The Long March to 11/24

Bagginski said:

Looks like we’ve squeezed out of the 2022 frame by the continued press of events, so here’s a spot to focus fresh.

Opinion | Jack Smith is up against both Trump and time. And he may have just made a big mistake. — MSNBC

How Smith may be hurting his chances of holding Trump accountable before voters head to the polls next November.

apple.news

I don’t agree with the article’s perspective (I don’t argue with it factually) because it hinges on the notion that Jack Smith choosing to investigate Trump’s fundraising will bog things down & run out the clock, allowing Turdflinger to escape consequences.

That’s the reason I disagree, and we got the word from Fani Willis yesterday, and the word is RICO.

Smith’s roll in that direction says to me that he’s doing a RICO investigation of his own.

I don’t know tons of details about the RICO statues, but I do believe that a RICO investigation proceeds under substantially different rules than normal, due to the nature & difficulty of such complex, in-depth undertakings. I believe one of the differences has to do with statutes of limitation, specifically when the clock runs out.

I know Jack’s not going to make me happy w/ a confirmatory statement, and I don’t care: I pick up trails, follow signs, see what patterns emerge. RICO or not, this could/should turn out to be the most significant public process since the Revolution…but…remember, back in the ‘90s, when HRC spoke about a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” I laughed. I couldn’t see it yet; but a truly thorough investigation of RPUSA, its support & funding networks, its fellow-traveling feeder organizations, its collusion with tax-exempt evangelical christian churches, patrons, & media, stands an excellent chance of ripping a great deal of that vast right-wing conspiracy out by the ears.

Watching the investigations & trial play out as a backdrop to the usual suspects pushing the usual bullshit to ever-more extreme lows as the elections approach ought to sell a cubic mile o’ popcorn

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Bagginski said:

Looks like we’ve squeezed out of the 2022 frame by the continued press of events, so here’s a spot to focus fresh.

Opinion | Jack Smith is up against both Trump and time. And he may have just made a big mistake. — MSNBC

How Smith may be hurting his chances of holding Trump accountable before voters head to the polls next November.

apple.news

I don’t agree with the article’s perspective (I don’t argue with it factually) because it hinges on the notion that Jack Smith choosing to investigate Trump’s fundraising will bog things down & run out the clock, allowing Turdflinger to escape consequences.

That’s the reason I disagree, and we got the word from Fani Willis yesterday, and the word is RICO.

Smith’s roll in that direction says to me that he’s doing a RICO investigation of his own.

I don’t know tons of details about the RICO statues, but I do believe that a RICO investigation proceeds under substantially different rules than normal, due to the nature & difficulty of such complex, in-depth undertakings. I believe one of the differences has to do with statutes of limitation, specifically when the clock runs out.

I know Jack’s not going to make me happy w/ a confirmatory statement, and I don’t care: I pick up trails, follow signs, see what patterns emerge. RICO or not, this could/should turn out to be the most significant public process since the Revolution…but…remember, back in the ‘90s, when HRC spoke about a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” I laughed. I couldn’t see it yet; but a truly thorough investigation of RPUSA, its support & funding networks, its fellow-traveling feeder organizations, its collusion with tax-exempt evangelical christian churches, patrons, & media, stands an excellent chance of ripping a great deal of that vast right-wing conspiracy out by the ears.

Watching the investigations & trial play out as a backdrop to the usual suspects pushing the usual bullshit to ever-more extreme lows as the elections approach ought to sell a cubic mile o’ popcorn

Click to expand...

Bagginski said:

Looks like we’ve squeezed out of the 2022 frame by the continued press of events, so here’s a spot to focus fresh.

Opinion | Jack Smith is up against both Trump and time. And he may have just made a big mistake. — MSNBC

How Smith may be hurting his chances of holding Trump accountable before voters head to the polls next November.

apple.news

I don’t agree with the article’s perspective (I don’t argue with it factually) because it hinges on the notion that Jack Smith choosing to investigate Trump’s fundraising will bog things down & run out the clock, allowing Turdflinger to escape consequences.

That’s the reason I disagree, and we got the word from Fani Willis yesterday, and the word is RICO.

Smith’s roll in that direction says to me that he’s doing a RICO investigation of his own.

I don’t know tons of details about the RICO statues, but I do believe that a RICO investigation proceeds under substantially different rules than normal, due to the nature & difficulty of such complex, in-depth undertakings. I believe one of the differences has to do with statutes of limitation, specifically when the clock runs out.

I know Jack’s not going to make me happy w/ a confirmatory statement, and I don’t care: I pick up trails, follow signs, see what patterns emerge. RICO or not, this could/should turn out to be the most significant public process since the Revolution…but…remember, back in the ‘90s, when HRC spoke about a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” I laughed. I couldn’t see it yet; but a truly thorough investigation of RPUSA, its support & funding networks, its fellow-traveling feeder organizations, its collusion with tax-exempt evangelical christian churches, patrons, & media, stands an excellent chance of ripping a great deal of that vast right-wing conspiracy out by the ears.

