SlowBoy
5hr ago
This is political sloganeering: Markey wants it both ways, saying yes and no, hoping voters like one answer or the other. If Markey really believed that this is a bad bill, and that Trump killed it, shouldn't he be thanking Trump? Wouldn't he be gloating? No, he just lapses into cliche: American values, better life, cynical Trump, etc.
Markey probably didn't even write his own statement. Someone in his office wrote it, and he signed off after making some changes. Now his statement exists as a fact in the public record I'm supposed to take as evidence of something. But taking it seriously is like trying to understand a LLM: it's just a rationalization for whatever was already decided upon.
(I'm not arguing that Markey wanted the bill to pass and is just giving kayfabe. I am arguing that his position is obviously, blatantly, contradictory. If I had to resolve that contradiction, I imagine that he thinks it was a bad immigration bill, and that his blaming Trump is purely cynical.)
This is my frustration with many discussions about politics here and this conversation in general: I think way too much credence is given to the imaginary fake facts the political world creates. "The bill was a good bill because the Border Patrol endorsed it" is like saying OMB predicts Obamacare will reduce the deficit: these are just press releases. They are treated very cynically by the people who make them. Take again Markey's statement: he wants to blame Donald Trump for leaving the border in chaos, because Trump (supposedly) stopped a bill Markey wanted stopped. Huh?
Which is back to the whole problem with the frame of OP's post: the frame that Trump tanked a good immigration bill was invented by politicos for cynical reasons. We could have given you this great border bill (that we don't want), but Trump stopped us, because he's selfish, while his supporters cheered, because, uh...? It's actually much simpler to assume that conservatives thought it was a bad deal, which explains neatly why they opposed it, why Trump opposed it, and why cons cheered when it was tanked.
You could argue that cons were wrong for thinking it was a bad deal, but the frame here basically accepts, uncritically, a cynical idea pushed by Democrats that they themselves don't believe.
SlowBoy
9hr ago
The surge at the border is consequent of Biden's decisions. He can't change those? He could reimplement Remain in Mexico, he could suspend Catch and Release, he could stop granting asylum. He could reimpose the Trump policies he suspended.
In fact, he doesn't need Trump to pass the border bill. If this is a great bill that Democrats are happy to have, they can pass it in the Senate and leave it to the House. They're not even trying this, they don't want to do anything, they just want to run on how Republicans won't do anything. This is maybe the best going scam in American politics: tearily tell the voters that we can't do anything, our hands are tied, unless you vote for me again...
Anything Biden does will be challenged, that's the nature of being president. Why does that mean he can't deport naybody? He could if he wanted to.
SlowBoy
9hr ago
It's in the name: Public Relations. Your argument is that Trump's PR was too mean, and damaged the cause of immigration restriction. But when pushed on this you fall back to claiming that Trump hated illegal immigrants. What's the point of blaming his PR then? If Trump hates immigrants, it doesn't matter what his PR is, because by your logic he would still have hurt the cause just by being Trump.
SlowBoy
10hr ago
Well, the same people who orchestrated Russiagate are now running the government. The parallel runs toward more scam prosecutions. Why do you think they lied about the cover sheets?
SlowBoy
10hr ago
Read the Trump comments in the piece Ben linked. They were all Trump remarks clearly about illegals. Ben claims Trump was too mean to immigrants, eliding the difference.
SlowBoy
10hr ago
Dems don't need new laws to stop illegal immigration. They aren't enforcing the laws that already exist. Why would passing more laws make Dems enforce them?
The politicians who created the problem, who could stop the problem at any time, are saying they need new powers to stop the problem. The politicians who want to solve the problem say that it's a bad bill. Trump wants to run on the border? But Biden could solve it today.
SlowBoy
1d ago
While those are all real possibilities, they are very distinct from the scenario you described above: Bureaucrats unfiring somebody by disobeying direct orders.
SlowBoy
1d ago
I addressed this in the post. To summarize, yes, he could fix it now, to at least some degree. Reimplementing the Remain in Mexico would help. The problem with all of these fixes though is that they're bandaids on bullet holes that don't address fundamental issues like this bill would have.
