mspart

You sound like the kid saying I know you are but what am I? Really really good there. mspart

Animals is a great Album. Songs are too long for radio play mostly but fantastic stuff. mspart

Nice backtrack. You got caught and like a 10 year old try to continue to say you were right. mspart

Think what you want UB. You received your answer. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge it is not a concern of mine at all. You didn't answer my Yes or No question. You answered it yes and no. What a stupid thing to do. You can't answer that that way and have it be valid. But I gave you a hint and the results of your answer so you went with both so you tried to have it all ways. Doesn't cut it. mspart

You being willing to bet is not what your argument is. You are saying here that his local PD has these things. But then you said you don't know but would be willing to bet. And you have no idea where he lives. Too funny. mspart

mspart

You don't know what his department has, but try to tell him he doesn't know what he's talking about when he has talked to these people who are his friends. You are trying to suggest that police departments have things, but you don't know for sure. So why put that out there? Stupid really. Of course you don't have that information. So why put such statements out there when you don't even know? Stupid really. You can bet all you want, doesn't make it true. You have admitted you don't know. You should stand by that. mspart

Sometimes it seems to me, as if I'm just being used. mspart

So now UB is telling Bigbrog what his local police department has without a single shread of intelligence or evidence. UB is telling Bigbrog he has not had the conversations he has had and that he doesn't know what he is talking about. UB doesn't even know Bigbrog or where he lives. In the words of Pigs (three different ones) from Pink Floyd's Animals, UB you're nearly a laugh, your nearly a laugh but you're really a cry. mspart

mspart

Again UB, Since you brought this up, you should easily be able to find the justification for spending that kind of money on that tank. Please share. mspart

Answer the question. mspart

UB, Since you bring this up, you should easily be able to find the justification for spending that kind of money on that tank. Please share. mspart

The legislature passed the $20/hour bill and Newsome signed it. No one held a gun to either and made them do it. Both are culpable. Clear and simple. And the effect is to reduce jobs for those very restaurant workers they were looking to help out. Not much help there fella. In WA, the legislature passed a law stopping new construction natural gas hookups. Also the bill allowed the local King County utility to start charging more in fees so they can get more electrification going. And then, the bill also allows the utility (again King County specific) to shut off natural gas service to customers in any way they feel they want to. The legislature was luke warm to this. It turns out the governor told the legislature that if they didn't pass this he would veto the rest of their bills. So they dutifully passed this. So both are culpable, the governor more than the legislature but the legislature could have called the bluff. They did not. There is now a campaign to sign a petition to repeal this law by Initiative. They need a lot of signatures and need to get them by July and the campaign started 3-4 weeks ago. Very fast. But polls show 75% of WA residents do not like this law. Hopefully this gets enough sigs and gets on the ballot in November. I have 2 petitions and have almost filled those out just in my neighborhood. The un-justness of this law is in the details. It only allows the one utility to do this. Not all utilities in the state. No doubt that will come later. Also it allows that utility to charge us all for their electrification upgrades which are unnecessary if this law was not passed. So we pay there. Then if our service gets cut off, folks like me will have to get a new furnace, water heater, and stovetop, and others have other natural gas appliances. Emergency generators run on natural gas or propane (propane is also part of the law) so those people will be screwed. And then, for people in my situation will not only have to buy new appliances (+$10k) but the house electric service will have to be upgraded to be able to run those appliances (+10k's). This is a raw deal. I have spoken with a number of folks that are happy to sign the petition. mspart

I agree with a). I agree with b) except I think we do know details about the trial. Intricate details no. I do agree we didn't sit on the grand or other jury and were not in the courtroom. But I think enough details have come out that show that this was a sham from the beginning as I have said and provided evidence of. I agree with C. I can take a hard stance because of the willingness of Bragg to take this case after he and his predecessor said they wouldn't because it was a joke. But because he ran on getting Trump, he was beholden to his supporters and had to do it because of the pressure he was getting. It was not that it was the right thing to do, but the convenient thing to do. As noted, DOJ and FEC both investigated and found nothing there to prosecute. That is without doubt. Also without doubt is that Merchan should not have been assigned to this case due to his conflict of interest and apparent lack of random assignment when he was the judge in 3 previous cases regarding Trump associates. Also without doubt is the structure of the indictment being circular and not specific. The indictment in part reads as follows: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Donald-J.-Trump-Indictment.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwib6fKvsseGAxUCHjQIHUK4CbkQFnoECCsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2IyXX-b_83qjuFwwmZld8S THIRTY-FIRST COUNT: AND THE GRAND JURY AFORESAID, by this indictment, further accuses the defendant of the crime of FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS IN THE FIRST DEGREE, in violation of Penal Law §175.10, committed as follows: The defendant, in the County of New York and elsewhere, on or about November 21, 2017, with intent to defraud and intent to commit another crime and aid and conceal the commission thereof, made and caused a false entry in the business records of an enterprise, to wit, a Donald J. Trump account check and check stub dated November 21, 2017, bearing check number 002980, and kept and maintained by the Trump Organization. In the underlined, the red is a misdemeanor that ran out of the statute of limitations 6 years earlier. The blue, is as specific as it gets to link to some other crime that was needed to make this situation felonious. What other crime? The indictment does not identify the "another crime". What charge have you ever seen or contemplated as being proper says the defendant did this specific thing in furtherance of some other unspecific thing? This is how the 32 counts against Trump read. There is nothing specific about "another crime". And the reporting from the case did not show any evidence of any specific "another crime" that Trump may have done. I'm not buying it. And the jury did not have to agree on what specifically Trump did, they only had to find that he probably did something, although unspecific, because the indictment was not specific. Those things do not a criminal trial make in my mind. That's just me. If trying someone with an indictment that reads, "this man/woman robbed Hay's Sporting Goods taking $1347.00 out of the cashier's tills and later with intent to rob other stores stole a car. " The first is a solid indictment, but the addition of the second ruins it. The third statement on its own is sufficient but you cannot tie stealing a car with intent to rob other stores. There was nothing solid in the indictment that Trump did and therefore, the case should never have moved forward. I'm no lawyer, but I cannot believe the judicial system would allow such a thing to happen. But it did and it is not a good look for NY. mspart

