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Merged 2024 Election Thread

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Right, he also said he would encourage our enemies to invade NATO members that do not do his bidding.

I see where you're trying to take this. I wonder if you have considered that as a businessman Trump expects all parties to an agreement to abide by that agreement? Typically in business if one does not abide by the terms of an agreement, it becomes null and void.

It's not a difficult concept to understand. One party agrees to hold up to their side of the agreement as long as the other party does the same. Is anyone in violation of their NATO agreements?
 
I see where you're trying to take this. I wonder if you have considered that as a businessman Trump expects all parties to an agreement to abide by that agreement? Typically in business if one does not abide by the terms of an agreement, it becomes null and void.

It's not a difficult concept to understand. One party agrees to hold up to their side of the agreement as long as the other party does the same. Is anyone in violation of their NATO agreements?

Haha... good one.
 
I see where you're trying to take this. I wonder if you have considered that as a businessman Trump expects all parties to an agreement to abide by that agreement? Typically in business if one does not abide by the terms of an agreement, it becomes null and void.

It's not a difficult concept to understand. One party agrees to hold up to their side of the agreement as long as the other party does the same. Is anyone in violation of their NATO agreements?

NATO members have never, ever been required to spend 3% of their national budget on defense, as a condition of NATO membership. Trump simply made it up
 
I see where you're trying to take this. I wonder if you have considered that as a businessman Trump expects all parties to an agreement to abide by that agreement? Typically in business if one does not abide by the terms of an agreement, it becomes null and void.

It's not a difficult concept to understand. One party agrees to hold up to their side of the agreement as long as the other party does the same. Is anyone in violation of their NATO agreements?

No, literally none of the members are in violation of any NATO agreements, least of all on spending adversary goals, as they are not a rule but a guild-line.

Trump, like you, not only doesn't understand business very well, he doesn't understand NATO in the least. He is willfully ignorant about how it operates as this isn't the first time he's made that exact error. The punditry spinning this as a reasonable ask from Trump are lying and doing so badly. Generally speaking, the lie should not make the person telling it seem more incompetent than just being mistaken.

EDIT: Ninja'ed
 
Very good news then if Trump underperformed his polling and Biden exceeded his.
The article specified that the miss came from the difficulty of finding "moderate" Republicans to answer a survey about Republican versus Republican. Surveys for the general election include both parties & all levels of moderateness or extremeness for a question of Republican versus Democrat. Historically, Republican voters have long been more reliable about showing up to vote for their party against the other party, regardless of who the nominee is or what happened in the primaries. For the general election to go worse for Tump than it looks like it will would require an unprecedented shift in Republican voting. The evidence (as opposed to just wishcasting) that such a shift is coming is... sparse. But there is a little bit. Surveys did show the Trump/Haley balance shifting Haley's way with time before Super Tuesday. If there were more time, that trend could have even put her in the lead eventually. So Trump's support against another Republican was declining. But we still need to see that decline generalize enough & go far enough to apply against the Democrat, which an almost completely unrelated thing. So far, that's been going the opposite way lately. So the latter trend would need to hitch a ride on the former trend to start getting turned around.
 
Let's deal with that bridge when/if we come to it.

If President Trump clearly commits undemocratic, impeachable offenses that TRULY endanger our democracy and freedom, and partisans in the Senate refuse to convict him cuz they are fellow Nazis, then we will have some tough choices to make.

Personally I'd rather secede from the Union than stage a violent coup.

We already have come to that bridge! Twice!

The first time when Trump held up US military aid to Ukraine unless they helped him create fake charges against Biden, and the second time when he tried to stop the legal transfer of power!

Both times, the GOP said, "That's fine."

Now he's running for President again, despite being ineligible according to the US Constitution. And the GOP is saying once again, "That's fine."

The guardrails are, in fact, down! Most of the Republican party is saying that that is a good thing, and the rest are deluding themselves into thinking that everything will work out somehow as long as they do absolutely nothing to stop Trump!

tldr - just look at my sig.
 
Apologies for the delayed victory lap.

