Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Please link the court case.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
I feel your pain. It reminds me of the Please Drink Verification Can copypasta. The new captcha's I've been facing have been particularly annoying, requiring me to click images that slowwwwwly reappear in a way designed to infuriate humans more than to ward away bots.
The problem with online anonymity is that it's only valued by a handful of libertarians, and millions of bots, pirates, scammers, and other unsavory individuals. Since most normies don't care about being anonymous, the vast majority of companies don't care either, and only see it as problem.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
It's a novel argument because whether the president is an "officer" hadn't come up in this context. If you disagree with this, feel free to cite the court case that specifically argues this point in an identical context.
You're effectively arguing that lawyers should never be allowed to make new arguments even if the situation is different.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Did you read my original source? It covers this:
"The Secretary of State's Office opened an investigation into the incident at State Farm Arena. Our investigation revealed that the incident initially reported as a water leak late in the evening of November 3rd was actually a urinal that had overflowed early in the morning of November 3rd, and did not affect the counting of votes by Fulton County later that evening."
The affidavit also states, in part, that "observers and media were not asked to leave. They simply left on their own when they saw one group of workers, whose job was only to open envelopes and who had completed that task, also leave," the affidavit said.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Where are the republicans inventing new legal theories
Lawyers arguing in new ways to new situations is just standard legal practice, e.g. when Trump's lawyers argued the presidency is not "an officeholder of the United States".
Where are the republicans using partisan organizations assessments of their ideological opposites as a justification to enact a domestic spying program?
The origin of the Trump-Russia investigation is shrouded in bias, just like the investigation into Biden's son was. But in both cases it was clear that there were actual problems there. Not problems that reached up to the highest level, but problems nonetheless.
I'm not a fan of plenty of the things Dems have done in regards to their woke crusade, but in terms of concrete escalation, storming the capital and trying to overturn a legitimate election due to being sore losers was far worse and more blatant.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
The Georgia incident wasn't a water main break, it was a leaking toilet. Nobody was instructed to leave the ballot counting area. No ballots were impacted. This has been documented already.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
So the Democrats have a whole bunch of riots, then steal an election
Once again, there's no evidence the election was stolen. Just an endless gish gallop from Trump, and his supporters motte-and-bailey'ing him with vastly weaker claims when pressed (e.g. "the election was stolen because the media is biased against Trump") before going right back to assuming the strong claims were true when they weren't being pressed.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
None of this is unique, unusual, or dangerous. Leftist NGOs and Democratic governors/AGs preparing for a potential second term of Trump. Sinister-sounding quotes like "controlling the flow of information" and "democracy-proofing our institutions" but nothing actually out of the ordinary in terms of real actions. I'll remind you that the vast majority of the actual escalation has come from Republicans. Remember J6? Remember "the election was stolen!!!" 70% of Republicans still believe that crap.
Trump will try some hamfisted executive orders, which will get massacred in the courts like much of his EO's did in his first term. He'll declare victory anyways, and the base will love him because they desire the appearance of "owning the libs" more than any actual substantive policy changes.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Good post. It's crazy to me how disorganized and fragmented France can be sometimes. On the one hand this could be the sign of a healthy democracy, on the other hand this level of fragmentation is part of what led France to being shattered so easily by the Germans in WW2.
Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.
Small correction, it was Reynaud that led France at the time of its capitulation.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Control of the executive has swapped between the two parties with nearly metronomic frequency across all of American history. If Republicans don't win in this election then they'd win in the not too distant future, at which point they'll wish they had passed the bill.
I feel like you were arrogant and just need to take the “L” here.
This is a pretty goofy response when I explicitly addressed this scenario before it even happened, and is almost certain to go exactly as I said it would have. This article has some good quotes:
The new policy could also soon be blocked in court. In a court filing in Washington on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union led a lawsuit with several immigration organizations against the Biden administration seeking to end the executive action.
The lead attorney for the lawsuit, Lee Gelernt, said Biden’s policy is “near identical” to one enacted by Trump that the ACLU was successful in blocking.
“We’re filing this lawsuit because this ban is patently illegal. The Trump administration enacted a near identical asylum ban. We sued over that. We won. We hope to win again,” Gelernt said.
A bill is just a piece of paper but who is going to enforce it? Paper plus Biden without an election hanging off his head was and is worthless. No paper plus Trump solved a lot of the issue. A good bill plus Trump would be amazing.
