Dean
1mo ago
Not only am I ignoring your warning, I am recommending for your own health- mental as well as possibly physical- to get some rest.
You are doom posting. Go sleep it off.
You continue to not identify a process Trump failed to follow to prove he actually did it, which by definition would be a required process in this context, as well as continue to not identify where this validation requirement comes from.
"He doesn't have to follow a process to do something, he just has do actually do [a process that demonstrates he did the thing]" is not the informed defense you think it is, particularly when this is the basis of the accusation against the prosecution flipping the burden of proof as a prerequisit of assuming guilt and requiring Trump to prove otherwise.
Which you have not identified a binding requirement requiring the President to do.
Feel free to come back when you identify a required process.
Dean
1mo ago
To be clear, I'm more worried now than I've been since at least 2017 (the Trump-Kim yelling match) - and I was in Melbourne then, and thus personally at risk. I was mildly nervous back in April of this year, but you'll note that I didn't make a post like this then.
Way to undercut your credibility, lol.
2017 was practically an archetypical example of American ethnocentricism of thinking their internal political squabbles reflect how other key actors view the world. No one who remotely paid attention to Korea for any amount of time was particularly surprised by rhetoric that wasn't matched by mobilization by North or South, and no one whose seen a 'don't hold me back, bro' moment of bar-posturing would have missed the caveats on both sides were using throughout. Variants of 'If you attack me, then you will regret it' were blatantly (and politically) being misrepresented and misreported by actors whose motive was to inspire panic and fear in the audience.
Meanwhile, in Korea, coverage of the 'crisis' had far more of a 'wow, the American media are talking' tone than one of concern... if they covered it at all. Certainly the South Koreans weren't mobilizing their society for a conflict.
How and why the Americans would wage a war against North Korea without South Korean support or ascent was, of course, rarely if ever raised and never addressed beyond possible dismissals of 'the South Koreans don't have a choice.'
Remember that your life is worth a lot more than a few hundred bucks; it is rational to take action even if you rate the chance of nuclear war as "small but significant". Remember also that it is good to survive; while QoL might suck in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, we'll recover, and if you have any ideological goals you will in almost all cases help them more if you're still around to advocate and act for them. That said, good luck to us all and I hope I'm worried over nothing.
Well, you're certainly demonstrating the classic failure mode of utilitarians, who struggle to conceptualize or deal with conceptual infinities and start doing irrational things on the basis of existential dread spirals.
No, the Chinese are not about to try and cold-rush Taiwan, or try to start a war via blockade that would be publicly jumped on by both US political parties for electioneering purposes. No, there isn't any particular grounds for panic-buying resiliency goods beyond the universal basis to have a stockpile for emergencies. No, the nukes (and the satellites) are not about to fall.
You are doomposting. Go back to bed and sleep it off.
You are seeing what the early part of an era of exploration or expansion looks like.
Commercially-driven exploration starts by trying to focus on the most profitable quickest returns, which are often closer, to further expand the new technology. When the Europeans began to build ships capable of traversing the world, they did not, in fact, immediately use most of those ships to traverse the world- they used them primarily for more profitable ventures closer to home. However, it was the capacity to go further which enabled the outlier minority to do the things that got famous.
Technological era innovations have similar examples. Yes, the telegraph enabled long-distance communications... but most investments were within or between cities already relatively close together. Yes, electrification has massive implications for making rural regions more efficient and profitable, but most electrical wiring started and focused in the cities. Yes, the American automobile revolutionized how people viewed distance and the ability to move across state and even continental scale, but things like the Interstate System trailed far behind. It didn't make the technologies less revolutionary.
What is currently going on with SpaceX and the reusable rocket technologies is that it is still scaling to meet the latent demand for low-earth investments that were previously priced out of application. There is still considerable profit, and market share, to be made, and currently SpaceX is about the only one making it. SpaceX is in turn using those profits to both expand capacity and develop new capabilities. The Falcon series is what prototyped the technologies for the Falcon Heavy, and the Falcon Heavy for the Starship.
Starship, in turn, is the new emerging and still experimental technology combination that- if it can be made to work, which yesterday was a significant step towards- will unlock a significant amount of lift capacity potential for beyond LEO activities.
The lift capacity gate is what limits what you probably think of as exploration, because the ability to lift fuel and resources is what increases range into deeper space. If you want deep-space transit, you want to lift material into space, where it is cheaper / easier / more technologically feasible to package it up and start pushing from a space gathering point than to lift all pieces at once from earth. That means cost-efficiency of lifting stuff, not just the capacity of stuff you can lift.
