Trump47 First Week & Beyond Catch-All

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nycfan said:


“… The Silk Road site was set up by Ulbricht in 2011 on the dark web, a part of the internet that's inaccessible to traditional search engines. It did not accept cash or credit cards; users had to pay with cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin. All transactions were encrypted and hence untraceable.

It became a place for people to buy and sell illicit drugs, weapons, poisons, and services such as computer hacking.

…
"Silk Road was the Amazon of drug sites," former FBI Special Agent Milan Patel said in an interview for the CBS News series "FBI Declassified."

"We saw murder-for-hire postings, hacking-for-hire postings, which was, 'hey, pay me two bitcoin and I'll hack into your ex-wife or ex-husband's email account,'" Patel said. "…It was totally anonymous. And you could never trace it back to the person who asked for it."

Ulbricht ran the site until his arrest in 2013, when it was seized by the FBI. During his trial, prosecutors said at least six deaths were traced to overdoses from drugs bought on Silk Road. They alleged that Ulbricht collected $18 million through commissions on tens of thousands of drug sales, and presented evidence alleging he sought to have people killed for threatening his business. …”

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Trump has gone full supervillain.
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And what's his reasoning for this?
 
Turd Ferguson said:
And what's his reasoning for this?
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Libertarians supported Trump and he hates the FBI. But he could have at least just commuted this guy’s sentence instead of a full pardon.

Libertarians believe this guy was targeted for his beliefs and use of crypto rather than his dark web criminal enterprise.

TBF, there were definitely some issues in some of the evidence gathering and NY allowing evidence of his apparent attempts to hire killers in five instances to protect his criminal enterprise (though he was not charged with those crimes), which was in accordance with NY law but almost certainly got him a (much) tougher sentence, but the dude seemed dead to rights on the criming …
 
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nycfan said:
Libertarians supported Trump and he hates the FBI. But he could have at least just commuted this guy’s sentence instead of a full pardon.

Libertarians believe this guy was targeted for his beliefs and use of crypto rather than his dark web criminal enterprise.
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I am spitting angry about the Ubrecht pardon. That guy is the most horrible POS around.
 
Day One and through most of today, I was of the mind that while Trump was doing a lot of crap all at once, most of which I oppose, we were more or less seeing what he promised play out in a jumble of performative and more serious executive orders, though the breadth and lack of any discernment on the J6 pardons was a bit surprising.

Tonight, the list of stuff his administration is doing is causing me genuine disquiet about this being a lot worse than suck it up for a while and hope for the best until the consequences of his lies and bizarre policy prescriptions start to be felt.

Pardoning a guy like Ulbricht (and the statement accompanying that), giving Musk free access to US classified data without guardrails, whatever deal is being cut with Oracle between TikTok and the new AI project (Stargate), shutting down info sharing by the FDA and CDC and pulling out of the WHO, the issuance of extremely broad immigration EOs, the mob talk coming out of House leadership … I dunno. Very Macbeth / vengeance vibe.
 
nycfan said:
Day One and through most of today, I was of the mind that while Trump was doing a lot of crap all at once, most of which I oppose, we were more or less seeing what he promised play out in a jumble of performative and more serious executive orders, though the breadth and lack of any discernment on the J6 pardons was a bit surprising.

Tonight, the list of stuff his administration is doing is causing me genuine disquiet about this being a lot worse than suck it up for a while and hope for the best until the consequences of his lies and bizarre policy prescriptions start to be felt.

Pardoning a guy like Ulbricht (and the statement accompanying that), giving Musk free access to US classified data without guardrails, whatever deal is being cut with Oracle between TikTok and the new AI project (Stargate), shutting down info sharing by the FDA and CDC and pulling out of the WHO, the issuance of extremely broad immigration EOs, the mob talk coming out of House leadership … I dunno. Very Macbeth / vengeance vibe.
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100%. And while this doesn’t let them off the hook, I have a very strong feeling 70% of the people who voted for Trump have no idea how bad this is about to get.
 
