U.S. Electile Dementia paralytica 2024

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by kriesel

I think some Asian figures are missing from the list, such as Mao, Pol Pot, Chiang Kai-Shek.

I watched a series called "Evolution of Evil" recently. One name I missed. François "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti. Mao Zedong (spelling) takes top prize for the number of his own people he killed, or had killed. Estimates are above 100-million. I was not aware Saddam Hussein had killed so many of his own. The tallies of the "Kim" family in N. Korea roll on, it seems.

[LaurV]

Did you put Jesus on the list too? Or fictive characters are not allowed?
More people died for him during the history than for all the other guys combined, few orders of magnitude (crusades, inquisition, even nowadays, the stupidity is still going on).
A lot of blood for a guy who, probably, never existed...
(well, his real existence is debatable, tho, but let's deliberately ignore that, to annoy these guys here ...)

[ScottieMckinley]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Did you put Jesus on the list too? Or fictive characters are not allowed?
More people died for him during the history than for all the other guys combined, few orders of magnitude (crusades, inquisition, even nowadays, the stupidity is still going on).
A lot of blood for a guy who, probably, never existed...
(well, his real existence is debatable, tho, but let's deliberately ignore that, to annoy these guys here ...)

Amen

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Did you put Jesus on the list too? Or fictive characters are not allowed?
More people died for him during the history than for all the other guys combined, few orders of magnitude (crusades, inquisition, even nowadays, the stupidity is still going on).[/COLOR]

Those that use someone's name are not all directed by him. There is enough evidence that he existed as at least an historical figure.

Want to add Mohamed to the list? During his lifetime didn't some of his people do not nice things at his direction?

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

Want to add Mohamed to the list?

Sure, Mohamed, Buddha, and all the other guys which have anything to do with supernatural.
As well as few popes, priests and missionaries. Jehovah witnesses alike. All hypocrites.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not an ignorant in the matter, I come from a Christian family, my parents were somehow religious, like they went to the church few times per year, pray sometimes or made the cross sign. My wife, whom I am married for over 30 years, is the same religious, she prays sometimes in the evening, and she makes a big cross sign in the morning if she goes for a long trip or has something important to do during the day. I never made fun of it, nor told her not to. Many Romanians I know, some of them good friends or relatives, will make a big cross sign and spit in their palms every time they start some hard work. But spitting in your palms and making a cross sign before taking the shotgun and killing the other guy, somehow this doesn't stand very well with me...

I believe that religion is a good thing, if it helps you achieve more, and/or be a better person, and as long as you don't bother other people with your beliefs, and don't try to convince others that your belief is better then theirs, your god is mightier, or you can pee higher then them... Apropos of peeing higher, I let my children chose their paths, trying as much as I could to avoid dragging them in a direction or the other, and they grew into not being religious at all, which somehow makes me happy. When I was young I lived with grandparents who "educated" me in Christianity, by teaching me prayers, reading stories from the bible, etc. There was nothing better to do during long Romanian winter nights in the Carpathian mountains. I almost know the bible by heart, because I used to have a good memory, and I have read it many times. I have also read pieces of things related to other religions, like parts of Quran, Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist texts. But all of them mean nothing to me, beside some nice stories to tell at bedtime. Somehow, the image of an old guy staying somewhere in the heavens and playing with us his dirty games, doesn't fit well with my logic. When I look around me, how many things happen that shouldn't, I think that guy is either mad, or complete idiot.

"I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors / but I think that God got a sick sense of humor..."

You don't need a god to teach you morals, or how to be a good person. Or, if you need one, be my guest, but let me out of it. Some people need a god to tell them what to do. Like Alexander Elder used to say, their little Stalin. Some other people are not really believers, but they are afraid of devil, or hell, or whatever. But most of the religious people are just uneducated in the matter (they don't know better), or are just hypocrites. "I will kill you in the name of the Lord". The lord doesn't give a shit. If he would, he wouldn't want me to kill you, and would kick my ass when I try to. At least, that I would do, if I would be the lord.