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/24/alvin-bragg-has-his-trump-trial-all-he-needs-now-is-a-crime/ For many of us in the legal community, the case of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against former president Donald Trump borders on the legally obscene: an openly political prosecution based on a theory that even some liberal pundits have dismissed. Yet, this week the prosecution seemed like they were actually making a case for obscenity. No, it was not the gratuitous introduction of an uncharged alleged tryst with a former Playboy bunny or planned details on the relationship with a former porn star. It was the criminal theory itself that seemed crafted around the standard for obscenity famously described by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964): “I shall not today attempt further to define [it] … But I know it when I see it.” After months of confusion of what crime they were alleging in the indictment, the prosecution offered a new theory that is so ambiguous and undefined that it would have made Justice Stewart blush. New York prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that one of the crimes that Trump allegedly committed in listing the payments to Stormy Daniels as a “legal expense” was New York Law 17-152. This law states “Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” So they are arguing that Trump committed a crime by conspiring to unlawfully promote his own candidacy. He did this by paying to quash a potentially embarrassing story and then reimbursing his lawyer with other legal expenses. Confused? You are not alone. It is not a crime to pay money for the nondisclosure of an alleged affair. Moreover, it is also not a federal election offense (which is the other crime alleged by Bragg) to pay such money as a personal or legal expense. It is not treated under federal law as a political contribution to yourself. Yet, somehow the characterization of this payment as a legal expense is being treated as an illegal conspiracy to promote one’s own candidacy in New York. ... As with James, Bragg saw it in Trump. His predecessor did not see it. He declined charging on this basis. Bragg did to. He stopped the investigation. However, after a pressure campaign, Bragg might not be able to see the crime but he certainly saw the political consequences of not charging Trump. It is not clear if Trump even knew how this money was characterized on ledgers or records. He paid the money to his lawyer, who had put together this settlement over the nondisclosure agreement. Cohen will soon go on the stand and tell the jury that they should send his former client to jail for following his legal advice. t is not even clear how this matter was supposed to be noted in records. What if the Trump employee put “legal settlement in personal matter” or “nuisance payment”? Would those words be the difference Again, it is not clear. But that does not appear to matter in New York. The crime may not be clear or even comprehensible. However, the identity of the defendant could not be more clear and the prosecutors are hoping that the jury, like themselves, will look no further. mspart

