American Politics Thread VI: Can't We All Just Get Along?

[Kowani]

Texas Gov. Greg Abott (R) issues Executive Order ordering state troopers to stop any vehicle suspected of transporting migrants "who pose a risk of carrying COVID-19" and send them back or impound the vehicle

(Image)

Attorney General Merrick Garland has now issued a warning that if this is not rescinded, the Justice Department will pursue legal action

And Texas has now been sued

[Kannap]

I never said that it would be a bad thing just that it’s fucking impossible. Biden has literally ignored a treaty with the Taliban about when troops would be removed from Afghanistan. That’s pretty illegal.

What treaty would that be?

We made an agreement with the Taliban to leave Afghanistan by May 1st of this year and Biden broke that agreement - resulting in the Taliban cancelling negotiations with us in Istanbul.

[Thermodolia]

No. But if your predecessor got a diplomatic deal signed that the US would leave the country by May 1st and you just decide to ignore it than what good is America’s word?

Well, if we do leave, Afghanistan will be under complete Taliban control quicker than a hiccup. I personally don’t mind breaking diplomatic deals when it comes to groups like the Taliban. I care about the millions of Afghans, especially women and girls that would suffer immensely under their regime.

And I care about the american troops we are going to lose in a forever war that we really never should have been to in the first damn place.

Friends I’ve lost over this pointless shit. Shit I’ve had to deal with because of this god forsaken forever war. I’ve had more friends die from suicide than over there. And that number doesn’t fucking stop. I knew three guys who died in Afghanistan, I’ve had over 7 friends kill themselves.

So I really don’t give a rats ass about a nation who doesn’t want us to fucking be there. I care more about the Americans not dying than Afghanistan

[Kannap]

Why would it be damaging if your not above the law after leaving office?

Because presidents do crazy illegal things? Obama literally droned american citizens. He ordered the death of Americans without a trial.

If we set this precedent that opens Obama and Biden to jail time for their actions.

And that’s why it will never happen

And while Obama sits dumb and happy in his Martha's Vineyard McMansion despite his crimes, Daniel Hale just got the book thrown at him for whistleblowing on the illegal drone strike program during the Obama administration.

[Heloin]

But just for a moment imagine Bush in prison. Just imagine that. Also give yourself an ice cream cone in your imagination, your choice. Let's all have a good day in imagination land. Past presidents are behind bars and we all have ice cream.

Hey, that was nice.

We all need a bit of good sometimes, even outside of the Happy Stuff Thread.

[Thermodolia]

Because presidents do crazy illegal things? Obama literally droned american citizens. He ordered the death of Americans without a trial.

If we set this precedent that opens Obama and Biden to jail time for their actions.

And that’s why it will never happen

And while Obama sits dumb and happy in his Martha's Vineyard McMansion despite his crimes, Daniel Hale just got the book thrown at him for whistleblowing on the illegal drone strike program during the Obama administration.

Can’t have the people knowing that their government might murder them without trial

[Gravlen]

I believe I just said why.

I don't think hes going to get off. I think he will go to jail and if he wants to run from prison by all means. It would be very interesting to see how many votes he got when he can't campaign and has a very limited campaign.

Eugene Debs did it why can't Trump?

For what? What crimes do you imagine he could be prosecuted for, exactly?

[The Temple of the Computer]

I don't think hes going to get off. I think he will go to jail and if he wants to run from prison by all means. It would be very interesting to see how many votes he got when he can't campaign and has a very limited campaign.

Eugene Debs did it why can't Trump?

For what? What crimes do you imagine he could be prosecuted for, exactly?

Tax evasion?

[Dresderstan]

Well, if we do leave, Afghanistan will be under complete Taliban control quicker than a hiccup. I personally don’t mind breaking diplomatic deals when it comes to groups like the Taliban. I care about the millions of Afghans, especially women and girls that would suffer immensely under their regime.

And I care about the american troops we are going to lose in a forever war that we really never should have been to in the first damn place.

Friends I’ve lost over this pointless shit. Shit I’ve had to deal with because of this god forsaken forever war. I’ve had more friends die from suicide than over there. And that number doesn’t fucking stop. I knew three guys who died in Afghanistan, I’ve had over 7 friends kill themselves.

So I really don’t give a rats ass about a nation who doesn’t want us to fucking be there. I care more about the Americans not dying than Afghanistan

Completely ignore the fact troops in the military say that we should have never pulled out regardless as all it's done is let the terrorists win and oppress the populace. And completely ignore the fact that they could easily take responsibility for another large scale terrorist attack and then what are we gonna do? We never should have made a deal with terrorists to withdraw, and we never should have announced our withdrawal for the whole world to see, and we never should have abandoned the strategic bases in Bagram and Kandahar.

