Don't people understand primaries?

And what is the obvious, BT?

Trump is facing 91 felony counts in four criminal cases in Washington, New York, Florida. Trump faces 40 felony charges in the classified documents case. The most serious charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. He's crying "witch hunt" but the reason all these cases are happening are because there is overwhelming evidence of his criminal activities. All feelings aside, it's pretty black and white that he is a bad human being. The only reason he wants to be president again is because it's the only way he's going to get out of his legal troubles. So what is obvious for you?

At least 18 women have accused Donald Trump of varying inappropriate behaviour, including allegations of sexual harassment or sexual assault. If that many women have accused him of that behaviour just imagine how many haven't spoken up for fear of defamation of character. Also a legal jury did say she was right and he was required to pay a penalty.

 

I actually disagree with removing the statute of limitations.
It's one thing if say somebody molests a 7 year old and then 15 years later after they have gotten enough financial independence to hire an attorney attempts to seek redress, but that is because the 7 year old can't do anything on their own for 11 years, and I'm including time to graduate from college and get a job in that 15 years. Said 7 year old might have reported it to the wrong people and not been believed. Note that "wrong" is subjective to the situation and varies from case to case.
It's quite another for an adult to not report it and keep quiet for 20-30 years.
Also you have to consider false accusations being used as a weapon, and it gets very hard to defend against those false accusations after that amount of time. People's memories are faulty.
Also the problem with these kind of crimes is that they usually take place in private, and it turns into a he said, she said situation and we are supposed to have a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Just because a bunch of people decide to gang up and make a bunch of baseless accusations against a person for alleged crimes 20-30 years ago doesn't mean the person is guilty without proof. Especially when you have a politician where somebody would benefit from assassinating his character.
I'm sorry, but as a man the whole idea that "if a woman cries rape/assault/molestation, it should be automatically believed unless the man can prove otherwise" flies in the face of the principal of innocent until proven guilty.
Women can and will lie about such things if it is an easy way to hurt somebody. Not all of them, probably not even a majority of them, but enough do. Especially if they know it's a weapon they can wield to get their way or "get back" at somebody that can hurt them. There needs to be a way for men to defend against that, and the burden of proof should not be on the accused to prove his innocence decades later.

 

Yup

You know I'm Canadian right? Not sure if you were trying to make a jab at me? Kinda weak. Oh wait! So that means the woman who was proven to be sexually abused by Trump, in a court of law, is BT's, E Jean Carroll?

I'm pretty sure Biden knows WW2 has already happened and Biden is also aware Obama is not in the running for president. You're a little confused (again) about who's going senile because poopie-pants and self-proclaimed Jesus, Trump, thinks he's running against Obama and WW2 hasn't happened yet. Former aids and people who've worked close to him can attest to the fact he smells like he shits his pants. But yeah, tell me again how Biden is going senile?

 

Thanks for clearing that up Tal. I guess the point is that Biden did not take classified information willingly. Trump on the other hand knew what he had on hand, and I'm sure he also knew the value of what he was holding on to.

 

If you mean in the same way I'm anti-Hitler, anti-Jim Jones, anti-Saddam Hussein, yes I'd agree. Most of the anti-trump people I know are highly educated and I wouldn't consider any of them zealots.

I do know a lot of right-wing nuts (acquaintances not friends) who definitely demonstrate cult-like behaviour. I have some Mormon cousins who totally drink the purple Kool-Aid. They've been trained since they were kids to be obedient and believe anything their church tells them. They are 100% zealots and preach hate for anyone who doesn't fit into their rigid religious structure. They're also pretty proud of their republican "values".

 

Come on people ... get it right. He's called "The Orange Jesus" when not referring to him by name.

 

I've heard him called "Cheeto Head" but not "Cheeto Jesus". I have heard "The Cheeto Head thinks he's as big a deal as Jesus Christ" a time or two however.

 

Orange Jesus came courtesy of Senator Mitch McConnell.

if leaders in the Republican party refer to him as the Orange Jesus, who am I to argue….

Edit: I heard it was Mitch that coined the term several years ago but Cheney credits a Republican Congressmen in her book.

 

Haven't seen some of you guys in a bit. Good to see you are still around.

I noticed the article Tal provided actually disproved some stuff MTA claimed even if Tal didn't realize it.

Bear with me and I'll quote the article several times and then add my thoughts afterwards.

Plus tack on why BTA's comments may be evidence he watched 1 of the same rightwing propaganda stations I did during reporting on 1 of these or something similar to it.

From the article:

"Biden noted that the special counsel drew a distinction between him and Trump, 77: Biden returned the documents while Trump allegedly declined to do so."

"Trump has described the four criminal prosecutions he faces — including one for his handling of classified documents — as politically motivated. He has claimed, without evidence, that Biden was behind the state and federal cases."

"Trump faces a 40-count federal indictment for retaining highly sensitive national security documents at his Florida resort after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing U.S. government efforts to retrieve them.

While the two cases have similarities, there are also some notable differences.

The White House said Biden's attorneys found a small number of classified documents and turned them over after discovery.

Trump resisted doing so until a 2022 FBI search turned up about 100 classified documents, leading to obstruction of justice charges against Trump and two employees at his Mar-a-Lago resort."


From the article alone we can see Trump took more secret/classified stuff. And, unlike Biden, didn't cooperate in returning-to the point of 2 people working for him plus Trump himself getting charged with "obstruction".

What isn't mentioned in the article is part of that obstruction not only involves lying to the people trying to get ahold of all the classified documents but a Mar-a-Lago employee being told to delete video camera footage showing that Trumps people (because he wanted them to) were moving and trying to hide some of the secret documents.

