Politics And Current Events

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

though I’ll admit that the nuances of citizenship law and her now being “stateless” is not something in that familiar with

[tifosi77]

So you would agree that Trump could not become a tyrannical dictator, because there would be doubt and unease in those who would have to carry out the tyrant's orders, and further soldiers would ignore Trump's orders to eliminate "undesirables"?

Didn't get a chance to reply last night: I don't think the country is susceptible to Trump the dictator being installed. Realistically you've only got about 15-20% that worship him as a deity, and that's not going to cut it with a population as high as the eastern seaboard has I feel (also, the bulk of his political support isn't local to DC, so that 15-20% is probably even lower locally). So no, Trump is not the next Hitler.

Now, what would have happened if he'd gotten his way on 1/6 is anybody's guess. Do I think he succeeds in maintaining power through a whole term? I don't think so. Is there a non-zero amount of bloodshed? Likely. Do I think that the ensuing political chaos does serious damage to the country? Absolutely. For the most part investors put their money here because that level of chaos isn't present, they hate uncertainty.

But then again, there's a fair number of people that would welcome complete chaos at the federal level because they hate what the Fedgov has matured into, isn't there?

If you're going to go that route with an analogy, Hitler and the NSDAP came to power in the 1930s with lower electoral/public support than the current Trump GOP enjoys. Public support is borderline incidental in the context of tyrannical rise. The 'how many' aspect is more of a critical mass kind of thing; the answer just has to be 'enough'. And 'enough' isn't a function of the number of people that view a potential dictator as a deity, enough is a function of the number of people who them as an answer. And that's a much lower barrier to entry. We talk about it a lot here.... the 'deal breaker' quotient. All of the awfulness Trump presented wasn't a deal breaker to enough people because they saw personal benefit in his presidency. "Kids in cages, yeah, but my tax bill was lower this year, so............." How many is not as important as who. (See yesterday's discussion about support in the military)

Keeping with the analogy, despite all the available evidence, I don't necessarily think the majority of people who initially voted to give the reins of power to the NSDAP did so out of a desire to exterminate Jews. They did so because they saw them as the answer to their personal economic malady; the Jew stuff was just sort of unfortunate rhetorical baggage at the start. Flash forward eight years, and those folks who just wanted to pay less than 1,500,000RM for a loaf of bread were now maintaining ledgers at the Arbeitslager outside of town for the DAW. Not necessarily what they signed up for initially, but it wasn't a deal breaker.

In a different context, it is believed that the American Revolution never broached majority support in the States, and all through the war most American businesses only accepted British money in exchange for goods and services. And yet.

[count2infinity]

Got caught up in the Google Gemini wormhole today. It's pretty GD entertaining

I didn't know this was a thing... very interesting.

[MR25]

[nocera]

Good thing she didn’t curse.

[tifosi77]

Russia arrests L.A. woman for treason after she gave $50 to Ukraine, employer says

Ksenia Karelina left Los Angeles around the New Year on a flight to Moscow via Istanbul. She was excited to see her younger sister, parents and grandmother in Yekaterinburg, the city east of the Ural Mountains in Russia that she departed more than a decade ago to start a new life in America.

Now the 33-year-old spa aesthetician and amateur ballerina, a dual citizen of Russia and the United States, is behind bars in Russia on treason charges, with loved ones fearing for her fate and U.S. officials warning that the country has become too dangerous for any American to remain.

Word of her arrest came from the main Russian security agency, and the treason charges stemmed from an apparent donation to a New York-based Ukrainian charity that aids Ukraine’s military, which for nearly two years has been fighting off Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The FSB said in a statement that she was accused of “proactively collecting funds in the interests of one of the Ukrainian organizations, which were subsequently used to purchase tactical medicine items, equipment, weapons and ammunition by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

The Russian lawyers group known as Perviy Otdel, or First Department, said she was accused of sending a donation of just over $50 to the group Razom for Ukraine, or Together for Ukraine. It pointed out that such donations could be tracked by bank records that could easily be recovered from a person’s phone during a border crossing or other checks by authorities.

She is facing 20 years in prison.

But my god, have you seen the coin-op shopping carts!

[MR25]

Isn't that what Carlson and Trump's gang want to accomplish? Jailing dissidents/whatever they deem to be political opponents?

[count2infinity]

Yeah, but there are people in this thread that wish people get hit by a bus or shot, so that's pretty much the same thing. All things are equal.

[CBear3]

Also, as an FYI:
Two adults were charged with murder in the KC Parade Shooting. Stemmed from a watchu looking at disagreement, possibly over one's sister. It appears 23 year old Mays didn't appreciate the attention and confronted another group. At that point the group backed up, removed their backpacks and said they were going to get him. He then claims he feared for his life and pulled out a handgun and picked a random target to pursue in the other group. He admits to firing first out of fear. The other group then returned fire, including Dominic Miller an 18 year old. The ballistics match between the handgun he apparently had in his possession and what was found in the victim's autopsy.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kansas-cit ... ed-murder/

Seems clear at this point that the 23 year old is trying to claim he's protected by stand your ground laws, and the 18 year old who's bullet killed the victim might claim the same. Basically both defendants will claim their only crime was having shitty aim.