You talked about it, but that doesn't really address it: If illegal immigration got worse after Biden undid Trump's policies (which is Trump's fault because his PR was mean), why can't Biden just redo them? Why are they bandaids? According to your line of argument: Trump's policies, which didn't do anything, and don't work, prevented the Biden mass influx of immigration, which can't be stopped, unless we adopt some new Biden policies (like building a wall). Mhmmm.
Multiple people referenced the exact same remark shortly after the meeting was over, so I think it's safe to assume he really said it. If you want to keep contesting that specific statement, just choose any of his other ones. His hostile rhetoric towards immigrants wasn't exactly a secret.
Illegal immigrants!
SlowBoy
1d ago
This again? If Biden wanted to cut down on illegal immigration, he could do it now, without any additional Congressional authority. So why is it Trump's fault? Your analysis is riddled with errors, such as:
Obama was quite hawkish on illegal immigration.
The Obama administration began counting repeated deportations of the same immigrant as multiple deportations. This was well-known at the time and confounds a simple analysis. Moreover, you neglect to discuss DACA.
During Trump’s 2016 campaign, immigration was frequently at the forefront despite the historical lows of illegal immigrant activity.
If the number of illegal immigrants increases every year, and in 2016 the increase is lower than previous years, that's not a "historical low"!
The second point worth noting is that Trump wasn’t really much better than Obama in countering illegal immigration, contrary to popular belief.
You then proceed to list many many things Trump did that Obama did not do!
Instead, Trump’s modus operandi was typically controversial unilateral action, followed by doubling down with rhetoric like “shithole countries” that may have flattered his base, but was very poorly received among Democrats and independents.
The "shithole countries" remark was not something Trump said in public as part of a "PR" strategy. It was something allegedly said in a closed meeting. Are you saying that Trump is responsible for rumors about him?
helped propel Biden to the White House in 2020, and ensured he had a clear mandate to roll back Trump’s policies.
So what? You were arguing just a few paragraphs ago that these policies don't matter! Trump's policies didn't do anything, because Obama was better, but then Biden undoes Trump's policies, which makes everything worse!
The bill received endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council
You should know by now that organizations endorsing bills and proposals is totally cynical, and it really makes me question your ability to digest evidence for your position if you have to point to some organization (that nobody had ever heard about five minutes ago) and say, "see, the authority says so!" This is a common scam politicians run all the time: ideological report cards, union endorsements, lobbyist fact sheets, etc. etc. Who cares?
Authorizes an additional 50,000 immigrant visas each year for the next five fiscal years.
Hmmm, why didn't conservative Republicans trust a deal that would allow more immigrants in exchange for a promise that this time money would really be spent on the border?
The reason he did this was as obvious as it was cynical: he didn’t want Biden to have a “win” on the issue.
This is reading Trump's mind.
The idea is that Reagan’s bill was supposed to fix the issue, but the Democrats skillfully reneged on their promise.
Yeah, "the idea". What happened to California after Reagan's amnesty?
There’s a kernel of truth to that idea, although it’s obviously extremely oversimplified and lacking in nuance.
My ideas are nuanced, yours have a kernel of truth, his ideas are extremely oversimplified.
They’ll assume I’m secretly a Democratic operative who wants to sow discord amongst Republicans.
No, I just think you're not very astute.
SlowBoy
1d ago
Yeah, the power of the President is greatly constrained by the bureaucracy, but that doesn't actually mean that the bureaucracy is this all-powerful behemoth. What does it mean for "the rest of DC" to say something? Even in a 95% blue town there are Republican officials and justices and appointees and mandarins. If the bureaucrats want to unfire someone: Who's going to sign the paychecks? ; Who's going to sign off on maintaining the security clearances? ; Who's going to assign work? These are all people who would have to report to the President, or report to somebody who does. Why would the FBI step in and arrest people? This is a very unusual circumstance you're proposing, it would be unique in the history of the United States, and not "What would change, really?"
