Rov_Scam
1yr ago
Is there a hierarchy of civic symbols that I am unaware of? If there is, who decided it, and how acceptable is it to resist each one?
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
But in the sense of say, American civilization, there are no people. America is a country but it isn't a nation. It was diverse at its founding, both ethnically and religiously, and it's hard to point to one group as having had an outsized influence on the development of American civilization, both in the founding era and going forward. Which is why the American alt-right nationalism never made intellectual sense, because it's argument is essentially ahistorical.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I raise my fees to cover the cost of the assistants. There's not even a competitive disadvantage to that since the laws apply to everyone.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
Seriously? If a bat is being swung in the general direction of your balls, you're telling me you're doing a calculation of the expected force?
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
Where do you get the idea that nobody has ever been prosecuted for this? A recent AP article suggests that there have been nearly 150 actions under the law since it was passed in 1956.
Rov_Scam
8mo ago
Usually, though, this ends up being that he was talked out of it by his own advisors, not that some life-tenure civil servant had anything to do with it.
The article you linked to doesn't cite any instances of any generals disobeying orders. It lists three names—Mattis, McMaster, and Kelly—none of whom were active military at the time and only one of whom, Mattis, was in any position to carry out orders; McMaster and Kelly's positions were purely advisory. Now, Mattis did ignore Trump's orders on a number of occasions, but as a civilian he isn't subject to military law regarding insubordination. As a political appointee, if he refuses an order Trump's remedy is to fire him, which he declined to do.
As to whether it's treason, luckily, the constitution is pretty clear on this:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Simply disregarding an order can hardly be described as levying war against the country, and it's not clear which enemies Mattis would have been giving aid or comfort to. Furthermore, the language of the clause implies that an overt act is required, not simply failure to act. Indeed, there are only a few instances in criminal law where one can be liable for failure to act, so the general presumption is that the law requires an overt act unless otherwise specified.
More importantly, I don't see how this really applies to discussion about a so-called Deep State. These were all people Trump picked himself to serve in high-level advisory positions. They weren't military lifers he was stuck with and couldn't fire. This whole situation, if nothing else, is emblematic of Trump's lack of fitness for the office. He said in 2016 that his lack of experience wouldn't be an issue because he would find the "best people" to advise him. Then he didn't like what the best people had to say, so he got rid of them and replaced them with other people whom he didn't want to listen to, either. If your own hand-selected panel of experts tells you something is a bad idea, and this happens multiple times, maybe the problem isn't with the experts.
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
It's an argument in favor of firing corrupt people, not of disbanding the department entirely.
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
I don't think he colluded and never said he did. I said he had extensive business dealings with Russians, which is well-documented and uncontroversial. The fact that Joe may have had a stake in something involving the Chinese doesn't point to corruption barring other evidence, and no one has shown me other evidence.
Rov_Scam
10mo ago
The FARA allegations weren't anywhere near strong enough for the government to prosecute. Having business dealings with foreign interests isn't illegal; it's only when you take the next step of lobbying for these interests without disclosing it. This is where the theory fails, because the evidence of any actual lobbying is weak. The most I've seen from conservative outlets is that he made numerous trips to visit his father while he was involved in these foreign dealings, which, yeah, the guy visited his father. He probably would have visited him regardless of what business he was doing at the time. The defense attorney in that case is going to call every person on the White House visitor log who could have conceivably been in the room with Hunter and Joe on the days in question and they're all going to invariably deny that any lobbying on behalf of foreign interests took place; meanwhile, the prosecution won't be able to put forth a single witness who would be able to testify that it had. This isn't evidence, it's conjecture, and the prosecution would never be able to get this in front of a jury. I'm not familiar with any potential drug charges so maybe you could clue me in on those.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
I apologize that the language I used was probably stronger than what was warranted. But the general point remains—it's a less relevant side issue to attack a bigger idea. The problem is that attacking the bigger idea doesn't make sense unless there are concrete reasons to do so. If the best concrete argument you have for attacking the idea of transgenderism is that it has the potential to create unfair disparities in women's sports, then it doesn't come across as much of an argument to me, especially if criteria are put in place to mitigate those concerns and keep people from abusing the system. If the real reason you want to attack the idea of transgenderism simply boils down to "I just don't like the idea of it", then that's a pretty thin rhetorical reed.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
I just commented above that the disconnect between the private statements and the statements he made on air is probably enough for him to get through any interview that tries to nail him on the subject. That being said, I don't for a second believe that Carlson believed that the election was stolen in a general sense but didn't believe any of the specific theories that Trump was putting forth. I was on here quite a bit during the election and I don't remember any of the fraud proponents expressing such a position. I did see a lot of fraud proponents mentioning these kinds of things as evidence of fraud and then backing off when challenged, either by gish galloping another spurious claim forward or by retreating to a Carlsonesque position of speaking in generalities. Which is what I'd expect from a place like this; if this is an intelligent community that cares about evidence and process then I wouldn't expect people to just cite vague claims about security as proof of fraud. But Carlson's audience wanted to hear what they wanted to hear and he didn't have to worry about getting any pushback, so he was able to couch his statements as vaguely as possible. I don't normally agree with the guy but he's not stupid.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
The union would raise hell, but I'm not sure the appeal would go anywhere. Players don't get to decide what uniforms they wear. If they want to sit out, then they don't get to skip team activities without permission. Pick your poison. It's just not a fight the NHL thinks is worth having.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
If there's in recent news to show that #4 is true, we only have to point to the train derailment in East Palestine. It's definitely a white working class area, and there's no love lost for Norfolk Southern having to foot a large cleanup bill, and people are still concerned about the water despite tests repeatedly coming back without showing any increase in pollutant levels. Contrast this with the days when companies would have dumped chemicals of a similar hazard level in an open pit and not told anybody about it, the residents not knowing anything until people started suffering adverse health effects decades later. Republicans can be a little more proactive about this than in the past since environmentalists are now almost exclusively concerned with climate change, but my guess is there would be broad conservative opposition to new environmental regulations if they weren't connected with a specific incident. I have a friend who worked for an environmental contractor and he said that the EPA turned into a joke under Trump, with operators totally unconcerned about being dinged with Federal violations. State environmental agencies had more teeth in those days, and in Pennsylvania, that's saying something, since DEP is viewed as notoriously dysfunctional among people in the know.