For example, the Saturn 5 rocket of the Apollo program to the moon had a LEO lift capacity of 118 tons, and about $5.5k per kg. The Starship is expected to have a LEO lift capacity of 100-150 tons, with a forecasted cost of around $1.6k per kg... possibly falling to $0.15kg ($150/kg) over time due to to reusability reduce the cost per flight as you don't have to keep re-making the whole thing.
Not only is Starship offering capacity on par or better than some of the heaviest lift rockets in history, but with a cost profile that is -70%of the Saturn 5 on the near-term side to -98% less expensive per launch over time, while offering more launches because the components can be reused rather than having to be built per launch. If you built 5 saturn-5 rockets a year, you could only have 5 saturn-5 missions a year to move stuff into space. If you build 5 Spaceships a year, you can have 5 + [Sum of all still-mission capable rockets from all previous years] missions a year, which is to say a heck of a lot more missions over time.
More missions means more opportunities to get stuff into space, including eventually deeper range mission preparation material.
To bring this all back to the age of exploration comparison- imagine if Caravels had the characteristic of having to be sunk the first time they landed on any foreign shore. Now imagine what exploration looks like if Caravels can land, restock, and go out again. This is the technological implication difference of SpaceX's reusable rocket technology.
In turn, the first caravels were in the 13th century. Magellan wouldn't circumnavigate the world until the 1500s. The carracks that Columbus used to reach the Americas were developed more than a century prior.
So when you ask-
Do you think we'll get there any time soon?
Then given that we are literally on the 5th test flight ever of a new degree of capability, historically speaking 50 years from now would be very soon, let alone 15 or 5.
Dean
1mo ago
SpaceX is effectively the non-missile orbital launch capacity of most governments in the world, with something like 85% of all upmass movement in 2023. It's not that the Americans bought all that mass lift, as much as it is that other countries spend buy the space for their needs rather than very expensive rocket programs themselves.
Dean
1mo ago
Nostalgic, in a way.
When I was younger, I vaguely recall sci-fi where ships landing like that was how spaceports worked. I thought it was distinct rather than cool since it seemed so unrealistic, but here I am decades later suitably impressed.
Dean
1mo ago
As expected, you still haven't identified a specific process the President is required to do that Trump failed to follow. Feel free to come back when you do.
Dean
1mo ago
Obama's executive order remained in effect because executive orders are not automatically null when a President leaves, and President Trump did not null them.
Executive 13526 does not establish a procedural requirement for the President to follow any particular process to declassify information. Therefore, there is nothing for Trump to null.
Which is unsurprising for you to not have caught on to, as you seem to have gone straight to Section 1.6, Identification and Markings, and so skipped or never got to various relevant sections.
These includes-
Sec. 1.3. Classification Authority.
(a) The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:
(1) the President and the Vice President;
(2) agency heads and officials designated by the President; and
(3) United States Government officials delegated this authority pursuant to paragraph (c) of this section.
...establishing a categorical difference in offices who can inherently originally classify and delegated classification authorities, of which later sections apply different standards to...
and
Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations.
(a) In no case shall information be classified, continue to be maintained as classified, or fail to be declassified in order to:
(4) prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.
...which is to say prevent or delay a President's decision to declassify, who as the ultimate classification authority gets to decide what does not require protection in the interest of the national security (other than atomic secrets)...
and
Sec. 1.7. Classification Prohibitions and Limitations.
(c) Information may not be reclassified after declassification and release to the public under proper authority unless:
...which is to say there are a number of caveats which are not even alleged to have been met by the prosecution, even without the executive superiority of a Presidential declassification...
and
Secs 1.8 and 1.9, Classification Challenges and Fundamental Classification Guidance Review ...which focus their guidance to Agency Heads and below, which a President is not....
and
PART 3 -- DECLASSIFICATION AND DOWNGRADING ...which in general establishes the President as an appeal authority to for standards ascribed to agency heads and below, but not the President...
and
Sec. 3.1. Authority for Declassification.
(b) Information shall be declassified or downgraded by:
(1) the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position and has original classification authority;
...
(3) a supervisory official of either the originator or his or her successor in function, if the supervisory official has original classification authority; or
...which, per Sec. 1.3 establishing that the President has original classification authority and authorized the original classification via delegated original classification authority and is the supervisory official of all executive branch agencies...
and
PART 4 -- SAFEGUARDING
Sec. 4.1. General Restrictions on Access.
