jakee

Since the US has the highest number of inmates in the world by far and the highest per capita of any functioning democracy, I'd say those folks are called Americans - wouldn't you?

Like I said before - you know that your entire argument is false and instead of just admitting you fucked up because you couldn't be arsed to read anything properly you are now just flat out lying and gaslighting everyone. When Ken said this: in practice, the President can invoke martial law on a national level, you said this Ken, you do not cite a source, so I don't know where you got this, but it is inaccurate. "The Posse Comitatus Act creates a general rule that it is unlawful for federal military forces to engage in civilian law enforcement activities - even if they are merely supplementing rather than supplanting civilian authorities - except when doing so is expressly authorized by Congress." even though your own source explicitly told you that 'general rule' did not apply to insurrection / martial law. Now instead of just acknowledging you mistake you are lying to cover it up. You then said there was something somewhere in 10USC 271-184 that would back you up, even though 278 explicitly told you that the entire chapter makes no restriction whatsoever on anything that the President can do with the military. Now instead of acknowledging your mistake you are lying to cover it up. I literally just told you that. I made it really, really clear. Telling me that should be my argument when you know damn well it is my argument is, once again, blatant lies and gaslighting on your part. And again - think how that affects what you are trying to say. You said the President cannot enact martial law. Do you seriously not see from what I said above (that you clearly agree with since you just said it back to me) that regardless of your misrepresentations of the law, in the real world in which we both live the President absolutely can declare martial law if he wants to?

You know that's a lie. You know that the only sources you've put forward so far say that in general the President is not allowed to deploy the Armed Forces to assist law enforcement. You know that I just explained that in the part of the post you didn't quote. You know that you are ignoring the very clear statements in your sources, that I have shown you, which say martial law / insurrection etc is an exception to any of those limits. You know you are pretending that the general case is the absolute case and you know that it is a lie. In that context you are then ignoring the fact that the situation on the ground, today, is exactly what you are saying the President is not allowed to do. So even if we accept your overall argument (which you know is false), what in reality is the check against the President declaring martial law - since he's already doing the thing which you say is illegal?

The funny / truly scary thing here is the denial of the street level reality of what is actually happening in the real world, today. It's clear now that your argument relies on conflating martial law with Posse Comitatus even though you know they are two completely different things. What you're really claiming is that the President can't deploy the National Guard, State Governors have to take the decision to deploy the National Guard within their own States. But here's the thing, you do understand that the National Guard is in LA right now, doing law enforcement, right? You do understand that Newsom didn't send them there or want them there, Trump sent them there, right? You do understand that no one is stopping him from doing it, right? So another way of stating your argument is that the president can't declare martial law because the President isn't allowed to do what he is currently (successfully) doing. You get why (even if the foundation of that argument wasn't as fatally flawed as it is) it's not remotely reassuring, don't you?

You mean the tactic of reading the documents you have supplied but couldn't be bothered to look at, and explaining why they actually say the opposite of what you claim they do? I can see why that would be frustrating for you if you only want to win an argument rather than find out whether or not you are actually right. Actually in this case, since I already told you to read section 278 (Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to limit the authority of the executive branch in the use of military personnel or equipment for civilian law enforcement purposes beyond that provided by law before December 1, 1981) then it's surely not that you couldn't be bothered to read that one sentence, it's that you are attempting to actively mislead and gaslight everyone here about the law. Why do you do it? Plenty of people here are under the impression that you're a reasonable person - why are you so hell bent on proving them wrong?

Use your words. The words "oh shit I was completely wrong" would be most appropriate, but if you still think you have a leg to stand on then you need to explain what it is. Fair warning though - before you do that you should read § 278, and really try to understand it. That is rich given that your entire argument so far rests on the Posse Comitatus act - when your own source explicitly tells you it explicitly does not apply in times of martial law.

Yeah, to throw someone out. That’s exactly what it means. Poor little cupcake, if you think this is boundless violent rhetoric you must find the world to be a very scary and overwhelming place.

Lol, that’s a blatant lie! A man was murdered on the street in broad daylight in front of a crowd of witnesses and even though you know he’s guilty you think the murderer should be immune from punishment. That’s not nothing. (You even appear to think that since he is locked up he should have a special ‘nice’ prison built for him so he doesn’t have to stay in the ‘nasty’ prisons that you think all other convicts should be housed in). Piers Morgan is a professional asshole and hypocrite who I’m not going to gift a single view to. If he told me the grass was green I’d go outside and check.