Calheel said:
Nothing happens.
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So this morning I realized that I have two nieces that are in the States each expecting in the next few months. Both are in the US with spouses that are on work visas (one is a heart surgeon, another is an oil trader); one has been in the US for about six years. Per this EO, their babies would fall into that limbo at birth while this gets resolved. They are freaking out right now.
 
CRHeel94 said:
So this morning I realized that I have two nieces that are in the States each expecting in the next few months. Both are in the US with spouses that are on work visas (one is a heart surgeon, another is an oil trader); one has been in the US for about six years. Per this EO, their babies would fall into that limbo at birth while this gets resolved. They are freaking out right now.
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Understandably
 
CRHeel94 said:
So this morning I realized that I have two nieces that are in the States each expecting in the next few months. Both are in the US with spouses that are on work visas (one is a heart surgeon, another is an oil trader); one has been in the US for about six years. Per this EO, their babies would fall into that limbo at birth while this gets resolved. They are freaking out right now.
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Really sorry to hear that.
 


“…In its nearly three years of existence, Silk Road, which operated in a shady corner of the internet known as the dark web, became an international drug marketplace, facilitating more than 1.5 million transactions, including sales of heroin, cocaine and other illicit substances. (The site generated over $200 million in revenue, according to authorities.) In court, prosecutors claimed that Mr. Ulbricht had also solicited the murders of people whom he considered threats — but acknowledged there was no evidence that the killings took place.

Despite his crimes, Mr. Ulbricht has remained popular with crypto enthusiasts because Silk Road was one of the first venues where people used Bitcoin to buy and sell goods. For years, his supporters have argued that his sentence was overly punitive and adopted the slogan “Free Ross” online and at industry gatherings.

“It’s hard to argue that Ross Ulbricht wasn’t the most successful and influential entrepreneur of the early Bitcoin era,” said Pete Rizzo, an editor at the news publication Bitcoin Magazine. “This is the industry banding together and saying, ‘We’re going to reclaim our own.’”

Mr. Ulbricht’s pardon was eagerly anticipated by crypto enthusiasts. On Monday, after Mr. Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 peoplecharged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Elon Musk, one of the president’s biggest supporters, responded to a concerned post on X, writing that “Ross will be freed too.” …”
 
Continued

“…
But the life sentence struck many observers as harsh. In 2017, the federal appeals court for the Second Circuit, in affirming Mr. Ulbricht’s conviction, acknowledged the severe nature of the punishment.

“Although we might not have imposed the same sentence ourselves in the first instance,” the court said, “on the facts of this case a life sentence was within the range of permissible decisions that the district court could have reached.”

Mr. Ulbricht has been serving his sentence at a federal prison in Tucson, Ariz. Supporters in the crypto industry, in calling for his release, have noted that he was convicted of a nonviolent crime and was never tried on prosecutors’ most explosive allegation that he paid to have people killed. …”
 


“… Painters on Tuesday spread a fresh coat to hide the holes that showed where it had been mounted until its sudden removal following President Donald Trump's Monday inauguration.

"Poof! He's gone," one uniformed military official joked, shaking his head in bewilderment. …”

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It is a lot less hilarious if you recall the way the Soviets frequently disappeared people out of photos, textbooks and reality back in the day.
 
Continued

“… The firing of U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Lee Fagan, the first female uniformed leader of an Armed Forces branch, echoed in the halls of the Pentagon.
While the Coast Guard is part of the armed forces, it falls under the Department of Homeland Security and not the Pentagon.

… But as Trump's team is sworn into jobs across the Pentagon, there is anxiety about sweeping personnel decisions.

"People are trying to read the tea leaves about what might be coming," a second U.S. official said. Milley's portrait removal is not doing much to allay those concerns, officials said.

… As they finished painting the wall where Milley's painting had hung for just over a week since its January unveiling, one painter looked at the blank wall with humorous satisfaction.

"There was no portrait here," he said.”
 
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