(i.) (2) *Classified information originating in one agency may be disseminated by any other agency * to which it has been made available to a foreign government in accordance with statute, this order, directives implementing this order, direction of the President, or with the consent of the originating agency. For the purposes of this section, "foreign government" includes any element of a foreign government, or an international organization of governments, or any element thereof.
...demonstrating that Presidential direction has its unique force without process requirement as well as authority to disseminate to any other agency (which includes the office of the White House)...
and
Sec. 4.3. Special Access Programs.
(a) Establishment of special access programs. Unless otherwise authorized by the President, only the Secretaries of State, Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, and the Director of National Intelligence, or the principal deputy of each, may create a special access program.
...demonstrating again that Presidential direction has its unique force without process requirement in the handling of classified information...
and, of course, definition (gg)
(gg) "Original classification authority" means an individual authorized in writing, either by the President, the Vice President, or by agency heads or other officials designated by the President, to classify information in the first instance
...which is to say, all EO 13526 requirements placed on Original Classification Authorities do not apply to the President, the Vice President, or by agency heads or other officials designated by the President, because for the purpose of policy those people (who have original classification authority per Sec. 1.3) are not, themselves, Original Classification Authorities (proper noun).
There are more, but they'd require more characterization and this review of American regulatory requirements has gone long enough.
Plus, it's all redundant, since none of them actually, you know, identify a required process for the President.
Since you have failed to identify a specific process the President must follow to declassify information, feel free to return when you find one.
No allegations?! For the umpteeth time, There is literally a recording of him doing so! It's 2 minutes long, listen for yourself.
Your own link doesn't claim it was an argument, but Trump supporting his recounting of events of someone not present to someone else not present... and this in turn goes back to automatic declassification authority powers for when he took documents away.
Moreover, and in contradiction to the prosecutions' own thesis, the clip is raised for Trump saying that the document is classified... but the later argument (and your concluding argument) is that Trump is no longer President, and thus does not have classification authority to make- or reverse- a decision already made. However, the decision to take the documents was a decision as a President, as would have been the accompanying declassification authority implications.
Which creates the quandary of the prosecution claiming that non-President Trump's claim (which should be taken as objective and legal and not at all performative because we all know Trump would never exaggerate) overturns the inherent decisions of President Trump's declassification authority when President Trump decided what to take.
Yes, and when the government told Biden to return the documents, he did. Trump is an outlier in that he allegedly attempted to hide documents to prevent them from being returned, That's the difference here.
No, the difference is that Biden did not have the authority to declassify the documents, whereas Trump did. This is also a significant part of the distinction between Trump and Clinton, and Trump and Pence. Of the four cases, the only one pursued has been the one against the only figure with the actual declassification authority, who also happens to be the political opponent of the party pursuing the charges, despite the Espionage Act having no obligation to spare the former or pursue the later.
The choice to prosecute was just that- a choice. It was also a choice pursued in parallel with multiple other lawfare efforts intended to hobble the ruling party's primary political opponent.
They aren't going to show the actual confidential documents of course.
Sure they are. They have to. Again, the classification cover sheets have no evidentiary power on their own, and so if photos are to be presented as evidence it will have to be photos of the actual confidential documents. If the photos are not going to be provided as evidence, there is no reason to take them.
Classified evidence not a new dilemma, and the US justice system has ways for showing limited classified information to a judge to validate a claim of secrets that won't be shown publicly.
But as you stated the cover sheet doesn't make them confidential. The contents of the documents will not be revealed to the public, but the case is immediately dead if Trump's lawyers prove the documents are not confidential. So yes, the cover sheet snafu is immaterial.
No, the cover sheets are not immaterial- they are demonstrative of how the FBI attempted to shape public (and worse for them, court) perception by altering evidence they claimed to be presenting that characterized the alleged crime, and demonstrate the unnecessary but existent coordination between the Executive Branch and the partisan news agencies who received and publicized the photos that had no evidentiary purpose.
You think the government doesn't have procedures for declassifying?
For the President? Heavens no. Nor has the prosecution, the current White House, past White Houses, Congressional Intelligence oversight committees, or lawyers identified a specific process that is required to be followed by the president before the President can treat a document as unclassified. Nor have you, for that matter.
The better question, then, is what procedure you think was violated by the President.
