A very sad day.
He overcame incredible obstacles during his lifetime.
He was a stalwart defender of our Constitution.

He will be missed. 😞

@dj2becker said
For me it’s a no brainer. What are the risks if any of putting your trust in God? People will always let you down, yet we still trust them. We even trust people that we have never seen or met sometimes. What do you have to loose by putting your faith in Jesus rather than in yourself and other people? This question is aimed specifically at non believers.

Seatbelts, shoelaces, knots, pent-up frustration, ...

Oh. You meant "lose".

Lots of things.

Years of wasted effort following a spiritual path that did not work for me.
Looking ridiculous in front of people trying to speak to a make-believe person, or speaking in a made-up language as if it were real. [lucky even christian me was careful not to do this around that many people]
All the money I gave as offerings [at least, the dollars that weren't spent on helping people].
Also, I think you know very well that most people don't have 100% faith in anyone, even themselves, and you're asking them to have 100% faith in Jesus. Having 100% faith in anything is suspect on the face of it. There should always be room for a little doubt. It's healthy.

@Anderssen
karma is merely a teacher
what have you learned this day?

This is an actual letter sent by the President of the United States to a foreign leader:


Let's work out a good deal! You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of
people. and 1 don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy - and I will. I've
already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Bronson.

I have worked hard to solve some of your problems. Don't let the world down. You can make a
great deal. General Mazloum is willing to negotiate with you and he is willing to make
concessions that they would never have made in the past. I am confidentially enclosing a copy
of his letter to me, just received.

History will look, upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look
upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a
fool!

I will call you later.

Sincerely,

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics/trump-erdogan-letter/index.html

No word whether the original was written in crayon or finger paint.

Where to have it?
After thoughtful debate : one of Trump's golf courses.

The man is shameless.

@hand-of-hecate said
I was recently in Mexico on business.

Selling meth?

@wolfgang59 said
Where to have it?
After thoughtful debate : one of Trump's golf courses.

The man is shameless.

I remember all the dancing on the head of a pin the trumpanzees around here did a few weeks ago to try and explain why the Scotland resort brouhaha doesn't amount to a violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause. Now I await with great anticipation the eleven-dimensional-chess explanation for why the Mango Messiah's decision to have the next G7 summit at one of his own resorts in Florida is "okay."

@metal-brain said
That is BS. Your statement is contradictory. A law has to be violated to impeach. You are lying.

"The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Seriously, the fact that you are incredibly ignorant about these matters hardly justifies you making spurious claims that I am "lying" when I simply repeat the overwhelming consensus of legal scholars.

Here are a bunch of "liars" discussing the meaning of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors:

The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the context of impeachments has an ancient English history, first turning up in the impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk in 1388.861 Treason is defined in the Constitution.862 Bribery is not, but it had a clear common law meaning and is now well covered by statute.863 “High crimes and misdemeanors,” however, is an undefined and indefinite phrase, which, in England, had comprehended conduct not constituting indictable offenses.864 Use of the word “other” to link “high crimes and misdemeanors” with “treason” and “bribery” is arguably indicative of the types and seriousness of conduct encompassed by “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Similarly, the word “high” apparently carried with it a restrictive meaning.865

Debate prior to adoption of the phrase866 and comments thereafter in the ratifying conventions867 were to the effect that the President (all the debate was in terms of the President) should be removable by impeachment for commissions or omissions in office which were not criminally cognizable. And in the First Congress’s “removal” debate, Madison maintained that the wanton dismissal of meritorious officers would be an act of maladministration which would render the President subject to impeachment.868 Other comments, especially in the ratifying conventions, tend toward a limitation of the term to criminal, perhaps gross criminal, behavior.869 The scope of the power has been the subject of continuing debate.870

https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-2/50-impeachable-offenses.html

Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation explained it for CBN News. "It is a little bit of an odd phrase, and those words might mean something to people today - they might hear the word misdemeanor and think that it's a minor, little offense. But it's a phrase that's been around in the law both here and in England for a few hundred years actually."

"It identifies a category, a very narrow category of serious misconduct by a public official. Not necessarily criminal, but in a sense it's an offense against the public trust, it's an offense against the political system, it's kind of a betrayal of the people in such a way that that official ought to be removed now."

