Everything posted by TwiceHorn
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2026 Midterms ...
Also, her bio: https://carahevents.carahsoft.com/2025LEIS/Speaker/?sid=6550 She's an "agent" dating back to 2003. But in intelligence. While one of FBI's major roles today is domestic intelligence, it's my understanding that Intel people tend to be major second-class citizens compared to the criminal hooverites. Not sure that means much in the Trump era.
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2026 Midterms ...
That email looks shiesty. Kellie Hardiman is, apparently, employed by the FBI, but as of last May her title was: Deputy Assistant Director Criminal Intelligence Branch Criminal Investigation Division FBI https://elpasomatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/FBI-TdA-assessment.pdf But, maybe it's real. NBC NewsFBI invites state election officials to an 'unusual' brie...The invitation comes amid growing tensions between state and federal officials over elections as President Donald Trump calls to "nationalize the voting."
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Trump’s America
Ok fair enough. Most of CR's suspicion of Trump voters, and I think it's accurate in a lot of cases, is they don't care about the policies either, they just want the "show." And, of course, the show is just a distraction from the depredations of the wealthy and powerful. I'm also suspicious that jkates likes and wants the show too, despite protestations to the contrary.
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Trump’s America
But he doesn't walk the talk most of the time. He's not going to make it any harder to get an abortion because that would be unpopular. He already basically unleashed the states to do that. He doesn't really care about immigration, but he's gonna put on a big show that happens also to be an OBEY power play, especially in cities and states that tend to oppose him. Wouldnt surprise me a bit if his deportation numbers are lower than Obama's, who managed to do it without putting the Gestapo in Bastropo. He doesn't give a fuck about election integrity. He's for all the voter fraud and suppression as long as he wins. One might hope that somewhere in all the rubble, he manages to throw your interest something of a bone, by accident. But that strikes me as a very dangerous game to play. Look at him and guns right now. He's so volatile and devoid of any convictions or personal moorings that you just never know.
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Trump’s America
Ok, for a long time I have been skeptical of candidates abilities to deliver on their campaign promises. So, for a while I voted on really "macro vibes," meaning I figure this guy a member of this party, who makes certain noises, will generally do X, and I am generally in favor of X. Some of that stuff was in retrospect delusional. Like be more fiscally conservative. Or for a smaller, less intrusive and maybe less costly government. But as the "macro vibes" from the GOP started to include a lot of social issues, the culture war, I began to dislike the vibes. Because my view of smaller, less intrusive government includes butting out of people's personal lives. And not discriminating against people because they're different. So, I'm pretty cynical about politicians generally. One "macro vibe" I never escaped was the ability of the President to project some character and leadership, even if that was a carefully cultivated front, see Nixon, for example. Because a huge part of the Presidency is to be able to project that to the American people and to our allies and enemies abroad. I have disliked Donald Trump and thought he was a grandstanding scumbag braggart since my earliest awareness of him in the 80s or 90s. I thought it conceivable that that was a bit and if he assumed the presidency, he might put that aside and act like a normal ish human being. I did not vote for him because of my suspicion of him as a very low character. And it was quickly proven that he was a lower character than I had even previously imagined. So, I find it almost incomprehensible that someone finds one of his policy positions so important that they will vote for a complete scumbag and ignore his horrible awful policy positions in the process. Stay home. I almost did in 2016. Also, in the process of understanding Trump and his version of the GOP, I also came to understand that many if not all of his policies, like on abortion, are not held based on personal conviction or governmental/political theory (government should stay out of highly personal decisions), but rather what gets him elected and gets him polling high. And that a lot of GOP positions were that way, in fact, most of them. Pure power plays and manipulation, nothing related to improving people's lives or the government, just to the accretion of power and money. It has become clear to me that he fantasizes about the most recent era of the US without income taxes. The so-called Golden Age. The main source of revenue at that time was tariffs. First, the Golden Age was an absolutely shitty time for the average American, but it was great for the billionaires of the day, the robber barons. Second, the world was a different place that was not so dependent on international trade and relationships that make tariffs and their attendant diminution of international trade untenable. Third, the last time we tried this with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, it was an unmitigated disaster. And that was in 1930, when the world was more interdependent than the Golden Age, but far less so than today. And his interest in this Golden Age is purely selfish. He doesn't want to pay taxes. He doesn't even want to talk about taxes he's paid. That's gotten a lot of billionaires who don't want to pay taxes on his side. And he's fooled you, and a lot of people like you, that he wants to help you with policies that are only designed to help himself.
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Trump’s America
Wait, you say that about Biden but not Trump? Or is it that they're both equally hideous humans, so that nets out, so you might as well vote for Trump's lukewarm abortion policy?
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Trump’s America
You don't see any of that fruit in Joe Biden?
