Yep, I get why some would be pessimistic after years of nothing happenning to the man, but this is kinda it. I mean, what else do people expect, no due process and straight to prison? This is the worst actual outcome for him right now, and possibly the best for America. I figure he could be considered a flight risk and be put in jail pending process, but I figure this would be a worst outcome for America, considering his deathcult. You’re 2 fox news articles away from them claiming be died in jail and resurrected like Jesus.
To each their own indeed. If you want see this as cause to celebrate who am I to rain on your parade, I truly hope you have the right of it.
I’m just exhausted from all of the "final nail in the coffin"s this guy has had. Ive gotten excited for some actual justice just to be disappointed 1 too many times I guess. Even now, any federal charges are gonna just get pardoned as the first act of the next republican president for some quick and easy brownie points amongst their base.
The only hope for lasting consequences is realistically Georgia and even ignoring that they are pretty deeply purple, the Secret Service has pretty explicitly said they will not allow Trump to go to prison… Now I personally am of the belief that they can pound sand since they have no jurisdiction over this. However I do not get to make the call, and as stated above I have been let down too many times…
Maybe this is actually it and maybe I’m just too jaded and not seeing the big picture… I just can’t bring myself to be optimistic anymore man
the Secret Service has pretty explicitly said they will not allow Trump to go to prison…
Woah woah woah woah, did they say this? A cursory Google search only came back with results stating he won’t lose their protection in prison, not that they won’t allow him to be put away.
As I have the right to celebrate all the recent unprecedented actions by DOJ (I must concede that DOJ dragged their feet on a lot of this, and that it’s pretty clear there’s a two-tiered system for the rich “important” types and the rest of us plebs), you certainly have the right to doubt that this all will lead to anything significant. I have nothing to support my belief that the Orange One has finally reached the “FO” stage of FAFO but the indictments that have occurred thus far. However, I will say with confidence that these indictments aren’t entirely meaningless (particularly the docs case), and that their unprecedented nature should be celebrated. The DOJ has taken steps that have literally never been taken before in our history as a country (the indictment of a former president), and while some might say justice delayed is justice denied, I still think that a slow response is better than no response at all.
That all said, I understand feeling skeptical or even hopeless at this point (I certainly felt that way after Impeachment Trial 2). Here’s hoping, though, that we’ll at least get to witness justice finally being served and that any pardons will be moot (I mean, c’mon, the guy’s old!) if a Republican president is elected again any time soon!
It’s possible I’m misremembering. I thought in their initial statement about his not losing protection while incarcerated they had mentioned that it would be impossible to protect him while he’s in an open cell block but perhaps that was my dumb lizard brain saying the quiet part out loud. Either way I don’t think they would just let that happen without significant uproar.
Idk maybe I can allow myself to feel an ounce of optimism. I do like the idea of something actually good happening for once lol
It just means that IF he manages to get found guilt, and that is a BIG if, he will not go into prison like you or I think of it. He will get some sort of special consideration as part of some sweetheart deal to be confined to house arrest in Mara-la-go except for “special supervised outings related to ex-president business”. Which will really just turn out to be whenever he wants to go somewhere.
So he will be convicted, but functionally it will only be on paper and just a technicality. All because no one is going to want to deal with the real world outcomes of an ex-president being sentenced to real hard time like not as well connected people.
But I will be shocked if they can find 12 jurors that a good lawyer on either side would not be able to argue are truly impartial to even have a valid trial to begin with.
Maybe don’t attach your name to a project that you’re not actually supervising in sufficient detail to ensure its quality? The whole point of trademarks is that whoever’s mark it is, is supposed to stand by their product.
That is sorta what he’s doing right now. He’s suing to terminate the agreement because they won’t do it correctly. I mean, I get what you’re saying, he isn’t the one executing the project, but I can’t blame him for suing at this point, and for trying I guess.
If he wins, he pardons himself from federal crimes then uses his powers as Commander in Chief to break himself out of prison for state crimes, thereby creating the ultimate constitutional crisis and tearing the country apart.