(And not, for example, a staff who failed to complete any supporting paperwork to note the decision after the fact.)
If you believe Trump has committed an open and shut case in not following a procedure applying to the president, you should at least be able to identify what procedure was violated, no?
(The answer to this is yes, by the way. If you reply without actually identifying the alleged procedure that specifically applies to the President, the response will merely be a question of if you've found that procedure yet.)
Trump could have changed the procedures, but he didn't do so.
Prove it. Which procedure, specifically, did Trump need to have changed?
If this is as cut and dry as you think, this should be very easy for you. Instead, I suspect what you are going to do is fumble around a bit because the media reports that alleged a process violation never actually specify a Presidential process to be violated. You will find some articles on how declassification processes work for agencies, you will find notes that declassification is typically noted in memos after a decision has been made, but you will not find a standard that says that the President has to go through a process before his decision to declassify information becomes legal.
The more politically minded will note that this is a form of how partisans can lie without technically lying- they are only implying the existence of a thing (a specific procedural requirement), but never actually make the claim of what the thing actually is, which might discredit them if examined. Then they move forward on acting on the basis of the implied thing.
More contemporary historically minded people will remember that this was a routine part of anti-Trump media coverage and probes for years, including in the contemporary legal environment when Trump was being accused of fraud in which the victims testified on his behalf, an accusation which in turn was used to levy historic fines.
You are correct that Trump doesn't need to explain why he is declassifying something, but incorrect that a document is declassified simply by thinking about it.
No, that's pretty much exactly how it works. That's what ultimate declassification authority entails and enables.
The archetypical example of ultimate declassification authority is that if a President decides in the middle of an a phone call with a foreign leader to reveal information, there is no legal issue even though the same could send other government employees to jail. The authority to do so does not come from the context, but from the position, and requires no more pre-work than the act. The action is not legalized retroactively, it was legal in and of itself.
Which, in turn, goes back to why the reporting on Presidential declassification that you will focus on are ex post facto recordings of the declassification, rather than pre-requirements. Classified information really can be declassified simply by an original classification authority deciding in the midst of a conversation that they really want to use a piece of information. The declassification does not get retroactively re-classified if they don't do paperwork, and that paperwork is in turn is owed to... the President, as the Chief of Executive. Not by the Executive, to someone else.
According to this article, it doesn't even matter. The Espionage Act criminalizes mishandling information "relating to the national defense" not "classified information." Meaning that theoretically you can be guilty of sharing information that was never even classified.
I laughed, but no.
In short, setting aside the various precedents that limit the Espionage Act to its historic limited utilizations, the Executive Branch has systems for designated information that it believes warrant information controls. Information that is not bound by information controls, categorically cannot be mishandled, because handling standards are established by the Executive Branch under the authority of the President.
The President, in turn, has ultimate authority over all Executive Branch information security programs. There is no one in the executive branch who can impose information control restrictions on the President, or who can reverse his decisions. If the President judges that something is unclassified and without restrictions, it is, unless the restriction is legislated by Congress.
Note, in turn, that the indictment and prosecutors have not actually cited a law under which the information could not be declassified.
False. An ex-President is not a President, and the actions of a former President are by definition not official acts.
Thank you for repeating the previously supplied summary of the prosecution's position.
The Biden Administration's effort to target Trump in the classified document case rested on an argument that Presidents have to go through a formal process for declassification, insist that because Trump did follow the process the documents were still classified, and thus that once Trump left office with them he could no longer declassify them and thus it was improper holding.
However, the prosecution's failure to demonstrate a process failure still stands-
However, there is no required procedure, the current White House does not assert it has created a required procedure, and neither the National Archives or FBI ever actually identified a required process that Trump failed to follow to lead to the judgement of 'improper' holding.
...which returns to assuming the conclusion as the basis of this prosecution.
Rather than proving the President Trump did not declassify the documents, which could be done by identifying a required process for the President to declassify, the prosecution is instead claiming the documents are still classified and demanding Trump prove otherwise, when the basis of proving otherwise would be a process that is not required to declassify and could be used in the stronger first form if such a requirement existed.
In shorter terms, rather than prove that Trump did not follow a required process to declassify information, the prosecution is asserting an inverse- that Trump must prove he declassified information by following a process that is not required.
The issue of demanding the target prove their innocence by compliance to a standard that does not exist should be obvious to those not partisan inclined.