This was in the second paragraph of Ms Elsea’s report. The express statutory exceptions include the legislation that allows the President to use military force to suppress insurrection or to enforce federal authority, So it’s pretty clear where you got your idea from, you just invented it - and it is inaccurate as it gets.

Good lord you’ve burrowed yourself down a rabbit hole on this one. First, you did not cite a source either. Second, did the use of the words ‘general rule’ not give you pause? Third, even if this paragraph was the be all and end all of the legal situation, is it your contention now that Congress is the state level government of the USA? So here’s the thing - the Posse Comitatus act does forbid the President alone from deploying troops to uphold the law…. except when he declares martial law! It’s not the only exception to the general rule (i.e. Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock under the Enforcement acts), but it’s kinda the biggy in this discussion. Here you go, the Insurrection act. It’s not like Trump has ever mentioned it or anything… The Insurrection Act of 1807 is the U.S. federal law that empowers the president of the United States to nationally deploy the U.S. military and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, of insurrection, and of armed rebellion against the federal government of the U.S.[1] The Insurrection Act provides a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act (1878) that limits the president's deploying the U.S. military to enforce either civil law or criminal law within the United States.[2][3]

Ok, I’ve read the article, and you’ve fucked up by using numbers from two different columns (therefore two completely different things) for the yearly totals and the full term totals under Obama. So honestly, if you can’t even compare apples to apples when looking at numbers in the same table, I have zero confidence that you’ve done so when looking at numbers from two different sources. Says who?

Quick maths check: 400,000 times 8 is 3.2 million. So yeah, Obama must have deported way more than 400,000 per year in that 3 year period if he was deporting fewer than that for the other 5 years. Or, just maybe, your numbers are bullshit. So yeah - do you think you might want to check whether the reason why some of your numbers sound so crazy is because they are all a work of fiction?

President Trump has sent the National Guard to help us protect public safety here," Homan insisted. "We got protesters making threats against officers, assaulting officers. How coincidental that MAGA have just now decided that this is bad again.

For FIFA it certainly is - their motto could be it's all about bribery, all of the time! The IOC do a better job of hiding it but aren't really that different. They are certainly well practiced at dodging any ethical concerns by insisting that they are always completely apolitical so as not to infringe on the purity and sanctity of the sporting arena. Because apparently athletes don't have to live in the world like the rest of us.

This would be the same FIFA who sent the last two World Cups to Russia and Qatar, and already have Saudi Arabia lined up in ten years time. Yeah… they don’t care.

Yeah - unintentionally hilarious that Musk appears to have only just found out about the very well known relationship between Trump and Epstein, and all the acolytes on his side of the MAGA split are like ‘OMG this is brand new information!’ Matched by Trump’s explanation that so many ex-staffers denounce him on the news as a terrible person and even worse president because they just love him and miss him so damn much they can’t deal with it.

And yet you voted for him, for the sole reason that he'd be best for the economy. So I guess you don't have a passing familiarity with either stochastics or Trump. Amazing how everyone else knew that before the election but you're only just figuring it out now.

What I can’t get my head around is how is he not getting hammered in the press every single day for his plan to not leave the jet in service for the next pres and the next pres and the next pres after him to also use?

Creating jobs isn’t in itself a solution, it’s a goal. How do you create those jobs? That’s where the solution would lie. Conventional neo-liberal ‘wisdom’ is that encouraging wealthy people and funds to invest in businesses so they can grow, make more profit and then create more jobs is the way to go. Top down investment in business, therefore top down tax cuts and incentives. But we’ve been trying that for a long time now and is it really working? Two major issues: 1) Rich people hoard money and businesses prioritise shareholder returns over employees. 2) Don’t businesses ultimately become truly successful by selling more of what they offer, bringing money in through the front door not the back door? In this way, a basic subsistence income is a job creation measure. Unlike with a rich person, if you give a person below the poverty line more money, they will spend all of it. Every single penny will go directly back into the economy through the front door of local shops and service providers which will have a direct effect on both profitability and need for new employees to manage the extra business. Plus the government gets an immediate rebate on its investment through sales tax which is a not insignificant discount in the overall cost. Of course if all that sounds too complicated you could just nationalise utilities and a range of public services and run them in a more socially responsible manner.

