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US Politics the 2025 trump presidency thread

nepalnt21 said:
they can lay down and give him everything he wants, which they've been doing (re chuck the cuck)
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www.wpr.org

Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge

Less than two weeks out from Wisconsin's high stakes Supreme Court election, Elon Musk's political action committee is offering voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing "activist judges."
www.wpr.org www.wpr.org

We have already been witness to Donald Trump poisoning the judicery and now he is openly bribing (via the auspices of Elon Musk) the public to stop 'activist judges'.

As I see it, the problem is 'legislative activism' has no legal defintion.

I've read quite a few definitions but all of them include at least one subjective element.

I note that judges can refer back to The Senate. How would The Senate react? Can they fail to define a legal definition? It's liable to be subjective in it's own right BUT with a majority, won't the current US government be able to obtain a definition favourable to themselves?

I'm reminded that Kurt Gödel (eminent logician) famously found a loophole in the US constitution:

In his 2012 paper "Gödel's Loophole" F. E. Guerra-Pujol speculates that the problem involves Article V, which describes the process by which the Constitution can be amended. The loophole is that Article V's procedures can be applied to Article V itself. It can therefore be altered in a "downward" direction, making it easier to alter the article again in the future. So even if, as is now the case, amending the Constitution is difficult to bring about, once Article V is downwardly amended, the next attempt to do so will be easier, and the one after that easier still.

I am in no way asserting that Donald Trump is aware or is using 'Gödel's Loophole' but if a team of legal experts were employed to highlight every ambiguity in the US constitution and only persue clarification on those weaknesses that profit them, isn't that the smart thing to do?
 
4DQSAR said:
www.wpr.org

Ahead of Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk PAC offers cash for pledge

Less than two weeks out from Wisconsin's high stakes Supreme Court election, Elon Musk's political action committee is offering voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing "activist judges."
www.wpr.org www.wpr.org

We have already been witness to Donald Trump poisoning the judicery and now he is openly bribing (via the auspices of Elon Musk) the public to stop 'activist judges'.

As I see it, the problem is 'legislative activism' has no legal defintion.

I've read quite a few definitions but all of them include at least one subjective element.

I note that judges can refer back to The Senate. How would The Senate react? Can they fail to define a legal definition? It's liable to be subjective in it's own right BUT with a majority, won't the current US government be able to obtain a definition favourable to themselves?

I'm reminded that Kurt Gödel (eminent logician) famously found a loophole in the US constitution:

In his 2012 paper "Gödel's Loophole" F. E. Guerra-Pujol speculates that the problem involves Article V, which describes the process by which the Constitution can be amended. The loophole is that Article V's procedures can be applied to Article V itself. It can therefore be altered in a "downward" direction, making it easier to alter the article again in the future. So even if, as is now the case, amending the Constitution is difficult to bring about, once Article V is downwardly amended, the next attempt to do so will be easier, and the one after that easier still.

I am in no way asserting that Donald Trump is aware or is using 'Gödel's Loophole' but if a team of legal experts were employed to highlight every ambiguity in the US constitution and only persue clarification on those weaknesses that profit them, isn't that the smart thing to do?
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How about you delete this comment and stop sharing that information.
 
As a harm reduction reminder - I may no longer mod this thread (though I am still a site mod), I feel that I wanted to just offer a suggestion to all who are following political events whether from within the USA or abroad, and who are concerned about what is happening:

1) Part of the power bloc that has emerged is very 21st-century. It exploits the kind of attention that habituation, dependence, and addiction to social media that has existed for a decade or more in increasingly substantial rates.

2) With any addiction, it's important to consider how the addictive agent is impacting you, your health, your capacity to function, your self esteem, your safety, as well as any possible benefits the agent is having (Maybe you need pain meds to function when living with sickle-cell, or cancer, for example).