Whether or not he can pardon himself is up for debate. So if the founding fathers intended that you can assume office from prison there would be a more defined method.
It was intentional that you can run and be elected as president from prison. It’s written about contemporaneously. They knew the risk of allowing a president, or administration, jailing their political opponents.
What’s not clear is if it was meant for a president to be able to pardon themselves. I personally would think not, but many think it’s permissable.
One presidential candidate got 3.4% (more than all 3rd party candidates in 2020 combined) of the vote (over 1million votes) as a third party candidate while in prison in 1920.
One of the few upsides of my living in Terre Haute, Indiana is that I can say I live in the same town Debs was from. They have a nice museum here dedicated to him in his former home. If you’re passing through Indiana, I do recommend an hour or two to see it. Bernie Sanders made sure to stop there during his 2016 campaign, if you need an endorsement.
FDR gets all the credit but without actual leftists like Debs (and all the workers who fought in solidarity with him) we’d still be sending our kids to work instead of school.
That’s who this is.
Bernie has his picture hanging on his office wall and he’s basically Bernie’s hero.
we’d still be sending our kids to work instead of school.
We are. They’re letting 14 year olds bar tend in Wisconsin and McDonalds in Arkansas has been busted for employing 12 year olds. Several states are actively bringing back child labor.
It makes sense though. Think about it like this, A politician that wanted to stay in power could disqualify his opponents by wielding the DOJ as a personal tool and nailing them with felony charges. Trump could have placed a more loyal attorney general, nailed Biden on some bullshit petty offense that technically qualifies as a felony, and have his name removed from the ballot shortly before the election. Allowing felons to run for president defangs that particular power move. To disqualify someone the 14th amendment would have to be invoked, and should be in Trump’s case.
While I do see the validity of this argument, it still feels like treating the symptoms rather than the cause. If the fear is a sitting president welding his personal power to imprison (and thus disqualify) a political rival, isn’t the bigger problem that a sitting president has the power to do this in the first place?
The Justice Department has to be able to indict people, that’s part of its function. And the DoJ is part of the executive branch. A good President will not use the DoJ for his personal political purposes, but the incentive to do so, if it was there, would be extremely powerful. I think it’s probably a good idea to remove it. If the people can’t be trusted not to vote for a criminal or a traitor, we have bigger problems.
I’ve heard the logic is to prevent people from wanting to retroactively legalize shit to secure votes from felons, which doesn’t make a lot of sense tbh
It’ll be ~5 years before all appeals are exhausted. I’d be shocked to see that he ever eats a final conviction, and any Republican president will pardon him, living or dead.
And, even if he is convicted and not pardoned, the functional challenges of managing Secret Service protection in a white-collar prison would be daunting, not to mention that his SS detail seems to have been easily corrupted to lie for him. The SS leadership, a locus of supreme bootlickers, would likely tell an inquiring judge that it’s too difficult to protect him in any penal institution for white-collar criminals, which will force the court to choose house arrest at most.
So, it’s probable that he’ll never serve a day in jail or prison.
No, maybe not a US declared war. That being said, North Korea seems pretty happy to shout death threats at you guys.
If I was living in the US, I don’t think that I would want those guys to have any top-secret information that could effect the country I lived in.
One could definitely argue that exposing certain types information could be considered an attack on the US, because it’s not like bad actors would follow the US constitution to the letter. I’m going to go out on a limb, and say that anyone who buys that type of secretive information probably isn’t very US-friendly.
Spreading certain types of information could also cause massive security breaches. Anyone who is a protected witness would be at a massive risk. Who’s to say that a bad actor wouldn’t try to mess with your currency sytem, or expose a secret military location? People generally don’t like that stuff happening either, and for good reason imo.
Lots of rich people convince judges they aren’t safe in prison without the help of the Secret Service. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump could get house arrest instead of prison even without being reelected.