Rov_Scam
1yr ago
But when people claiming there was foul play in the 2020 election point to "machine politics" as evidence, the implication is that this is a well-run political organization that does this kind of thing all the time to maintain their own power and thus already has the mechanisms in place to commit fraud. What you're arguing is that an ad hoc group of political opponents conspired to rig an election due to ideological consensus regarding one issue, despite that fact that none of them had ever done something like that before. That's the opposite of machine politics.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I could say the same thing about any American, though. Believing the United States should restrict trade and immigration is a luxury belief for Americans, almost all of whom have jobs and live decent lives compared to people in say, Guatemala or Venezuela. We all have the luxury of being born in a country where a shitty job at a convenience store pays well above what most of the world is making.
Rov_Scam
1mo ago
I think it's best that reorient ourselves to the initial topic of discussion. I apologize since my initial comment was a bit opaque and my replies were hastily written on mobile, so let me clarify the crux of my argument — There's an outward stereotype, mostly perpetrated, for lack of a better term, by the right, that agency is an inherently right-wing characteristic. The argument goes that if conservatives are more likely to blame one's failures on individual factors, most notably lack of effort, while liberals are more likely to point to external factors like structural inequities. I was trying to rebut this presumption by saying that right-wingers don't take this argument to the end of its ideological tether, since they temper their otherwise libertarian free-market principles with calls for restrictions on immigration and trade in the guise of protecting American workers. That's all I was saying. When pressed, @Walterodim made reference to J.D. Vance, who has, in the past, complained about the tendency of lower-class white conservatives to repeatedly make bad decisions and blame their misfortune on external factors, be it the economy, China, Obama, the government, immigrants, etc. My comment was intended to point out two things: First, that these sentiments aren't limited to lower-class conservatives but are prevalent among successful ones as well, and second, that Vance himself has echoed the same sentiments himself since he entered politics and had to cater to the class of people he criticized in his book. That's all I was saying. I wasn't making any particular argument about my own policy preferences or trying to criticize other people for theirs, just disagreeing with categorical statements about the belief in personal agency among liberals and conservatives that a lot of comments were making. I certainly didn't intend to go down this road. And while I place most of the blame on myself for this misunderstanding, I do think you made an assumption that I was following this thread more closely than I actually was, and your comment, as we lawyers like to say, "assumes facts not in evidence".
But while we're here, I might as well respond to your comment. I'm not conservative, but I am a liberal free-marketer who generally believes in what I call "welfare capitalism", which is mostly laissez-faire but allows for government interference in the case of market distortions and for some kind of welfare state. As such, I believe that a free market should be the default, and while interventions are permissible, they have to be justified. And this isn't just my default; it was the default throughout most of American history. The Constitution says nothing about immigration and very little about market regulation, and indeed the country didn't make any serious attempts at regulating either until well into the 20th Century. So when you ask me what I'd do about the passage of some particular law that was passed that threatened my livelihood, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that my opinion wouldn't be influenced by the fact that I'm directly affected. But whether I actually try to get the law overturned would depend on whether I think it's a good law. What I certainly wouldn't do is directly advocate for rent-seeking legislation, like having the state cap annual bar admissions to drive up the price of legal work. If there are stupid laws on the books that are having the effect of disadvantaging workers in the Rust Belt then I'm all in favor of getting rid of them, and I'd agree that the left advocates for plenty of stupid new laws that would have this effect. But opposition to them isn't what I'm talking about. What conservatives are advocating for is deviating not just from the default, but from the status quo, by passing additional immigration and trade restrictions for the express purpose of benefiting a favored class. And that's not exactly an expression of self-agency.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
I don't remember who it was, exactly, but what you posted wasn't the kind of thing I was referring to. I'm too lazy to research the specifics here, but there was some kind of law used in auditing that says certain numbers are evidence of fraud because of how the digits are distributed or something along those lines, and they were using that alone as evidence that vote totals from certain counties were fabricated.
Rov_Scam
2mo ago
They didn't take the company away; they levied a fine. It's a large fine, but dissolving the company would have involved appointing a receiver and liquidating all of the company's assets.
Rov_Scam
6mo ago
There's a pretty big distinction between zealous representation and defamation. Participation in a matter of public importance doesn't give you license to make shit up out of whole cloth.
Rov_Scam
8mo ago
I'm more interested in what the policy prescriptions were that these people found so odious.
Rov_Scam
9mo ago
And what do they tell me? Do they just have the record locations memorized?
How did the media wade into it willingly, though?
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