With NATO, there is at least a contractual obligation for the Bundeswehr to fight Russia if it were to invade the US, even though nobody is under any illusion about the threat the Bundeswehr poses to Putin.
There isn't. It's a common misconception, but while there would be massive political ramifications if a country did not step up during an Article 5 invocation, countries are not required to fight. All a NATO member is required to do is "take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked."
So in your 'invade the US,' the Germans could make the argument that 'Americans, with your navy you got this, the Bundeswehr isn't necessary.' It could even point to the sorry state of the Bundeswehr as evidence that mobilizing a non-functional Bundeswehr wouldn't help, would be detrimental even, and thus not only be unnecessary but fully in keeping with the spirit of the alliance to not force the Americans into a two-front war defending Germany as well.
What's more likely?
An impulsive braggart with a tendency to think he can do anything grabbed some docs as personal trophies or to win arguments?
Or...
Trump normally keeps stacked up boxes of documents in bathrooms and the FBI throws in cover sheets to make Trump look guilty?
The later. That's what actually happened, after all, and is consistent with years of prior leaks from the FBI and associated probes pursued for political harm, whereas there is no allegation that Donald Trump used those classified documents to try and win arguments.
Stacks of boxes in odd places is pretty normal. It was a minor- and not prosecuted- reoccurance of both former VP Pence and former VP Biden that they both were found to have boxes of classified documents in their domiciles well after their departures. In Biden's case, they were found being kept in a garage.
Further, there was no practical reason to put classified cover sheets over the documents in question for the purpose of an evidentiary photo. The cover sheet has no evidentiary power in and of itself- it could be any document behind it, so you'd need to take photos sans cover sheet anyways, and if you're doing that you'd need to have a camera and photo-storage planned for the relevant classified level anyway.
The cover sheets were brought for a photo that could be shared without itself being a disclosure incident, the documents were staged for the photo, and the photo was presented publicly and presented in a way to insinuate that the cover sheets had been there from the start. (Which itself was furthered by a major media outlet coincidentally being at Mar-a-Lago for the dawn document raid to report it as it happened.)
And the judge is going to accept they they are classified based on this cover sheet and not check?
The nature of Presidential classification authority is that there is nothing to check, hence why the classified document case got nuked by implications of the official acts immunity ruling by the Supreme Court during the parallel attempt at anti-Trump lawfare.
The Biden Administration's effort to target Trump in the classified document case rested on an argument that Presidents have to go through a formal process for declassification, insist that because Trump did follow the process the documents were still classified, and thus that once Trump left office with them he could no longer declassify them and thus it was improper holding.
However, there is no required procedure, the current White House does not assert it has created a required procedure, and neither the National Archives or FBI ever actually identified a required process that Trump failed to follow to lead to the judgement of 'improper' holding. This is why the charges were under the espionage act for having classified documents, and not for violation of a declassification process in improperly declassifying documents. The case has hinged from the start on the argument that Trump did not declassify them, as opposed to could not do so automatically as part and parcel of the job.
Which has been utterly unsurprising to anyone actually familiar with US classification regulations. The President does not need to justify the decision to declassify to other parts of the US government, does not need to communicate that decision to anyone else, and if the President determines something no longer needs to be classified then- as long as it doesn't derive from Atomic Energy Act- there is nothing and no one to say he can't. There are all inherent aspects of being the ultimate classification and declassification authority of Executive Branch documentation, an authority that the Biden administration has never taken the position that then-President Trump didn't have the authority to do.
This is why the case functionally broke when the Supreme Court made its ruling on immunity for official acts. The President's decision to declassify solely Executive branch information is an official act. It's not something regulated by Congress. It's not something beyond the scope of the Executive to establish limits on itself either in certain ways, but no such procedural requirement was ever alleged.
Dean
1mo ago
Thank you for continuing to demonstrate the importance of differing political interest.
Dean
1mo ago
So, I guess you'll be voting for Harris then? That's the only reasonable conclusion I can draw based on the timeline here
If that's the limit of your reason, that's the limit of your reason.
Dean
1mo ago
Thank you for continuing to demonstrate the point on differing political interest on pursuing crimes.
For example. Yes. Riots in DC. Not the same as literally occupying the seat of government. These two riots are not the same.
Of course not. One riot was politically favored for prosecution and led to among the largest prosecutions in American history, and the other riot was disfavored and was not, as well as many following riots of similar partisan vein. This difference in interest of prosecution of prosecutable riots being the critical difference in prosecution is the basis of the critique, not an argument that one is not a prosecutable offense.