Re: Trump has not been indicted for insurrection
That's like saying Hitler was never convicted of the genocide of European Jewry. Just because you're not found guilty in a court of law doesn't mean you didn't do it.

No, it's not. We can say OJ Simpson committed double-homicide even though he was acquitted. We know he did it. However, we can't imprison him for double-homicide. This is elementary.

Cain has convinced me. The Constitution should be ignored because Cain has decreed it so and also because slavery. To not ignore the Constitution would be “shady legal maneuvering”. Airtight legal reasoning.

Pure hackery. At least tyr alternates between banging the keyboard and his high chair. There are areas of the law that are far more open to interpretation. The unsigned "majority" opinion discusses a lack of historical precedent which is a "telling indication" of a "severe constitutional problem" and no persuasive evidence of a "general understanding." It wouldn't matter if they were talking about a state's authority to remove a candidate for federal office, the Roberts would do anything possible to prevent SCOTUS from interfering. Left-leaning people correctly question felon disenfranchisement, even though, as noted more than once above, there is no constitutional right to vote.

Re: Removing Trump for insurrection when nobody involved on J6 has even been charged with insurrection.

Four people have been convicted of seditious conspiracy, the exact executable charge for those who attempt insurrection.

If we squint hard enough, can we just pretend they're the same exact offenses? I suppose that if the law arbitrarily punishes conceptually adjacent crimes, it's tempting for unprincipled people to go on a conflation quest.

Hey, remember your, quite correct, argument that the legitimacy of the government derives from the consent of the governed? Why do only part of the governed consent matter, or said another way, why do you only imagine that the 'cost' of removing Trump from the ballot is a hit to consent? The lack of accountability for Trump and his cohort have already lead to a loss of legitimacy in the eyes of many. It does matter that another mechanism would fail to hold him to account.

It's outrageous that Trump's federal trials have not concluded, let alone begun. There should be criminal consequences not just for what Trump has done but because failure to respond establishes a dangerous precedent that a person has nothing to lose by claiming their failed election bid was stolen. Trump's legitimacy was rightly questioned back in 2016 because he lost the popular vote.

Re: Might this special boy personally object to a 14th Amendment requiring conviction as anti-democratic? Maybe!

Well get back to me when you have the intellectual integrity to actually embrace your arguments.

What?? It's not referring to you. Jesus. I'm the special-boy. Pay attention.

The Congress was supposed to clarify the mechanisms of the 14th. That's the proper place for debate of it. The Court again taking up power when Congress has just abandoned it is a band-aid at best. With this Court? A dangerous opportunity to repeat Bush v Gore, that can lead to another hit to their legitimacy. (Which is approved of at about 18% right now since you seem to care about polls and legitimacy, but a fact you'll discount now that a 'stooge' brought it to your attention.)

In Bush v. Gore, the Court stopped the recount. It was an outrageous opinion, and that you think I would whatever because you mentioned it has 18% approval seems to further demonstrate that you are ostentatiously bad at reading other people's mental states (and not just Tim Pool, Lauren Boebert, or a Black woman who attempted to steal liquor).
 
No, literally none of the members are in violation of any NATO agreements, least of all on spending adversary goals, as they are not a rule but a guild-line.

Trump, like you, not only doesn't understand business very well, he doesn't understand NATO in the least. He is willfully ignorant about how it operates as this isn't the first time he's made that exact error. The punditry spinning this as a reasonable ask from Trump are lying and doing so badly. Generally speaking, the lie should not make the person telling it seem more incompetent than just being mistaken.

EDIT: Ninja'ed

The facts suggest you are either mistaken or deliberately lying.

https://www.forces.net/news/world/nato-which-countries-pay-their-share-defence

"The nations falling short of the alliance's target in 2023 were France (1.90%), Montenegro (1.87%), North Macedonia (1.87%), Bulgaria (1.84%), Croatia (1.79%), Albania (1.76%), the Netherlands (1.70%), Norway (1.67%), Denmark (1.65%), Czech Republic (1.50%), Portugal (1.48%), Italy (1.46%), Canada (1.38%), Slovenia (1.35%), Turkey (1.31%), Spain (1.26%), Belgium (1.13%) and Luxembourg (0.72%)."