A bill would at least pave the way for Trump to take tougher action. No bill + Trump was no better than Obama. The chances of Trump actually passing a more stringent bill are quite low (although not zero).
I have no idea if you sincerely hold your beliefs or just fell for the lefts trap.
In the entire previous thread nobody could say how it was a "trap" other than vaguely sneering at their outgroup.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
I already addressed this in the post actually. Here's the relevant bit:
The issue with this idea is that even if Biden were to reimplement all of Trump’s executive orders, they still amounted to little more than a bandaid on a bullet hole. Critics of the bill are technically correct in pointing out that there was less blood before Biden ripped off the bandaid, but it’s ludicrous to then assume that the bandaid was all that was ever needed. US immigration law and border enforcement is fundamentally broken in a number of ways, and this bill would have gone a long way in addressing the worst problems. Recall that Trump himself tried to go after asylum laws directly, but his efforts mostly fizzled in the courts.
I doubt Biden will reimplement all the things Trump tried to do with EO's, and even some of the more moderate stuff he does will likely get gummed up in the courts. Better "something" than "nothing", though, I guess. Still, it really would have been better to just pass the dang bill. Even if Biden refused to implement it, it would have cleared the way for Trump to not get his EO's mangled by the courts if he becomes president.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Why is NATO so obsessed with the 2% of GDP figure? Never in human history has a country lost a war to an abstract ratio. They lose to brigades, warships and aircraft.
Army counts and number of warships/aircraft, etc. can all be gamed quite easily. It's harder to game total investment numbers. It can sort of be gamed through inflated pensions qualifying as "military investment", but there's another bit in the NATO records about a certain % being devoted to procurement, which takes care of that. On the issue of overinvestment, the 1% to 1.5% most NATO countries were at prior to the invasion would have been enough to have a basic territorial defense, but it wouldn't have been enough for a serious expeditionary force if Russia tried to do a fait accompli invasion of the Baltics. Germany's military in particular was just in a disastrous state before the war that it would have been more of a liability than an asset.
Given modern satellite surveillance they should be able to foresee a Russian invasion of the Baltics and move forces there to defend them.
We had this yet most people (barring the US government) missed the invasion of Ukraine. Also, there would be a lot of pushback to moving a bunch of troops close to Russia from domestic far right + far left who are obsessed with not "provoking" Russia.
Why does Ukraine fighting Russia advance European interests?
For the same reason that the UK + France guaranteed Poland in 1939. Russia's history has been dominated with a desire to push west as far as possible. Putin has only reaffirmed that.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Trump's underlings lying to him to avoid implementing orders they didn't like is a clear example of insubordination, but the comment I quoted was specifically about the US government lying to the American people.
We can go to two decades if you like, but I don't think it changes much. It became clear within a few years that Bush's claims of Iraqi WMDs were BS. Nothing since really comes close to that.
I'm not sure what parts of the Afghan pullout would be classified as lies. It was handled about as well is it could have been, with 2 exceptions: 1) the Pentagon predicted it would take months for the Afghan government to fall instead of days, and 2) that one suicide bombing that occurred. #1 was pretty clearly not a lie since it's quite hard to gauge peoples' willingness to fight. The Pentagon overestimated it Afghanistan, and then underestimated it in Ukraine a few months later. Putin also misjudged it in that case. It's a tough thing to get right. Importantly, nothing about the big picture in Afghanistan was ever really hidden from the public. Some officials or generals would come out from time to time and make statements claiming "it's getting better, trust us", but anyone could look at the evidence and see it clearly wasn't. The NYT and other news organizations had a slow but steady drumbeat explaining how bad things were.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
This is a pretty long, thought out comment. Thank you for engaging.
I'm familiar with Mearsheimer's work. I've argued against the man's perception of "Russia invading Ukraine is entirely the USA's fault" and was exposed by proxy to his stuff on lying.
Conflating "lying" with "spinning" is a big old motte and bailey. When you accuse someone (or an institution) of lying, that's a quite aggressive claim of something that's clearly wrong. Like 1984's "we've always been at war with Eastasia" sort of thing. Bush and Powell lying about Iraqi WMD's was a good example here, as it became clear after the fact that they were pulling stuff out of their asses, and it served as a major part of plunging us into a pointless war. Spinning, by contrast, is something that everyone does all the time. You can accuse the government of spinning facts all you want, and you'd be 100% correct, but you didn't do that, likely because you knew it lacked the same punch as an accusation of "lying".