[Gravlen]

For what? What crimes do you imagine he could be prosecuted for, exactly?

Tax evasion?

Highly unlikely.

The prosecutors would have to prove that Trump knew that statements in connection with his taxes were false, and that he didn't just follow the advice of the people he had hired to prepare his tax documents. Tax evasion is a crime that requires a higher level of proof of specific intent than other crimes. He had to know that whatever he did was illegal, and it's a plausible defence that he just signed whatever his economic advisors put in front of him.

(The well-known "I'm a guy who stares directly at eclipses, the CFO tells me something's okay, I do it" defense.)

[Thermodolia]

And I care about the american troops we are going to lose in a forever war that we really never should have been to in the first damn place.

Friends I’ve lost over this pointless shit. Shit I’ve had to deal with because of this god forsaken forever war. I’ve had more friends die from suicide than over there. And that number doesn’t fucking stop. I knew three guys who died in Afghanistan, I’ve had over 7 friends kill themselves.

So I really don’t give a rats ass about a nation who doesn’t want us to fucking be there. I care more about the Americans not dying than Afghanistan

Completely ignore the fact troops in the military say that we should have never pulled out regardless as all it's done is let the terrorists win and oppress the populace. And completely ignore the fact that they could easily take responsibility for another large scale terrorist attack and then what are we gonna do? We never should have made a deal with terrorists to withdraw, and we never should have announced our withdrawal for the whole world to see, and we never should have abandoned the strategic bases in Bagram and Kandahar.

And do what? Remain in Afghanistan for how much longer? We’ve been there 21 years. It’s time to cut our losses. Same shit happened in Vietnam. We just need to leave and while im not happy about it I’d rather we not stick around and try dying.

[Dresderstan]

Completely ignore the fact troops in the military say that we should have never pulled out regardless as all it's done is let the terrorists win and oppress the populace. And completely ignore the fact that they could easily take responsibility for another large scale terrorist attack and then what are we gonna do? We never should have made a deal with terrorists to withdraw, and we never should have announced our withdrawal for the whole world to see, and we never should have abandoned the strategic bases in Bagram and Kandahar.

And do what? Remain in Afghanistan for how much longer? We’ve been there 21 years. It’s time to cut our losses. Same shit happened in Vietnam. We just need to leave and while im not happy about it I’d rather we not stick around and try dying.

Make it a duty station, we did it with Germany and Korea, we never left, same thing with Kuwait.

[Kowani]

Tax evasion?

Highly unlikely.

The prosecutors would have to prove that Trump knew that statements in connection with his taxes were false, and that he didn't just follow the advice of the people he had hired to prepare his tax documents. Tax evasion is a crime that requires a higher level of proof of specific intent than other crimes. He had to know that whatever he did was illegal, and it's a plausible defence that he just signed whatever his economic advisors put in front of him.

(The well-known "I'm a guy who stares directly at eclipses, the CFO tells me something's okay, I do it" defense.)

it's very convenient how "ignorance is no excuse" disappears the more white-collar the crime gets

[Thermodolia]

And do what? Remain in Afghanistan for how much longer? We’ve been there 21 years. It’s time to cut our losses. Same shit happened in Vietnam. We just need to leave and while im not happy about it I’d rather we not stick around and try dying.

Make it a duty station, we did it with Germany and Korea, we never left, same thing with Kuwait.

Dude we don’t have people wanting to murder us in Germany, Korea, and Kuwait. In Kandahar you had fucking rocket attacks daily or near daily.

It was a fucking war zone still. Afghanistan is less like Germany or Korea and more like Vietnam. Hell I still can’t have certain alarms on my phone because i tense up and go into a near panic attack because of the similarity to the fucking rocket attack alarm.

[Dresderstan]

Make it a duty station, we did it with Germany and Korea, we never left, same thing with Kuwait.

Dude we don’t have people wanting to murder us in Germany, Korea, and Kuwait. In Kandahar you had fucking rocket attacks daily or near daily.

It was a fucking war zone still. Afghanistan is less like Germany or Korea and more like Vietnam. Hell I still can’t have certain alarms on my phone because i tense up and go into a near panic attack because of the similarity to the fucking rocket attack alarm.

And what are you gonna do when a terrorist attack at home is traced back to the Taliban in Afghanistan, nothing?

