jakee

Who was that guy? I don't remember working with him. Maybe he brought us coffee.

In the disqualification case they’ve also been arguing that only Congress has the power to decide on eligibility of a candidate when the meet to certify the election. Which lead to a counter argument essentially saying “do you seriously think the framers designed a system where voters would have to choose between candidates without ever knowing if they were eligible for office until after they won?”

And Cheney sitting in a room with a team of aides rewriting intelligence reports until they said what they needed to say. But that doesn’t matter - whether or not it’s true it is the premise of the Trump team’s argument that Bush did commit crimes in order to invade Iraq for no good reason and that it would be a bad thing if the justice system were able to hold him to account for that. Which is mind boggling.

An interesting passage from a BBC article on that - More widely, Mr Sauer also contended that prosecuting a president for his actions in office could paralyse government, particularly the executive branch. He claimed that authorising "the prosecution of a president for his official acts would open a Pandora's Box from which the nation may never recover". He posed the hypotheticals that George W Bush could be prosecuted for "giving false information to Congress" to make the case for the invasion of Iraq, and that Barack Obama could face charges "for allegedly authorising drone strikes targeting US citizens located abroad". While the judges seemed open to the government's arguments, they also expressed concern that their decision could lead to the "Pandora's Box" raised by Mr Trump's attorneys. So let me get this straight, a downside to prosecuting Trump might also mean you have the ability to prosecute a President who deliberately lied to Congress in order to start an unjustified war of aggression that costs thousands of US servicemen and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives? And pretty much everyone agrees it would be a bad thing not to have a guarantee that the next person who tries that also gets away with it?

Indeed, just imagine the self proclaimed independent thinkers who look at the naked crime, corruption and anti-democratic, anti-constitutional actions of Trump, then simply declare that Biden must be just as bad. Truly, it boggles the mind.

And I wonder why she's concerned? According to Trump suspected criminals should be beaten up and mistreated by the authorities. Just another example that everything the Republicans complain about the other side doing is stuff they really want to do themselves.

I think a lot of the malicious pushing of conspiracy theories ties in with a point of view I saw recently about the Russian elections. It was arguing that the point of Putin still holding elections isn’t to trick the Russian people into thinking they still have democracy - it’s actually to beat them down into thinking that pushing for democracy is futile, elections will never work and there’s nothing they can do about it. And it seems to me that’s very much what the mainstream American Right is trying to do as well. Create an atmosphere where no one trusts any election results, so that when they actually succeed in overtly stealing one the majority of the population won’t think they’ve really lost anything because they didn’t think the election was real anyway.

I think a problem there is that a lot of these conpiracies start bleeding together and share a common ground of 'don't trust the MSM'. And once that cumulative effect of so many people from so many angles saying 'don't trust the MSM' starts taking hold in the wider public consciousness it opens the door to so many important and consequential lies. You even see it here where 'normal' right wingers will dismiss out of hand a report from WaPo, NYT or even the BBC because it comes from one of those outlets. And once you assume anything and everything from those outlets is a lie then where the hell does it leave you in understanding anything to do with current affairs?

Not to the NRA it isn’t.

What about the admittedly tiny subset of the population who are other people?

So no one complained about migration while Obama was in office, then?

No one knows what it was you out out there. Are you copying Hungary or not? Are you letting asylum seekers apply in their home countries or do they have to go to Mexico? You might wanna simmer down on the self congratulation, you’re hardly taking a bold and unique stand based on strong principles here. I just did.

Where is yours? Why did you just link to an article and quote part of it to support your position, when you apparently don't actually believe anything it says?

You said refugees would have to apply at the Embassy in their home country. Most people at the southern border are not Mexicans. Are you going to have a list of countries where asylum seekers can apply at the US embassy and a list of countries where they can't? I think I now understand why you were so confused just now. I was talking about what you actually said and you apparently didn't know what you'd said. And? Stop stressing and make it easier.

But also at the moment asylum seekers have to physically get to the US first. Are you happy that anyone, anywhere in the world can find the closest US Embassy, have their asylum claim fairly assessed, and if it is genuine they get to come to the US from there?

Right, because North Korea is locked down to an extent where it’s incredibly difficult for anyone to physically leave. Which according to you is impossible, because there’s no reason for NK to spend so much time, money and effort on locking down the borders. As for trying again, how can I? If the only thing you will accept is a real example of the consequences of your plan then there isn’t one - because your requirement of asylum seekers presenting themselves at an Embassy in their home country doesn’t exist. That’s just the most transparently stupid attempt at a ‘gotcha’ imaginable. But ultimately if you don’t understand that the real situation of nations imprisoning and refusing to release people that other nations are desperately trying to have released actually exists, then you really need to quit talking about politics until you join the rest of us in reality. Asylum seekers are generally not just economic migrants because that alone won’t get them asylum. But ok - if your position is that there is nothing that would prevent genuine asylum seekers trying to escape despotic governments from just walking into an embassy… are you really saying that you want the US to take in many more asylum seekers than it does now?

Because despotic regimes rely on the threat of punishment to keep the populace in line. If someone goes against the government, simply allowing them to leave and no longer be subject to that government is not a desirable outcome. It signals to everyone in the country that they too can go against the government and be absolutely fine. Do you think Kim Jong Un would be ok with any North Korean citizens turning up at the UK embassy and attempting to escape to Europe? This is honestly the most staggering level of cluelessness you’ve displayed yet.

What is there to worry about? Oil will last forever and aquifers will last forever. It’s so simple!

They get murdered / disappeared / imprisoned for life by the government they want to escape from. When I said it was complicated I was being facetious. I didn’t think it was actually possible that you wouldn’t understand.

Now stay with me here, because this is going to be an extremely complex scenario that may stretch the limits of your understanding - but what if the dangerous government of said home country has agents identifying citizens who go to the US embassy?

If you suggested copying the Third Reich’s border policy I sure as hell would. And again, your point was about how Hungary manages to do things - the answer to which is authoritarian, anti-democratic government.

I think you just did.

If you don’t understand that how Hungary manages to do something inevitably comes back to Orban then I have no idea why you even bother talking about politics at all. When the question is how does Hungary manage to do X - well, Orban controls the government, Orban controls the press and Orban controls the courts. So how else does anything happen?

I see. It’s kinda odd that you phrased it in a way that implied parity when you actually meant that there is evidence of an incredibly small scale of wrongdoing from Biden compared to Trump. Also odd that you contrasted calls for jail time for Trump and excuses for Biden even though you actually meant there was no evidence of wrongdoing from Biden of the sort that has lead people to call for jail time for Trump.

Hungary is ruled by a proto-dictator leading his country further and further down the Vladimir Putin model of government. Using them as an example of how to do anything right now is about as MAGA as it gets. (Seriously, the US right’s idolisation of Orban couldn’t be a bigger warning sign if it was literally written in the sky with fireworks.)