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  2. Phil1111
    So you're saying the punishment fits the crime. Stealing elections isn't a crime when by Caucasian evangelical birthright they already belong to you.
  3. nigel99
    If they go forward with immunity then in the US not all men are equal under the law, secondly it is a tacit admission that the justice system is deeply flawed and that you are not guaranteed a fair trial in the US as there are insufficient checks and balances. I’ve always been irritated by the phrase ‘Leader of the free world’ but it really annoys me a lot now that the US is a Banana Republic.
  4. gowlerk
    Some people sit in county jail waiting for their trials. Other people try to steal presidential elections and barely get punished. It mostly depends on what race and especially class you belong to.
  5. Today
  6. wolfriverjoe
    He hasn't been... Yet. That's why I said 'crimes he's accused of'. A lawyer doesn't need to be convicted of anything to get disbarred. The Bar Association filed a complaint. That complaint went to a hearing by a judge (separate from his criminal trials) That judge agreed with the Bar Association and said he'll no longer be allowed to practice law in California. Of course, Eastman plans to appeal. The part I found amusing was that Eastman DIDN'T say he should keep his license because he didn't do anything wrong, or that the trial was 'fake'. He just wants to keep making money.
  7. tkhayes
    I couldn't figure out how the SCOTUS was going to muck up the immunity case, but we got a pretty good preview today. They are going to drag this out and turn it into something undefinable and unachievable. trying to specifically define what is immune and what is not.... I thought the jury was supposed to do that? Trump enablers again, and one more chip out of the republic.....
  8. jakee
    Remember when th right used to bitch about nothing so much as 'activist judges'? Now you can hear the conservative justices in real time trying to talk each other into inventing Presidential immunity out of thin air simply because they (claim to) think it would be a good idea.
  9. jakee
    Newsflash - people lose their jobs without needing to be convicted first. Every. Damn. Day.
  10. gowlerk
    Not only were there pizzas, but basements were also in existence. So Hitler's opponents could have been doing those nasty things after all.
  11. billvon
    My bad. My pizza chronology was off.
  12. headoverheels
    You don't have to be convicted of anything for your law license to be suspended.
  13. olemisscub
    Ich schatze das!
  14. BIGUN
    I don't see where he was convicted. Did I miss it?
  15. BIGUN
    Compete bullshit, Bill. Pizza was invented long before the Treaty of Versailles. The troops loved going to Italy to experience pizza. One of the reasons it became so popular in the US after WWII
  16. billvon
    Comparing political figures to Hitler has a long and ignominious history in the US, and has been overused so much that there's actually an Internet law about it; Godwin's Law states that if an online discussion goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will make a comparison to Hitler. Earlier, the philospher Leo Strauss had spoken of a very similar logical fallacy: reductio ad Hitlerum. The problem, of course, is that that means that if there IS a politician that proposes (for example) to exterminate a race of people, and people compare them validly to Hitler, no one takes any note of that. Just another Godwin attack. Comparisons of Trump to Hitler initially fell afoul of Godwin's law, because there really wasn't much similarity between a mealy-mouthed reality TV star and Hitler. Just another Godwin violation! Trump was something of a joke anyway. But lately the parallels have been getting scarier, and none other than Mike Godwin has written editorials stating "this time the comparison is valid." I just listened to an interview with Timothy Ryback, author of "Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power." Ryback is an historian, and he wrote this book not by going through historical records, but by reading contemporary accounts of the time (newspapers, meeting minutes, pamphlets) so he could get a better sense of how this happened from the perspective of the people living through that time. He never mentions Trump in the book. But the parallels are astounding. While Hitler was building his power, he regularly used Polish immigrants (who were pouring across the border due to unrest in Poland) as a scare tactic. During this time, two Germans brutally tortured and murdered a few Polish immigrants; the Germans were sentenced to death for their crimes. Hitler decried that, and stated that if he were elected "never would a foreign life be put above a German" again. He made up bizarre stories to enrage and infuriate his party. He claimed that German children were being sold as sex slaves to foreign countries, and claimed that this was required by the Treaty of Versailles. (Pizza had not been invented yet, so no pizza places were involved.) His stated goal with this sort of disinformation was to "hollow out the middle" - remove the moderates and drive them to one of the two camps, so that he could frame his quest for power as a choice between only two options. Hitler regularly vowed to destroy democracy through democracy; he promised to use the mechanisms of democracy to destroy the right of the people to govern. He planned to give himself more power if he was appointed chancellor. He was very open about this, but the German people assumed he was just making speeches. "The soup is hotter during the cooking than during the eating" was a popular German phrase, indicating they thought that Hitler would calm down once he was in power. It is noteworthy that he almost didn't make it to the Chancellorship. Due to his profligate spending and his lack of respect for the law, he was often in court in the years leading up to his chancellorship. He didn't mind this; he used the courtroom as a pulpit, and one of his fellow Nazis once said that every time Hitler went to court he got another 1000 votes. The justice system was closing in on him, for his crimes, his unpaid debts and for his refusal to pay taxes. His only chance to avoid jail was to do what he did - become chancellor and suspend civil rights and the justice system. His campaign was based largely on vengeance - against the Treaty of Versailles, against the Communists, against Hindenberg and his other perceived enemies. Even his own people became enemies once they crossed him, or told him that maybe perhaps he was being a little racist. "Once I'm in power, heads will roll," he told several of his supporters. And roll they did. Hitler could not get any support with just the Nationalist party