Watching the investigations & trial play out as a backdrop to the usual suspects pushing the usual bullshit to ever-more extreme lows as the elections approach ought to sell a cubic mile o’ popcorn

Click to expand...

Roger A. Shrubber said:

I was really hoping they would at the very least drop some major indictments in maybe june of 24...give people time to reflect, get used to the fact that a lot of these people are going to be going away, whether they vote for them or not.
But when the indictments drop isn't really that important, as long as it's in the next couple of years....It's not like we have to worry about trump winning, he doesn't have anything like enough support for me to even take him seriously, and this isn't the same kind of dismissal as i felt in 2016, this is the dismissal caused by his major donors abandoning him, most of the republican party hating his guts, and most of America feeling the same way.
He doesn't have a joyful ally in fox news anymore, although they will still cover his antics, they'll probably be a lot less friendly to him, and 787 million worth of careful not to be caught spreading his horseshit...

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Biden's approval rating hits new low

The poll shows a dip in the president's approval, two weeks after he announced his reelection bid.

www.politico.com

The federal RICO statute does not contain a statute of limitations provision. The only time limitation of any sort referenced in the federal RICO statute is in §1961(5), which states that to constitute a “pattern of racketeering activity,” two predicate acts must occur within 10 years.7

Interpreting the federal statute, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals applied the state limitations period most similar to the predicate offenses alleged,8 while the Seventh and Ninth circuits chose uniform statutes of limitations based on a comparable state statute of limitations.9 This ambiguity culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, et al., 483 U.S. 143 (1987), which noted that “[f]ederal courts have not adopted a consistent approach to the problem of selecting the most appropriate statute of limitations for civil RICO claims.” In an effort, however, to “avoid intolerable uncertainty and time-consuming litigation,” the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the statute most analogous to RICO, The Clayton Act, contains a four-year limitations period and that this same limitations period ought to be applied to RICO actions.10 More recently, the Supreme Court determined that the statute of limitations on a federal RICO claim begins to run “four years from the date the plaintiff knew it was injured.”11

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

I was really hoping they would at the very least drop some major indictments in maybe june of 24...give people time to reflect, get used to the fact that a lot of these people are going to be going away, whether they vote for them or not.
But when the indictments drop isn't really that important, as long as it's in the next couple of years....It's not like we have to worry about trump winning, he doesn't have anything like enough support for me to even take him seriously, and this isn't the same kind of dismissal as i felt in 2016, this is the dismissal caused by his major donors abandoning him, most of the republican party hating his guts, and most of America feeling the same way.
He doesn't have a joyful ally in fox news anymore, although they will still cover his antics, they'll probably be a lot less friendly to him, and 787 million worth of careful not to be caught spreading his horseshit...

Click to expand...

Bagginski said:

According to the Florida Bar’s website:



Clearly I’ve not dug into this particular can before

No idea how this applies, exactly, as a civil RICO action is specified, and I believe the matters in hand for Smith are clearly criminal. So, I might be misreading this, and I may be leaning too hard on memories of lengthy mob investigations, but if two predicate acts within ten years are the bar, it may be that it operates outside of statutory time limitations. Inherent in the idea of targeting racketeering, influence, & corrupt organizations (‘operating under color of law’, perhaps), is that you’re not investigating these individual crimes qua crimes, you’re investigating an ongoing SOURCE of crime, influence, corruption & associated criminal activity using those individual crimes as clues. RICO is about the big picture: it’s about locating, isolating, and killing the cancer.

This in no way means that Smith is abandoning specific indictments for specific crimes. RICO as I understand it is a different kind of investigation, it’s fed by the very investigative & prosecutorial process involved in naming a defendant & taking them to trial: in fact, it may be that the current situation may be unique - it’s all blossoming as one, simultaneously. The triggering events have not gone to trial & been adjudicated, even as the need for RICO is still showing itself. No precedent I know of for an ongoing series of criminal events triggering a RICO-style/scale inquiry in real-time.

Guessing the individual crimes & indictments are being reserved so it can all be served at once (or am I imagining a shock’n’awe element in the build-up so far - or is it the momentum of history?), and RICO probes ongoing, following the evidence to the end.

In some ways, this is the MAGA/DeSantis’ worst nightmare: all the stuff they’ve been trying to hide, the original taint of slavery, the generations of lies, the farming & fleecing of the public,the long-haul effort to capture the nation away from its citizens all the things they don’t want taught, or done, or talked about - it’s all going to be out by the end of the trip, their ‘auto da fe’ a self-inflicted fait accompli.