Your examples given in the last two decades amount to very little. The link on Biden came in the runup to the Ukraine war, when a lot of people thought the US was needlessly saber-rattling by saying Russia would invade. Of course, Russia did invade a few weeks after that article was published. Other than that, it gives an example of a US strike in Afghanistan which it claimed was legitimate until the NYT wrote some articles, and then it said "oh, maybe not". The examples on Trump are likewise lacking. Yeah, he presented himself as a peace president while actively throwing a bit of gasoline on some international fires, but again that's pretty mild. The stuff on Obama is just some spinning of the benefits of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Again, calling it "spin" is fine, but I wouldn't call any of those "lies".
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Fair enough.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Hot take: There's a very good chance this ends up mostly as a nothingburger. Trump will of course appeal the decision, kicking any possible imprisonment beyond November. Even then, he might not get actual jail time.
As I've stated several times before, the right won't rise up in some great rebellion over this (or almost anything else).
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
This is like the mirror inverse of "this will be the end of Trump's campaign, says increasingly nervous man for the seventh time this year".
"Now, this time it's no more mr. nice guy!" Yeah, uh huh. Sure thing.
The only way that would actually work is if the right had a leader who had a clear vision for seizing power and was able to issue clear marching orders. J6 showed Trump really doesn't know what he's doing on that front. He wants something to happen, but he lacks the institutional capacity to do much more than simply lash out at random.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
I don't get it is Sachs claiming he was first hand knowledge of this stuff or is he just talking his ass off like all of us here?
You're correct: He's shitposting like anyone on this forum is, yet he has a PhD (in an unrelated discipline) so he gets to act like a public intellectual.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
I agree with Sachs general sentiment that the US government has lied to the people far too much with disastrous consequences.
When has the US government lied about foreign policy in the last decade or so? The last major incident I can think of was the runup to the Iraq war, but that was an exception that proves the rule.
Are you just using "lying" here as a stand-in for "position I disagree with" or "unrealistically rosy assessment"?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Are there any estimates from relatively unbiased sources that give a much higher number?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
As to whether or not the package is a trap, I can't see any reason the Democrats would support this unless it furthered their objective of increasing migration.
This is your brain on relentless negative partisanship. "The enemy is agreeing with me!?! It must be a trap!!!"
Remember when the Democrats agreed to tough-on-crime policies in the 90s, despite formerly being the party that wanted to lessen crime penalties? Many issues aren't black and white, where one party supports 0 and the other party supports infinity. If both sides support some finite number, with one side's number simply being less than the other side's, then there's no contradiction if the status quo's number is far higher than what both would prefer, that both sides would agree to bring it down. For a more pessimistic take, it's possible that the side supporting a higher amount realizes that the status quo is too high and is thus costing them politically. In other words, they might prefer the status quo if they could have it for free, but they judge that the ongoing cost isn't worthwhile. That's what was going on back in February with the compromise deal. It's how the Democrats got to supporting much more stringent immigration restrictions without supporting any sort of amnesty, which had been a feature of basically every immigration compromise prior.
The resurrected bill could be another attempt by Democrats to defray the costs, or it could simply be grandstanding if they know Republicans will shoot it down again. Then they can say they tried to crack down on the border multiple times but Republicans (Trump) wouldn't let them.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Thank you for being the only person in this thread who actually agrees with me. It's nice to have at least one person who agrees to make sure I'm not going crazy.
I agree with all the points you wrote.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
5mo ago
Then why don't you reply to what is written? I still don't think you want to get immigration under control any more than someone in the 'Alt Right'. In fact, considering your second paragraph, bringing up the 'Alt Right' makes very little sense outside of the context of you trying to frame your views in a positive light with regards to "mainstream media morality".
I'm really not sure what you want me to reply to. You bolded the Alt Right for a reason that's not clear to me, then you again accuse me of "framing my views in regards to mainstream media morality". I must not understand what you're meaning here.
This response is functionally unfalsifiable. It's like saying "If I'm right, I'm right; If I'm wrong, there's a coverup".
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