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Even Mitt Romney is opposed to this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna152420

 

that the president “made an enormous error” by not pressuring New York prosecutors to drop their case against Trump. (Presidents can pardon only in federal cases.)

"He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said, referring to Biden. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump.”

Pressed by Ruhle whether that is Biden’s job to pardon Trump, Romney said he believes that Biden should have taken a cue from former President Lyndon B. Johnson, saying that the president could have stepped in and urged New York prosecutors to drop the case.“I have been around for a while. If LBJ had been president, and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office,’” he said.

This a pretty naive take, even for a fairly naive politician like Romney.

Biden isn't LBJ. No President in the modern party system has institutional power like LBJ had in Washington. And LBJ had it just in Washington! This is a New York State case, after all.

Bragg should be publicly shamed by the Democratic Party . I mean this is a guy who lets far worse crime go on a daily basis . Also you can issue a pardon on these charges and thus remove any incentive to bring the case to begin with

Every time some Atlas conservative claims that people should quit calling old school Republican beep boop anymore because he is supposedly grown into someone who actually can hold his own intellectually, he goes off on one of these tangents where he the same talking points over and over and over and over again ad nauseam without allowing any new information to permeate his skull and then that's as a defense that the prime minister of Luxemburg or some such agrees with his position so there, checkmate libtards.

Never change, beep boop

I fully understand the points you guys are arguing but the fact is we just disagree on the premise.

Even Mitt Romney is opposed to this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna152420

 

that the president “made an enormous error” by not pressuring New York prosecutors to drop their case against Trump. (Presidents can pardon only in federal cases.)

"He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said, referring to Biden. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump.”

Pressed by Ruhle whether that is Biden’s job to pardon Trump, Romney said he believes that Biden should have taken a cue from former President Lyndon B. Johnson, saying that the president could have stepped in and urged New York prosecutors to drop the case.“I have been around for a while. If LBJ had been president, and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office,’” he said.

This a pretty naive take, even for a fairly naive politician like Romney.

Biden isn't LBJ. No President in the modern party system has institutional power like LBJ had in Washington. And LBJ had it just in Washington! This is a New York State case, after all.

Bragg should be publicly shamed by the Democratic Party . I mean this is a guy who lets far worse crime go on a daily basis . Also you can issue a pardon on these charges and thus remove any incentive to bring the case to begin with

The President cannot pardon state crimes. How do some of y’all still not get this?

The governor of New York can

Oh shut up beep boop. That's never ever ever going to happen, nor should it. Just admit that the Smeagol osr who actually had the courage to cast a write-in vote for John Kasich rather than vote for Trump has been thoroughly corrupted by the power of the Discord ring into Gollum osr, and all you are seeking at this point is an excuse, no matter how flimsy and baseless, to vote for Trump this time. Little spine you had broken, so just come out and admit it.

[then you should require them to be allowed an auto appeal to the state Supreme Court or SCOTUS(depending on whether it’s a state or federal charge) and let them decide if they should get immunity for that particular charge]

Even Mitt Romney is opposed to this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna152420

 

that the president “made an enormous error” by not pressuring New York prosecutors to drop their case against Trump. (Presidents can pardon only in federal cases.)

"He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said, referring to Biden. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump.”

Pressed by Ruhle whether that is Biden’s job to pardon Trump, Romney said he believes that Biden should have taken a cue from former President Lyndon B. Johnson, saying that the president could have stepped in and urged New York prosecutors to drop the case.“I have been around for a while. If LBJ had been president, and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office,’” he said.

This a pretty naive take, even for a fairly naive politician like Romney.

Biden isn't LBJ. No President in the modern party system has institutional power like LBJ had in Washington. And LBJ had it just in Washington! This is a New York State case, after all.

Bragg should be publicly shamed by the Democratic Party . I mean this is a guy who lets far worse crime go on a daily basis . Also you can issue a pardon on these charges and thus remove any incentive to bring the case to begin with

The President cannot pardon state crimes. How do some of y’all still not get this?