And about the devil, if he exists, then I really want to meet him. With my level of beliefs, I will meet him for sure, some day. That time, I will for sure be boiling in my tar barrel there in hell, but I will be so happy, because I will also see some of the people I see daily on TV, internet, and real life (people who do abominable things in their life, but still die happy and rich), boiling around me in their tar barrels... An endless sea of tar barrels, with people boiling inside. What a nice view . Unfortunately, this will never happen, because there is no such thing as heaven and hell. They will never be punished for things they did. It is for us, the society to fix this, not for the god, nor the devil. The god and the devil are just creations of twisted minds. They don't care about you, or me.

"God made me an atheist, who are you to question his wisdom?"

[/end rant]
.

[Dr Sardonicus]

It was not so many centuries ago that the monarchs of Europe ruled by "divine right" - kings and queens were appointed by God, and you did what they said, or else.

And that went for their appointed officials, too. If you disrespected them, you were in trouble.

But in the British colonies of North America, things changed. In 1735, a publisher named John Peter Zenger had been printing unflattering things about New York's colonial governor. He was criminally charged with "libel" (insulting the king) in a case known as Crown v. John Peter Zenger, which see.

Fortunately for Zenger, a skilled lawyer took up his case, got the stacked jury picked by the colonial governor dismissed, and went to trial. The prosecutor told the jury that it didn't matter whether the unflattering things which had been published were true - they were insults to the Crown, and they had to find the defendant Guilty.

The jury thought otherwise, and took about 10 minutes to bring in a verdict of Not Guilty. And, to this day, in US law, truth is generally considered to be a valid defense against a libel suit.

The War of Independence waged by the United States aborning inspired others, notably the French. The French overthrew their monarchy.

But old traditions die hard. In 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts made it a crime to "print, utter, or publish... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about (criticize) the government or public officials such as the President. On October 10, 1798 Congressman Matthew Lyon was convicted of violating the Acts. He had written that President Adams had "an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice." He subsequently became the first (and so far the only AFAIK) member of the US Congress to be re-elected while in prison.

In China, Emperors had the "mandate of Heaven." But around 1850, a religious zealot named Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus, led what became a major rebellion known as the Taiping Rebellion. (There were, of course, other underlying problems fueling the rebellion.) It is generally regarded as the bloodiest rebellion in history. It was ultimately crushed, but at a huge cost.

Nowadays, Thailand is one country with a Lèse-majesté (to do wrong to the monarch) law making it a crime to insult the monarch. On January 19, 2021 a 65-year-old woman was sentenced to 87 years in prison for repeatedly posting things to Facebook which were deemed insulting to the king. The sentence was reduced to 43 and a half years when the defendant admitted her guilt.

Here in the good ol' USA we were treated to something similar by people who didn't want to acknowledge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Some folks were comparing the loser to King David, claiming he had been appointed by God to rule, that what we needed was a military coup followed by rounding up the Democrats and executing them for treason, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And with the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, here we go again...

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Did you put Jesus on the list too?

This immediately brought to mind a line from The DaVinci Code spoken by Ian McKellen. "Ever since there has been one true God, there has been killing in his name."

This goes back over 2,000 years to the time when The Roman Empire was at its height. In the two millennia since, the killing has never stopped.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by storm5510

This immediately brought to mind a line from The DaVinci Code spoken by Ian McKellen. "Ever since there has been one true God, there has been killing in his name."

This goes back over 2,000 years to the time when The Roman Empire was at its height. In the two millennia since, the killing has never stopped.

Long before that.

Witness the Akhenaten heresy / religious reform.

[Dr Sardonicus]

The warrant and property receipt from the FBI search and seizure at Mar-a-Lago have been made public, pursuant to a DOJ motion to unseal them.

Copies of the warrant and receipt had been in the hands of the property owner's legal representatives, who could have made them public at any time, but did not do so. The DOJ checked whether they had any objection to the unsealing, and there was none.