I'm moderately skeptical that DC will actually prove capable of being reformed and constrained any time soon, but it's not as though DC is this perpetual motion machine that escapes all laws of history and politics. Yeah, it would be a big deal if Trump got into office and tried firing people: that's why they don't want it to happen!
SlowBoy
1d ago
It's definitely an open question. But I don't think it amounts to much. Trump can pardon himself, he can fire everyone involved he can get his hands on, he can declassify any and all documents involved, he could order the entire classification system revoked. If Congress is on his side, they can open investigations into the investigators, they can defund the offices involved. And even if Congress isn't on his side, they couldn't impeach him before and won't impeach him over this.
Anything could happen, but I find it very unlikely that Trump's enemies will really push (escalate) a Constitutional crisis over classified documents the public isn't even allowed to know the details of, especially given all the other issues with this case.
SlowBoy
1d ago
Of course DOJ messed the case up, because there was no "obvious misconduct" without them trying to arrange it!
The new disclosures indicate the Department of Justice was in touch with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) during much of 2021, undermining the DOJ’s claims that it became involved in the matter only after the Archives sent it a criminal referral on February 9, 2022, based on the findings of records with “classified markings” in 15 boxes of materials Trump gave to the Archives a month prior.
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1784226958127014361
Haphazardly fill boxes with mislabel classified information, tell the Trump team to pick them up, then accuse Trump of haphazardly storing classified information. No neutral operators, no brave civil servants executing the spirit of the law, just Biden appointees organizing more lawfare against their opponents. Take salacious pictures of Trump's classified documents on cover sheets that were brought there for the purpose, to prejudice the public against Trump, because that's the same playbook that's worked all along. (It's not like Trump colluded with Russia either.) And it's not like anybody is going to prosecute Biden or Mike Pence over classified documents either.
It’s not a great look for the prosecution. But it also has no bearing on the facts of the case.
Jack Smith had to admit that they lied, "this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented," about their central piece of evidence. How is the government going to prove that Trump should have known how to handle these documents when the government itself was wrong about what they were. They gave him mislabeled documents, essentially making it impossible for him to have ever handled them properly in the first place.
SlowBoy
1d ago
It's been a long time since we've discussed Trump, and there have been a number of developments in the court cases against him, and so I'm here to say that our long mottizan nightmare of peace and tranquility is finally over.
Florida
CNN: Federal judge indefinitely postpones Trump classified documents trial
Trump's trial in Florida over classified documents has been indefinitely postponed. (Jack Smith had requested it start the day after Trump's New York trial ended.) It turns out that new revelations made in documents Trump's lawyers requested have upended the case. CNN doesn't elaborate on what happened, for which I'll turn to this story:
Prosecutors admit key evidence in document case has been tampered with
“Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants' review of the boxes,” Smith’s team wrote in a new court filing to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon.
“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” the prosecutors wrote.
Smith’s team in a footnote also conceded it had misled the court about the problem by previously declaring that the evidence had remained in the exact state it had been seized.
“The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said.
It turns out that when the government alleged that Trump had classified documents he was not supposed to have, the government itself did not accurately know which documents Trump had, or which documents Trump was even supposed to have. Actually, worse than that, it turns out they fabricated some or all of the accusations. For instance, that famous picture of classified documents with cover sheets raided from Mar-a-Lago? It turns out those documents didn't have cover sheets, the FBI staged them before photographing, and they didn't even correctly label all of the documents they supposedly took:
The DOJ's Doctored Crime Scene Photo of Mar-a-Lago Raid
“[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. (Emphasis added.) See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’).”
The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.
In order to prove Donald Trump had documents he wasn't supposed to have, the goverment took documents Trump had (that the NARA gave him in mislabeled boxes) and added cover sheets for photographs to them.
Whoops!
Judge Cannon has indefinitely postponed trial while Jack Smith's prosecutors work out answers to the questions posed by all these new revelations.
