, just quoted from a Crime & Law opinion piece at length. Yes, I did mention the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigative piece as being part of the basis for what led Attorney General James to suspect, correctly it turns out, that Trump's businesses were engaged in illegal practices. Of course I didn't mean you personally. It's an opinion piece from the Washington Examiner. You called it an "MSN link" and gave no clue as to the source, so I supplied the missing information. If you think it contains facts relevant to your position then you're welcome to introduce them into the discussion. That Quin Hillyer thinks the Trump monetary penalty akin to fining a jaywalker $50,000 is an opinion, not a fact.I do agree with Hillyer about the $65 million the jury awarded in punitive damages in the Carroll case, that it was to punish Trump. Of course it was to punish Trump. That's what punitive damages are for. Looking this up, both "punish" and "punitive" come from the Latin root word punire, "to inflict a penalty on."--Percy

They aren't partisan Democrats. They were appointed. They don't run in an election on a partisan ticket.Anything else you want to be wrong on?

You were asked for evidence of significant voter fraud. We all agree that there are extremely rare cases of voter fraud. Less than 2,000 cases out of billions of votes is not significant. As stated in previous posts, people getting struck by lightning is way more common than voter fraud.

Trump lies about elections, and gets his followers to believe the lies. That is significant because it provides political cover for Republicans to suppress legal votes. People from all parties? Who are the Democrats who have been screaming about voter fraud?What the Democrats are screaming about right now is vote suppression, gerrymandering, and a whole host of other issues, but not fraud.

That principle has existed for thousands of years, since the inception of civilization itself. What sets communism apart is the state ownership of the means of production and how the resources from state owned entities is distributed to the populace. An employee owned business would be something closer to communism. Taxing privately owned businesses is not communism.

For the majority of US history, all you had to do was to cross the border and you were a legal immigrant. The US still seems to be here.I also fail to understand how 9/11 or the national debt has anything to do with immigration. If nothing else, expanding the tax base would help with lowering the national debt. As far as I am aware, all of the terrorists who committed the 9/11 atrocities were legally in the country. Building a 100 foot wall at our southern border would have done nothing to stop those attacks.

They get investigated all of the time. For example, Robert Menendez, a Democratic Senator:https://www.justice.gov/...ersey-businessmen-charged-briberyThe MAGA crazies are investigating Biden in the House, but they can't turn up anything. According to his own lawyers, Trump has 14 billion dollars. A 90 million dollar fine amounts to 0.6% of his wealth. A 500 million dollar fine amounts to 3.5% of his wealth. How are any of these excessive?

Are you daft? Of course they get investigated. And those are absurd accusations.So, I guess your view on criminals is ""if we can't prosecute every criminal we shouldn't prosecute you favorite politician." Trump should be above the law because other politicians are corrupt, but you cannot show any evidence of their crimes. We all watched that scumbag commit multiple crimes. Before his inauguration long lists of his conflicts of interest were public knowledge and he violated every one of them.America always thought the Constitution would protect us from a truly corrupt or insane President, but Trump demonstrated that there is really no protection at all. If that fucking treasonous insurrectionist is ever elected again it will be the end of the United States of America.

It's her political opinion of Trump when she was running for Attorney General, but NOT her opinion of him AS Attorney General? This is really weird. So she's two completely different people depending on if she has the position of Attorney General, or before she had that position? So if it's a conservative source it's an opinion piece, and if it's the NY Times it's an unbiased investigative piece? When it comes to specific news organizations ratings of bias, just about any source places the NY Times about as far left as any of them can be. I didn't "call" it an MSN link, I showed it as an MSN link because that's what it was! It was a Washington Examiner piece contained in an MSN link. As a well-poisoner, sources seem very important to you. A common sense opinion, if Trump's fines are compared to fines imposed on others, for more serious crimes, for people who aren't the target of election interference. How about the Leslie Millwee case against Bill Clinton? The Paula Jones case? The Kathleen Willey case? The Juanita Broaddrick case? Were they $65 million each? Why didn't Bill Clinton get that kind of punishment? Because he has a "D" behind his name? There would have been an 8th Amendment outcry by the mainstream media, especially if Clinton had been involved in a presidential campaign.The fact that Trump is being hindered in his presidential campaign is an important consideration in this "get Trump" circus. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had something to say about election interference;

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“The Excessive Fines Clause traces its venerable lineage back to at least 1215,” wrote Ginsburg, “Magna Carta required that economic sanctions ‘be proportioned to the wrong’ and ‘not be so large as to deprive [an offender] of his livelihood.’”

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and, most importantly, also from Ginsburg;

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“For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties,” wrote Ginsburg. “Excessive fines can be used, for example, to retaliate against or chill the speech of political enemies.”

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[bolded mine]Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Trump’s $355 million fine – Daily NewsWas that an acceptable source? Or is it to be disregarded, even though it contained quotes from Ginsburg?"Chill the speech of political enemies", that's not an opinion of what's being done to Trump, that's a fact.

Presidential cabinets are always full of appointed partisans. Appointed partisans are all over state politics as well.

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Four liberal Colorado Supreme Court justices were behind the landmark ruling Monday night that former President Donald Trump would not be allowed to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot in the state.

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Meet the four Democrat-picked Colorado justices who kicked Trump off the ballotFour LIBERAL? They were appointed by a liberal governor, and made the most liberal decision ever in the U.S., trying to bar a top presidential candidate from a major party from the state ballot. Anti-democracy - that's as liberal as it gets.