Trump can't drop out

It hasn't been said that much, but recently there have been a few predictions that Trump will drop out of the reelection race before November, even someone on Fox News floated the theory.

Trump can't voluntarily stop being President because if he does, the barriers he has put up between his personal financial records, including his tax returns, and prosecutors will disappear. All of the arguments before various Courts trying to prevent those records from being released are based on the fact that Trump is President and fending off those legal challenges would distract him from watching Fox News and tweeting about it all day addressing the pressing concerns of the nation.

I don't know what is in these records. But it's gotta be bad given how strenuously he is fighting to keep them secret. Not running for reelection would be tantamount to just handing them over to the investigators and prosecutors who he has been fighting throughout his presidency.

"1619 riots"

It's hilarious how the far right is still hung up on the 1619 project.

Planting evidence and lying in official reports is the biggest threat to police, not protests or antifa

Can we have a rule that if a police officer is caught planting evidence, or falsifying a report of a crime, the officer should be fired and barred from ever being employed by law enforcement again? (If not prosecuted, as both of those things are also crimes). If any of these team-police people actually cared about law enforcement they should understand that credibility is really important. When they make shit up to go after the perceived enemies of police, it makes me wonder if they care at all about law enforcement. But if the police aren't about law enforcement, why do we need them?

Trump wages war against the U.S. economy for the cause of xenophobia

This has got to be my most updated post ever. I have probably updated it an average of once per month over the past two years. It is a handy list to have the next time some Trumpy claims that Trump is only restricting illegal immigration. (And I'm my list is probably not complete. The Trump Administration has been clamping down on legal immigration so much, I am sure I missed something.)

Honestly, this last restriction is a new level of crazy if you give any shit about the U.S. economy. What is the point of preventing foreign executives of multi-national corporations from transferring to the U.S.? Or barring the spouses of those foreigners who do get permission to work here? If I were an executive of a multinational corporation, that seems like a good excuse to close or downgrade the U.S. office. I mean if it is possible to have your entire executive team together in Berlin, but not New York, that New York office is not going to be as useful anymore.

Not that anyone is going to want to come to the United States of Corona anytime soon.

John Bolton is still a piece of shit

Bolton may be right about this. But if so, then why was it malpractice for Democrats not to do impeachment differently? Minds were already made up!

Who Are These People?

Jesus Christ:

A former Atlanta police officer was charged on Wednesday with murder and aggravated assault in the killing last week of a black motorist outside a fast-food restaurant, and prosecutors revealed chilling new details of the late-night encounter, including that the officer kicked the dying man after shooting him twice in the back.

NEW: ATL Police Union spokeman Vince Champion tells me that officers around the city are protesting the charges announced against officers Rolfe and Brosnan. He says they're walking off the job, not responding to calls unless backup is needed, and going silent on the radios.

— Charlie Gile (@CharlieGileNBC) June 18, 2020

As ambivalent as I am about "Defund the Police" as a slogan from a marketing perspective, what the fuck is wrong with the cops who are effectively striking over this? Anyone who thinks it is okay to shoot someone in the back multiple times as they are fleeing and then kick them as they lay dying on the ground should not be a police officer. Any legitimate argument the cops may have against tearing down the police department and starting over from scratch immediately goes out the window when they pull shit like this.

Marketing is important

I think we definitely need to #DefundThePolice but polls showing that most Americans agree with the Democrat's "sweeping law enforcement reforms" but also that most Americans "oppose the defund the police movement" suggest that the movement needs a better slogan.

If you want substantive change you need to take advantage of a moment like now, when the public is really on the BLM protester's side. The fact that a slogan isn't popular shouldn't matter. But it does give the other side an opportunity to distort the terms of the debate and obscure the actual changes being proposed.

Oops he did it again

The RNC is moving its convention (well, technically just part of its convention) to Jacksonville, FL. So now it will take place on the 60th anniversary of this white supremacist event. This comes right after, Trump announced he would give his first big rally since the COVID-19 lockdown in Tulsa, OK, the site of the biggest post-Civil War racist massacre in American history.

Do you think the Trump Administration is doing this on purpose, as a wink to their neo-Nazi followers? (Not that Trump knows anything about history, but maybe his close advisors do) Or is this country's history so filled with racist atrocities, Trump keeps bungling into these by accident?

I suspect its the latter, but I'm open to either possibility.

Has anyone ever had a prenuptial agreement who wasn't a total asshole?

Good for Melania, I guess. But they're still both total assholes.

Also, that would be a post-nup.

ADDING:

Wait a damned minute: it cost up to $140k a day OF TAXPAYER MONEY to provides security for her in NY ($300k when Trump was here), and she spent $675k on flight during that period. We spent tens of MILLIONS for Madame #BeBest’s prenup! So outrageous. https://t.co/SVeLrFStUv

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) June 12, 2020

The cops seem determined to prove the protesters right

So... the police department is admitting its officers committed a crime.

Why aren't the officers being charged? The police are not supposed to be a protection racket. An officer is not allowed to knife someone's tires just because he thinks they are anti-police. They don't get permission to commit whatever criminal act they want just because they have a badge.

The oddest thing about all this are the reactions from the police themselves to the protests. The protesters are marching because the police commit violence against the public (particularly the black public) and officers are not held into account for the criminal actions they commit. And the police's reaction is to commit more crime against the protesters and more impunity?

No one has a blue life

I really think it was a mistake when police started thinking of themselves as some kind of ethnic group.  Being a police officer is a job. That's all it is. I realize that cops work odd hours and so in that sense it can become central to their lives. And I also understand that it a stressful job and stressful jobs can forge a kind of close camaraderie. But there are other stressful jobs with odd hours. No one yells "surgeon lives matter" or hangs a "thin surgical line" flag in front of their house.

Every once in a while someone will tell a lawyer joke in front of me and think I might be offended. I don't give a shit. Being an attorney is my job, it's not central to my identity. I don't feel personally threatened when people make fun of my profession. If someone hates lawyers I don't view that as an attack against my being. Besides, a lot of lawyers are assholes. Like a lot of cops.

When cops started thinking of themselves as a distinctive "blue" ethnic group, it brings out all the chauvinism and ethnographic-nationalism that can be really destructive for a profession that is supposed to be about serving the public. I don't know how the community can address that issue, but I do think in order for there to be real police reform we need to stop all this blue lives shit.