Georgia
News-watchers will remember that, several months ago, it turned out that Fulton Prosecutor Fani Willis was hiring her secret lover to work on the Trump election fraud case. He was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars while they dated and went on vacations together, for which she insisted (without evidence) that she always paid him back. This posed a serious concern of misconduct and the risk that Fani Willis would be forced off the case entirely. After weeks of wrangling, Judge McAfee ruled that Willis could stay on the case, as long as Nathan Wade did not. Trump's team appealed the ruling, and now, the Georgia Appeals Court will hear the decision:
The court's decision to grant Trump's appeal will likely delay the start of any trial, though no date has been set for it to begin. The case in Fulton County is one of four Trump is facing as he mounts a third bid for the White House. His first criminal trial is currently underway in Manhattan, where local prosecutors charged him with 34 counts of falsifying business records. He pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Re-hearing the Fani Willis conflict of interest decision might lead to a repeat of the earlier hearing, where Fani repeatedly shouted over the courtroom and judge:
Fiery DA Fani Willis loses it on lawyer during misconduct hearing: ‘Don’t be cute with me!’
“It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” Willis screamed into the microphone, prompting Judge Scott McAfee to immediately call a five-minute break.
[...[
Willis told Merchant she was “extremely offended” by the implication that Willis slept with Wade after her first time meeting him at a conference in October 2019.
Earlier in proceedings, witness Robin Yeartie — a former employee in the DA’s office who claimed to be a longtime friend of Willis’ — said she had “no doubt” that Willis and Wade were already romantically involved in 2019.
So the question of prosecuting Trump over the 2020 election in Georgia will have to wait until it's determined how much of a liar the prosecuting DA might or might not have been.
New York
This trial is the juiciest of all, as it is currently in session in New York, with the judge threatening to have Trump locked up:
CBS: Trump held in contempt again for violating gag order as judge threatens jail time
Judge Juan Merchan said Trump violated his order on April 22 when he commented on the political makeup of the jury.
"That jury was picked so fast — 95% Democrats. The area's mostly all Democrat," Trump said in an interview with the network Real America's Voice. "It's a very unfair situation, that I can tell you."
In his written order, Merchan said Trump's comments "not only called into question the integrity, and therefore the legitimacy of these proceedings, but again raised the specter of fear for the safety of the jurors and of their loved ones."
Trump has promised, in interview and social media post, that he's willing to go to jail for exercising his First Amendment rights to criticize Judge Merchan, having said in April that it would be his "great honor" to go to jail for violating Merchan's gag order.
The issue really stems from Trump's accusations of political bias in the New York courtroom. The gag order was imposed after Trump attacked Merchan's daughter for working for Democratic fundraisers:
Dem clients of daughter of NY judge in Trump hush-money trial raised $93M off the case
Two major Democratic clients of the daughter of the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush-money trial have raised at least $93 million in campaign donations — and used the case in their solicitation emails — raising renewed concerns that the jurist has a major conflict of interest.
Another such example is that one of Bragg's prosecutors working the case is Matthew Colangelo, who left the #3 position at DOJ under Merrick Garland to work the Trump case:
In December 2022, Colangelo, the high-flying third most senior official in President Joe Biden's Justice Department, astonished colleagues by packing his bags and leaving for the Big Apple to take a less senior role working for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Judge Merchan himself, it turned out, donated (a small amount) to the Biden campaign:
Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump case, donated to Biden campaign in 2020
The state is arguing, in effect, that Trump, by paying Stormy Daniels in 2017, falsified business records that should have rightfully been marked as a campaign contribution, and thus constituted a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election. The count of falsifying business records is a misdemeanor under New York State Law, but can be elevated into a felony charge if the business records were falsified with the intent to commit another crime. Curiously, Alvin Bragg has alleged that Trump falsified business records to commit another crime, but has not charged him with committing any other crimes:
The New York Case Against Trump Relies on a 'Twisty' Legal Theory That Reeks of Desperation
Ordinarily, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. But it becomes a felony when the defendant's "intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." Bragg says Trump had such an intent, which is why the 34 counts are charged as felonies.
