So let me start by saying that I think SCOTUS is for the most part a group of a few decent thinkers and a slew of partisan hacks. Not going to argue otherwise. However, I actually think that they had to take the immunity case. They didn't get to test the BS about "If the president does it, it's not illegal" back in the 70s because of the Nixon pardon. They haven't had an occasion to do so since, so even though the lower courts basically laughed Trump out of court, I still think in the long run it's incumbent on Roberts to lay the smack down for any future presidents who claim to be above the law. Which is silly, I know, because the facile imagination one needs to possess to show how ridiculous that claim is basically makes it self-evident to anyone who isn't comatose (looking at you Justice Thomas). But still. Two president-crooks have tried to make the claim, so it needs to be addressed. As for leaving office in 2029, I think it's a misreading of the tea leaves. First of all, the president doesn't get to decide whether to leave office. More or less, the military does (which hopefully it will never come to that). But all the military officers I know (not tons but a few) are not in favor of dictatorship. Seems to be part of the coursework at Westpoint or something. But beyond that, Trump is going to pardon himself on day 1, and there's no way that works itself through the courts until after his term ends, and then we're talking probably another two years. So 2031 best care scenario? He'll be 85. Nobody is sending an 85 yo to jail, let alone an 85 yo former president. Hell, he'll probably have clogged his arteries so badly by that point that he'll be fortunate to not be full tits-up. So while I don't look forward to 4 more years of nonsense, I also think that the story will write its own end in a way.
If SCOTUS felt like they needed to "supremely" settle whether or not a president is immune for crimes while presidenting, they had the opportunity to do so, when Jack Smith put the question to them in December. They said "nope, we don't want to", and punted it back to the DC appellate court. The three judges in the appellate court wrote a long, technical ruling savaging the Trump camp's arguments, which was appealed, like we all expected. So it's back to SCOTUS. For them to now say "oh, wow, well we haven't really thought about it, and we'll have to hear oral arguments, hmmmmm, how about starting in two months?" is a fucking joke. We all know that they won't allow absolute immunity, because that'd be irreversibly squandering the power of the judiciary, among other issues. The appellate ruling was so well done that it would have been more than acceptable to slap the SCOTUS seal of approval on it and call it a day, either by not taking it up or with a quick certification, or at least by expediting the process like they have for the Trump vs. Colorado insurrection-ballot-removal case. This affects the election too, so if one case requires quick attention, so should the other. Coincidentally, the quick Colorado case ruling is going to help Trump, and the slow presidential immunity ruling is going to help Trump. I've heard people say that this schedule is actually pretty fast-tracked for this SCOTUS, and... OK? I do not give a shit that they've already lowered the bar of expectations for themselves. This is obviously a massive win that they have handed Donald Trump, and not by accident. Any dumbass arguing in good faith knows that this needs to be resolved ASAP, and that's simply not what they're doing. And they know it. Pretending like this is even worthy of their time is part of their act. He doesn't even really need to pardon himself, because DoJ won't prosecute a sitting president. But I agree, he'll do it anyway, for fun, and headlines, and because now the taxpayer will be picking up the tab for all the legal proceedings. I have also realized, maybe about a year ago or so, that he'll never go to prison, no matter what. But a conviction on the J6 stuff might finally be enough to tank him in the election.
All you need to know about the Supreme Court is in their 2000 Bush V. Gore decision, whereby they say "we're giving this to Bush because we fucking well feel like it, it will never set any sort of precedent, except we know damn well it will, eat it libs."
I think it's already tanking him. Sorry to play the perennial optimist, but if you look at the recent primaries, Trump has underperformed his polling, which I would argue is already really bad for an incumbent, by at least 5-10 points (so keep that in mind when you read he's "up" by 5 points or whatever on Biden, especially since incumbents typically poll badly early in the election year). His campaign may be inevitable, as we continually hear, but it's also a complete fucking catastrophe from a X's and O's point of view. Meanwhile, the "uncommitted" vote we also have to endure endless commentary about actually wasn't that much higher than Obama's share of uncommitted in 2012, whereas total Biden votes dwarfed what Obama got. Basically what that says is that even though a lot of people in Michigan wanted to express dissatisfaction, way, way more people wanted to counter that narrative.I have also realized, maybe about a year ago or so, that he'll never go to prison, no matter what. But a conviction on the J6 stuff might finally be enough to tank him in the election.
I don't really pay much heed to polls and primary statistics, but I can tell you this: It is nothing short of a travesty that there is any debate or room for interpretation about this at all. Not just because of how depressing it that we have Mussolini (or whoever) incarnate still at least kinda holding his own, but because any amount of closeness in the race will help legitimize those who will dispute the election results. On January 7th, 2021, I was optimistic too. "He shot his shot and it failed", I thought. "He'll be excommunicated from the GOP, and everybody will agree that he's earned himself imprisonment". Not just from the rally, telling the crowd to march to the capitol, and the J6 physical violence on TV, we already knew about the fake electors scheme, pressuring the DoJ, hamstringing the capitol police, the fact that he did fuck-all as everything unfolded, etc., and I thought DoJ would build an investigation immediately and have him on trial by spring of '22. It's better to just expect the worst. But within reason. Speaking of, it'd be fun to try and predict the verbiage in the inevitable dissent from Alito and Thomas on this ruling, explaining how GOP presidents are immune from prosecution, but dems should be held accountable, actually. I'll think about that.