There is no spin here, nor opinion, just the facts. Feel free to verify.
 
NATO members have never, ever been required to spend 3% of their national budget on defense, as a condition of NATO membership. Trump simply made it up

I think the agreement was actually 2%. Unless that figure has changed recently.
 
I'm having a hard time imagining what the President could actually do, to truly endanger our democracy and freedom. Almost all of the President's power comes from having people willing and able to do what he wants. Not one or two people, but an entire branch of the federal government, millions of people.

I know some people are convinced that he's just going to replace the entire civil service and military establishment with fanatical yes-men on day one, but I have my doubts. Dude couldn't even get a proper insurrection going, and suddenly he's going to suspend elections, dissolve Congress, and turn the Joint Chiefs into his bitches? Pull the other one, it's got an NFT.
Not millions, not the entire civil service, but a whole slew of positions that got in his way the first time around will be replaced with Trump sycophants.

Don't conflate the mob Trump riled up enough to try to stop certification of Biden's win with Trump having the House, then filling positions: military leaders under POTUS control, the DOJ, the FBI and other homeland security leaders etc with Trump cultists.

Trump will be preoccupied with pardons, revenge and corruption. That could go in a number of directions starting with evidence-free prosecutions of anyone who filed charges and lawsuits against him.

If you can't imagine that you might need to think a bit more broadly about Trump POTUS 2.


I happen to believe he won't be reelected. That depends on the suppression of votes in a couple of key states, unfortunately. As for whether or not that could lead to another mob attack, sure, but Trump won't be in charge of security, Biden will be.


ETA:

Look how Orban did it in Hungary; MSNBC clip
Anne Applebaum, Staff Write for the Atlantic and Rachel Kleinfled, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace join Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House to discuss Donald Trump hosting Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Mar-A-Lago, and what it shows about Donald Trump’s affinity for strong-man authoritarian leaders.
It's 10 minutes long but you can skip to the last half for a summary of how to take over a country without arms. Fortunately I don't think Trump will live long enough to completely dismantle our Democracy but he sure wants to.
 
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The facts suggest you are either mistaken or deliberately lying.

https://www.forces.net/news/world/nato-which-countries-pay-their-share-defence

"The nations falling short of the alliance's target in 2023 were France (1.90%), Montenegro (1.87%), North Macedonia (1.87%), Bulgaria (1.84%), Croatia (1.79%), Albania (1.76%), the Netherlands (1.70%), Norway (1.67%), Denmark (1.65%), Czech Republic (1.50%), Portugal (1.48%), Italy (1.46%), Canada (1.38%), Slovenia (1.35%), Turkey (1.31%), Spain (1.26%), Belgium (1.13%) and Luxembourg (0.72%)."


There is no spin here, nor opinion, just the facts. Feel free to verify.

Nothing in your post refutes what tyr_13 said.
 
Then perhaps you need to read my post again.

I only needed to read it the one time to see you failed to establish that the spending targets are contractual obligations, as opposed to guidelines as tyr_13 very clearly explained.
 
Ironically, Putin made his first move on Ukraine during the Obama administration, with clear signals from the White House that they would be allowed to get away with it.

Then nothing during the Trump administration.

Then, after Biden replaces Trump, Putin makes his second move on Ukraine.

I think this sequence of events tends to falsify the hypothesis that Trump encourages Russian aggression.

Err... As I recall it, it was most definitely NOT nothing during the Trump years. There wasn't a huge escalation in violence from what they had been doing, certainly, but characterizing what did go on as nothing is rather misleading, to put it nicely.

To push at that in a larger sense, at best, a reasonable case can be made that Trump delayed things. More specifically, Russia may have held off in hopes that Trump would sabotage the forces against them enough that they'd have a much easier time with their planned aggression and got nervous when Biden was undoing what he could of Trump's sabotage, which spurred them to action. Going a bit further, at last check, Trump repeatedly took actions that helped Russia prepare for aggressive action and undermined the ability to resist them, as it was.