Bragg had long been cagey about exactly what crime Trump allegedly tried to conceal. But during a sidebar discussion last week, Colangelo said "the primary crime that we have alleged is New York State Election Law Section 17-152." That provision says "any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor."
In other words, Bragg is relying on this misdemeanor to transform another misdemeanor (falsifying business records) into a felony. But the only "unlawful means" that he has identified is Cohen's payment to Daniels. And while Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making an excessive campaign contribution by fronting the hush money, Trump was never prosecuted for soliciting that contribution.
Section 17-152 has never actually been prosecuted to this effect, so the case is entirely novel. New York is arguing, in effect, that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 election by falsifying business records in 2017.
This case is a hot one as it is currently in trial, and will likely be resolved with a few weeks. The question of whether the jury can be unbiased in such conditions is ongoing.
I will omit Trump's last criminal court case, the January 6th case run out of DC, as it is currently pending on a Supreme Court decision as to whether Presidents can even be tried for official acts in the first place, which would throw the whole case back down to the lower courts to disentangle which of Trump's actions on January 6th constituted private action. It goes almost without saying that, if Trump were elected in 2024, he could have the authority to fire Jack Smith and derail both this case and the documents case in Florida.
SlowBoy
1d ago
Income taxation didn't really take off until the invention of tax withholding. Even after the ratification of the 16th Amendment, Congress found popular resistance to the income tax too strong for it to actually be enforced. It wasn't until they partnered with corporations, which were growing in importance in society, to withhold taxes that resistance died down and the tax could be collected. Psychologically, it makes a big difference. You see a number at the end of the year that corresponds to what the government took, but they took it before you even knew they were taking it. You get a paycheck and then there's some accounting about how much they took which comes with a bonus for you. At least, for most people.
SlowBoy
2d ago
Men like discussing who is hot. There is no expectation that everything you say in a private or semi-private space becomes public. Your argument becomes close to saying that ranking any human attribute is in bad taste, because someone ends up at the bottom, which is bullying.
If the victim
People discussing whether you're hot (or ugly) does not make you a victim.
SlowBoy
2d ago
It's a cliche: Bipartisanship is when the stupid party and the evil party get together to do something stupid and evil.
For now, I don't think it's going to go away: large portions of the Republican leadership still believe in bipartisanship. If you imagine (simplistically) any compromise to lie between two extremes on a spectrum, that compromise will fall somewhere in the middle. But probably not the middle. One side gets more. The question is: which side gets more? But it's probably frequently at least in somebody's interest to write a policy and appeal to bipartisanship. That's half the problem solved.
Besides, there are lots of small picayune daily humdrums, about which nobody really cares, on which members have to work together anyway. Trust or no trust, it takes a very specific kind of person who can get elected to Congress and then defect on the deal. Most of those such members now make up the wing of the Republican party characterized as "MAGA" and "extreme," and it requires them to constantly sail upwind against all other incentive. Just this morning I was listening to Katherine Clark explaining on NPR how Democrats would probably vote to save Mike Johnson's speakership, because, uh, we have to get back to the serious work of "governing," not "politicking". "But what are Democrats getting out of this," the interviewer asks? Uh, well, the American People know right from wrong, and we need to act to sustain our economic recovery, and in November when abortion access is on the ballot... ... ... ... ...
SlowBoy
3d ago
If the boys had rated their classmates on a scale of one to ten, this would still be in poor taste imho
Why is it in bad taste for men to rate women's attractiveness?
SlowBoy
3d ago
Think better of what? Edgy offensive teenage jokes? Is this something you think society can or should stomp out?
SlowBoy
3d ago
Calling dog-kidney pie "inedible" is a clear implication that you consider other preparations of dog meat acceptable to eat.
They're children. Maybe some children somewhere are capable of rape, but treating a group of posh high school boys as if they were seriously contemplating violent rape is laughable on the part of the Australian establishment.