3) If use of the agent (in this case social media that is targeting emotional regulation in a very intentional way, through curated political activities, content distributed that evoke strong emotional responses (pride, vengence, fear, confusion, all of the above), and your use continues to maintain or escalate inspite of or in response to these triggers: you do have power to make a change

4) Attention is an established commodity by big tech. Your clicks lead to dollars for the tech oligarchs and those in power. The more upset you are, the longer you'll stay engaged, and the greater their valuation will climb along with ad revenue from sponsorships.

5) Remember the serenity prayer:

'Accept what we cannot change
Change what we can
[Grant me] The wisdom to know the difference'

There may be things that are happening that you have no control over - that's okay. What you do have absolute control over is how much of your focus and attention you are giving to social media, news media, and to politics.

Part of the way this stuff is exploited is that it is presented is both incredibly significant while also being business as usual. Something feels both established and normal, and also completely unhinged and on the brink. This is a model that has been utilized by Putin for over 20 years, even before modern social media had fully evolved. There's a reason that Bezos, Ellison, Zuck, Musk, Pinchar et. al, were there on election day and given Musk's near total control of X, there are now explicit channels of proganda that are entirely controlled by government interests and are curated through moderation and promotion to promote messages that are friendly to the white house and its allies, while taking a broad interpretation of dissent, activism, terrorism, and how these things are defined. Definitions are often applied in an unbalanced way depending on whether the message is pro-party (Jan 6) or anti-party (BLM and its alleged connection to ANTIFA). Similar actions will not be treated based on law or precedent, but will be treated based on favor.

All of this is happening and the only control you have is whether you participate, how long you spend participating, how much attention you give, and what you do to separate yourself from these forces.

Recovery is a robust and multigenerational movement that exists and emerged out of people trying to find social support in overcoming addiction. Recovery meetings exist beyond 12-step meetings and related fellowships and all are welcome to attend any OPEN meeting to learn more about what they offer. While this may not feel like a reason to go to an AA meeting, I have noted and interesting way in which recovery meetings have proven to be helpful for some during these times, as the experience of addiction is easy to relate to others in recovery from drugs, alcohol, or other behaviors.

Moderation of intake: Each morning I try to spend at least an hour waking up, getting my day started with some intentions for the day, even if it's just drinking coffee and watching the sun climb in the sky. I watch the neighborhood, check out birds on our porch, and enter the day with a quiet mind. In the fall, post election, I found myself reaching for my phone as I was opening my eyes, and being met with reddit posts and news stories that were alarming. I found my heart rate raising and feelings of dread washed over me before my first sip of coffee.

After a few weeks of living in a sense of agitated panic without any way to deal with what was happening, I realized that I was allowing this to kick in, and when I'd wake up in 'withdrawal' I'd go back to the dope dealer that lived on my bedside table for another hit of bad drugs. I started limiting my use of my phone and social media - reddit is the major site I use, though I've come to use this site mostly as I"ve been moderating but even this becomes too much some days and I will avoid logging in entirely.

It's good to remain informed, and I recommend analysis by publications like The Atlantic if you'd like thoughtful analysis (with a historically progressive vantage point - it was founded in Boston in the mid-1800s and has high standards for publication as well as a history of offering the perspectives of non-progressives as well. Newsmedia has become more clearly curated by the establishment left and right for some time - it is the model for which our tech infrastructure has participated in and is also following through with.

All of these things can lead to social isolation and loss of relationships, so a big protective factor is social connection, in person.

"The opposite of addiction isn't abstinence, it's human connection".

Taking some time to digest how you are impacted by political theatre and curated news about it as well as the social and other media sources that distribute it - how all of these things are impacting you, and deciding if you have changes you may need to make is healthy and empowering. If you connect with people in new ways in non-political contexts, through service work (charity organizations), hobby interests (meetup.com is good for finding things), athletics or fitness groups, or simply contacting old friends to make plans - these are things that can help to offset and overcome the weaponization of your attention for the benefit of others.

I realize that this was a long post, I have taken some time to consider whether to mention this and how to do so. I've become aware of people online expressing increasing levels of paranoia, distress, despair, anger, and a willingness to take increasingly risky actions because of things that have been going on. Much of this is designed to evoke these exact feelings and causes a helpless state that continues to come back for more, hoping that their attention will help change things.