This is destruction of evidence.

Not destruction of the documents but trying to destroy proof that they still had the secret documents.

Mike Pence, the former VP, also had secret documents but cooperated in returning them and was not charged with anything.

Additionally what the report only lightly goes into is that

"Hur, who served as the top federal prosecutor in Maryland during the Trump administration and was tapped to lead the Biden probe by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023."

"Hur said Biden would not have faced charges, even absent a longstanding Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president."

So Mr. Hur-whose job was to get the documents back and see if Biden should be charged knew the answer to the second part is no. But did something that was arguably unusual in today's time by adding remarks about Biden's memory and age.

Biden's age and memory were things Republicans has already been making remarks about as a form of political attack.
Since the investigator knew he couldn't charge Biden he did the unusual and turned his report into something that could be used in coordination with political attacks that had already started.

The article pointed out that Biden's lawyers complained Hur's remarks on Biden's age and memory don't belong in the kind of report he was doing.

I don't remember any report making similar criticisms of Mike Pence when he was investigated. Pence is was a smaller political target than Biden, didn't have the same line of political attacks against him started up, and very possibly didn't have someone investigating him with the same level of political bias as Hur.

Trump did worse than Pence or Biden.

Not the same, worse.

Arguably the most politically based or outside the norm criticisms by people doing the investigations were the remarks aimed at Biden.

When the Hur report came out I bounced between MSNBC and either NewsMax or Foxnews.

I noticed MSNBC had more commentary about how personal comments aimed at Biden were unusual than the rightwing channel-I'm guessing it was NewsMax.

The rightwing channel I was watching at the time also totally omitted that Trump tried to cover up that he was still holding on to secret documents rather than cooperate like Biden and Pence did. A guy on the show actually said Trump was like Biden. Leaving out important facts as part of creating a false narrative.

If BTA was watching a rightwing channel like I had and believed it then he would've believed Trump had done no worse than Biden-or Pence. When what Trump did was actually worse in more than 1 way.

And if there is bias in the people doing the investigations it is probably more against Biden than Trump despite the self proclaimed victimhood of the latter.

Now I think it would be fair to see charges and a court case against Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election for President before the 2024 election-but right now Trump's lawyers are using so many legal moves that may not happen before election day this year.

 

Ok, a month later I am forced to admit maybe I don't understand the primaries, or maybe the primaries are obsolete compared to what they taught me in school.
That is if they are actually about selecting the candidates. There hasn't been a surprise upset in my lifetime in the primaries, or even a real contested primary. Closest I can think of was the Democratic one in 2016 between Hillary and Sanders. I don't recall any others being contested in my lifetime, although I was too young to remember the '80 or '84 elections and I honestly don't recall the primary for '88, just the general election between Bush and Dukakis.

It seems that all the people running against Trump have dropped out of the race before Illinois has their primary on March 19. They DID have some early voting starting March 1, but by law that isn't counted until after Election Day.

So, if who gets the Republican nomination is decided before the primary, what's the point of the Illinois Republican Presidential primary aside from picking candidates specific to Illinois for other offices besides president that aren't national?
It seems that just a minority of States decide the candidates and if you aren't part of Super Tuesday you don't get a say. Heck, most of the contenders dropped out after the Iowa caucus or the New Hampshire primary. Niki Haley dropped out after Super Tuesday despite winning New Hampshire and Washington D.C.

Personally, I think that all the primaries and caucuses should be held on the same day to avoid this problem. I feel I didn't get a say in who is on the ticket, it was decided by the States that had Super Tuesday.

I know Illinois lost an electoral vote, but so did Pennsylvania, so we are still tied for 5th place for electoral votes, yet everybody drops out before we get a say. Half the primaries had not been held yet!
So did the people ever really have a say in the primaries in the 21st century or is it all decided by the Parties ahead of time and we just get to pick between the parties in the November election?
Or do only the people in the early primaries get a say?

 

I just feel that I never got a say in the primary. I really think they should all be set up to occur on the same day so people aren't influenced by the polls and fears of "wasted votes" in order to unseat somebody like tRump.

I believe that caucuses are something like what you described.

Although to be fair, the way the primary works in Illinois is that you have to declare which party you are affiliated with, and then you can only vote for candidates for that party. The results of the election with the exception of the Presidential race decide which candidate will appear on the November ballot for that party.
In the November ballot you do NOT declare a party affiliation. You can split your ticket as you please and vote for whatever candidate you want.
This does open the door for shenanigans where members of a rival party can declare for their rivals and vote for the worst possible candidate in the hopes that the rival candidate would then be easily defeated in November. This is balanced by the fact that their own prime candidate would have fewer votes to defend against a similar tactic being used against them (although if they only have one candidate it won't make any difference), and reports in the polls of their candidate getting far fewer votes.

Anyways in theory the primaries are supposed to be the members of each party picking their candidates. I just feel that IL and close to half the other States that did not schedule their primaries before Super Tuesday got shafted in that they don't get a say in who the Presidential candidate is.
Note that I'm not mentioning the Democratic ticket, as the incumbent is almost assured a place on the ballot and no sitting president has lost the nomination since the primary system was implemented instead of party leaders selecting the candidate. Heck even then IIRC the last sitting president who did not get the nomination was before the Civil War.

 

I was thinking the same thing. We basically have two incumbents. The last time an incumbent had any real challenge was when Ted challenged Carter.

Unfortunately, the primaries are usually when the extremes in each party choose a candidate because the moderates don't get off their lazy buttocks (I may be guilty of this). Which is why most of the November elections seem like a Monty Python show ... 'Election Night Special' is a great routine.