January 6 is not prosecutable on grounds of 'literally occupying the seat of government.' It is prosecutable on grounds of intent to disrupt the government processes, the publicized prior intent to take actions, the recorded evidence of illegal actions taken, and the jurisdiction of where it occurred. There is no distinction in the lawfulness of the acts between whether the disruption occurs inside the Congressional building itself versus other government buildings, or other places in the capital. January 6 wasn't the first time in even the preceding year that violent, disruptive, and/or intimidating protests had forced a relocation of senior government officials in the capital.
The prosecutable equivalence between events of political violence that is intended to disrupt is that they are political violence intended to disrupt. 'But their political violence was categorically different!' is special pleading, particularly when the difference is not the degree of severity of prosecution, but whether to prosecute at all.
Spying is an overblown talking point. They spied on like, one guy? Maybe a second, and neither of them big deals?
No.
The ruling party in 2016 used multiple intelligence agencies to target opposition campaign personnel, on the basis of unfounded allegations presented by the ruling party candidate whose role in its generation was hidden due to its disqualifying nature, and subsequently overturned citizen-protection measures designed to protect American citizens from just such intelligence abuses, which enabled illegal leaks what would inherently have been classified information, to fuel election-year and then multiple post-election year conspiracies intended to undermine the opposition campaign and target up to cabinet level officials, conspiracies which were publicly pushed by party-affiliated media and legitimized by the party's leading member of the Senate Intelligence community.
...while campaigning that Trump would be an authoritarian who would commit security state abuses, and thus organizing the #Resistance that dominated media coverage for years to come and would help organize riots in several major American cities, including the US capital.
Russiagate actually did fade pretty quickly after the Mueller report in the news and from Democratic politicians
The original Russiagate lasted nearly half of Trump's time in office, and its narrative themes were later re-used to justify the first Trump impeachment and which remains a regular theme in Democratic C-lane social media campaigns since.
They tried to impeach him over something almost explicitly a quid pro quo - you could argue that some presidents get a pass for that kind of thing (Nixon sure as hell did it but that wasn’t what his impeached for) but it’s still, um, bad.
One of the presidents in question being Biden, who publicly boasted in his success to squash the corruption investigation the subject of which was the basis for impeaching Trump, not including the many other credible quid pro quo of the Biden dynasty.
If you think that was abnormal lawfare you have not been paying attention to politics the last several decades
The Trump experience of lawfare was abnormal precisely because it surpassed what any candidate had received in the last several decades, and on multiple grounds were highly reminiscent of mid-Cold War abuses that spurred the US Intelligence Community reforms of the 1970s and 1980s that were ignored in the process of targeting the Trump campaign. The abnormality of it was the subject of multiple extensive discussions and even deliberate justification articles posted in major media outlets and a post-2020 victory lap on the degree of cooperation required to 'fortify' the following election.
Scope and scale matter. My point stands.
Scope and scale mattering is precisely why your point falls to a basic Russel conjugation critique.
'My favored party accepted the results reasonably and mostly peacefully despite legitimate reasons to believe they were unjustly denied their rightful victory, your party unreasonably refuses to accept the legitimacy of their defeat and threatens everything in ways that should be disturbing to all...'
Thank you for demonstrating the point on differing political interest on pursuing crimes.
What should the DOJ have done? Wasted a bunch of money prosecuting another 200 cases it wasn't going to win?
Yes. Unironically, unabashedly, yes. There would be far less perception of a bureaucratic-driven double standard if the Jan 6 treatment had been done to equivalent rioters years before. That would be worth far more than the money saved.
The question of the thread is how to get an opposition party to buy into the legitimacy of the government of the victorious party. The value of a federal prosecution for state legitimacy in this context doesn't come from securing a conviction, it comes from showing the commitment of the government to seek to bring people to court on the basis of what they did, rather than on the basis of who they protested against. Appearing to turn a blind eye to one's own partisan faction and what they do against their political opponents is about the worst thing you can do for the legitimacy of a legal institution.
If the Justice Department sits on and does nothing with 200 cases against the opposition party, the opposition narrative has 200 examples of the other team- the winning team, in this case- not being prosecuted on the basis of acts conducted. When prosecution isn't being pursued for acts not in dispute, 'we wouldn't secure a conviction' is a poor shield to charges that the real reason is 'we didn't want to.' Especially when there would be plenty of people publicly acknowledging partisan sympathies from within the government, and especially if the opposition would be charged for equivalent acts later.