We need to look out for ourselves and work on our connection outside of online spaces as these are the most important protective factors we as humans have.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading - always feel free to DM me if you want to chat about anything or ask questions about recovery, dependence, mental health etc. It's good to get things off your chest and anything people share with me I keep between us.
 
4DQSAR said:
The thing is, nothing has substantially changed within US law. It was always possible for a group to do this.

I keep telling people to read what Julius Ceaser did:

The ONLY law he changed was to restore the power of the Tribune of the Plebs to pardon anyone found guilty in court. He then had those loyal to him elected to the role (a political dead-end as it prevents that person from moving through the cursos honorum) by the simple expedient of bribing voters with unprescidented amounts of money (and threats to others seeking the role).

But it them put him in the position of forming alliences with future consols and after bribery to ensure his candidates got the roles, they could steal as much as they likely (JC getting a kickback) knowing that even when caught, he could use his power to get them pardoned.

Yes, there were many more events but at the end of the day, Julius Ceaser placed himself in a position where he could essentially allow his chosen patricians to make HIM vast amounts of money knowing that legally, nobody could touch them.

The thing to bear in mind is that the Tribune of the Plebs had become a real 'voice of the mob' job. The plebian assembly had been stripped of almost all of it's powers due to corruption - but JC only required one minor, unimportant seeming modification to short-circuit the entire Roman justice system.

Trump has done something similar. Put in place judges that will support him so he can rule by decreed - I mean 'presidential order' but the whole point of the US system was to have 3 arms of power, the goal being that one couldn't take complete power. Too late. With the judicery on his side, exactly what can the two houses do now? He HAS sole power.
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Didn’t Caesar get stabbed by Brutus in the end? Sorry this is a Trump thread and I’m here talking about Brutus and Caesar lol. But I’ve read a couple books in the past about Cleopatra (that led me to read a book about Caesar) in which he was stabbed by Brutus in the end and just thought about that when I was just reading what you wrote.
 
"i voted for trump because he is the anti-war president!"

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans

"The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.

I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.

This is going to require some explaining."

tl;dr the very competent administration of the stable genius trump accidentally sent a journalist (the editor in chief of the atlantic) their war plans.

jfc.

alasdair
 
473992999_1036315048540540_3980027580818477726_n.jpg
 
AngelsandFairiesarereal said:
Didn’t Caesar get stabbed by Brutus in the end? Sorry this is a Trump thread and I’m here talking about Brutus and Caesar lol. But I’ve read a couple books in the past about Cleopatra (that led me to read a book about Caesar) in which he was stabbed by Brutus in the end and just thought about that when I was just reading what you wrote.
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If people wish to read a single book on the history of ancient Rome, 'SPQR' by Mary Beard is the one (it was also made into a BBC television series which is the second best option).

But if you really wish to FEEL the ebb and flow around the age where Rome changed from a democracy to a tyrrany, the Robert Harris series 'The Cicero Trilogy'.

While the latter is partly fiction, it's sort of famous that over half the writings of Romans are the letters, speeches and books written by Cicero who was born into a democratic Rome and was murdered when it became a tyrrany. Cicero employed a slave, Tiro, to record his every word. So we have an enormous amount of primary material from a politician who lived to record how Julius Ceaser took power.

Indeed, Julius Ceaser was assassinated by 60-70 senators within the senatorial building. The reasons boiled down to the fact that Ceaser wanted to be Rex (king) but repeatedly organized things so it would appear to be the will of the senate.

The problem was, JC damaged the democratic system of Rome so deeply that when one of his descendents saught the same powers, the fact he WAS a descendent was a key piller of his claim. But he used similar tactics. Install others into positions of power so that when the time came, he merely needed to assert PRESCIDENT.

And what is the definition used to define 'activist judicery'? 'Not following prescident' (or the constitution). As if, once a judge rules in one way, in any similar future case, prescident would prevent them from using their own judgement. Do we see how dangerous that is? How it would be possible for a counsel to demand a case be referred back to the senate.
 
