Trump47 First Week & Beyond Catch-All

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Nobody deserves 2 life sentences plus 40 years for running an internet black market. It's the only one so far I agree with. Punishment was ridiculous.
Did he deserve a pardon? Or would you argue for his sentence being commuted?
 
Did he deserve a pardon? Or would you argue for his sentence being commuted?
I personally would have commuted him but I don't really have a problem with the pardon given the circumstances of how it all went down. He was a young kid and got in way over his head way fast and ended up with a double life sentence. It's the least of the many pardons anyone should be concerned about.

I mean most liberals would have said this is the harshest sentence of all time when it went down, but now that Trump has pardoned him all the media is trying to make like he pardoned a serial killer. No, just a twenty-something that started a black market drug site.
 
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We know he loves suck ups and yes men, guess that's the new mantra of the federal government when considering hiring. Like someone recently stated: He's running things like an organized crime boss.
 

Pentagon Plans for Bigger U.S. Troop Role at Border​

Trump calls migrants, drug traffickers and smugglers an invasion requiring a military response​


“…By describing migrants, drug traffickers and smugglers as invaders threatening U.S. security, the administration could possibly circumvent the Posse Comitatus law, though whether such a move will survive likely legal challenges is unclear, analysts said.

The claim that an invasion is occurring “at least plausibly permits the use of the armed forces at or near the border,” though “judges and legal experts disagree whether mass undocumented immigration constitutes an ‘invasion,’” said John Dehn, faculty director of Loyola University Chicago’s national security and civil rights program.

During his first term, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and deployed thousands of troops there. But officials on Tuesday suggested the new administration was taking more aggressive action to expand the military’s role. …

… Trump appeared to be lumping migrants seeking asylum with drug cartels, which he has termed “enemy combatants,” and treating both as national security threats. “When you use the military this way, you take them offline from other high-intensity threats, like China,” Feaver said. …”
 
Nobody deserves 2 life sentences plus 40 years for running an internet black market. It's the only one so far I agree with. Punishment was ridiculous.
Not sure I agree. From what I read Silk Road facilitated many shady activities, such as identity theft and the selling of credit card and other personal information. I guess it's sort of like the bartender serving a drunk who gets into an accident, he has some responsibility for the accident. Silk Road founder should possibly have some responsibility for what he facilitated the trade of. Maybe 2 life sentences is a bit much.

I wonder who put trump up to this pardon?
 
Not sure I agree. From what I read Silk Road facilitated many shady activities, such as identity theft and the selling of credit card and other personal information. I guess it's sort of like the bartender serving a drunk who gets into an accident, he has some responsibility for the accident. Silk Road founder should possibly have some responsibility for what he facilitated the trade of. Maybe 2 life sentences is a bit much.

I wonder who put trump up to this pardon?
It grew into all kinds of nefarious stuff but there are multiple documentaries on how it all went down. Watch them and make your own decision. He started it young and it grew out of control and he wasn't the only one involved. He's not multiple life sentences culpable. The crypto bros love him because the site ran on bitcoin transactions. That was the only payment option back before cypto was anything. Elon asked for the pardon. Libertarians also like him because they don't give a shit about drugs as a personal decision and don't want the government wasting asinine amounts of tax dollars trying to enforce drug laws.
 
Not sure I agree. From what I read Silk Road facilitated many shady activities, such as identity theft and the selling of credit card and other personal information. I guess it's sort of like the bartender serving a drunk who gets into an accident, he has some responsibility for the accident. Silk Road founder should possibly have some responsibility for what he facilitated the trade of. Maybe 2 life sentences is a bit much.

I wonder who put trump up to this pardon?
 

Trump Wants to Unleash Energy, as Long as It’s Not Wind or Solar​

Legal experts said the president was testing the boundaries of executive power with aggressive orders designed to stop the country from transitioning to renewable energy.

“…
The orders that Mr. Trump signed on Monday would make it easier and cheaper for companies to produce oil and gas and for the government to stop clean energy projects that have been approved.

While some actions lie within his purview, others may violate federal law or run counter to judicial decisions. Among other things, Mr. Trump raised the possibility of reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which has been confirmed by the Supreme Court, and proposed to halt funding for electric vehicle charging stations that Congress has already authorized.