Also there is a VERY high chance he just straight up dies before he goes to prison, or even before the court date. Which might be the worst possible scenario, as the right wing crazies will go fucking ballistic with conspiracy theories blaming the deep state or the clintons or whoever the current boogeyman is and we will literally never hear the end of it
I witnessed a security guard taking a loaf of bread from a homeless kid all the while preaching the word of Christ. Christians are nothing like their Christ.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that a historical human Jesus existed. Historian Michael Grant asserts that if conventional standards of historical textual criticism are applied to the New Testament, “we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.”
Virtually all scholars of antiquity dismiss theories of Jesus’s non-existence or regard them as refuted. In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is a fringe theory and finds virtually no support from scholars.
He didn’t exist. The reason why the James-Peter fraud stuck was because Paul was a preaching machine and they lucked out with getting at least two good writers. Proto-Mark and M. If Paul had died on that shipwreck or Syrian scribe had found a better job there would be no Christianity today.
It does matter. Because it is near impossible to find a Christian who is fine with the Jesus story being a complete myth. Some of them will admit that not all of the contradiction-filled stories are correct but doubting he existed at all? Paul, the real founder, was at least honest about this and said all of their faith would be in vain if the resurrection had not happened.
The evidence points to a con that got out of control.
Michael Grant doesn’t know that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Saying that we know that there was some king in a certain place and time isn’t a big claim. Most places had kings. Saying that if even a quarter of the claims of the Gospels were true is a massive claim. Also whataboutism is kinda boring. I really don’t feel giving “historians” slack because they cut themselves slack.
In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is a fringe theory and finds virtually no support from scholars
Not going to have a job selling book and teaching the story of some old con. You sell books by advancing dozens of different contradictory models of the events all of them equally impossible to test.
Regardless, most historians agree that there was a human historical Jesus. Whether you think it’s all a conspiracy or scam or whatever is another matter I don’t care to get into.
And you repeat your argument from authority. Maybe if you do it another time it will convince me? Why not just address the total lack of evidence for this massive claim instead?
Claiming that Jesus of Nazareth existed is not extraordinary at all though. It’s hardly far-fetched to claim that he was real. Claiming that he was the son of God and could perform miracles however, is - as someone else pointed out.
Right so you are trying to make the claim so small it can be snuck in. Theists try this trick with God all the time.
Does making a claim small make it true or is that a rhetorical device to try to manipulate the argument? If I told you I was Obama and you called me out on it so I said well really I did met him once in a bar when he was in Congress, would my altered claim become true by virtue of being ordinary?
Jesus existence has nothing to do with the religion in and of itself. He can be reall without Christianity being true. You’re getting so caught up in wanting to argue against the theists that you’re focusing on something completely irrelevant just to chalk up a victory.
I have no evidence one way or another for our against his existence, the point is that it doesn’t matter. Jesus’ potential existence has nothing to do with the truthiness of religion unless you believe that his existence can only be a validation of the new testament - which would be akin to your Obama comparison and would be patently ridiculous.
I have no proof that billions of specific people existed, doesn’t change that they did.
Jesus existence has nothing to do with the religion in and of itself. He can be reall without Christianity being true. You’re getting so caught up in wanting to argue against the theists that you’re focusing on something completely irrelevant just to chalk up a victory.
We got a mind reader over here.
I have no evidence one way or another for our against his existence, the point is that it doesn’t matter. Jesus’ potential existence has nothing to do with the truthiness of religion unless you believe that his existence can only be a validation of the new testament - which would be akin to your Obama comparison and would be patently ridiculous.
First off you do have evidence of his non-existentence. Which I gave you. No one can keep their story straight about him. Secondly even if you didn’t have that you can say the same thing about unicorns.
I have no proof that billions of specific people existed, doesn’t change that they did.
First off you do have evidence of his non-existentence. Which I gave you. No one can keep their story straight about him. Secondly even if you didn’t have that you can say the same thing about unicorns.
You’ve given no such thing. You have made a statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but you fail to grasp that the existence of Jeaus would not be extraordinary. Billions of people have existed and will exist. The extraordinary part is the sin of God thing, which we don’t disagree on. Unicorns , much like “The Messiah”, are certainly extraordinary claims that would require proof. We have seen nothing to support the existence of anything even resembling unicorns. We have forever seen plenty to prove that humans exist. A specific human some thousands of years ago, is not unlikely.