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alasdairm said:
The 2020 Trump Presidency Thread
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Was looking for a Biden Presidency Thread but there isn't one...just this Trump one, for a period he wasn't President. And I replied in it back at the beginning. Getting old sucks for your memory :|

I suppose this thread is good enough as it addresses what Trump seeks to undo from the previous administration. It allows us to contrast what Biden did vs what Trump is attempting to do. I just hope nobody takes it as simple as 'whataboutism' when it is a clear comparison worth making. Anything Trump is doing now, ought be compared (IMO) to both what Biden did, and to what Trump did in his first go'round. I get that his first term is very different from now for multiple reasons. He has congress barely on his side now, he's got the SCOTUS supposedly stacked and leaning his way, and he isn't at all concerned about re-election. On the last one, there are seriously no fucks left to give on what the left thinks or does about his 'mandate' actions. It's gonna be a wild ride.

I generally read back 3pgs to get up to speed when coming back in here, so I'll do that now.
 
alasdairm said:
not a little ironically, the u.s. economy has performed much better under democratic presidents than republican presidents in the modern era.
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brokedownpalace10 said:
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.
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So the conservative view would be Democrats love to make up social expenditures without being grounded in how to pay for it. But let's take a more factual approach to this, shall we?

Starter question - how much of the economy for a given administration is their blame/credit vs the preceeding admin? Both sides will scream 'He broke it, he ain't fixin it!' as soon as a new admin takes office (see the left ignoring the price of inflation/eggs for 4y then yelling about Trump not fixing it as if it was his creation). For real, what do you want to agree, for discussion purposes, is the time frame a President (and Congress who controls the purse strings) is actually accountable for the economy? Until we get some replies to work towards an agreement, I'd venture to say the first year is inherited from the previous admin and the fist year after a President leaves office is still his credit/blame. Gotta start the discussion somewhere.

Also, it helps discussion to remain factual and avoid emotions/opnions if we can link to sources. There's not much out there to cite that is non-biased, but I'm not going to kick that point on anyone, we have to work with what's available and accept sources are spinning an agenda. To start, I'm referencing wikipedia on recessions and who was president at the time.

@brokedownpalace10 (nice name, btw) chose 1953-2020, so I'll look there (and yes, this is some homework, so bear with me while I pull some data together):

Recession / President / Predecessor / Other factors
July 1953 – May 1954 / Eisenhower (R, '53-61) / Truman (D, '45-53; had a 8mo recession in 1945, and also had an 11mo recession in 48-49) / Truman had the Korean war spending, and Eisenhower caught the end of that
August 1957 – April 1958 / Eisenhower (R, '53-61) / Own it, budget surplus of 0.8% became a deficit of 0.6%. Own it.
April 1960 – February 1961 / Eisenhower / Kennedy (D, 61-63) / Just f'n own it
November 1973 – March 1975 / Nixon (R, 69-74) + Ford (R, 74-77) / Own it / Oil crisis with OPEC + '73-74 market crash leading to stagflation
January 1980 – July 1980 / Carter (D, 77-81) / Own it / Volcker raised interest rates dramaticall in 70's to fight inflation
July 1981 –November 1982 / Carter / Own it / 1979 Oil crisis
July 1990 – March 1991 / GHW Bush (R, 89-93) / Own it / 1990 Oil price shock, huge debt accumulation in the '80s
March 2001 – November 2001 / GW Bush (R, 01-09) / Clinton (D, 93-01) / dot-com bubble, 9/11 attacks
December 2007 – June 2009 / GWB / Own it / housing bubble collapse, $700Bn bank bail out, $787Bn stimulus package
February 2020 – April 2020 / Trump (R, 17-21) / Own it / Pandemic

So...by my homework....ya'll are correct. Majority since '53 were under R Presidents. Ftr, in looking further back, history continues this trend. I thought I'd find D's setting them up with crashing economies, but no, that's not the case. In mose situations, the R President has to own that recession. I can't account for Congress and budgets, nor Fed Res interest rate changes, as I've already put too much work into proving my thoughts incorrect :D
 
www.bbc.co.uk

Signal war plans chat: Five takeaways from leaked US top military meeting

What was discussed in the top-secret group that a journalist was accidentally added to?
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk

I'm uncertain as to how the above is being reported in the USA. I know for a fact that some US-based news sources will detect what nation someone is in and either refuse to allow access or go to a different page if the IP shows them to be outside the US.

