The Goat Pen

Every government would have a pet project for propaganda so they could put up the poster that tells their little socialist minions how great it is to live here, but otherwise is just achieving some minimal expectation.

Thanks to you, I know now that in Nicaragua, their version is "Nicaragua, our healthcare is so amazing, nobody usually dies of Dengue fever!"

aTm wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:48 pm "Capitalism is legalized theft"

Yikes. Capitalism is not perfect, and we already hedge it in with a lot of socialist regulations. Our economy is not purely socialist or capitalist. The idea that there is some fixed "GDP" and if Bezos makes more, then everybody else makes less is simpleton understanding of economics. There is a bit of a balancing act, sure, capitalism can lead to an oligarchy of the rich, but pure socialism leads to stagnation and decline. Just like your fanciful "Nicaragua is great" healthcare article you posted. Yes it is admirable how the socialist government can make sure high and low all can receive their treatment for dengue fever equally. However, it completely glossed over the fact that the picture painted of a "hospital" in that article is about as foreign to an American as can be despite the how much she lipstick she slathered all over that pig. 40 beds in a dengue fever ward with mosquito nets is not a "Hospital". You know what they dont have in an American hospital in a malarial environment in say Louisiana or Florida? A building where they need mosquito nets. You know what happens if you get cancer in Nicaragua and even catch it early at your free hospital? You're rich enough to go get it treated in Houston or you're poor and you die.

You took most of what I said out of context. When has pure socialism ever happened by the way?

The purpose of that article wasn't "Nicaragua is great". It's a third world country that the article even admitted has no middle class. But they've somehow managed to still outdo us with their healthcare system that isn't subject to big insurance corporations looking to squeeze as much profit out of the deal as possible.

By the way, do you think Nicaragua and other South and Central American countries are still third world because of anything to do with US foreign policy? The Monroe and Clinton Doctrines are an odd paradox for sure. Maybe empires can only become such by oppressing everyone, at home and abroad?

China and India’s economies have been growing the fastest. They must be stealing all the central american dream!

I suspect geography does have a lot to do with central american troubles, although very little to do with the US.

Even among all those central american countries though, Nicaragua is the absolute worst one. Because its the most corrupt one with the least economic and political freedom. Im sure if you ask Ortega or his wife or whatever other motherfuckers are in charge there, they will gladly tell you all about how it’s the United States that fucks their people over…certainly not them…no siree.

It's been awhile in here since anybody was taken behind the woodshed and had the shit whipped out of them like aTm has been doing to Tree here. I love it...

I just got back from Costa Rica. Even they think Nicaragua sucks...

hedge wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:26 pm "Yes of COURSE Governor Whitmer has been silent on this whole thing: she is embarrassed. She is embarrassed and ashamed that her side "lost" because their entire case was predicated on charging and prosecuting men who were LARP-ing. And instead of taking plea deals they were like, no, fuck you, lets go to court. And the defense won and the FBI and Gov Whitmer are embarrassed."

How embarrassed are you about these two clowns getting convicted for the Witmer kidnapping plot?

2 men convicted in plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Whitmer

https://apnews.com/article/elections-pr ... 9d6c4cb8d5

Yeah, these guys look like real winners. Your people....

not my people. but YES they ARE clowns. both convictions are likely to be overturned on appeal.

Tree wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 6:18 pm

innocentbystander wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:55 pm

Tree wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 4:41 pm So let's review. It's bad to have safety nets where a few bucks a day go to keeping people fed and sheltered because they get dependent on them. But it's okay to let a few hundred people take insanely large pieces of the pie while half the country lives paycheck to paycheck, then have these elites spend billions on shaping the political system even more so to their favor. God bless Capitalism.

there is no pie. Bezos is worth $100 billion or whatever, not one penny was taken from ANYONE ELSE

if there was a pie, then capitalism just makes the pie "bigger"

Problem with capitalism (at the moment) is the high IQ people get all the real money created for them. Fuck everyone else. IQ is where it is at. That is the information age.

Got some bad news for you IB. Bezos takes from others. He and folks like him drive down employee wages, strip benefit and retirement packages, wage war on unions, and even use their wealth to change laws so they can take a bigger piece of the pie and force folks in the middle to take smaller pieces. It's nothing but legalized theft. Consider the pie to be the GDP or total profits or whatever. We let a few folks take slices that are way too big and establishment propaganda programs us to think it's all just hunky dory.

The problem with Capitalism is that it creates a few winners and a whole lot of losers, just like monarchies of the past and dictatorships of the present. It has opened up the gateway of social mobility for sure, a step in the right direction, but the wealth distributions are heinous.

there is no "wealth distribution." There is no "pie" (not even hair pie anymore, all women shave their bush.) There is high IQ people who create millions/billions out of thin air, and there is everyone else not born with a high enough IQ to create a tech company out of thin air who works for those who DO. Bezos has $100 billion because he founded a tech company. Zuckerberg has $100 billion because he founded a tech company. Same thing with Oracle, Google, Apple, Microsoft, all of them, hundred-billionairs who could write code and found companies. And exactly how "smart" is "smart" in this day and age? Facebook CEO and founder Zuckerberg has a 140+ IQ and scored a perfect 1600 on his SAT before he dropped out of Harvard. The number one university in the entire fucking world, and that did nothing for him, not one bloody thing OTHER than introducing him to the Winklevoss twins. he then proceeded to steal their idea for facebook and made $100 billion out of thin air