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-legal-guru-says-new-york-trump-prosecutors-contorted-law-case-unjustified-mess CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig criticized the New York criminal case against Donald Trump as an "unjustified mess" in a scathing analysis piece, saying prosecutors "contorted the law" to ensnare the former president. ... "Plenty of prosecutors have won plenty of convictions in cases that shouldn’t have been brought in the first place," he continued. "'But they won' is no defense to a strained, convoluted reach unless the goal is to 'win,' now, by any means necessary and worry about the credibility of the case and the fallout later." Honig then laid out "undeniable facts" about NY v. Trump. "The judge donated money — a tiny amount, $35, but in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind — to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for ‘resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy,’" Honig wrote. "Would folks have been just fine with the judge staying on the case if he had donated a couple bucks to ‘Re-elect Donald Trump, MAGA forever!’? Absolutely not." The CNN legal guru then noted that Bragg ran for office by "touting his Trump-hunting prowess" in the deeply blue county. Honig, who noted Bragg and Trump attorney Todd Blanche are both his friends and former colleagues, also said Bragg regularly made false claims about Trump on the campaign trail. "Most importantly, the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process. That’s not on the jury. That’s on the prosecutors who chose to bring the case and the judge who let it play out as it did," Honig wrote. Honig declared the charges against Trump are "obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented." "In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever," Honig wrote. https://cafe.com/elies-note/trump-manhattan-da-trial-bragg/ An essay written by Elie Honig: First: paying hush money is not a crime. In fact, a hush money agreement, though seedy, is legally no different than any other contract between private parties. So the fact that Trump knew about the Daniels payoff – and he clearly did – is merely a starting point here, and insufficient to prove anything criminal. The charged New York state crime here is falsification of business records. The DA alleges that Trump had the hush money payments fraudulently recorded in his internal books as “Legal Expenses” (rather than, I don’t know, “Hush Money to Porn Star”). If proven, that’s merely a misdemeanor – a low-level crime virtually certain to result in a non-prison sentence. For comparison, under the New York code, falsification of business records has the same technical designation as shoplifting less than $1,000 of goods. The proof on the falsification point is mixed. On one hand, Trump plainly knew about the payments, and he signed some of the checks to reimburse his former attorney (turned-star-prosecution-witness) Michael Cohen for the payoffs. But it’s not entirely clear whether Trump was involved in the actual logging of those payments in the internal records of his business – and, remember, that’s the crime. In fact, when Cohen secretly recorded his then-client talking about a hush money payment to another woman in 2016, Trump seems clueless about the accounting mechanism; Cohen explains to Trump that “I’ve spoken with [Trump Organization CFO] Allen Wiesellberg about how to set the whole thing up.” Later, when Trump asks if they’ll pay cash, Cohen responds, “No, no, no, no, no. I got it.” So Trump’s team will argue that the lawyer (Cohen) and accountant (Weisellberg) – not Trump – handled the booking of the payments. Cohen surely will testify that Trump was in on not just the payments, but also the internal bookkeeping around them. mspart

I gave the eggregious issues that should have not let the judge on the case and not allowed to case to move forward. Since the NY Bar says no judge can give political contributions, Merchan was in flagrant violation. Since the NY Bar states that a judge with real or construed conflicts of interest are barred from the case. Merchan by his D donations and daughter with D fundraising job is the definition of a conflict of interest. The indictment was not specific as to the crime, the means of the crime, nor the documents that prove the crime. It was an empty dissertation of why Trump should be convicted but not the specific allegations of why. You can't just prosecute someone because you don't like him and he probably did something bad. You have to allege exactly what he/she did and then prove it. There was no such allegation so therefore no case. It should not have been tried. mspart

That would be good but does not really resolve the issue. There are plenty of candidates that win with less money. Money is an advantage and it should be taken away from Incumbents. But they have name recognition and can raise more money just from that. The answer is term limits but Congress will never go for that and neither will State legislatures. Hence we are where we are. Surprise! It was Congress that initiated term limits for the Pres, but they didn't do that for themselves at that same time. mspart

I can't answer that, they would have to. But I think any honest lawyer would look at the indictment and say this isn't a case. Any outside honest observer would have to say Merchan should not have been the judge. He presided over 3 other Trump affiliated type cases. No way was he randomly picked a 4th time. Any outside honest observer would say Merchan had too many conflict of interests (donations and daughter) to move forward with this trial. All of these show the trial should never have happened (the indictment shows this) the rest shows the judge should not have been there trying to run the farce. mspart

Yes, WA is all vote by mail now. Pros and cons to that. mspart

Well, the incumbent will get his party's vote mostly. And the challenger will get his. And usually the incumbent wins. We need stronger challengers in the primaries that can oust those incumbents. We have Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray. Both should be out by now. But we just voted back in Murray for her 5th or 6th term. She is no good. But no one will challenge her in the D party. And being that WA is mostly D, she gets elected. mspart

The trial should never have happened. I wrote a long dissertation on this and my browser crashed. I will not re type it up. Suffice to say the indictment was not specific as to what Trump did. The DOJ and FEC did not prosecute after investigating. The state charged Trump with federal election law violation. Judge was not randomly picked, nor was he eligible to preside as he contributed to Biden and Democratic causes. Judge was also eligible because of conflict of interest with his daughter who works for the Ds as a fundraiser. The trial, as performed, was a joke. Judge was obviously against the defense and for the prosecution. The prosecution in the closing statement disregarded rules the judge had laid down but the judge did not stop them. The judges instructions to the jury essentially said they did not have all agree on what Trump did, they could find different things Trump did and as long as all of them thought he did something, that was a unanimous decision. Since when is there such glaring vagueness in the indictment, charges, or jury instructions. The case should never have been brought. The case should not have had the judge it did. There should have been no trial held nor verdict read out. This was a sham and a joke of a trial. This did not do NY legal system any favors. Elie Honig and Jonathon Turley are agreed on the above as well as others. mspart

Hochul didn't get the memo apparently. mspart

No, I actually want an answer to my question . Not a no and yes. That is not an answer. All I actually want is for you to answer the question. Is that too difficult? mspart