Anyone else remember March 5ᵗʰ 2024 the FSB intercepted a conference call between four senior German military officers, including Air Force chief Ingo Gerhartz and Brig Gen Frank Gräfe? They heard discussing the prospect of supplying Ukraine with the long-range cruise missiles and saying the weapons could be used to hit the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the illegally-annexed peninsula of Crimea.

I f**king DO because they put British lives at risk.

ANYONE but ANYONE in a position of such power SHOULD know that they are extremely high-value targets for Russian and Chinese security services. Both have extremely skilled hackers - something you can be 100% certain that the CIA, FBI, NSA and so on will ALL have flagged the fact.

Lest we forget, Donald Trump used his iPhone to take a photograph of an image caught by a US reconnicence sattalite. Within HOURS experts were able to confirm the mirror sizes (three are required to remove spherical, chromatic, and coma aberrations), the practical resoution (10cm/4 inch) and the ultimate theoretical resolution (6cm/2.4 inches). The location being known, the time could be calculated using shadow-length and shadow-direction. Such data would make killing the satellite an easier task.

I'm no security expert BUT a president who either doesn't understand or doesn't care about US security strikes me as someone unfit for government. Until the image, experts roughly knew the capabilities, but now they know in much more detail and may potentially decide to shoot a number of them down after realizing the satellites were more able than thought.

I will conclude by noting that security is only as strong as it's weakest link. When the POTUS IS that weak link, I feel confident in stating that there will be hackers assigned purely to gain access to Donald Trump's digital data. I mean, I would!
 
4DQSAR said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Signal war plans chat: Five takeaways from leaked US top military meeting

What was discussed in the top-secret group that a journalist was accidentally added to?
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk

I'm uncertain as to how the above is being reported in the USA. I know for a fact that some US-based news sources will detect what nation someone is in and either refuse to allow access or go to a different page if the IP shows them to be outside the US.

Anyone else remember March 5ᵗʰ 2024 the FSB intercepted a conference call between four senior German military officers, including Air Force chief Ingo Gerhartz and Brig Gen Frank Gräfe? They heard discussing the prospect of supplying Ukraine with the long-range cruise missiles and saying the weapons could be used to hit the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the illegally-annexed peninsula of Crimea.

I f**king DO because they put British lives at risk.

ANYONE but ANYONE in a position of such power SHOULD know that they are extremely high-value targets for Russian and Chinese security services. Both have extremely skilled hackers - something you can be 100% certain that the CIA, FBI, NSA and so on will ALL have flagged the fact.

Lest we forget, Donald Trump used his iPhone to take a photograph of an image caught by a US reconnicence sattalite. Within HOURS experts were able to confirm the mirror sizes (three are required to remove spherical, chromatic, and coma aberrations), the practical resoution (10cm/4 inch) and the ultimate theoretical resolution (6cm/2.4 inches). The location being known, the time could be calculated using shadow-length and shadow-direction. Such data would make killing the satellite an easier task.

I'm no security expert BUT a president who either doesn't understand or doesn't care about US security strikes me as someone unfit for government. Until the image, experts roughly knew the capabilities, but now they know in much more detail and may potentially decide to shoot a number of them down after realizing the satellites were more able than thought.

I will conclude by noting that security is only as strong as it's weakest link. When the POTUS IS that weak link, I feel confident in stating that there will be hackers assigned purely to gain access to Donald Trump's digital data. I mean, I would!
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All true. ^^

In addition, a big irony is that Trump arguably won the 2016 election on Hillary running an e-mail account on a private server. After a years-long FBI investigation, it was determined that Clinton's server did not contain any information or emails that were marked classified. Although federal agencies did retrospectively determine that 100 emails contained information that should have been deemed classified at the time they were sent. (Wiki, but I've read that many places)
All that is why Comey said that what she did was not criminal, but careless. She should have not done what she did because classified stuff did still slip though, but compare that to coordinating highly sensitive Yemen war plans in real time on an unsecure group chat. Imagine how that attack would have turned out had a foreign power hacked in. Also, it shows they've been doing stuff like this all along.