“Congress passed landmark infrastructure and climate investments, and now President Trump is attempting to illegally withhold that money from American businesses, communities, and workers,” said Representative Frank Pallone, Democrat of New Jersey.


The moves also underscore a fundamental tension. Mr. Trump declared that the United States is facing an energy emergency, yet wants to block thousands of megawatts of planned wind projects that could power homes and businesses. He talks about strengthening American manufacturing but plans to withdraw assistance from the electric vehicle industry, which has invested billions of dollars in new factories across the United States.

“The phrase ‘energy emergency’ is an excuse to put in place initiatives that are hostile to the energy transition that is already taking place, to stop the progress that has been made in producing solar and wind power, electric vehicles, batteries, and renewable power,” said Robert N. Stavins, director of the Harvard University Environmental Economics Program.

By any economic measure, the United States is not facing an energy emergency, experts said. America is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, and the price of oil, about $76 per barrel, is roughly the same as the average cost over the past 20 years, adjusted for inflation. The cost of gasoline, about $3.13 per gallon, has dropped about 3 percent over the past 12 months.…”
 


“… 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. …”

——
Trump has gone full supervillain.

Gone?

You lived in Manhattan.

Trump’s always been a wannabe supervillain.

Now he’s POTUS; so, he CAN be a supervillain; and, he is.
 
I'm not entirely following Trump's stance against electric vehicles given that one of the primary oligarchs brought them into the mainstream.
 
Continued

“… The president has ordered that federal agencies stop spending money approved by Congress when it passed the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which together pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy and electric vehicles. The order appears aimed at stopping the government from distributing funds to manufacturers of electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and other clean energy, even if grants or loans had already been approved and binding contracts were signed.

“At the end of the day, the federal government has entered into a legal agreement with these recipients,” said Zealan Hoover, who directed the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act programs at the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration. “An executive order does not give the agency magic power to ignore properly implemented laws and regulations.”

Another executive order raises the possibility of revoking or altering offshore wind leases after companies had already received them. Before terminating or amending existing wind leases, the Trump administration would review existing permits to see whether there were any environmental reasons to revoke them. …”
 
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.
1. There will be an injunction by the time they have their babies.
2. Do they think the US born infant children of lawful residents would be deported?
 
Cool, cool.

In the coming days, I expect stop-work orders for several projects I work on. It’s stuff that can’t easily be re-started once it’s stopped—like studying a couple different cohorts of Long COVID patients.

We’re fucked, ya’ll.
You’re part of the “fringe” of government that few know exist. You and your colleagues do “obscure” work that matters NOT until it matters BIG.

Our fellow citizens have no clue how many such federal or contract employees and what you do.

To MAGA, you’re part of the Deep State.
 
It grew into all kinds of nefarious stuff but there are multiple documentaries on how it all went down. Watch them and make your own decision. He started it young and it grew out of control and he wasn't the only one involved. He's not multiple life sentences culpable. The crypto bros love him because the site ran on bitcoin transactions. That was the only payment option back before cypto was anything. Elon asked for the pardon. Libertarians also like him because they don't give a shit about drugs as a personal decision and don't want the government wasting asinine amounts of tax dollars trying to enforce drug laws.
You left out the part where he put out hits on five people, which was an aggravating factor in the sentencing that was credited by the Second Circuit
 

“If you want an analogy for the present state of America it’s perhaps not an out-and-out fascist regime, but a Vichy regime. It’s partly fascist but mostly just a reactionary and defeatist catch-all. It’s a regime born of capitulation and of defeat: of the slow and then sudden collapse of the longstanding institutions of a great democracy whose defenders turned out to be senile and unable to cope with or understand modern politics.

It’s a regime of born exhaustion, nihilism, and cynicism: the loss of faith in the old verities of the republic. A regime of national humiliation pretending to be a regime of restoration of national honor. It claims to be at once a national revolution and a national restoration. It’s a hybrid regime: a coalition that includes the fascist far right, of course, but also technocratic modernizers who might have once called themselves liberals, the big industrialists, and old social conservatives.

Even some disaffected socialists and leftists for whom liberalism was always the main enemy want to give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s a regime of collaboration and sympathy: the #resistance may have dominated the political style of the first Trump administration, but now, as Trump says, everyone wants to be his friend.”
 
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