Nicker on 3/12/2024 at 05:08
If you donated ANYTHING to the GOP for the 2024 election, even in the name of both-sides-ism, you should get fucking roasted.
But yeah, where the fuck is Tesla?
PigLick on 3/12/2024 at 13:23
[video=youtube;kHwpS0LakeU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHwpS0LakeU&list=RDkHwpS0LakeU&index=1[/video]
demagogue on 3/12/2024 at 14:49
Welp, the new FBI director appointee has openly said he wants to start punishing journalists and internal enemies of the state, by which they always mean political opposition, activists, NGO staff, lawyers, basically any one that openly criticizes the regime, and he wondered aloud whether it'd be by criminal or civil means we don't know yet, but they always mean arbitrary arrest and detention.
Don't forget that the plan for the mass detention camps isn't only to hold up to 20 million "illegals" pending their deportation (once reality kicks in and the budget for it becomes clear, they always mean indefinite detention and not actual deportation beyond a symbolic number, and you have to put "illegal" in quote marks because it's not like there's going to be judicial review or a process to look at the evidence), but also US citizens that get mistakenly caught up in the round up, homeless people, and mentally ill people, the definition of which they'll extend to trans people, and possibly gay people, drug users, and basically any "abnormal" group they want, and again with the critics of the regime once the pretext is done with.
I'm in the kind of job that would get rounded up, so if they do come after me when I'm in the US, I have one message for you all:
Inline Image:
https://i.ibb.co/FsV6nRd/f3535d59-b258-40f0-8014-a4c4927f8bb5-text.gifheywood on 3/12/2024 at 16:52
Some of these Trump appointees are going to be in over their heads. Given how he promoted QAnon, I doubt Patel really knows what the FBI does, let alone how it works. He may want to be like J Edgar Hoover in the 50s and 60s, but Hoover literally built the FBI. He hired everybody under him and ran it for 20 years before the COINTELPRO stuff.
I think a lot of people's expectations for change are unrealistic. The President is an executive, not a magician. He can't just turn a Greyhound bus into a sports car because he wants one. Government is harder than that.
Starker on 3/12/2024 at 17:34
So, Brandon will pardon his son, apparently. Very disappointing decision and a blemish on what's probably one of the more impressive presidencies in modern US history (not that it's a high bar).
Whatever you may think of the charges or the investigations, at the end of the day lying on a gun form is a crime and given the gun violence epidemic in the US, gun owners should be held under increased scrutiny and not only if they are celebrities on Fox News.
demagogue on 3/12/2024 at 17:42
I would have said that if Harris had won, it would have been awful for that pardon to happen, since it undermines justice for Trump and company. The prosecution was somewhat politically performative, but even then a court decision should be respected to maintain respect for the judicary. I think the issue now is that Hunter is at a real risk of abuse and torture while in detention, and that's what the discussion should be centered around, the measures moving the US towards a police state, the heart of which has always been arbitrary detention and abuse of the regime's critics and enemies.
There's no issue about tempering Trump's abuses anymore, and respect for the judiciary is of course dead to these people. (We don't even have to get into the cretins and traitors that Trump is pardoning, including all of the Jan 6. insurrectionists.) And I agree that lying on a gun form is a crime that deserves an appropriate criminal sanction; but the risk to Hunter is so far beyond that that it's kind of amazing that that's even part of the discussion. These aren't normal times; the criminal and judicial systems are getting ready to be weaponized; but I suppose we have to wait several weeks for that to sink in or see if and how it plays out.
Edit: The stakes on both sides matter to the evaluation. So I think if it's a discretionary prosecution that's greatly more prosecutorial than average, as in 9 of 10 prosecutors wouldn't pursue it (with indications of political motivation) on one side vs. a legitimate or credibly justified fear of torture or abuses in detention on the other side, a pardon is more reasonable for that, with those stakes, than if it had been something any prosecutor would have brought objectively and there's no fear of near-future abuses, where it's less reasonable. The details of this case matter to the evaluation over the general case. (Trump's pardons are routinely inexcusably awful, but that's another issue.)