Winklevoss twins (two smart kids, just not smart enough "to code") sued Zuckerberg and got like $100 million or whatever. it was pennies compared to what Zuck made

Zuck "stole" an idea from two twins who aren't smart enough to write code, just smart enough to pull straight As at Harvard. THEY are the ones who got paid from "the pie", not authentic 3rd world, workers. Zuck stole nothing from them, nothing

IQ is where it is at for capitalism in the Information Age. The Information Age began the day the Atomic Age ended, 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union. Since 1991, the people born "lucky" (with all the smarts, smart to "write code") they get the millions and the billions. everyone else, works for them. that is capitalism today. fuck whatever it is you think Nicaragua has

They should make a movie about how Facebook was built. Bet it would stun people.

Wall Street Journal Legal Opinion........

Was the Federal Bureau of Investigation justified in searching Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago? The judge who issued the warrant for Mar-a-Lago has signaled that he is likely to release a redacted version of the affidavit supporting it. But the warrant itself suggests the answer is likely no—the FBI had no legally valid cause for the raid.

The warrant authorized the FBI to seize “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§793, 2071, or 1519” (emphasis added). These three criminal statutes all address the possession and handling of materials that contain national-security information, public records or material relevant to an investigation or other matters properly before a federal agency or the courts.

The materials to be seized included “any government and/or Presidential Records created between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021”—i.e., during Mr. Trump’s term of office. Virtually all the materials at Mar-a-Lago are likely to fall within this category. Federal law gives Mr. Trump a right of access to them. His possession of them is entirely consistent with that right, and therefore lawful, regardless of the statutes the FBI cites in its warrant.

Those statutes are general in their text and application. But Mr. Trump’s documents are covered by a specific statute, the Presidential Records Act of 1978. It has long been the Supreme Court position, as stated in Morton v. Mancari (1974), that “where there is no clear intention otherwise, a specific statute will not be controlled or nullified by a general one, regardless of the priority of enactment.” The former president’s rights under the PRA trump any application of the laws the FBI warrant cites.

The PRA dramatically changed the rules regarding ownership and treatment of presidential documents. Presidents from George Washington through Jimmy Carter treated their White House papers as their personal property, and neither Congress nor the courts disputed that. In Nixon v. U.S. (1992), the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that Richard Nixon had a right to compensation for his presidential papers, which the government had retained under the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 (which applied only to him). “Custom and usage evidences the kind of mutually explicit understandings that are encompassed within the constitutional notion of ‘property’ protected by the Fifth Amendment,” the judges declared.

The PRA became effective in 1981, at the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It established a unique statutory scheme, balancing the needs of the government, former presidents and history. The law declares presidential records to be public property and provides that “the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.”

The PRA lays out detailed requirements for how the archivist is to administer the records, handle privilege claims, make the records public, and impose restrictions on access. Notably, it doesn’t address the process by which a former president’s records are physically to be turned over to the archivist, or set any deadline, leaving this matter to be negotiated between the archivist and the former president.

The PRA explicitly guarantees a former president continuing access to his papers. Those papers must ultimately be made public, but in the meantime—unlike with all other government documents, which are available 24/7 to currently serving executive-branch officials—the PRA establishes restrictions on access to a former president’s records, including a five-year restriction on access applicable to everyone (including the sitting president, absent a showing of need), which can be extended until the records have been properly reviewed and processed. Before leaving office, a president can restrict access to certain materials for up to 12 years.

The only exceptions are for National Archives personnel working on the materials, judicial process, the incumbent president and Congress (in cases of established need) and the former president himself. PRA section 2205(3) specifically commands that “the Presidential records of a former President shall be available to such former President or the former President’s designated representative,” regardless of any of these restrictions.

Nothing in the PRA suggests that the former president’s physical custody of his records can be considered unlawful under the statutes on which the Mar-a-Lago warrant is based.

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I guess at some point Biden is going to have to state on record he needed those documents

"Federal law gives Mr. Trump a right of access to them. His possession of them is entirely consistent with that right"

That's horseshit. He can access them in DC or wherever else has been designated for those types of records to be kept. They belong to the US government, not to Trump. Just b/c he legally can "have access" to them doesn't mean he is allowed to possess them at his beach club...

it may be , I'm not going to claim I'm a scholar of the PRA, and the WSJ has been known for whatever reason to be a Trump apologist, but the FBI better have their ducks in a row

" The law declares presidential records to be public property and provides that “the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.”"

I don't have any problem whatsoever with Trump keeping his crossword puzzles and whatnot, but not top secret classified material. I can't believe that anybody would be OK with that...

I don't understand his motivation for keeping them (if true), but if the law says he has a right to access them and it does not clearly define what access is, then I doubt any statute the FBI throws up as justification is going to override it.

The Jig Is Up. He better call Saul because I'm not sure there are any attorneys left.

"I don't understand his motivation for keeping them"

Well, the Saudi's gave Jared $2 billion to "manage" for them (even in the face of objections from experts in the Saudi finance ministry b/c they rightly didn't think he had the experience to handle it, but the crown prince said "just let me worry about that"), and Manifort got $1 billion...

"He better call Saul because I'm not sure there are any attorneys left."

He filed some motion the other day and claimed he was going to act as his own attorney. That should be fun...