jakee

"First things first." That's why.

Thanks for demonstrating over the last couple of pages exactly how much you don't care about supporting Ukraine. If your party, like you, keeps hijacking every conversation about military aid with whining about the border it's going to do a huge amount of damage, possibly permanent, to their hopes of being able to push Russia back.

Remarks by President Trump on the Illegal Immigration Crisis and Border Security IMMIGRATION Issued on: November 1, 2018 https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-illegal-immigration-crisis-border-security/ "Well, thank you very much, everyone. Appreciate it. And good afternoon. I would like to provide an update to the American people regarding the crisis on our southern border — and crisis it is."

Right, so what Phil highlighted the GOP wanting - NO border claims for people who've travelled through another country - is not a UN standard.

Why do you believe that?

The bit where you do't think it's worth doing anything about until every other part of the US government is fully aligned with your political priorities.

So you care about stopping Putin and helping Ukraine to the extent that you would be happy to wait until the invasion is a complete success before doing anything about it?

That’s just the point, isn’t it? It’s a free country for a white man. But you’re supposed to care about whether it’s free for other people too.

which is stupid Not everything that is evil is stupid. Ironically I just heard on the radio for the first time in a few years a song that includes the lyric "Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a [redacted]. Some people are just nice." This is like that, except that some people are just arseholes.

Well yeah... but I think that first off Trump would argue that he's actually allowed to do that anyway. You really do have to go a long way down the rabbit hole before you get to something he'd agree he needs immunity for.

Worth pointing out that the last time Brent posted about arctic sea ice he appeared surprised by the notion that there is more of it in winter and less of it in summer.

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.