Among the items seized were documents classified as Top Secret - Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). Such information is generally only read by people on a "need to know" basis, and only in a specially protected room. The unauthorized disclosure of such material is deemed to be especially damaging to US security interests.

The property owner claims that (1) as President, he declassified the documents in question, and (2) If only the National Archives or DOJ had asked, he would have turned them over.

He is obviously lying on both counts. There is a legal process for declassifying Top Secret documents, and SCI documents are particularly hard to declassify. There is obviously no record of the declassification process being followed. And the National Archives and DOJ approached the person in possession of the documents and his legal representatives on multiple occasions trying to get the documents returned, including by subpoena, but were rebuffed in a manner that convinced them they were being lied to. That's why the search warrant was sought and obtained.

Meanwhile, adherents to the personality cult of the subject of the warrant have been sending death threats to the federal judge who signed the warrant, and to the FBI. One adherent went, armed to the FBI office in Cincinnati, OH but his firearm set off an alarm, and FBI agents swarmd after him and he fled. State troopers pursued, he fired at them, and the pursuit wound up in a standoff out in the sticks which ended when the suspect raised a gun at the police. Result, "Suicide by cop."

[Prime95]

I am no Trump fan and all the facts have yet to come out.

IMO, the government slaps "Top Secret" on way too many documents. For those that don't know, there is a classification above Top Secret. Trump having possession of run-of-the-mill Top Secret documents is not nearly enough reason for the DOJ to take the unprecedented move of asking for a search warrant on a former President's residence.

I vaguely recall Hillary (or one of her underlings (Weiner?)) was discovered to have classified materials and I believe Hillary was found to have placed classified information in unprotected emails. I would find it surprising if Hilllary, Trump, and for that matter most every other former very high ranking official not to have some classified materials in their possession.

Then there is the Sandy Berger case - smuggling classified materials in his pants. A clear case of knowingly guilty behavior that went virtually nowhere. Clearly the DOJ has historically not aggressively pursued this particular crime.

All I'm saying is that if this is all the DOJ has got I'm underwhelmed. I'll withhold final judgment until all the facts are in.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by Prime95

<snip>
Trump having possession of run-of-the-mill Top Secret documents is not nearly enough reason for the DOJ to take the unprecedented move of asking for a search warrant on a former President's residence.
<snip>

I don't think that's the only reason they got the warrant.

It's pretty clear from what facts are already known that The National Archives and DOJ knew he still had a bunch of classified material after he surrendered 15 boxes of classified stuff he had at Mar-a-Lago.

If the DOJ learns that someone is unlawfully in possession of government documents, they can try to retrieve them through informal requests or by subpoena. This is what they would do if they basically trusted the person in possession of the materials. And if the stuff is returned voluntarily, they generally don't prosecute.

And in this case they did have meetings with the someone, and with his legal representatives, and also issued at least one subpoena, but these were ineffective.

In the present instance, some of the documents were covered by the Presidential Records Act. Some of the documents had been ripped up, and some of the ripped-up documents had been taped back together.

IMO the main reason for getting the warrant was that the DOJ was simply fed up with the person with the documents continuing to play games with them, and resorted to a search warrant as a legal means to retrieve them.

Whether there will be any criminal prosecution based on what the search turned up is more than I can say. However, I will note that "Sensitive Compartmented Information" is definitely not "run-of-the-mill" Top Secret information.


EDIT: Cult followers are chanting the mantra that in executing a search warrant the FBI was "using Gestapo tactics," screaming "Defund the FBI!" like banshees, and threatening political retribution when the Republicans regain control of the House.

Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who is running for Congress, proposed that Florida enact legislation requiring that "any FBI agent conducting law enforcement functions outside the purview of our State should be arrested upon sight."

Apparently he is unfamiliar with clause 2 of Article VI, Constitution of the United States, AKA the "supremacy clause," which says

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.