DuatDweller on 3/12/2024 at 17:47
Can't be any worse than McCarthy I guess.
heywood on 3/12/2024 at 18:35
Quote Posted by demagogue
I would have said that if Harris had won, it would have been awful for that pardon to happen, since it undermines justice for Trump and company. The prosecution was somewhat politically performative, but even then a court decision should be respected to maintain respect for the judicary. I think the issue now is that Hunter is at a real risk of abuse and torture while in detention, and that's what the discussion should be centered around, the measures moving the US towards a police state, the heart of which has always been arbitrary detention and abuse of the regime's critics and enemies.
There's no issue about tempering Trump's abuses anymore, and respect for the judiciary is of course dead to these people. (We don't even have to get into the cretins and traitors that Trump is pardoning, including all of the Jan 6. insurrectionists.) And I agree that lying on a gun form is a crime that deserves an appropriate criminal sanction; but the risk to Hunter is so far beyond that that it's kind of amazing that that's even part of the discussion. These aren't normal times; the criminal and judicial systems are getting ready to be weaponized; but I suppose we have to wait several weeks for that to sink in or see if and how it plays out.
Edit: The stakes on both sides matter to the evaluation. So I think if it's a discretionary prosecution that's greatly more prosecutorial than average, as in 9 of 10 prosecutors wouldn't pursue it (with indications of political motivation) on one side vs. a legitimate or credibly justified fear of torture or abuses in detention on the other side, a pardon is more reasonable for that, with those stakes, than if it had been something any prosecutor would have brought objectively and there's no fear of near-future abuses, where it's less reasonable. The details of this case matter to the evaluation over the general case. (Trump's pardons are routinely inexcusably awful, but that's another issue.)
How is Hunter Biden at risk of abuse and torture? I'm not OK with looking the other way. Just because we elected a felon doesn't mean the law doesn't matter anymore.
demagogue on 3/12/2024 at 19:18
For sure it's the jobs of the courts to prevent abuses in detention or punish them if they happen.
Since I don't expect a threat of impeachment is in the cards (i.e., that the legislature will have any real check on Trump), and Trump won't feel personally accountable since he feels he has total immunity by the Supreme Court, it's really only the judiciary that holds the line now, and I really hope it holds the line. I've researched how other countries try to attack the power and legitimacy of the courts, and you can read hints that they have plans for that.
I don't right now think anything is inevitable, but I can read in the transition plan they are talking about building mass detention camps outside judicial review that will detain groups beyond "illegals" (homeless, mentally ill, trans), and because my day job is researching other states that have built camps like that for basically the same reason (undocumented migrants or the like, cf. Rohingya, Ugyhurs...), over time, once you have those kinds of camps in place, they start detaining journalists, critics, and political enemies, and once that happens you get torture like the sun rises in the morning, every case in history down the list, black site = torture.
I think it's a justified risk in a situation where Biden can't wait until after Trump's admin starts to see how their motivation to go after journalists, critics, and political enemies will play out because then it's too late. I think honestly, looking at some of the comments coming e.g. from Biden's press person, Biden has a concern for some nebulous abuse his son might be at risk of in the future... E.g., they are worried he'll be targeted with further arbitrary prosecutions (the pardon wasn't just about the gun charge but any potential future prosecution), not certain that the abuse has to be torture (that's something I'm worried about, but I research China in my day job, so I'll grant I have a heightened concern about it), but some kind of abuse. I think the risk of just that is sufficiently justified even now and enough for this argument, anyway for the purposes of this discussion I think it makes this within the reasonable prerogative of a president to use his pardon power.
In the big scheme of things, I'm worried about much bigger fish than Hunter Biden's case by itself, and honestly it's kind of an unhelpful distraction from the bigger fish. So in that sense I didn't think it was that welcome. But I don't know if there ever would be any good time to do it, and I think only that it's within Biden's prerogative and there's some risk there. But I'd rather we pay attention to the appointments & Project 2025 plans in its details, like on detentions, surveillance, free speech, the agency & military purges (which is also a giant red flag of abuses coming), etc. It just seems like they're a lot more organized and motivated in this admin compared to Trump's first term, and we have these things in writing if you look for them.
lowenz on 3/12/2024 at 19:51
Quote Posted by demagogue
It just seems like they're a lot more organized and motivated in this admin compared to Trump's first term, and we have these things in writing if you look for them.
This is bad.....but military purges - if you mean purges inside the army/navy/etc. - are hard.....without a war giving some nice excuses to persecute "incompetent" staff.