On the other hand, if the Justice Department brings up the evidence and prosecutes 200 cases and the DC jury fails to convict a single one, the opposition who lost will still be citing 200 cases of the Justice Department being on their side and insisting on the propriety of the Justice Department. This insistence will not only negate years of hostile accusations as to why the government didn't even attempt the case, but has all the usual psychological effects of challenging and/or undermining people who would later go from lauding the Justice Department's willingness to challenge bad actors to (when those were the other side) to accusing the Justice Department of uneven handling (when it was the oppsition side).
That DC juries would jury nullify is a separate issue, and a far better problem to have from the perspective of government legitimacy. If DC juries intend to consistently demonstrated partisan animosity, there are ways the government (Federal or the Congress under the majority party) can respond to that, much as how jury reforms were imposed on the civil rights south to ensure fairness. What is more important is that if DC juries are the problem, opposition party ire will be focused on them, and not the federal government itself.
The legitimacy of the government is considerably better off if a lack of justice is seen as the fault of the jury pool that voted 90% Democratic than if the government simply accepted it. One is a scandal for the Democratic Party, and one is a scandal for the state.
Sure they did, you just don't accept 'seriously.'
At the time, however, and for several years after, these were routinely associated with the Democratic party conspiracy theory- colloquially remembered as Russiagate- that Trump had conspired to corruptly win the 2016 election.
#Resistance and its associated elements routinely propagated conspiracy theories to that effect, to the point that even after the Mueller Investigation found no substantiating evidence of Russian collusion most Democrats believed it anyway.
Am I missing something basic?
Yes.
Kamala Harris has been a bad speaker for most of her public career. It's like being confused about why a politician known for gaffes continues to make gaffes. The quality is meeting expectation.
In turn, Harris' rise to her current position is largely the result of two things largely indifferent to her public speaking skills: Democratic Party political faction alliances of the 2020 election cycle, and campaign finance laws in the 2024.
In 2020, where Harris bombed pretty early in no small part because of her propensity to word salad, Biden's victory in the Democratic primaries was hinged on the support of the African American wing of the Democratic party, particularly specific political machines. The quid for the quo was rewarding allies of the allies with places in the administration. Part of that was the selection of Harris for Vice President, as she met various political faction interests (most notably known, but oversimplified to, Biden's announcement of his vice president criteria). Harris was a VP selection to balance internal party politics, not her speaking role. If anything, her lack of speaking skills was an asset, as it reduced the threat / feelings of being slighted to those who didn't get an ally into the VP slot, and Harris was so weak as to not threaten to overshadow Biden as a more ambitious VP might have. (Even in his fall, Biden's fall is generally believed to have been much more at the instigation of Party Elders, not Kamala herself.)
In 2024, Harris's ascension largely revolves around campaign finance limitations, in that when Biden was pressured to step down from the race, she was the only potential candidate who could legally utilize the Biden campaign fund without potential legal risk freezing a pillar of the Democratic campaign. As most sitting Presidents do, Biden's control of the presidential campaign relied on control of the money, which was under the legal control of the Biden-Harris campaign, as opposed to the Democratic Party. If, and when, Biden was pressured to drop out, the Democratic Party leaders who pressured him to couldn't demand control of the money already raised. In a choice between a possibly bitterly contested / coalition-fracturing contested convention, in which the huge fundraising sums wouldn't be usable, or between a better funded and smoother party politics, Harris was the beneficiary regardless of speaking skills.
One of the two runways at Greenville airport.
Unless you think the loading and unloading happens at the runway itself, the point stands.
A 50% reduction of available runways is not the same as 50% airport throughput reduction, because the throughput of an airport is almost never limited by runway availability. This is why targeting runways is and of itself so rarely effective in a war, and why it's more important to target hangers and loading areas near the runways. Unless the runways are actually being constantly used at maximum capacity- which there is no reason to believe given the video's own lack of use of the still-active runaway and instead focus on a loading area- reducing runways is not what limits functional throughput.
This is especially true when a specific airport itself is not required to reach the end destination, which in this case is not Greenville but the places in Tennessee the video was claiming the flights were going to. There is no requirement for aid being flown to Tennessee to fly via the Greenville airport, because the aircraft flying to Tennessee via Greenville could fly via other airports. Fixed wing flights through Greenville could drop 100% and it wouldn't necessarily entail fewer goods reaching or passing through Tennessee airports.