Buttery males.
 
4DQSAR said:
I'm no security expert BUT a president who either doesn't understand or doesn't care about US security strikes me as someone unfit for government.
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It’s worse….he doesn’t even know…or it’s even worse than that, he’s lying and saying that he doesn’t know.

This was 2.5 hours after the news broke. He doesn’t even know what happened after the whole world did
 
alasdairm said:
"i voted for trump because he is the anti-war president!"
thank goodness he's a real straight shooter and you always know exactly where he stands

so, yeah, not so much.
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Ali and I are friends, irl, so I know he likes to hold Trump accountable to his literal statements. A go to has been 'Mexico will pay for the wall'. Ali won't let Trump off the hook with 'hyperbole', which to many on the right is how Trump operates. He says he's going to take Greenland by purchase or force...knowing it will never come to force but his starting position in negotiations is beyond realistic. Same for 'end Ukriane war before in office'. Yeah, Trump said it, but again, those who are used to his bluster realize a) he was pitching for the office at the time so he wanted to promise things, and b) he speaks in hyperbole. But let's stick with the Ukraine one for a moment and review the facts:
  • Russian invaded in 2014 while Obama drew a red line and watched Russia walk all over it.
  • No trouble with Russia during Trump's term
  • Russia invaded in 2022 while Biden said 'as long as it isn't a real serious incursion'
Add that to 'no new wars' under Trump's first term and he has some room to talk. Note, his claim of 'only President to not start new wars' is again hyperbole/lies (depending on your position), as Obama, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Kennedy, and Eisenhower (going back to WW2) also did not bring the US into any new wars (also depends on how you define 'conflicts').

Trump has a visceral fear of nukes. It's why he never talks about using them, and a big reason he works for peace over war, especially with nuclear powers.


Shifting gears to the US bombing of Gaza. They have held hostages for over a year, fk'd around with releasing wrong bodies, and only entertain cease fires as a matter of time to resupply. He gave Hamas an ultimatum, at which point he can either lose face internationally by not backing it up or prove to the world the US is a force to reckon with and we mean what we say. Nobody has believed any threats from the US in the past two decades, except when Trump was in office. I believe there is/was a Gaza war thread where we can take up any back and forth on it's justification and what steps ought be taken. At this point, in this thread, I'm good with giving Israel anything they want for the complete annhiliation of Hamas. Anyone want to talk about Palestinian civilians, we can go to the other thread. But Hamas? FA is over, FO time is here. I'm actually quite surprised IDF hasn't gone harder sooner.

US launches airstrikes on Yemen Houthis. Seriously? How disingenuous can you be? They've been attacking shipping lanes for a long time. It's past time to shut that down. Specific to attacking US ships, that bit is over. Now, dig deeper on two points - what exactly is being attacked, and what is the bigger picture in play? Strikes have been surgically focused on Houthi spots. Is there collateral damage? Always is, especially when, like Hamas, you hide amongst the civilian population/structures. What's the bigger picture? Iran funds Hamas, Houthis, and Hezbollah. Iran needs to be kept in check - it's leadership, not necessarily the population. To do so, you need to shut down their proxies, which IDF has done to Hamas & Hezbollah, steadily taking out leader after leader (as opposed to carpet bombing civilian spaces). US is taking on Houthis, and it is warranted. All of this, with a quick nod to IDF taking out a leader IN IRAQ and only that person....yeah, Iraq is getting exposed and weakened, and will be held accountable for it's actions, direct and indirect. ALL of this is in the US interest, and the larger int'l interest, but others aren't willing to step up and do what's needed. Biden took the losses and handcuffed IDF and our ability to respond. Trump is taking the gloves off in an effort to end this.
 
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