The governor of New York can

Should the other 34 defendants in Manhattan that have been charged by Bragg's DA office with felony counts for falsifying business records be granted pardons too?

https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1796370294858490027

What Romney is saying is presidents should not  be charged for stuff like this .

At the very least if you are gonna, then you should require them to be allowed an auto appeal to the state Supreme Court or SCOTUS(depending on whether it’s a state or federal charge) and let them decide if they should get immunity for that particular charge

This might be the most unhinged nonsense I have ever read on Atlas.

How is that unhinged

B/c nowhere in the Constitution does it say that former Presidents (who were convicted for crimes they committed while they were NOT President at that) have this extra special privilege of getting a crack at a state SC or SCOTUS extra-super-special hearing so the judges can decide to discard the will of a jury simply b/c they may feel like it. That's why it's f*****g unhinged.

Exactly — parties stand down all the time in Northern Ireland — unlike in Great Britain, there’s no strong cultural norm that the major ones contest every seat. This is certainly not a case of Alliance and SF sitting down and ‘carving up’ the map between themselves.

In fact, Alliance are still running in both of the seats which Sinn Fein hold marginally over unionists: Belfast North (Alliance polled 10% there last time) and Fermanagh and South Tyrone (where they got 5%). Some pact.

Although I suspect Alliance standing benefits SF in both of those seats.

In any case, SF standing down in Belfast South is to the benefit of the SDLP and it's as much against the Alliance as it's against the DUP.

According to the Treasurer this is untrue: https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/treasury-says-iec-was-well-funded-to-run-election-20240530. But even if it was the case - the ANC controls the IEC budget/appropriations, don't they? So it doesn't really undermine the sentiment of the letter. Like, when the Republican party in the US cut funding to the postal service, knowing that Democrats disproportionately voted by mail, everyone rightly saw that as incredibly shady - letters were written, condemnations were made. How is this any different?

Also, just yesterday, Julius Malema cast doubt on the electoral process by suggesting that ballot boxes weren't secured and that they lines were made long intentionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECdnSDKQFRY. So I'm not sure why you're implying that this language is limited to the right wing.

Yeah I saw that, but the way it is worded is that the IEC had said that they didn't need the extra money not that it was refused to them. In itself that seems like an insane decision considering they knew they had the challenges of the third ballot and the new rules about having to vote where you are registered, but it is also just that a poor decision and I don't think you can make out that it was some form of deliberate manipulation as the DA (pre-emptively) argued.

Even with what the ANC did, it's in the context of a big austerity budgeting that has hit public services everywhere. And the decisions about the new ballot and the registration, those were things that they were told they had to do by the constitutional court. So you can argue that the solutions that were implemented were poorly thought through and created the problem, but this is really down to the ANC being a bit incompetent - hardly a surprising new phenomenon than deliberately manipulating the process. I mean, in principal the queues hit their own electorate as much as anyone elses, as it was black people who vote disproportionately in the evening. So what incentive would the ANC have to do this? It's certainly a far cry from what the Republicans do, which is to target specific voter groups they know don't vote for them.

And in that respect it was unacceptable what the DA did, because it was copying from the Republican playbook of calling election results into doubt, without any evidence, of assuming bad intention and practice in what on the whole was actually a fair and free election on the level of what we have in the west. Certainly it's playing a far more dangerous game than the mere existence of long queues.

As for Malema, I have criticised him for that in my earlier posts, and we hadn't been discussing the EFF up to now. It's hardly new to see him opportunistically deserting any sort of principles for his own personal advantage though is it?

All the more as he has to contend with the knowledge that his party has hit an effective ceiling of 10% of the vote, and the biggest factor in that ceiling being that low is himself.

Both sides of the aisle in the US campaign on with this level of severity and doomsaying. But even in the UK there's a degree of "Party X will be bad for the country and drag us further down" from both sides of the spectrum. I hate it as a rhetorical tactic, but it probably works, unfortunately. I can't speak to Switzerland and the rest of the EU.

