Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Another easily triggered lib, unhappy that patriots are being handed pardons.

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[Hannibal]

Ben Sasse, the original 2016 Never Trumper, doesn’t approve of Trump’s pardons? That is truly shocking. It’s almost as if he’s a totally unprincipled grifter who only says and does what he tries to predict is going to be popular. In this case, he has no incentive to side with Trump. On anything. So he and literally the entire Republican Party have abonded Trump since he’s about to be out of power.

not to mention, any allies of Trump are going to face the most brutal retribution imaginable from the Democrats.

Meanwhile, DSL’s sole rebuttal to every argument, no matter how factual or logical, is “this Republican agrees with me, therefore, you’re wrong”

[Dr. Strangelove]

I've yet to hear you offer a reason why Charles Kushner deserves a pardon other than "he's related to Donald Trump by marriage, what more reason do we need?"

Why don't you tell us why Chris Collins was unfairly prosecuted?

How about Duncan Hunter?

[Hannibal]

The same reason that Communists who throw Molotov cocktails at cops never go to prison

[iam416]

I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by dubious pardons. Mark Rich says hi. Chelsea Manning would like a word. It’s gonna happen.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I’m not sure why anyone is surprised by dubious pardons. Mark Rich says hi. Chelsea Manning would like a word. It’s gonna happen.

I'm not "surprised" by it. I think they should still be called out when they happen. I was okay with Chelsea Manning and Obama clearly had no personal motive doing that one. BTW, there's a reasonable chance Trump's going to pardon Snowden. Which I also wouldn't have a tremendous problem with but it sounds like you would.

The pardon of Marc Rich resulted in a DOJ investigation of Clinton during Bush's first year. We've gone from that to Trump pardoning family members and it's the Trumpist position that of course Presidents have always been allowed to grant favors to friends and family.

Incidentally and I did not know this but one of the people pushing for Marc Rich's pardon was Scooter Libby. Small world.

I'm genuinely a little surprised at the Manafort one though. His crimes had nothing to do with Trump, weren't mere 'process' crimes, and he was so obviously guilty of them, I didn't think Trump would have the chutzpah to pardon him but he did. Shows what keeping your mouth shut in this circle gets you (sorry, Rick Gates).

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oh and the reference back to the Clinton era did make me think of this too. Not really related. But remember when it was considered a huge scandal that Al Gore made campaign phone calls from government property?

http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/03/02/gore/

For the past year every fucking Trump official in the White House has probably violated the Hatch Act by giving campaign pitches on White House grounds and nobody gave a fuck

How times change.

[iam416]

Didn’t Clinton pardon his brother?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Didn’t Clinton pardon his brother?

I believe so, yeah.

[iam416]

Yeah, so to be clear -- I'm not say Presidential clemency is always qualitatively and quantitatively equivalent (or close). What I am most definitely saying is that every time a President leaves office there (a) pardons and (b) stories about how outrageous a few of the pardons were. That's the way it goes. The same stories will be written when President Harris leaves office. Heh.

I wouldn't have pardoned Kushner or maybe Manafort, but I would have pardoned almost anyone crucified in the Russia Hoax 2.5 year investigation.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Some may know that former Buckeye WR Anthony Gonzalez (see the 2005 Game for reference) is now a Republican Congressman in northeast Ohio. He put out some tweets last night criticizing Trump for throwing GOP congressmen under the bus over the Covid/Omnibus bill. He correctly points out, and others have as well, that 100% of the items he complained about in his speech are either a lie (illegals are not getting $1800 each) or something the Trump administration asked for (all the foreign aid).

[iam416]

The war against Uber and Lyft by the Left continues. The two innovating rideshare companies managed to stave off California's bullshit with a statewide vote that repealed a bill requiring the two companies to treat drives as employees instead of independent contractors (which, they so clearly fucking are).

Welp, entere New York. Unforuntately, this time it's through the courts. http://www.courts.state.ny.us/report...2020_07645.htm

So, even though drives have not set schedule, can work as little or as often as they want, can refuse rides and can cancel accepted rides, they are employees. Now, I've never worked at a job where I can literally set my own schedule from 0 hours to 60+ hours. That doesn't seem like an employee-employer relationship to me. But, hey, The Left hates "gig" jobs. HATES THEM.

However, to be fair, I'll give anyone who is interested 1 guess at which group of interested workers were the driving force behind this particular lawsuit.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Yeah, so to be clear -- I'm not say Presidential clemency is always qualitatively and quantitatively equivalent (or close). What I am most definitely saying is that every time a President leaves office there (a) pardons and (b) stories about how outrageous a few of the pardons were. That's the way it goes. The same stories will be written when President Harris leaves office. Heh.

I wouldn't have pardoned Kushner or maybe Manafort, but I would have pardoned almost anyone crucified in the Russia Hoax 2.5 year investigation.

Manafort is the worst one to me. Dude wasn't imprisoned for process crimes or perjury. Enough time has gone by on Kushner that fine, not a huge deal. Also the least surprising pardon ever.

It's also very unimportant, but that Dutch lawyer Van der Zwaan who also got a minor conviction (and deported) in the Mueller probe? As a foreign citizen he technically wouldn't have even been eligible for a pardon under normal DOJ procedures. But virtually none of Trump's pardons have gone through the typical DOJ review and vetting.

Anyways, this is all prelude for when Trump announces preemptive pardons for his entire family and Giuliani. No idea if those will be legally valid, but I pretty much expect him to give it the old college try.

[iam416]

I actually don't disagree with that.

The notion of pre-emptive pardons strikes me as mostly lunacy. I guess the question is what is the pardon pre-empting -- the act or the charge? Clearly, the President can't pardon someone for future acts. That just can't be. He can't give Dr. Strangelove a lifelong get out of jail free card. However, what is less clear to me is whether he can pardon for crimes arising out of acts previously committed. This, again, strikes me as MOSTLY nonsense. The idea of the pardon, IMO, is to forgive a specific transgression and until that transgression is charged you don't actually know what you're pardoning. HOWEVER, I can also imagine a Federal prosecutor intentionally holding off on filing charges until the day a President leaves office. I'm not sure I'd like that situation, either.

I guess I MIGHT be able to see a pardon for "any crimes that may be brought as a result of a pending investigation" or something like that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Some solid evidence reported in the NEJM on Wednesday that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity. In one of the study's arms (retrospectively) the likelihood of infection with evidence of symptoms after having been exposed to SARS-CoV2 and possessing serologic evidence of antibodies was 10X less than for a similarly sized cohort whose immune systems were naïve. Both groups had over 10K people in them.

The study looked back 6 months but the immune response was still robust at that point in time and researchers felt confident it would last but didn't say how long.

https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-78ee6a51a7fe48e063f0803da611cb84