spaceghoti

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[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 25 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As the article points out, they're determined to bull through anyway. But the effort is doomed to failure. Even if they achieve victory conditions (effectively ending democracy) it won't last. It'll just make the next revolution that much more painful. But their sense of entitlement won't allow them to stop.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So the staff of "Never Back Down" are backing down.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 13 points 2 years ago

Paul Ryan is mostly upset that Trump beat him to it.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago

In buildings. Heat pumps are amazingly efficient, and pumping hot air from inside to outside (or the other way around) is something we've been doing for generations.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one -1 points 2 years ago

That still doesn't make this a black and white situation. Would Israel be able to get away with selling their atrocities to the Israeli people if Hamas weren't dedicated to doing the same to Israel? If the Palestinian government had been willing to accept compromise forty to fifty years ago, would Israel have been able to do what they've done?

The answer, of course, is no. No one's hands are clean. And there's really no easy solution that doesn't violate ethics because we're on the outside looking to force solutions on them. Just like they're doing to each other. If we abandon Israel, then they'll suffer what they've done to the Palestinians, and the Israeli people don't deserve that any more than the Palestinians. You can't tell me you have a better solution because you don't.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So you know exactly what details give you the moral probity to make these confident statements? I'm glad we have authorities like you to give us moral clarity. I had no idea you were in possession of state level secrets.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Genocide is bad. Both Hamas and the Israeli government are guilty. But the Israeli people and the Palestinian people are not their governments. We can't abandon either of them and keep the moral high ground. So how do we accomplish all of those goals and get their governments to accept it.

You can't force your black and white perspective on this no matter how satisfying you might find it.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 12 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Yup. UFOs are definitely a major concern. Certainly more important than fascists taking over our government.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 15 points 2 years ago (7 children)

It would be nice if the world was so easily divided into black and white, but it isn't. Politics is complicated, and the actions of the Israeli government are not the actions or even the will of the Israeli people. Israel deserves to exist, and so does Palestine. Acknowledging the rights of both people doesn't negate condemnation of what either government has done in violation of human rights.

Trying to walk that middle line between their right to exist and disavowing their actions is harder than you think. You think it ought to be easy, except for the people who think differently from you and insist that the opposite solution you want is the only acceptable path.

We don't have the privilege of knowing everything about the situation. Trying to drive from the back seat isn't helpful.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 1 points 2 years ago

These aren't his plans. These are the plans of smarter, more capable men. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation don't go away easily.

[–] spaceghoti@lemmy.one 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

From a fundamentalist standpoint, the vast majority of scientists who ever lived will be going to hell because they don't believe. With an endless supply of heat to provide energy, you better believe they already installed air conditioning.

 

Why this renewed assault? “Obamacare Sucks!!!” declared the former and possibly future president. For those offended by the language, these are Trump’s own words, and I think I owe it to my readers to report what he actually said, not sanitize it. Trump also promised to provide “MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE” without offering any specifics.

So let’s discuss substance here. Does Obamacare, in fact, suck? And can we believe Trump’s promise to offer something much better?

 

Mike Johnson seems to have forgotten he's been elected to public office, not to church leadership. Conflating the two violates our First Amendment right to freedom of conscience.

 

A court-ordered financial auditor has caught Donald Trump quietly moving $40 million from the Trump Organization into a personal bank account—seemingly so the former president could pay his whopping $29 million tax bill.

Trump isn’t supposed to be moving any money around without alerting Barbara S. Jones, a former federal judge in New York tasked with babysitting the Trump Organization for its relentlessly shady business practices. But on Wednesday, she notified a New York state court about some major bank transfers that were never brought to her attention by the Trumps.

 

Sen. Thom Tillis wants you to know that he’s very “reasonable.” That’s the word the North Carolina Republican used with reporters this week while describing immigration reforms that the GOP is demanding from Senate Democrats in exchange for supporting the billions in Ukraine aid that President Biden wants.

But the demands from Tillis and his fellow Republican leading the talks, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, are not reasonable at all — they’re following Donald Trump’s playbook. Under the guise of seeking more “border security,” they’re insisting on provisions that would reduce legal immigration in numerous ways that could even undermine the goal of securing the border.