And? And so, the claim that he exists is hardly extraordinary.
Yeah no surprise. You think you can read my mind and except super low standards of evidence.
You’ve given no such thing. You have made a statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but you fail to grasp that the existence of Jeaus would not be extraordinary.
Yes it would be. Even the people who try this game of finding the man behind the myth have to make so many assumptions to make this work. And I have repeatedly stated that the narratives contradict.
If you look at the actual evidence you have you find
Details are missing from Paul that should be there.
Every part of the Gospels shows signs of being borrowed from older stories and ideas. Almost as if two people were just writing a fanfic.
Nothing is unique. They had versions of messiah prophecy that including him dying. They had a popular story of a leader dying and his young follower continuing (Peter). Everything he said was cribbed from the OT or later thinkers. They had matry stories. They had stories of betrayal. They had stories of demagogues claiming to speak for God raising armies. Stories of raising the dead. The magic tricks were all known in the area at the time.
Not a single thing you can point to and say “ok this isn’t clearly a borrowing from earlier Jewish culture”. The Jesus con was a combination of Jeremiah, the first leader of the Maccabees, and Hillel. Which the scholars you seem to love so much are constantly pointing out. Except they need to keep selling books and you don’t do that by just admitting that it is all con.
But hey go ahead and shut me up. Show me a single piece of evidence that he existed.
You’re trying to argue against the veracity of the bible by using the bible as your source of truth. Your argument hinges on Jesus mere existence equating to him being the son of God. That is not a given… at all! Vlad Tepes was a real person - that doesn’t mean that vampires are real though.
As for “the scholars you seem to love so much” you may want to reread the thread - I think you’re getting your discussions mixed up - I haven’t referenced any scholars at this point. My argument is that your logic framework is referenced flawed. I have taken no stance on the existence of Jesus - purely on whether him being a real person is particularly extraordinary.
Vlad Tepes was a real person - that doesn’t mean that vampires are real though.
I am sorry. Do we have multiple separate narratives of that man that contradict each other? Do we have the main source of his existence totally unaware of all the details of his life and details of his death? Do we find that in every single story about him almost the exact same story about another king that was well known to the people of the area?
Your argument hinges on Jesus mere existence
My argument is very simple. We can not find any evidence that he existed. The evidence that we do have is better explained by a con man’s grift. Every single time someone tries those “let’s make him real by taking away the magic and assuming that Mark is 100% right otherwise” they have to make up this insane story to fit the narrative. Meanwhile they know the narrative was borrowed and they know that their version is equally as untestable as all the other contradictionary ones.
purely on whether him being a real person is particularly extraordinary.
I think it is. An ordinary person doesn’t have a cult that outlives their life. Even a minimum Jesus requires so much. Could you do it? Like right now. Could you get a few people to follow you around because they think you will be king and have them talk about how amazing you are for decades after you die? Our hypothetical minimum Jesus pulls this feat off with no money, no political power, and nothing to offer people except parlor tricks and stories. Think of every modern cult that outlived it’s founder. All of them were big billion dollar operations, not a few illiterates in the backwater of a backwater.
If Paul is to be believed this “ordinary person” cult was growing, thriving against opposition, totally unorganized, at least 20 years before he meet it with a dead leader, and almost no one having seen any of the big events.
Wouldn’t it make so much more sense that two conman just cobbled together these stories about their imaginary friend and preyed on the local superstitious? That Paul didn’t know (excluding the betrayal and euchrist) about the ministry because there was nothing to know. That he didn’t know about the Tomb because the current version of the con had Jesus buried normally. That when the narratives came out there stories didn’t match up because like all liars they couldn’t keep the story straight?
Again your assuming that Jesus existence means that anything in the bible is correct. My point is that the two can be entirely disconnected. I am making no coatings about Mark, Luke or Paul in this line of argumentation. I am starting that the extraordinary part of the claim is his godliness, not his existence.
