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By David Futrelle
BAM! Two more Republicans have announced they’ll be voting no on moving forward on Trumpcare, for a total of four. So it looks like the bill is DONE.
!!!!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/nLFBRINoFh
— shauna (@goldengateblond) July 18, 2017
DISCUSS! Celebrate! No trolls, Trump fans allowed!
UPDATE: McConnell is now pushing REPEAL ONLY. Seems like a desperate move, but we need to keep calling and protesting!
McConnell is moving on from Repeal & Replace to… Repeal & Suffer.
The battle to #ProtectOurCare continues!
🔥☎️🔥: https://t.co/4hAUAAmYTE pic.twitter.com/3qXigBoFjW— 5 Calls 🇺🇸 (@make5calls) July 18, 2017
@scildfreja
I listened to some other Khaled Freak vids.
“What is yellow and awaits?”
“Jonathan”
I didn’t get that one. Any hints?
is Pun!
Jon- == jaune/yellow
-athan == attendre/await
I must correct you on something Scildfreja. I’m sorry.
Incorrect. You don’t even have to have committed a crime.
It’s unclear if he can pardon himself. That’s a SCOTUS question. The clear meaning of the word “pardon” is that it is something that one person grants to another person, so whether he can pardon himself is Constitutionally unclear.
But what is not unclear is the guilt thing. You don’t have to admit guilt first to get one. You are correct, however, that anyone who receives a pardon can no longer claim 5th Amendment protections, which is probably why no pardon has been granted to Flynn.
Congratulations Oogly! And condolences to Sinkable John and Falconer.
He can pardon himself if he’s SURE the Supreme Court won’t laugh it out of the building. I don’t think the current Court would do anything quite so dumb as accepting it as a real pardon. And if they does, the Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply any more to that crime, or any other crimes he pardoned himself for. Too many downsides for Trump to even try that.
I could still see it happening, Trump is the “One Weird Presidential Trick” guy.
*cough*Gorsuch*cough*Thomas*cough*
In other news, Spicer out-SNL’d SNL. The hell?
@Ooglyboggles
That is wonderful! Congratulations on your new job. I wish you great success.
@Falconer and @Sinkable John
I hope you two feel better.
@POM
I was under the impression that Presidential pardon powers were limited to after a crime was committed but could be given before being charged or convicted. Or am I wrong here or misunderstanding what you’re saying?
That would be a rather horrendous legal conundrum.
The Presidential pardon power is written in the Constitution. It has some defined limits, but within those limits it is incredibly broad. Behold:
That’s really broad. There’s nothing here that says that a crime has to be committed, which is why some people were urging Obama to pardon Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she committed no crimes. It would have ended all of the nonsense of pursuing this non-crime.
Like, I’m President, and I say to you, “Myriad, I pardon you for murdering the Pope.” Now you can’t be prosecuted for murdering the Pope, and any investigation into your potential murder of the Pope is moot because no prosecution can come of it. But I can say that even if I know you didn’t do it, an I can say it even if the Pope is still alive. It still serves the purpose of ending any prosecutorial mischief against you.
I can’t, however, issue you a forward-looking pardon and give you a license to kill the Pope in the future. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking about?
eta: One of the uses of the pardon system is to eliminate wrongful convictions. If we require that someone have committed a crime, then we must require not only that someone be legally guilty (convicted) but that they also have factually committed the crime. It creates a paradox in the case of wrongful convictions where the person did no crime but the justice system won’t do anything about it. The paradox is resolved if we eliminate the requirement that the person have done the crime for which the pardon is being offered.
Thanks, POM, for making that more clear. A forward-looking pardon was exactly what I was thinking.
@Pom
I was also under the impression that you had to be pardoned by someone else. Wasn’t that the move Nixon pulled? Resign and then have his VP pardon him? If so we could be looking at a Nixon part II.
Sort of unrelated, but aging is not fucking fun in any way whatsoever. I just got a bit of a temporary double vision and wasn’t too concerned until I googled it:
http://scarysymptoms.com/2012/10/sudden-onset-transient-double-vision/
The neurologist won’t be in until tomorrow. Hopefully it wasn’t a mini stroke as the site suggests.
@Oogly
That’s awesome! Congrats!!
I just know that oogly took MY job, and will now complain lengthily about that and also women in general, disregarding everything outside my worldview, and also contradicting myself at least once.
Nah, I won’t. Gratz Ooglyboogles, good luck!
Anyone willing to send job search encouragement my way would be welcomed. I’m terrible at it.
@Sinkable John
I don’t have much to add besides support for hard times, but…that song you linked to was really good. I don’t typically listen to rap (and I don’t speak french) but I’m definitely going to give that artist a try.
@JS
Job searches are awful, I know, but you got this!
@Scildfreja
Weeeell… protesting is basically illegal now. And a bunch of fuckers have decided whoever doesn’t like Macron is a Le Pen fan, so now we’re deemed open fascists for resisting a sneaky authoritarian.
… I also don’t know who’s gonna pay for the raise I’m getting. Or, alternatively, what new criteria will be required to get said aid – I might not qualify anymore after he’s done with it. My handicap is mental, and I believe the jargon for people like me is “lazy” and “parasites” – he is and remains a banker.
@Schnookums
You have been converted ! Muhahahahaaahh !
More seriously, I would stick to the Eloge de l’Ombre album (and Les Matins Sous La Lune, from which that song came, and which comes out in October). The earlier ones have… ehh, darker stuff. That was one of his old schticks, like writing a song in the first person about some serial killer picked at random, for example. I can’t always stomach those songs, to be honest. They make up a good third of his older stuff, so that’s worth bearing in mind, especially since you don’t speak French.
Of course you might end up actually loving that stuff, in which case, good ! But otherwise, there’s nothing wrong with say, making a playlist and filtering it out (which is what I do). I’m pretty sure there’s a reason he stopped writing that stuff, and it’s plausible he did because of the risk of triggering PTSD. Given that he writes a lot about his own mental illness, I’m kind of expecting a reason like that.
If you haven’t seen it department:
Slate has a piece roughly titled “Maybe what trump wants from the Russians is to launder their dirty money”. Intriguing and frightening. I’d link to it but I’m on my fone n I’m just plain technologically incompetent! O_o
Here?
https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/07/20/robert_mueller_don_jr_s_russia_meeting_and_money_laundering.html
Did it work?
Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump 6 hours ago
So many people are asking why isn’t the A.G. or Special Council looking at the many Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes. 33,000 e-mails deleted?
“But her emails!!!”
@Weird Eddie Yes, sort of. It links through a google redirector URL, but does get to slate eventually.
Here’s a link that doesn’t go through google first.
http://i.imgur.com/Ef5Y4II.jpg
But how dare we call it a dictatorship or a cult.
SFHC, yeah, right. “Evolved”.
Hypocrite.
Good thing he dislosed that, because people can preserve his old tweets that way to show his “evolution.”
Seems to me like deleting tweets is the opposite of transparency. Could just be me!
Hold on, who is Scaramucci again ? With all the ratfuckery going on these days, I can’t keep track anymore ._.
@JS
Best wishes on your job search. You are going to nail it in the interview.
Re: Deleting Tweets
I wonder why he is using his personal Twitter account and not one with his government position if he is going to be tweeting in an official capacity.
I could hazard to guess what the tweets in question say. Well, you know what they say-what is on the Internet stays on the Internet. They will probably turn up soon enough.
@Sinkable John
He is the new head of communications for Trump.
And now everyone is asking the question of the day:
“Scaramucc’, Scaramucc’, do you do the Don-fang-o?”
It’s become the Meme of the Day.