Now you're getting ridiculous.
No, that was a shock-line opening of a genuine criticism. If the location is planned to be an aid distribution center, part of the plan's merit is how it plans to received aid to distribute.
Rotor wash is not an issue of aviator incompetence, it is the mechanical consequence of how helicopters fly in the first place. If you have any desire to receive aid via airlift, you need to plan your reception sites around those limitations. This means you need to not actively create aircraft safety hazards like FOD. There needs to be a place for helicopters to approach to either land or- at the very least- hover to hoist down pallets.
The issue is that the distribution point set up in the middle of a parking lot with an apparent lack of planning for receiving stuff by air. A parking lot is normally an excellent location for an impromptu helicopter zone. It's naturally flat, open, few obstructions to create rotor backwash, and naturally connected by and to roads for disseminating any goods downloaded from an aircraft quickly and efficiently to staging areas.
Instead, the on-site actors have made a functionally ground-only delivery reception point... in a disaster where ground-logistics were significantly degraded.
In order for that distribution point to receive any benefits from airlifted supplies, the airlifts will need to find somewhere else in the general area that meets helicopter requirements in order to unload. To reach the distribution site, those pallets will then need to be loaded on new vehicles, to be driven to the distribution point, which will then need to unload from the vehicles before it can be distributed.
This is not only doubles the number of logistical sites and loading logistics (forklifts, teams, etc) needed to support receiving aid, this also negates one of the advantages of air-lifted supplies in the first place, which is that they can be packaged in ways to facilitate fast dispersal that doesn't need forklifts that may be limited in a disaster area.
A pallet of rations air-lifted to a site doesn't necessarily need a forklift at all. If you have a surplus of bodies compared to forklifts- as is visible in the video- boxes of high-value/low-weight aid can just be directly carried off until the wooden pallet is all that is left, which can be picked up and moved elsewhere. This is far, far better in a disaster context than imposing a requirement to lift the pallet 5+ feet into the air (to put it into a truck for transport).
But this can't be done, because of how the organizers of the site have taken and chosen to use a parking lot. Which includes their choice of tent placement and not security it (or trash).
Now, maybe there are extenuating circumstances. Maybe that lot is the only one in the area. Maybe there are no resources to secure tents. Maybe there was literally nowhere to drag the loose trash that was just left in the middle of a distribution site, no man-hours or volunteer teams to move refuse to dumpsters to clear up more space, no time to plan or prepare for how to receive aid, no space to do things otherwise.
Or maybe they were using unsecured tents as sunroofs in the middle of the parking lot because it was convenient, and left trash in place because moving it was inconvenient, and didn't think through what that would mean if/when they become potential recipients of helicopter delivery and someone was sent by to do a check.
I get that 'FEMA bad, local volunteers good' is the narrative of the cycle, but this is what bad implementation looks like. Good implementation may be hard, good implementation may be beyond what can be expected, but good implementation is not what you are seeing if you are looking at the ground in that video.
Dean
1mo ago
The point is that military engineering is the former and not the later, and always has been.
In the current week / imminent days, as the OP fantasized? Below negligible, particularly without a corresponding buildup of forces or chinese domestic narrative campaign.
If the OP wanted to say this was a drill normalizing conditions for an attempt to establish a blockade, sure. And whatever- that's not actually a blockade. But that wasn't the position.
In current week / month / year, October 2024?
The Biden Administration publicly identifies the effort, denounces, and announces an intent to break the blockade while moving multiple carrier groups towards the region. Harris issues as-fiery-as-she-can speaches on the need for American strength and unity against the Chinese threat, while being conspicuously present in official photos of Biden and the National Security aparratus taking response, even as a new rush of adds characterize the Democrats as the party of defense and appeal to the neocons once more while social media sites like Reddit begin to mock Trump for bonespurs and Vietnam avoidance. The Republicans, in turn, offer full throttled support (for the Troops, not Biden), seek to out-hawk Biden even as Republican propaganda elevates Biden's China-corruption links and attacks Waltz on his links and otherwise claims this as the vindication of every objection to Ukrainian aid (regardless of how little of it would be relevant or useful in the current week/month/year).
Taiwan and allies quietly watch in horror and try to silently wave down the Americans for overreacting to yet another Chinese drill where the US overreaction might increase Chinese counter-reaction in ways that the Chinese will continue doing even after American attention drifts away a few news cycles later.
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