Wouldn’t it make so much more sense that two conman just cobbled together these stories about their imaginary friend and preyed on the local superstitious?
So we’re back to realm of speculation. If you’re going to frame it there, would it not make even more sense then if these two conmen, in order to lend their support credibility, went through the local scrolls and found a local dude that died a little while back and coopted his name for their narrative?
For all of your arguments against his existence you keep coming back to the bible as your source. You tie yourself in an oddly circular loop here, again arguing that Jesus either isn’t real and so the bible is wrong, or he is and the bible becomes the word of God. There’s a lot of room to move in between the two - including a dude from the area, name Jesus once existed.
Gotcha. You think if you continue to weaken the claim it will become true or at least can’t be disproven. You know the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do. We gather evidence and develop theories. You are taking an existing theory and lowering its explanatory power. We see the sales people of fake medicine do this all the time. At first it is a cure-all, within a generation or two the claims have shrunken to the point where no one can really say they aren’t true.
Again your assuming that Jesus existence means that anything in the bible is correct. My point is that the two can be entirely disconnected. I am making no coatings about Mark, Luke or Paul in this line of argumentation. I am starting that the extraordinary part of the claim is his godliness, not his existence.
Which still doesn’t match with the evidence because again Paul met a community that was widespread. Just a regular guy wouldn’t have a cult survive his death. You overshot.
So we’re back to realm of speculation. If you’re going to frame it there,
Not really speculation. The evidence points to a con.
would it not make even more sense then if these two conmen, in order to lend their support credibility, went through the local scrolls and found a local dude that died a little while back and coopted his name for their narrative?
Given the overwhelming odds that both men were illiterates I wouldn’t bet on that.
For all of your arguments against his existence you keep coming back to the bible as your source.
Because that is the only source. All we have after that is another generation later a guy saying what he heard from someone else about what this new cult believed. Hearsay.
You tie yourself in an oddly circular loop here, again arguing that Jesus either isn’t real and so the bible is wrong, or he is and the bible becomes the word of God.
Not at all. The only source we have shows evidence of a con. So I accept it as a con. Also can you show me where in the Bible that it says this book is the word of God? Exact passage please.
There’s a lot of room to move in between the two - including a dude from the area, name Jesus once existed.
Again you try to tactic of lowering the claim hoping to sneak it in. Me personally I like developing models that have more power to explain facts, not less. In your desire to keep your childhood Jesus friend you have now reduced him to one guy one time named Jesus somewhere in that area.
This is a strange interpretation of how theories and generally science works in practice. If the aforementioned poster is doing their best to discredit an existing theory the information from that is implicitly involved in any subsequent theory with greater explanatory power or predictive ability.
It was known a bit after Newton’s theories and prior to Einstein’s Relativity that Newtonian Mechanics could not account for the perihelion precession of mercury. These serve as baselines for new theories to predict or explain. Popperian Falsification is one school of thought in philosophy of science more or less predicated on the idea you cannot ever prove a theory, only disprove them. An important criteria then is to allow for testable hypothesis with clear fail states. There have been other developments and more fruitful ways of looking at how science works in practice but if we stick with this then no theory can be proven, we only work with whatever theory is most amenable according to some criteria.
Theories already exist, it’s inevitable that they will be used to explain phenomena, someone engaged in introducing auxiliary hypotheses and theories to explain away or contend with the core of their theory is not ‘doing the opposite’. Rather it might be useful to think that a lack of evidence of something means it is not worthy of consideration among the litany of hypotheses, only certain evidence of something not occurring would be good enough to completely abandon a hypothesis. As that is significantly more difficult and the extent of evidence required great, one can avoid all this by accepting that all theories are wrong and some are seemingly wronger than others and it isn’t necessary to completely abandon them. Instead they can be kept in a provisional space with other theories which are less productive or fruitful until they may be called upon.
And what’s more is the very closest written account we have shows problems. Paul never mentions the tomb and thinks Jesus was buried in the ground. Besides for the Eucharist he doesn’t seem to know much of anything about the ministry. Which is really freaken odd because by his own admission he was hunting and interrogating Christians before his conversion.