Meh, though. This is not an appropriate thread to follow that tangent far, especially when there are actual Ukraine threads.
 
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The article specified that the miss came from the difficulty of finding "moderate" Republicans to answer a survey about Republican versus Republican. Surveys for the general election include both parties & all levels of moderateness or extremeness for a question of Republican versus Democrat. Historically, Republican voters have long been more reliable about showing up to vote for their party against the other party, regardless of who the nominee is or what happened in the primaries. For the general election to go worse for Tump than it looks like it will would require an unprecedented shift in Republican voting. The evidence (as opposed to just wishcasting) that such a shift is coming is... sparse. But there is a little bit. Surveys did show the Trump/Haley balance shifting Haley's way with time before Super Tuesday. If there were more time, that trend could have even put her in the lead eventually. So Trump's support against another Republican was declining. But we still need to see that decline generalize enough & go far enough to apply against the Democrat, which an almost completely unrelated thing. So far, that's been going the opposite way lately. So the latter trend would need to hitch a ride on the former trend to start getting turned around.

Monday morning quarterbacking about why the polls were off and Trump underperfomed doesn't change the fact that the polls were off and Trump underperformed
 
If we squint hard enough, can we just pretend they're the same exact offenses? I suppose that if the law arbitrarily punishes conceptually adjacent crimes, it's tempting for unprincipled people to go on a conflation quest.

You don't know what you're talking about. Literally. There isn't any squinting required; seditious conspiracy is the executable charge for insurrection. You're operating on your philosophical pondering being reflected in the law, when they just aren't.


It's outrageous that Trump's federal trials have not concluded, let alone begun. There should be criminal consequences not just for what Trump has done but because failure to respond establishes a dangerous precedent that a person has nothing to lose by claiming their failed election bid was stolen. Trump's legitimacy was rightly questioned back in 2016 because he lost the popular vote.

Re: Might this special boy personally object to a 14th Amendment requiring conviction as anti-democratic? Maybe!


It is outrageous, and Trump getting away with all of it also takes away the legitimacy of the courts and general government in the view of the governed. Citing the lost of legitimacy for one course of action while ignoring that the other course of action also leads to that loss is cherry picking. The fact that the sub-group of 'the people' losing faith in the legitimacy differ in each case isn't chance. The views of the conservative movement are almost always given priority in such cases because everyone knows they're the violent unreasonable dickheads most likely to act on it. This is leading to the ratcheting rightward of the 'enlightened centrists' and other performatively moderate. It's worth fighting against that assumed cost imbalance at every chance.



What?? It's not referring to you. Jesus. I'm the special-boy. Pay attention.


...yeah? What made you think I didn't know that? My point was that advancing an idea of section 3 of the 14th being 'undemocratic' is muddying your argument against courts enforcing section 3 being bad for other reasons. I said you weren't saying the former to advance the latter. You, for some reason, objected to you even claiming the former, and now retreat to it being 'undemocratic' as a hypothetical objection from you. My comment means that if it is just a hypothetical objection from you, that's even worse and can just be dismissed.


In Bush v. Gore, the Court stopped the recount. It was an outrageous opinion, and that you think I would whatever because you mentioned it has 18% approval seems to further demonstrate that you are ostentatiously bad at reading other people's mental states (and not just Tim Pool, Lauren Boebert, or a Black woman who attempted to steal liquor).

You're the one who cited polls as evidence of the danger of losing legitimacy. As happens so often, you claim mind reading when it was normal reading of the words you wrote. There was no need and no attempt to assess your mental state when I pointed out that this court would go beyond what is reasonable to grab power as demonstrated in Bush v Gore. And what happened in this case? The court goes so far beyond what is needed to rule, issuing what is in practice an advisory decision, that even Amy Coney Barret went with the liberal Justices in calling it out. The 'Textualists' on the court of course abandoned what they normally argue in such cases. Indeed, what they argue in rulings on other sections of the 14th.

But such rulings aren't going to cause a loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the unreasonable, so, no harm no foul. :rolleyes:

Citing other times you were wrong about people doesn't bolster your case anyway.
 
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