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Goodguy  3d ago (text post)   Edited 3d ago   9708 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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What are the chances Trump gets impeached now and actually removed from office? Could he go to prison even? He is beyond fucked. Republicans are already turning on him on the timeline.

Aside from impeachment, I wonder if the Dems will have enough people (and spines) to invoke the War Powers Act.

We should probably replace the "national emergency" part of the War Powers Act with a new modernized set of rules, which I propose we name the "Everybody Has Fucking Cell Phones Now Act". Might the dastardly Elbonians hit us with a sneak attack? Sure! Does that mean we had best be prepared to let a President launch acts of war, for months on end, before getting Congressional approval like those dumbass Founding Fathers thought was necessary? No!

Perhaps we were all spooked during that brief window of history in which ICBMs were fast but communications were slow, but at this point incoming ICBMs are just about the only thing that we might want to make an exception for. For anything less, the Commander-in-Chief can spare 10 minutes to mass-message Congress and tally a vote before starting a war, because, as my proposed Act expressly notes: everybody has fucking cell phones now.

What? Why?

Yours, a confused foreigner.

The US constitution gives congress power to declare war. During the cold war congress delegated the power to react to presidents with the War Powers Act. The idea being even after Pearl Harbor it took congress a day to declare war. So, Presidents could act immediately if the ICBMs start flying toward the capitol. But under the delegated authority, Presidents are supposed to get congressional approval after a short time.

Trump has thumbed his nose at the limits of the War Powers act pretty openly, and the Republicans in congress have mostly let him.

Republicans might want to help them after tonight.

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