behind him, so he allied with the Socialists (and specifically with socialist leader Gregor Strasser) to get a larger percentage of the electorate. Even with that, the best he ever did was 37% of the vote. He publicly supported the Socialists but privately detested them. Strasser was a big socialist - an anti-capitalist polemic of his caused Hitler to repudiate him at the 1926 Bamberg Conference. He was briefly elected to the vice-chancellor position while Hitler was rising to power, but retired when he could no longer stomach the changing Nazi goals. Then, in 1934, Hitler had Strasser arrested and executed for being a socialist. He could not do this alone, of course. Maintaining his bizarre claims of sex slavery and victimhood required a media apparatus. And that came in the form of Alfred Hugenberg, a media mogul who had his sights on world domination as well. At first Hugenberg and Hitler couldn't stand each other, but once Hugenberg realized that Hitler was rising in power, he allied himself with him. At that point Hugenberg owned the Scherl publishing house, the news agency Telegraphen-Union, several newspapers and the Universum-Film-AG (Ufa), a major film producer. This let him churn out not only news about the evil Polish immigrants and the child sex slavery thing, but also publish glowing articles about "Hitler at home" "Hitler with children" and most importantly "Hitler as a victim of the evil Europeans." This went a long way towards steering public perception about Hitler. Hitler took every opportunity to "gum up the works" of government when he could through his position as one of the leaders of the Nazi party. The worst provisions of the Versailles Treaty were due to end in two years, and there was a movement to delay the passage of new laws until that time, so that they would be passed in a less reactionary environment. Hitler did everything he could to push as many new laws through as possible, often with conflicting goals that he could then use them to show how dysfunctional government was. The Nazi party, according to Ryback, thrived on political chaos and economic despair, and worked hard to provide that environment. The president at the time - Otto Hindenberg - was elderly, and Hitler's media apparatus spent quite a bit of time attacking him for being senile, doddering, and sleepy. Hitler could not attack him directly since he still needed his support. A month after he was appointed Chancellor, there was a fire at the Reichstag, the seat of government for Germany at the time. When police arrived, they found Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch council communist, leaving the building. The fire chief, however, saw Nazis fleeing the fire, and found evidence that they had in fact started the fire. The fire chief was then arrested and assassinated by the Gestapo. Hitler used this "attack by the Communists" to issue the Fire Decree which suspended civil liberties in Germany and allowed Hitler to start eliminating his political opposition. And of course there are the growing similarities in their speeches. Trump speaks of "poisoning the blood" of America with immigrants; Hitler spoke of "The rats that poison our body-politic gnaw from the hearts and memories of the broad masses" and that "this poison was allowed to enter the national bloodstream and infect public life without the Government taking any effectual measures to master the course of the disease." Trump talks about how "we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country" - and Hitler said he "the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin." Trump: "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within." Hitler: "Never in our history have we been conquered by the strength of our outside enemies but only through our own failings and the enemy in our own camp." Finally, in a speech in 1940, Hitler said that the various German political factions could be "blended into one strong new idea to carry new strength which would make Germany great again." It's not funny any more.
  17. billvon
    I can't believe Al Capone didn't use that one! "You can't jail me, Your Honor. I have to keep running this crime syndicate just to afford my legal bills!"
  18. Ben K
    How much in us dolars
  19. wolfriverjoe
    Eastman has also argued that his law license shouldn't be revoked for the crimes he's accused of because he needs it to make money to pay for... His criminal defense. https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/ex-trump-lawyer-eastman-asks-pause-disbarment-ruling-2024-04-04/
  20. JoeWeber
    We sure know how to party, that's a fact. You should consider emigrating.
  21. nigel99
    Interesting listening to the Supreme Court discussion, and the Supreme Court questions the layers of protection offered against corrupt prosecutors and also stating how ‘grand juries’ are easily swayed by prosecutors and therefore a president warrants special treatment. Obviously this is part of oral arguments and challenging as a hypothetical, but if true sucks to be Joe Public and subject to the legal system.
  22. kleggo
    old but interesting thread. I believe the thunderbow story. I've seen / done multiple instances of in-flight- sorting -shit -out -that -would- have- otherwise- caused -a -cutaway" while doing CReW.
  23. randy233
    I really like your YouTube channel and learned a lot of things I didn't know before. Keep it up.
  24. Phil1111
    Judge obviously mistaken because he failed to weigh trump in that decision.
  25. Al Fitz
    I was there the day Philips went in at Casa Grand. It was the first time I ever saw a jumper bounce. He landed right in the middle of the highway (2 lanes) and had pulled his reserve a few seconds too late. His reserve was black and it covered him up when it settled down. There was an elderly women who was driving a 1949 light green Dodge sedan and Philips landed right in front of the women and she slammed on her brakes when Philips hit the ground. When the ambulance got there they took the women who had a heart attack. The other memorable event on the same day or maybe the day before was the Loadstar stalled on a jump run and became inverted. I was jumping base and was the first one out. When I got stable, the Loadstar was maybe 1000 feet below me. Not every every one on the flight got out before the pilot got control of the plane. It was a crazy few days at Casa Grande, and BTW the drop zone gave everyone on that jump a free jump. We flew in from Pope Valley CA in a beech 18 and when we were over Palm Springs, we lost an engine and had to make an emergency landing there. p
  26. skydiverek
    REPACK.bmp See attached photo. .
  27. wmw999
    I got the same error testing, so it's not a personal problem. Meso? Wendy P.
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