[Lady Victory]

And do what? Remain in Afghanistan for how much longer? We’ve been there 21 years. It’s time to cut our losses. Same shit happened in Vietnam. We just need to leave and while im not happy about it I’d rather we not stick around and try dying.

Make it a duty station, we did it with Germany and Korea, we never left, same thing with Kuwait.

False equivalency.

Germany, South Korea, and Kuwait were being protected from aggressive neighbors. The Taliban were an insurgency. You can't make a nation with an active insurgency a duty station. What we should have done from the very beginning was refuse to entertain peace talks with the Taliban, pursue their total annihilation, and strong-arm Pakistan to stop giving them a fucking refuge.

But if we'd done that then the war would've ended, and since that's obviously bad for the MIC we couldn't do that.

[Thermodolia]

Dude we don’t have people wanting to murder us in Germany, Korea, and Kuwait. In Kandahar you had fucking rocket attacks daily or near daily.

It was a fucking war zone still. Afghanistan is less like Germany or Korea and more like Vietnam. Hell I still can’t have certain alarms on my phone because i tense up and go into a near panic attack because of the similarity to the fucking rocket attack alarm.

And what are you gonna do when a terrorist attack at home is traced back to the Taliban in Afghanistan, nothing?

Let special forces deal with it. Ya know the guy we should have been using to take out terror cells. That or drone them from the sky.

We don’t need to fucking invade everything

[Dresderstan]

And what are you gonna do when a terrorist attack at home is traced back to the Taliban in Afghanistan, nothing?

Let special forces deal with it. Ya know the guy we should have been using to take out terror cells. That or drone them from the sky.

We don’t need to fucking invade everything

And yet we aren't, guess what special forces are gone, and all we're doing is providing air strikes, while the ANA and Afghan commandos are getting executed and their videos by the Taliban getting sent to Al-Jazeer.

[Thermodolia]

Let special forces deal with it. Ya know the guy we should have been using to take out terror cells. That or drone them from the sky.

We don’t need to fucking invade everything

And yet we aren't, guess what special forces are gone, and all we're doing is providing air strikes, while the ANA and Afghan commandos are getting executed and their videos by the Taliban getting sent to Al-Jazeer.

Then maybe we should use the special forces.

But we shouldn’t be sticking around with the main force with literally zero game plan.

[Gravlen]

Highly unlikely.

The prosecutors would have to prove that Trump knew that statements in connection with his taxes were false, and that he didn't just follow the advice of the people he had hired to prepare his tax documents. Tax evasion is a crime that requires a higher level of proof of specific intent than other crimes. He had to know that whatever he did was illegal, and it's a plausible defence that he just signed whatever his economic advisors put in front of him.

(The well-known "I'm a guy who stares directly at eclipses, the CFO tells me something's okay, I do it" defense.)

it's very convenient how "ignorance is no excuse" disappears the more white-collar the crime gets

Almost as if the game is rigged...

[Fauzjhia]

Make it a duty station, we did it with Germany and Korea, we never left, same thing with Kuwait.

False equivalency.

Germany, South Korea, and Kuwait were being protected from aggressive neighbors. The Taliban were an insurgency. You can't make a nation with an active insurgency a duty station. What we should have done from the very beginning was refuse to entertain peace talks with the Taliban, pursue their total annihilation, and strong-arm Pakistan to stop giving them a fucking refuge.

But if we'd done that then the war would've ended, and since that's obviously bad for the MIC we couldn't do that.

No, we also need to address the incapacity of the state to deliver services to its populations. The Taliban take advantages of that to gain credibility, they offer the service a state should offer, As long as the (taliban hegemony) is not weakened or destroyed, we have no chance to end this war.

[Dresderstan]

And yet we aren't, guess what special forces are gone, and all we're doing is providing air strikes, while the ANA and Afghan commandos are getting executed and their videos by the Taliban getting sent to Al-Jazeer.

Then maybe we should use the special forces.

But we shouldn’t be sticking around with the main force with literally zero game plan.

Tell that to our weak and spineless "commander in chief" who decided to have a full on withdrawal.

[Kowani]

The Election Takeover continues

A letter first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday shows two dozen state senators calling for a performance review of Fulton elections chief Richard Barron using provisions from Senate Bill 202.

Republicans say they are trying to protect Fulton’s voters from the county’s decades of elections mismanagement. Democrats view this effort as a hostile takeover to alter elections results.

Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts wrote a letter to Fulton’s legislative delegation leaders Thursday asking them to hold a hearing “to ascertain the legitimacy of this request.”

