Archive for August, 2023

What Is A “Speaking Indictment”?

August 02, 2023 By: Half Empty Category: Uncategorized

Just a short note on something I’ve been wondering about for 24 hours.

What the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks is a “Speaking Indictment”?

It’s a term that has been applied to Jack Smith’s 45-page (double-spaced) 1/6 indictment by newsies on the cable TV, and a term I’ve never heard of.

So I looked it up on The Google.

Quoting Wikipedia: “…a speaking indictment is an indictment that goes beyond the legally required statement of the elements of the charged offense(s) by including a narrative of the alleged underlying conduct in more detail”.

In other words, a document that is absent of legalese and weaves a story, chronologically mostly, and is eminently readable by lay people like most of us.

So if you’ve been eschewing the perusal of the hereinbefore mentioned document because law stuff is unreadable, worry not. It’s a good read.

Yes, I know most readers here have already downloaded and read the 1/6 indictment, but if you haven’t yet, scroll down to Juanita Jean’s post and grab a copy.

The Problem

August 01, 2023 By: Nick Carraway Category: Uncategorized

Decades of unbalanced coverage and a profound misunderstanding of the job of media has finally come home to roost. As you’ve probably heard by now, Donald Trump has been indicted again. I won’t belabor that point specifically as we have covered this over and over again, That’s a large part of the problem. What we have is an intersection of lack of proportion with a steady diet of misinformation to create what apparently appears to be our collective decent into nihilism.

Those are big words. That’s also part of the problem. Conservative America and conservative media have managed to pull off a dumbing down of society in general which has led to a whole separate universe. So, the House of Representatives continues to go after Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. Hunter Biden has almost certainly taken short cuts in life and traded on his name to get ahead. Of course, that pales in comparison with what the Trump children have done, but that is an example of the problem we will get to. Did Joe Biden use his influence to help his son? Perhaps he did and if he did that’s a bad thing, but we certainly haven’t seen proof of it yet.

Let’s compare that with a president that literally committed treason. Let’s compare that with his children that made money hand over fist from foreign governments while actually working in the White House. Let’s compare that with a president that has now been found liable for rape, indicted for paying off a porn star to keep the story from impacting the election, been indicted for illegally possessing documents in his bathroom, hiding it from the authorities, and apparently showing them off to any Tom, Dick, and Harry that came to see him in his office.

Anyone other than someone like Trump would be standing before a firing squad. This is not hyperbole. This is literally true. We haven’t even gotten to his efforts to subvert the election and end our democracy. We haven’t gotten to him being on voice mail openly asking the Secretary of State in Georgia to find him enough votes to win. He will literally be indicted in four different jurisdictions and will be held civilly liable for defamation in another one.

The problem is perfectly plain. We do not live in a balanced world. There is no “well your guy did some stuff so it is okay for my guy to do stuff.” Even if that were remotely true, there is no comparison between the two things. They want you to believe it. They want you to believe that all politicians are overwhelmingly corrupt. They want you to understand that Biden has committed impeachable offenses. They aren’t quite sure what yet. They can’t prove it and they’ve spent the better part of a year trying, but by God it’s true.

The problem is that it all sounds like a fantastical conspiracy theory. It sounds similar to the yarns that are spun on the right. So, it all becomes political theatre, They say stupid stuff without any facts to back it up, so the seemingly bizarre truth that happened before our very eyes has to be equally nuts. Except it isn’t. We saw it with our very eyes. We heard it plainly with our ears. We aren’t stupid. Except maybe we are. Sometimes some things are so over the top and so up front that it is nearly impossible to believe. Would someone really be that stupid to do something that blatant? Well, the answer is yes.

Finally

August 01, 2023 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized

Jack Smith indicted Trump on 4 charges.  The good news for Trump is that none are insurrection.  The bad news is that they are all serious and provable.  There are also six others (I hope I counted that right), mostly lawyers. John Eastman and Sidney Powell are surely two of them and probably Rudy.  I hope Rudy.

Break out the champagne!

Here ya go.  Click to see the official document.