I haven’t dug into this what-so-ever, but how would it even be possible to identify whether a specific person with that name existed 2000 years ago? It’s not like you could just Google the guys Facebook profile or social security number back in 200AD
Why is it whenever this brought up an appeal to authority is invoked to people who weren’t there? Why not just use evidence to prove your position instead of telling me what some random priest in the 2nd century thought about zombie-skydaddy?
There is no evidence he existed and the narratives disagree with each other. Easily could have been a fraud by James and Peter.
Tell that to the scholars of antiquity. I’m just reporting what the prevailing thought is by people who study such matters because it was falsely claimed that most of them believe that Jesus was a myth.
Sure. Hey guys hate to be a buzzkill and I know you have a sweet gig inventing one crazy way after another to make this myth be true but there really isn’t anything here. It is a superstructure with no substructure. Until someone digs up some old letter or something you got nothing.
because it was falsely claimed that most of them believe that Jesus was a myth.
I don’t think anyone in this thread did that. I know what they believe, I just don’t care. Again
There is no evidence Jesus was a historical person
A fraud by the leading apostles could easily fit the data that we have.
Humans lie.
The narratives disagree with each other to an extent that it sounds very much like liars trying to remember their stories
There are things missing in the narratives that should be there.
In a way I sorta get it. There are like these Sherlock Holmes appreciation groups that have spent all this effort trying to find the historical 221B baker street. It is fun to pretend that a fictional character exists in the real world.
If you ask Mormon historians whether the particular figures in the Book of Mormon exist, they mostly all agree too. Perhaps a better metric is the number of secular historians who consider Jesus to be a historical figure. Or suppose that he is a historical figure, how many things can you say about him that are definitely true?
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure has gotten even more absurd and hilarious to me as I’ve gotten older; it both aged well and has grown funnier with time (nearly 40 years!)
Trump pushed the big lie that the election was stolen. Trump lost in the courts^[1] including the Supreme Court.^[2] Then he tried to pressure state officials.^[3] He tried to pressure Pence.^[4]
So what does Trump do after exhausting all nonviolent methods of overturning the election? He turns to his supporters and lights them up making inflammatory statements such as;
We are going to fight for the survival of the nation.
Now is not the time to retreat, its to fight harder.
We will never give in, never back down, never surrender.
We will fight like hell.
You have to get your people to fight.
He primed them for weeks.
State officials had started getting death threats weeks before the attempted insurrection following the general election.^[5] Trump saw first hand what violence was being created as his supporters rioted and vandalized black churches in Washington back in December.^[6]
Trump didn’t stop his incitement after the initial violence, he got more specific. He told his supporters how, when, and where. He gave them 18 days notice inviting them to the rally telling them to be there, that it will be wild.^[7] And on the day of the insurrection Trump told his supporters to march on the Capitol and fight like hell.
Following the riot Trump continued to promote the big lie that had incited the insurrection. After the mob was dispersed, Trump praised and sympathized with the mob in a video he released, claiming once again that the election had been stolen.^[8] Then he praised the insurrection in a tweet after the mob had been dispersed. He told his mob to remember Jan. 6 forever. He said that he loved the insurrectionists and that the violent mob were special people.
My “favorite” but was when he heard that some of them had weapons that were denied access, and he angrily told his staff to let the weapons into the capital, because they weren’t coming to hurt him.
There a reasonable chance he gets house arrest or there’s some special facility built for him. Alternatively he could be kept in solitary for the entire time, but that’s starting to be considered torture.
The sheriff of Fulton County, Ga., said on Tuesday that if former President Donald J. Trump were to be indicted in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, he would not receive special treatment, and would be booked and photographed like any other defendant.
though evidence to support many of the claims is thin.
This is the most important part. Don’t go nuts because of one small study. There is little evidence to suggest probiotics make meaningful changes to gut biome
Who’s gonna bet China is going to use this to bring back headlines of their propaganda from years ago about how covid-19 actually originated in the US?
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