I think that's the thing, even in the context of increased political tension everywhere, the US has a unquely toxic political environment that has (with France) been a factor in the country's democratic decline. Importing that to South Africa seems like a pretty bad idea.

I do agree with this! I think there's largely a wish that there were alternatives to choose from that weren't minor parties or liable to collapse into nothing overnight (see: COPE, ActionSA). Out of curiosity, if it's not too personal - who do you support (or who would you support if you can't vote?). Kinda curious as you don't seem to like any of the major parties.

Haha, I certainly hope that's the way I come across! All of the major parties (and pretty much all of the minor ones too) seem completely unacceptable to me. Probably Zuma's party the most of all if I am honest. If I had a vote, I would have undoubtedly gone with Rise Mzansi (my partner did vote for them, on the sole logic that the DA were to anti-ppor); who had pretty crap policies but rhetorically were great and seemed to have a level of enthusiasm behind them. Of course it turns out that they have had a complete disaster. So I'm very apprehensive of the future, after all, both the DA and EFF don't seem to have much ability to progress beyond the levels they are at now, and Zuma won't be around in 10 years, so some sort of better alternative almost mathematically has to turn up.

If holding accountable a former president for his crimes is going to tear a country apart then this country isn't worth saving.

Easy to say that when you’re from a mess of a country like Greece where corrupt officials rarelt get held accountable and you don’t have as much to lose. We have a 250 year old democracy on the line.

 

Appeasing would be terrorists is probably not a good idea. There are other problems with your argument as well, but I'm going to bed.

Amazing how willing you are to apply that logic to the U.S., but not to Israel.

Even Mitt Romney is opposed to this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna152420

 

that the president “made an enormous error” by not pressuring New York prosecutors to drop their case against Trump. (Presidents can pardon only in federal cases.)

"He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said, referring to Biden. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump.”

Pressed by Ruhle whether that is Biden’s job to pardon Trump, Romney said he believes that Biden should have taken a cue from former President Lyndon B. Johnson, saying that the president could have stepped in and urged New York prosecutors to drop the case.“I have been around for a while. If LBJ had been president, and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office,’” he said.

This a pretty naive take, even for a fairly naive politician like Romney.

Biden isn't LBJ. No President in the modern party system has institutional power like LBJ had in Washington. And LBJ had it just in Washington! This is a New York State case, after all.

Bragg should be publicly shamed by the Democratic Party . I mean this is a guy who lets far worse crime go on a daily basis . Also you can issue a pardon on these charges and thus remove any incentive to bring the case to begin with

Every time some Atlas conservative claims that people should quit calling old school Republican beep boop anymore because he is supposedly grown into someone who actually can hold his own intellectually, he goes off on one of these tangents where he the same talking points over and over and over and over again ad nauseam without allowing any new information to permeate his skull and then that's as a defense that the prime minister of Luxemburg or some such agrees with his position so there, checkmate libtards.

Never change, beep boop

Imagine if a Democrat called Kentucky or West Virginia a conservative sh**thole. The hands of Republicans would bleed from how hard they'd clutch their pearls.

https://twitter.com/Jim_Banks/status/1796293183430705353

Jesus Christ. Why all the simping for two-tiered justice systems here? Seriously. The endless bootlicking for criminal politicians has become insufferable here. You hunch-backed weirdos all write this crap knowing full f#cking well that Joe Blow would be getting his ass rammed in prison right now if he committed one-tenth of the degree of crimes the likes of Nixon or Bush or Trump have committed.

There has to be a reason for it. Is it the same reason multiple users worship warmongers like Scoop Jackson or LBJ on here? Are we so ingrained in the doings of the political establishment that we do their propaganda work for them, in the hopes that one day we, too, might become like them or enjoy the same prestige? Do you want to sit with daddy in the big chair one day?

Is that all you’ve got? Do you seriously have nothing better to do than come and white knight for (legally and/or morally compromised) scumbag politicians? Are you the head of a nursery? Is that what you do? You are a child. You are a child. You are a child.