 

Despite losing a bid to strike from the indictment references to that day’s violence, defense attorneys have made clear their strategy involves distancing the former president from the horde of rioters, whom they describe as “independent actors at the Capitol.” At the same time, special counsel Jack Smith’s team has signaled it will make the case that Trump is responsible for the chaos that unfolded, and point to Trump’s continued support of the Jan. 6 defendants to help establish his criminal intent.

 

Given the current state of partisan polarization, it’s unlikely Biden can get majority job approval next year even with the most fortunate set of circumstances. But the good news for him is that he probably doesn’t have to. Job-approval ratings are crucial indicators in a normal presidential reelection cycle that is basically a referendum on the incumbent’s record. Assuming Trump is the Republican nominee, 2024 will not be a normal reelection cycle for three reasons.

 

Mulvaney outlined how Trump's legal woes could play out in an opinion piece published in The Hill Wednesday morning.

He described an "outlandish" scenario in which President Joe Biden offers Trump a deal if the former president is convicted. Under that agreement, Biden would pardon Trump in exchange for his dropping out of the presidential race. Biden would then end his 2024 campaign to assure Americans that the deal was not done to make his reelection chances easier.

Mulvaney predicted Trump would ultimately accept that offer. While he said the scenario is not likely to happen, he described how the former president might approach such an offer to avoid serving time in prison.

 

It's a tense time on the world stage. The U.S. is playing a supporting role in two foreign wars, Ukraine and Gaza, while simultaneously trying to shift its national security focus to the challenges posed by China.

If there were any questions about the role of foreign policy in the Republican primaries, the answers came following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. At the last debate in Miami, Republicans clashed over their support for Israel.

In a November Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll, 57% of likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers said the Israel-Hamas war is "extremely important" to them as they evaluate candidates.

 

But with all the talk about the Koch Network stepping into the arena on behalf of Nikki Haley, there's been hardly a mention of another big bucks right-wing family coming off of the sidelines for Donald Trump. CNBC reported last week that according to "people familiar with the matter," Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah are considering getting back in the game after laying out since 2018. And they've got $88 million sitting in their private nonprofit, the Mercer Family Foundation, just waiting to be spent.

 

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy to review a ruling that set aside a decision of the SEC that the hedge fund manager George Jarkesy committed fraud when he misrepresented his financial position to investors. Based on that finding, the agency barred Jarkesy and his company from certain parts of the investment business, imposed $300,000 in penalties on him, and required him to disgorge unlawful profits of nearly $685,000. What makes this case so extraordinary is not that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded that the SEC’s decision was unconstitutional, but the substance of the three separate grounds it found for doing so. If the lower court ruling is upheld, it would likely make adjudications by most federal agencies (and not just the SEC) a thing of the past. Here’s why.

The legal arguments are complicated, but the consequences of the 5th Circuit’s ruling, if upheld, would be straightforwardly devastating. First, Jarkesy argues that the SEC’s decision must be vacated because the agency sought civil penalties and disgorgement of unlawful gains in an agency proceeding and not in a federal court, where he would be entitled to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment. The result would be the demise of agency proceedings if any agency―not just the SEC―sought monetary relief except in federal court. Not all agencies have the statutory authority to bring cases in federal court, and if they wanted the right to recover money from a wrongdoer, today’s stalemated Congress would need to act (it won’t). Even agencies that currently have the right to go to court would have to choose between getting full relief in court or settling for an order stopping the unlawful conduct, which they could do in an administrative proceeding. And to the extent that agencies choose the federal court route, those courts would see a significant increase in complex litigation, with no new judges or additional resources.

 

Trump is asking a judge to force the special counsel’s office to turn over records from the intelligence community that he wants to use at trial for the Jan. 6 case, where he faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

What Trump wants includes reports on damage wrought by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and threats to the 2020 election. It’s part of a series of defenses which Trump wants to raise at trial aimed at debunking a core position of Special Counsel Jack Smith: that Trump spread lies about breaches in 2020 election because he was “motivated by a desire to maintain office and undertaken with specific intent and unlawful purpose,” his attorneys wrote in the request.

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