“It is my ultimate fear that this request performance review could be occurring for political reasons and that Fulton County’s voters will be the ones who bear the cost,” Pitts wrote.

Gabe Sterling, COO with the Secretary of State’s office, pushed back on that accusation at an Atlanta Press Club event Thursday.

“The reality of it is not the state Legislature can come in and overturn results, and that’s what many people on the left side of the spectrum have said about the law,” Sterling said. “It’s simply not true.”

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Fulton has been “failing” at elections since 1993 and now Georgia has a method to ensure fair elections. The next steps are unclear because this process has never been executed.

SB 202 is one of many pieces of legislation created after the 2020 election that allows legislators more control over elections management, said Jessica Marsden, counsel for Protect Democracy, a non-profit that works to protect elections from partisanship.

“We’re seeing the bill being used to potentially put control over elections into more partisan hands for the first time nationwide,” she said. [...] She said legislators nationwide usually create a law that directly addresses things they didn’t like in that last election. In Kansas, she said, the new law restricts the authority of officials instead of removing them like Georgia’s law. Barron is the target of this latest attack. Raffensperger called for Barron to be fired the day after a segment admonishing him aired on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Barron said he’s concerned Georgia Republicans are taking orders from national TV personalities.

“I don’t think there’s another state in the union that has a State Election Board with the power to turn a non-partisan elections office into a partisan arm of the Secretary of State’s office. And that’s really what’s going on ahead of the primary,” Barron told the AJC on Thursday.

He added: “In our department, we’re all public servants, and no matter what we can’t move on from November 2020.”

Georgia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly passed SB 202 a couple months after the 2020 election cycle ended.

Sen. Jen Jordan, an Democratic attorney who specializes in complex civil litigation, said the law has many legal issues. But that may not matter, she said. “As a general rule, courts are really hesitant to get involved in stuff like this … courts try as much as they can to stay away from political issues,” said Jordan, who heads Fulton’s Senate delegation.

And even if a judge decided to take up the case, Jordan said she wonders whether Republicans will be too far along in the process for any intervention to matter.

But, some say, the letter from the legislators includes a rudimentary misunderstanding that invalidates their effort to oust Barron.

Among its 98 pages, the bill allows the State Election Board could replace a county’s elections superintendent following a performance review/audit/investigation with a temporary superintendent to enjoy full reign counting votes and staffing.

The phrase “superintendent” has many definitions, but, for Fulton, that equates to the county’s board of registration and elections. So that means the law allows the senators to request replacing the board but not Barron, said Marilyn Marks, executive director for the Coalition for Good Governance, which is suing over the law.

“They are trying to circumvent their own law,” she said. “They are likely trying to circumvent addressing the performance of the entire board of elections, which includes two Republicans.”

When asked how a Senate roster full of attorneys could have made that mistake, Marks said: “To go public and make such a public showing of an inappropriate action, it is just irresponsible and should not be tolerated by the citizens. It’s not a slight misstep. There’s no doubt that they had plenty of eyes on that document.”

But that seemingly won’t stop the party, according to multiple statements from GOP legislators.

“It is high time that Fulton County Board of Elections be investigated for their years of elections malpractice,” BJ Van Gundy, the state party’s first vice chairman, wrote in an email. “Republicans are committed to making it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

[Valrifall]

Dude we don’t have people wanting to murder us in Germany, Korea, and Kuwait. In Kandahar you had fucking rocket attacks daily or near daily.

It was a fucking war zone still. Afghanistan is less like Germany or Korea and more like Vietnam. Hell I still can’t have certain alarms on my phone because i tense up and go into a near panic attack because of the similarity to the fucking rocket attack alarm.

And what are you gonna do when a terrorist attack at home is traced back to the Taliban in Afghanistan, nothing?

You're taking it for granted that once the US pulls out, terror from Afghanistan is inevitable. This is the same kind of vague posturing that got us into Afghanistan in the first place and the broader War on Terror, which, turns out, has been bad, actually.

[Gravlen]

Why would that be a bad thing? it would say while you may be above the law while in office you aren't when your out.

I never said that it would be a bad thing just that it’s fucking impossible. Biden has literally ignored a treaty with the Taliban about when troops would be removed from Afghanistan. That’s pretty illegal.

Not a treaty, and there's nothing illegal about violating an agreement with a non-state actor. Besides, there is a question of whether the Taliban has shown sufficient commitment and action on the obligations the deal imposed on them, so it's unclear if Part 1, B, of the agreement should be triggered at this point.