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2019/september/how-impeachment-works-what-does-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors-even-mean

Generally, debate over the phrase high crimes and misdemeanors has split into two camps. The minority view is held by critics who undertake a literal reading of the Constitution. They maintain that high crimes means what it says—criminal activity—and argue that the Framers wanted only criminal activities to be the basis for impeachment. The generally accepted viewpoint is much broader. It defines high crimes and misdemeanors as any serious abuse of power—including both legal and illegal activities. Supporters of this reading believe that because impeachment is a public inquiry, first and fore-most, it is appropriate to read the phrase broadly in order to provide the most thorough inquiry possible. Thus, a civil officer may face impeachment for misconduct, violations of oath of office, serious incompetence, or, in the case of judges, activities that undermine public confidence or damage the integrity of the judiciary.

https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/High+Crimes+and+Misdemeanors

The convention adopted “high crimes and misdemeanors” with little discussion. Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors” as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.

https://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.html

In addition, there are number of major scholarly works on impeachment most of which I have read. A discussion of Charles Black, Jr.,’s Impeachment: A Handbook, a highly influential work written in 1974 states:

"Black’s point is that given the structure of the impeachment provision—providing that the president shall be impeached for “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors”—the last category must refer to the same “kind” of offenses as “treason” and “bribery.” He interprets this to mean that the offenses must (1) be “extremely serious,” (2) “in some way corrupt or subvert the political and governmental process,” and (3) be “plainly wrong in themselves to a person of honor, or to a good citizen, regardless of words on the statute books.”

Note what Black does not include here—any suggestion that “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” must be, like treason and bribery, crimes. Instead he devotes significant energy to arguing the opposite. An impeachable offense need not be a crime—and a crime need not constitute an impeachable offense.

This first point, that "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" is not limited to indictable offenses, does not seem to be well understood by the public today, though it is the accepted view among key scholars. Raoul Berger, Cass Sunstein, Bob Barr, Michael Gerhardt, Richard Posner, and Ronald Rotunda (to name just a few) have all deployed a range of arguments to support the basic point. On this narrow issue, history alone seems to settle the matter. Pointing to key English illustrations, such as the impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk in 1386, Berger explains that that "[i]mpeachment itself was conceived because the objects of impeachment, for one reason or another, were beyond the reach of ordinary criminal redress" (p. 62). In fact, the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" was used in those proceedings at a time when misdemeanors were not "crimes" at all and comprised only torts and private wrongs."

https://www.lawfareblog.com/impeach-president-applying-authoritative-guide-charles-black

I will accept your gracious apology.

I'm sure I could kick you in the nuts and no one would care.

The Donald caves in a petulant, childish tweet:

"Based on both Media & Democrat Crazed and Irrational Hostility, we will no longer consider Trump National Doral, Miami, as the Host Site for the G-7 in 2020," he tweeted.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/19/trump-says-his-doral-resort-will-no-longer-host-g7-summit-000292



😢 😢 😢

Give the poor baby a binky since obeying the Constitution hurts his widdle feelings.

@anderssen said
I'll take a young female slave, preferably untouched.
Cost is not an issue, just have your people contact my people 😉

You’ll take what you get and you’ll like it.

@Phranny
And the STUPID Republicans continue to keep kissing Trump's ugly ass. THEY must want the dissolving of the US also, just as bad as Putin.

@sonhouse said
@Gambiteer
As far as I know there are no grandmasters or IM's here. The ones who claimed to be such proved to be using engines. And most of page one are ALL users. On page one of the tables, there is NOBODY under 2300 there. Statistically impossible.

I know that there is one GM here, and find it perfectly reasonable to think that there are a lot of masters playing online -- why shouldn't they? They are by definition the most skillful players around, and it takes passion and a love for the game to play at that level -- why shouldn't they enjoy playing online as much or even more than the rest of us? The masters that I know can't get enough chess, they're always ready for "just one more game". And when they play online, aren't they allowed to play with all the skill and ability they have?

As for the first page of the tables, why should it be statistically impossible for less than 0.37% of our active players to be rated over 2300, which really isn't even a very high rating, assuming some approximate equivalence to USCF ratings? That percentage is a shade less than 4 players in a thousand, and if we gathered 1000 players for a tournament here in my part of the US, there could easily be 10 times that many such players, in addition to the lesser masters.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
You don't deserve to listen to the Beetles.

Listening to beetles gets boring after a while, it's mostly just scratching noises, although some big ones make buzzing noises when they fly. The Beatles are far more interesting.