The 23 yo had just finished 2 years of probation for flashing a handgun after a dispute during a basketball game at a local rec center. His weapon was a handgun reported stolen previously.

[Pavel Bure]

Also, as an FYI:
Two adults were charged with murder in the KC Parade Shooting. Stemmed from a watchu looking at disagreement, possibly over one's sister. It appears 23 year old Mays didn't appreciate the attention and confronted another group. At that point the group backed up, removed their backpacks and said they were going to get him. He then claims he feared for his life and pulled out a handgun and picked a random target to pursue in the other group. He admits to firing first out of fear. The other group then returned fire, including Dominic Miller an 18 year old. The ballistics match between the handgun he apparently had in his possession and what was found in the victim's autopsy.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kansas-cit ... ed-murder/

Seems clear at this point that the 23 year old is trying to claim he's protected by stand your ground laws, and the 18 year old who's bullet killed the victim might claim the same. Basically both defendants will claim their only crime was having shitty aim.

The 23 yo had just finished 2 years of probation for flashing a handgun after a dispute during a basketball game at a local rec center. His weapon was a handgun reported stolen previously.

Hopefully prosecutors don’t use the pseudoscience of ballistics matches to make their case. Both of these idiots need to be in jail.

[tifosi77]

Gotta love it when both parties in a dispute are the good guys with a gun.

[DigitalGypsy66]

Getting 2-3 desperate Nikki Haley text messages a day for two weeks. Fortunately, my phone blocks them... But yikes. Sad, she can't win her home state.

[NTP66]

Sad!

[NTP66]

Gonna be humorous to watch her endorse pissbaby after all of the talk from her about him being unfit to be president, etc.

[shafnutz05]

Gonna be humorous to watch her endorse pissbaby after all of the talk from her about him being unfit to be president, etc.

It's definitely coming. She will bend the knee.

[Kaiser]

Slightly smarter campaign than desantis.

[Kaiser]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/military-t ... -military/

What about second balloon?

The U.S. is tracking a small, high-altitude balloon that is drifting across the country but poses no threat to national security, U.S. officials and the military said Friday.

CBS News first reported that the military was tracking the balloon as it traversed the Western U.S. earlier in the day. NORAD, the military command responsible for air defense over the U.S. and Canada, later confirmed it had detected the object and said it was floating between 43,000 and 45,000 feet. Its presence prompted enough concern that the command sent aircraft to investigate.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

I know we all thought that the last balloon was a spy device by the Chinese or something, but from a technical perspective what advantage does a slow, wind-guided balloon over a satellite?

[shafnutz05]

I know we all thought that the last balloon was a spy device by the Chinese or something, but from a technical perspective what advantage does a slow, wind-guided balloon over a satellite?

Fewer carbon emissions?

[tifosi77]

Balloons are easier to loiter over one place for a longer period of time; they are by definition much closer to the ground they are surveilling, making it technically easier to obtain high-quality imagery and signals intel; they are fantastically less expensive to produce, deploy, and operate....

But........................................................ as compared to satellites they are much more easy to shoot down, both technically and from a legal justification perspective.

[AuthorTony]

Gonna be humorous to watch her endorse pissbaby after all of the talk from her about him being unfit to be president, etc.

It's definitely coming. She will bend the knee.

I'm sure she knows she can't win. I think she's playing the odds that Trump will somehow be disqualified and she'll get the nomination by default. I really hope she sticks around until Super Tuesday, if for no other reason than to annoy Trump.

[faftorial]

Tim Scott is a disgrace.

Hopefully she won't capitulate to him like he did.

[MrKennethTKangaroo]

I actually got sick to my stomach reading about Tim Scott earlier today. No backbone on that guy

[tifosi77]

Gonna be humorous to watch her endorse pissbaby after all of the talk from her about him being unfit to be president, etc.

It's definitely coming. She will bend the knee.

I'm sure she knows she can't win. I think she's playing the odds that Trump will somehow be disqualified and she'll get the nomination by default. I really hope she sticks around until Super Tuesday, if for no other reason than to annoy Trump.

There's no other discernible strategy imo. Her clock is the courtroom, not primary ballots. The feeling/belief is a lot of Trump's support will go away if he's convicted of anything, and she wants to be there come convention time like "I am literally the only other candidate with any delegates".

Trump's polling went up after his first indictment, so I don't know how much I believe that he has enough frangible support based on being convicted that you can hinge a political campaign on it, but okay.

[Troy Loney]

Tim Scott is a disgrace.

Hopefully she won't capitulate to him like he did.

He’s a big time industry stooge. He’s probably working to get in to the administration and make sure their interests are managed.