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The Trump Economy
Also, Mehmet, where does that $3T go? What's in it for the average American, er serf? Also, is this some kind of Sharia law? Why does this dirty mooslim get a break?
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The Trump Economy
I don't recall ever seeing a lawyer's own correspondence including the self-title, Esq. I think use of the "title" or honorific or whatever it is propagates mostly through secretaries.
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The Trump Economy
Yeah, I think I have noted that. Hedge funds are so volatile that they can be hard to evaluate.
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Trump’s America
Do you see that it is also legitimate for people to resist the invasion in almost exclusively non-violent fashion? Especially once they started killing unarmed, non-violent people? Also, a point I'd like to raise. You said you had no sympathy for Renee Good, presumably because she placed herself in a volatile situation. A situation I might add caused at least partially by government agents. Your arrested abortion protestor buddy did the same thing, in a situation made volatile only by his actions, but the only thing he got from the government was arrest and conviction, while Good and Pretti got 14 bullets and dead. I'm going to assume it was a misdemeanor conviction, also.
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Trump’s America
What the fuck is the fruit of another person's Christianity? You don't evangelize another person to Christianity for "fruit." Or do you mean some government or policy benefit that you consider "fruit." That seems to be an extraordinary admixture of man's kingdom and that of God.
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Trump’s America
There is no surge in Houston. There was gonna be one in Maine (Maine?) until he figured out it would wind up costing Collins her seat. Here, I am defining surge as sending thousands of non-native ICE agents to a city. Not merely a general increase in ICE activity, which is probably occurring everywhere. And, tell me how the local government in Minneapolis resisted the surge?
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Trump’s America
So, it's the cities' fault for resisting an armed invasion? Has nothing to do with the fact that Trump specifically targeted LA, Chicago, and Minneapolis to send thousands of troops to march around in groups in public. And DC must not have an immigrant problem, but it sure needs the National Guard.
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Papers, please. Surly thread of deportation cruelty dominance
In the federal system, ordinarily, a judge's order to release would go to the Marshals for pretrial detainees and BOP for post-conviction detainees. Both of these are parts of the DOJ that are used to taking orders from federal judges. They have systems for it. Whereas, these detainees are held in ICE/CPB custody. They're not DOJ sub-agencies and not used to getting orders from federal judges, only Immigration Judges. Strange as it sounds, I don't think their systems have "check boxes" for district judge orders or reasons for release. I imagine in the DOJ system, the US Attorney fills an electronic form for habeas release, it goes automatically to the right Marshal/BOP person and the order propagates and the person is released in the ordinary course and swiftly. Like you described in the state system, happens multiple times every day. So, DOJ defends the agency in court, the court gives an order to the DOJ lawyer, who forwards it to ICE/CBP lawyer and officials, and there's no formal chain of command or protocol for dealing with it. The minions who actually open the doors/gates, don't get the right orders or they do it some fucked up way they're used to doing it from an Immigration Judge. And, I think they're legit overwhelmed. They hired a shit ton of rednecks to play GI Joe, but I bet they didn't hire hardly a single extra "back office" person. Then you add in a bit of senior officials that like to at least play like they don't have to follow court orders, and it's a mess. ETA: elaborating here, these clowns will fuck around with court orders and have their flapping spokescunts talk about illegitimate court orders, but they won't show up in court and say it to the judge and get their asses thrown in a cell. They will maliciously comply and fail to implement obviously needed systems.
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Trump’s America
That and it's an excellent distraction for that billiionaire's dick up your ass. For certain people anyway.
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Trump’s America
Great point. Obama, Bush, and Clinton deported historic numbers of people. Probably more than Trump will. And they did it without all this militaristic sturm und drang. Whether you agree or disagree with the deportation policy of some, any, or all of these, it demonstrates that you don't need this GI Joe/Rambo/A-team shit to do it. You have two choices as to why it's happening, maybe not mutually exclusive: Trump is an idiot that can't execute government policy; or he's doing it on purpose to intimidate people.