SlowBoy
6d ago
I would even be in favor of inventing meats that don't exist. If some proprietary Frankenblend of, say, 25% shrimp, 40% pork, 35% passenger pigeon were delicious, why would you not sell it?
SlowBoy
6d ago
You need to start with a niche, because the product isn't good enough to compete in the general market. Nobody will pay 5x for a steak substitute that's worse. But lots of people would try, at least once, an exotic whale steak. It can't cost much more to grow that than a beef steak. You wouldn't pay $100 for a bad steak, but would you pay $100 to try shark fin soup? It's an endangered species, it's an illegal dish in many places, and isn't that a good deal?
Once you have a niche, there's a productive market that incentivizes lab-grown meats to get better and better (instead of relying on government handouts and PR campaigns to convince people to replace meat in their diet).
I agree that beef is delicious, and I don't especially want to replace a nice steak with something lab-grown. I'm skeptical of the whole technology. But in a Machiavellian sense, this is the line I would pursue if I was in the industry. I actually feel like this is a billion-dollar idea lying on the ground, and if I had the money to invest in lab-grown and impose my vision, I would.
SlowBoy
6d ago
There has to be at least one exotic meat that hits a sweet spot for: relatively tasty; more expensive in real life than the lab; nobody is familiar with the real thing. If I were in charge of a lab-grown meat company I'd throw money at this question until one suitable species could be identified. Ideally several. Find a few celebrity chefs willing to experiment with and serve the product. You might not want to go to the grocery and buy lab-grown meat for the grill, but your girlfriend will want to post nice Instagram selfies of herself enjoying the lab-grown whale meatballs at a fancy restaurant. Politicians are not going to ban your product if they enjoy it. If you could get lab-grown steaks served regularly at the French Laundry, it's over.
Artisinal meats are the perfect test-case for lab-grown. Everything is small-scale and gives the tech a chance to develop. Lab-grown will not win a head-to-head competition with real meat without significant R&D. Developing beef steak first seems to me like the worst proposition, driven by (well-meaning) idealists who want to replace meat consumption. Surely it'd be easier to pass off a fake chicken nugget than a steak. Steak is something everyone is familiar with, is a food cooked to be eaten as itself with minimal coverings or dress. People will not accept lab-grown steak as viable until the technology is fully mature. Why would you pay 5x for a substitute that's worse? Because it's moral? That's a terrible proposition for most consumers. If the lab-grown meat industry wasn't run by idealists with a chip-on-their-shoulder about the morality of meat, they could easily see the business model I'm describing.
SlowBoy
6d ago
Ban is a bad policy for getting to the goal.
If I wanted to eliminate lab-grown meat, I'd target the organizations that create it. Open investigations into the researchers and funders looking for political extremism. Target the patentability and profitability of the technologies involved. ("You can't patent chicken!") Publicize the process that creates these products. Labeling doesn't go far enough, you want to associate the components of lab-grown with dangerous chemicals and bad health outcomes. (I think when you look into the science of what they're currently doing, and not the glowing press releases, this is basically the truth.) Banning lab-grown just makes it exotic, and does nothing to stop its development in other localities.
If I wanted to popularize lab-grown meat, I'd start by making it exotic and sexy. Growing chicken and steak might be the ultimate goal, but this is a losing proposition: everybody knows what beef is supposed to taste like. I would develop unusual meats: lab-grown shark fin, panda bear, lion steaks, elephant. These meats would have a winning price-tag compared to "real" meat, and nobody can tell if they're not good enough. Run a promotion where the profits from every $70 "Penguin Steak" go to sustaining Penguin habitats.
I've also thought about opening a shell company that would advertise and sell lab-grown human flesh steaks. Sell a fun and fancy experience of getting to be a cannibal, except it's "ethical". This would generate a lot of publicity and interest. But I'm not actually sure whether that would ultimately be a winning or losing move.
You want to claim that Trump had bad PR, using as an example something that was leaked from a private meeting, assuming he even said it. Trump's PR is bad because of things other people said about him? This is like saying Biden's PR is bad because of "Let's Go Brandon".
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