“In early April, the Floridian was sentenced to 18 months in prison and two years of supervised release, and he was ordered to pay more than $4 million in restitution. His pardon spares him both from serving time and paying the fees.” Son of a bitch. Nice to see that Trump’s commitment to reducing the deficit is as strong as ever.

When some pay is a given, what will motivate most people to work is a) more pay and b) wanting something to do. Most people would be bored shitless sitting at home on a subsistence wage and would much rather take an honest occupation and more money as a significant win-win situation. Contrast that with the behaviour of major companies who will do the sum total of sweet fuck all divided by a million for the greater good. Who will cut as many jobs as they can as often as they can and will treat the low level workers they sweat for 40+ hours a week (on whatever schedule benefits the company most) as lazy shiftless parasites. In 1930 Keynes predicted that technology increasing productivity would bring about universal 3 day weeks and a near utopia of personal freedom and leisure time. Instead, 40 years of increasingly neo-liberal global economic policies since the dawn of the Reagan and Thatcher era, which treat corporate growth and profit as the end goal from which all other good will somehow, somewhen flow (and every time that fails to occur the answer is we just haven't increased profit enough yet for the billionaires to be able to start sharing it) mean we are way past the point of technological advancements increasing quality of life for most people and are rapidly regressing the other way. Increasingly ruthless exploitation of the non-executive workforce at almost all levels is resulting in an increasing lack of employment opportunities for ordinary people, an increasing return to the workhouse conditions of the Industrial fucking Revolution for people that are employed, and an increasing concentration of wealth for people already so wealthy they live in an exclusively low tax environment. This leads directly back to quality of life for most people as local governments are asked to support more and more people for less and less money. Is anyone here going to stick their hands up and say their city has better public transport than it did 30 years ago? More childs playgrounds per capita than it did then? More parks and green spaces in general? Better roads? Better any public service of any kind? Someone did that, and it absolutely positively was not lazy benefit scroungers. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/sep/01/economics

Yet more self inflicted wounds at the DOD as Hegseth's team try desperately to blame anyone but Hegseth for the three Hegseth appointed aids that they fired for supposedly leaking against Hegseth. It seems they may have accidentally admitted doing something way worse than leaking in order to justify firing the alleged leakers. The conversation seems to paraphrase to approximately this: White House: It's getting difficult to point to any evidence that these guys were the leakers, are you sure they did it? Hegseth's Lawyer: Oh yeah, definitely. We uh, hmm how did we find out, oh yeah we got the NSA to tap their phones! They totally discussed it on the messages we intercepted with a phone tap. WH: And this is the first we're hearing about it? You didn't tell us when you got the warrants and shit? HL: Warrants? We didn't get any warrants, we just told the NSA to do it. WH: Dude you can't just tap someone's phone without a warrant! That's really freakin' bad, we've got to sort this phone tap stuff out right now. HL: Phone taps? I didn't say anything about phone taps. Where did you get that from? Are you hearing things again? Trump advisers lose confidence in Pentagon leak investigation Hegseth used to justify firing three top aides At least we know that there's no question Hegseth was the best possible choice for SecDef because, well y'know, he's white.

So? No one who has far more than they need to survive does anything for the greater good. I'd argue the more they have the less likely they are to do so. Take Covid as an example. In this country our entire vaccination scheme relied on thousands of dedicated volunteers - all of them ordinary everyday people of the working or middle class - standing in the rain hour after hour, day after day, organising queues, checking appointment slips, keeping order, doing all the thankless grunt work for nothing but a sense of duty to their communities. We also had politically connected businessmen and women already so priviliged that they're on the Sunday Times Rich List who thought it appropriate to leverage those connection to make tens of millions of pounds simpy for acting as middlemen between chinese mask and PPE factories and the UK government. Honestly show me a single rich bastard who jumped in to organise a PPE supply during the emergency who charged less than a 100% markup and then we can start talking about who's working for the greater good.

Don't be so quick to put limits on people. Since the white South African refugee scheme is a textbook example of what the right falsely claim that DEI is, you could say they're being woke and racist.

Well congratulations, I guess, on the US government once again becoming significantly more racist than South Africa. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czellw10ejdo