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Bagginski said:

the original taint of slavery, the generations of lies, the farming & fleecing of the public,the long-haul effort to capture the nation away from its citizens all the things they don’t want taught, or done, or talked about - it’s all going to be out by the end of the trip, their ‘auto da fe’ a self-inflicted fait accompli.

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Bagginski said:

auto da fe

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An auto-da-fé (/ˌɔːtoʊdəˈfeɪ, ˌaʊt-/ AW-toh-də-FAY, OW-; from Portuguese auto da fé [ˈawtu ðɐ ˈfɛ], meaning 'act of faith'; Spanish: auto de fe [ˈawto ðe ˈfe]) was the ritual of public penance (torture) carried out between the 15th and 19th centuries of condemned heretics and apostates imposed by the Spanish, Portuguese, or Mexican Inquisition as punishment and enforced by civil authorities. Its most extreme form was death by burning.

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cannabineer said:

I also imagine indictments happening in ripple-fire. It is less likely that way that putative co-targets can destroy evidence or get their stories straight. Perhaps also they won’t be able to move assets into shelter.

On an unrelated note, I always thought Auto Da Fe would be a great name for a repair garage in New Mexico.

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cannabineer said:

I also imagine indictments happening in ripple-fire. It is less likely that way that putative co-targets can destroy evidence or get their stories straight. Perhaps also they won’t be able to move assets into shelter.

On an unrelated note, I always thought Auto Da Fe would be a great name for a repair garage in New Mexico.

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Bagginski said:

But for the historical associations….

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

Whenever i hear that, i see the scene with the dancing spanish inquisition torturers from history of the world part 1 "I just got back from the auto de fe." "what's an auto da fe? " "It's what you oughtn't to do, but you do anyway."
...Even geeks look at me like "WTF Geek? "....

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cannabineer said:

I think my favorite Brooks scene is the natives in Blazing Saddles speaking Yiddish.

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doughper said:

I guess i'm into defining phrases, lately.

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Fogdog said:

Here we go. A few years ago, Texas made it much harder to vote by mail. They already restricted mail-in ballots to those 65 and older, voters who will be out of state during the election or people with disabilities. Not satisfied with that, they added layers of documentation to be provided to solve the problem of voter fraud that doesn't exist.

Now this:

Texas Senate Approves Bill To Allow Gov. Greg Abbott To Overturn Elections

The GOP-controlled body's unprecedented move focuses on Houston's Harris County.

news.yahoo.com

Texas Senate Approves Bill To Allow Gov. Greg Abbott To Overturn Elections

The GOP-controlled Texas Senate on Tuesday passed a proposal allowing the state to overturn elections in Harris County, home to the state’s most populous city Houston.

The legislation penalizes county officials for running out of ballot paper at some voting sites in the 2022 election, the Houston Chronicle reported. Still, more importantly, it gives Republican Gov. Greg Abbott “precedent-setting” power to undo election results.

The measure would give Abbott’s appointed secretary of state the authority to hold a new election in the county if it runs out of paper at 2% or more of its polling sites for more than an hour, the newspaper noted.


Harris county did have a problem with election sites running out of paper ballots. There was a SNAFU, it seems, that somebody underestimated need at hundreds of sites and didn't have the ability to meet large number of requests for more ballots. Some reports say the problem was not as severe as people say. Also, because Republicans got hammered in Harris elections, they are blaming the SNAFU of ballot shortages instead of the fact that Harris County doesn't like Republicans very much. Excuses are for losers, so they say.

GOP leaders say Harris County's ballot shortage was targeted at Republicans. Here's what the data says.

Harris County's ballot shortage may result in changes to Texas elections based on unproven claims of criminal wrongdoing, a Chronicle investigation shows.

www.houstonchronicle.com

So now this. Instead of working with the county to ensure they can handle larger than expected voter turnout, they gave Abbot the power to declare an election invalid and force a re-running of the election.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/elections/2023/04/24/449769/harris-county-republican-election-judges-ballot-paper-shortage-intentional-claim-no-evidence-backing-up-surfaced/

Ballot shortages in Harris County didn’t undermine Republicans, data shows

With new bills being debated at the Capitol based on these claims, what does the future of elections in the county and statewide hold?

www.texasstandard.org

It all sounds like some people would rather get angry than talk about how to solve a problem. Texas doesn't have a problem they can't fix, they just seem unwilling to do what is proven to work elsewhere. Oregon is entirely vote by mail. Everybody who is registered to vote gets a ballot through the mail early enough to do something about it if one doesn't arrive for some reason. Election day goes pretty smoothly here.

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Why a ‘spider crab’ is crawling to the top of a US ‘I voted’ sticker contest | The fight to vote

Voters in Ulster county, New York, may receive a sticker of Hudson Rowan’s design this November – and many say it’s ‘a fitting image’ of the political scene

www.google.com