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Trump’s America
You didn't ask me, but the origin of the immigration courts and warrants system is legitimate (of course assuming a good faith executive and immigration officials). Immigration (and deportation) are mostly a civil matter, so many/most of the criminal protections don't apply in the first instance. Civil litigants legally get less due process than criminal defendants, because generally the stakes are a lot lower. To keep this from burdening the federal courts system, a specialized set of "Administrative Law Judges" (ALJs) and courts was created. They at least in theory have specialized knowledge of immigration laws and burdens of proof, etc. that US District Judges don't have. ALJs are all over the government adjudicating things for which people are not entitled to a jury trial (that's kind of broad delineator between what an ALJ can handle and what a US District Judge must handle, constitutionally). One notable example is the Patent Office, where ALJs are an intermediate level of appeal on the issue of who gets (or gets to keep) a patent. Like all judges, competence, personality, and political bent vary pretty wildly, but overall the ALJ system works pretty well, again assuming a good faith executive and immigration officials. Yeah, just like district judges everywhere, one or two of em will bust out with a fucked up decision or what seems like a fucked up decision, but overall it works decently. So these ALJs, Immigration Judges, decide basically who gets to stay and who must go. And they sign orders that someone must be removed or deported, by law, or is permitted to stay. That is, most often, what is referred to as an "administrative warrant." The order serves as the warrant, or maybe another slip of paper is signed saying "Arrest X pursuant to the order of removal of the judge dated ______, and attached." It seems that under Trump, such slips of paper are signed when there is no such judgment and it's not attached. And that's not even an administrative warrant, it's a nothing and a corruption of the whole process. So I'm excluding that kind of bullshit from the discussion. So, assuming there's a judgment of an immigration judge, it's not an Article III judge signing off on a judicial arrest warrant but it is a reasonable facsimile. As we've discussed, that empowers arrest of the warrant subject at large in public, but does not permit entry on private property to make an arrest. In the normal course of things, I think we should be satisfied with the rulings of Immigration Judges deciding these things and forming the basis for arrest and removal of the people that come before the immigration courts. And, the use of these "administrative warrants." Of course, all of this assumes that Immigration Judges aren't biased and selected for their bias, and are not pressured to decide against the immigrant by the executive and senior immigration officials. So, like a lot of things, a pretty half-decent system thoroughly corrupted by the Regime.
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Trump’s America
As an abstract proposition I agree that those here unlawfully should not expect to remain here. But that needs to be implemented in an orderly fashion that prioritizes the most recent unlawful immigrants along with those who are criminally ineligible to immigrate here and might pose a public danger. But I suspect as a practical matter, an orderly process there is nearly impossible. And with the disorder comes fundamental unfairness. I see some combination of amnesty for those who have been here the longest and/or were brought or came as minors and a guest worker program for recent and long-term immigrants seeking/obtaining jobs and remaining employed, to be the only reasonable and orderly solutions.
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Trump’s America
It's not really a #bothsides, but the response is likely to be "it's just a building in DC who cares, calm your jets." A corollary might be "don't know why the government is spending money on artistic performances, anyway, especially when they're a bunch of librul fehgs." But then they might have to answer why it is, in addition to his other profligate spending, combined with tax cuts, he's spending $200M (Big Beautiful Buttfucking Bill) to fix it up. But again, this is evidence that the guy is so vain, so narcissistic about plastering his name on shit that one should be seriously concerned that he could ever enact and execute valid policy.
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Jeffrey Epstein needs his own thread
Just an observation. Public release of investigative files is not a step in the investigative process that brings prosecution any nearer. It might even be a step in the opposite direction. It could increase pressure to bring indictments against those indictable. But it certainly doesn't change the character of the evidence itself or whether it would support a conviction. And, as Jack Smith so eloquently stated, a prosecutor who brings an indictment should verily believe he can secure a conviction on the evidence s/he has. Doing so for any other reason is improper and unethical.
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Trump’s America
Absolutely, even if you could believe him when he announces some policy that makes some sense, you know the execution of it would be totally FUBAR. The guy is so flawed, so fucked up, nothing good could ever come from him. As I said on the other thread, he's the most deeply flawed and disturbed human I have ever had the displeasure of observing outside of a prison cell, and probably death row at that.
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Trump’s America
He didn't say you were lying. He said your principles are malleable. So which immigrants are dirty? Which ones bother you? Do you think it's necessary to send a brutal armed invasion into peaceful cities to randomly arrest, detain, injure, and murder people, some of whom are citizens, some of whom are migrants, some of whom are dirty migrants? I didn't agree with a lot of Biden's policies and generally thought him to be a lifetime politician, who is not someone I normally respect or want to vote for. But whatever his flaws, personally and politically, he is infinitely preferable to Trump who is one of the most deeply flawed humans I have ever observed outside of a prison cell. I also believe Biden to be an actual Christian, or striving Christian who makes an attempt to observe the teachings of the Gospel. As a professed Christian, do you think Donald Trump deserves judgment for his many vast personal failings, his sins. For which he is obviously not repentant?
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The Trump Economy
Well, the guy seems to have sort of bona fides. I think I'd prefer a masters in economics or at least to have run a broad based financial firm like Goldman. Regardless, he's Secretary of the Treasury. Rarely has an SoT been so politically outspoken, especially on matters not within the ambit of SoT. If he's sick of the exposure and having to answer political questions, it's his own fault for inserting himself into them. I hate him just about as much as Vance, Noem, Hegseth. Trump and Miller have a special place in hell.