This isn’t about a two tiered justice system. This is about keeping the damn country together. Half of my posts on this forum are about how much I don’t like Trump and how I believe he’s a danger to democracy. I’ve made it very clear where I stand on him. My issue is that instead of being vulnerable and reaching out to people on the right, people on the left have a “better than you” attitude and instead chose to harass and name-call them, further emboldening people on the right to adopt a victim mentality (of which Trump is the ultimate representation). And people with that mentality will eventually use that mentality to justify physical violence. Does the rise in militia membership, constant social media dogwhistles, and the rescripting of the January 6 attack as a “patriotic demonstration,” not signal to you that what you’ve been doing for the past few years hasn’t been working?

Times of crisis require leaders to show courage and to do things that are unpopular. We’re approaching one of those crises again. Biden is the President- the most powerful person in the country, and he has to do something to demonstrate to all Americans, not just those on the left, that his commitment to keeping the country together is genuine. If he doesn’t, people on the right will turn to Trump, and the lord only knows what kind of ugly things Trump is willing to unleash on our country.

Appeasing would be terrorists is probably not a good idea. There are other problems with your argument as well, but I'm going to bed.

Edit to add: Oh I'll just write this up first, if anybody cares:

1.Those on the right had the victim mentality to begin with, that's what made them support Trump.

2.If what's presently being done isn't working, and I generally agree with that, it doesn't mean that anything else will work either, and we can look at the consequences of pardoning a convicted felon.

3.As with one, those on the right already have turned to Trump. Why don't they have to have a commitment to keeping the country together? Maybe they could start with committing to following the rule of law and following those who follow the rule of law.

Generally I think that giving in to people who might commit violence is weak and self defeating. It might be the sort of thing that Nikki Haley would suggest, but she's already shown what happens to loser appeasers.

If Biden/Hochul consider doing what you suggest, why shouldn't millions of Democrats threaten violence?

Jesus Christ. Why all the simping for two-tiered justice systems here? Seriously. The endless bootlicking for criminal politicians has become insufferable here. You hunch-backed weirdos all write this crap knowing full f#cking well that Joe Blow would be getting his ass rammed in prison right now if he committed one-tenth of the degree of crimes the likes of Nixon or Bush or Trump have committed.

There has to be a reason for it. Is it the same reason multiple users worship warmongers like Scoop Jackson or LBJ on here? Are we so ingrained in the doings of the political establishment that we do their propaganda work for them, in the hopes that one day we, too, might become like them or enjoy the same prestige? Do you want to sit with daddy in the big chair one day?

Is that all you’ve got? Do you seriously have nothing better to do than come and white knight for (legally and/or morally compromised) scumbag politicians? Are you the head of a nursery? Is that what you do? You are a child. You are a child. You are a child.

This isn’t about a two tiered justice system. This is about keeping the damn country together. Half of my posts on this forum are about how much I don’t like Trump and how I believe he’s a danger to democracy. I’ve made it very clear where I stand on him. My issue is that instead of being vulnerable and reaching out to people on the right, people on the left have a “better than you” attitude and instead chose to harass and name-call them, further emboldening people on the right to adopt a victim mentality (of which Trump is the ultimate representation). And people with that mentality will eventually use that mentality to justify physical violence. Does the rise in militia membership, constant social media dogwhistles, and the rescripting of the January 6 attack as a “patriotic demonstration,” not signal to you that what you’ve been doing for the past few years hasn’t been working?

Times of crisis require leaders to show courage and to do things that are unpopular. We’re approaching one of those crises again. Biden is the President- the most powerful person in the country, and he has to do something to demonstrate to all Americans, not just those on the left, that his commitment to keeping the country together is genuine. If he doesn’t, people on the right will turn to Trump, and the lord only knows what kind of ugly things Trump is willing to unleash on our country.

If holding accountable a former president for his crimes is going to tear a country apart then this country isn't worth saving.