Could be a dissent or could actually be a concurring opinion. I think (stress think) that even Alito wouldn't argue that GOP presidents are above the law completely and totally, but he'll try to argue that in this case it didn't reach the level where immunity is forfeited. They'll whine about free speech or something totally beside the point.
I think you're right that Trump is doing badly. I think Klein's right that Roe v Wade is very motivating. I think Biden is not beloved, and if you believe what's happening in Gaza is a genocide, being able to take a moral stance on "never voting for a genocider" is a hard line in the ground to argue against and means you get to feel brave voting aginst someone you didn't really like to begin with. If the war isn't over and the Palestinians made whole it will be a very tight race. I'd give Biden the odds, but I did in 2016 too
Been trying my damndest not to get drawn into the Gaza shit, but there's no reasonable definition of "genocide" that applies here. One can argue about how they're prosecuting the war, but they're fighting a government who refuses to surrender. Today's Left would have accused the US of genocide in Germany and Japan in WW2. It's full and pure nonsense. In war, people die and it's sad. It doesn't make it genocide. And it's insulting to actual genocides that have taken place.
Oof. OOF. I worry that because the tankies have made their blanket anti-US stance on Palestine-Israel quite clear, it's played into you crafting a blanket anti-tankie stance on the issue. I hate the tankies, but history will remember this as a genocide. Hamas is absolutely complicit in exacerbating and prolonging it, but Israel's literally carpet bombing the places that they told the citizen population to take refuge in. They're withholding as much humanitarian aid from Palestine as they can. Famine is setting in. Hamas is irredeemably terrible, but they don't have blank checks from America for all of the weapons money can buy. Oct. 7th was a goddamn tragedy, but now the disparity in death tolls is something like a factor of 50. Israel did exactly what we did after 9/11. They went to "war" with guerilla terrorists, civilian collateral bedamned. In time, this will be viewed in a very similar light, and, worse, it's just gonna make a shitton more terrorists.
I would compare it more to what happened in Bosnia than to the atomic bomb. But you're right, dropping the abomb has also fallen out of favor with the left
I think it's true that there were a net number of lives saved from the a-bombs, and if America didn't use 'em, the Soviets would've demonstrated the tech in another few years. Even if WWII was over. It might have tilted the Cold War in favor of the Soviet Union for a long time. I'm glad I'm not Oppenheimer, though.
Operation Downfall called for SIXTEEN atomic bombs. Basically nuke it, march through the fallout, nuke it, march through the fallout, nuke it, march through the fallout, up to Tokyo. And if they had to keep going after that well, the US will have had time to make more bombs. People forget that the B-29 was more expensive and more of a strategic priority than the Manhattan Project. People also forget that Germany spent more on the V-2 than the US spent on the Atomic Bomb. "Big boom" is the horror weapon we all freak out about now but the WWII mentality was "the way we win this is by indiscriminate unguided bombing at scale from an extreme distance." We've created this false narrative around "should the US have used a horrific weapon like the atomic bomb" when the real dilemma, acknowledged by both the United States and Japan, was "will the Japanese be made extinct as an ethnicity before hostilities are over." The truth of the situation is the Emperor of Japan saw Hiroshima, went "stop this madness", was nearly murdered by a military junta, and enough loyalists regained control for the Emperor to declare unconditional surrender after Nagasaki. Anyone who wants to waffle around the absolute and total genocide anticipated by both sides of the conflict is a simp. We were gonna turn Japan into Carthage and the Japanese were all in on it.
Yeah :/, there's definitely a pragmatic case to be made. And it wasn't a genocide. But wow was it horrific for a bunch of civilians.
But it's the same basic calculation there as in any total war, which is that your objective is complete capitulation of the enemy, knowing full well that a cease fire only delays and probably exacerbates the killing. In the case of Germany, Japan or Hamas, an unconditional surrender is the endgame. That differentiates it completely from other interethnic conflicts that were not about surrender but annihilation. The reason I'm hesitant to weigh in is that if I say, "this isn't genocide", it doesn't mean I think there's no moral culpability or that the objectives couldn't be satisfied in a less awful way. Maybe they can. I don't know the situation on the ground any better than you do. It's just not a genocide, no matter how people want to remember it, because the aim is the elimination of a government, not of a people.
They are deliberately starving them, burning their food, denying aid. They've moved all the civilians into one city and are now bombing it indiscriminately. They fire onto unarmed civilians, even killing their own hostages shirtless waving a white flag. They are bulldozing houses and building settlements on their land. 75% of all structures have been destroyed. This is not total war. Hamas can barely fight back. Post Oct 7th, a fifth of the IDFs 188 deaths have been friendly fire. It is a slaughter by a government that promises that there will never be a Palestinian state.
You're arguing against a strawman. Nowhere did I say that the Netanyahu government is correct in their prosecution of the war. I said it's not a genocide, because it's aims aren't genocidal, they're statecraft. Pointing out how bad conditions are there isn't a counterargument.
I don't think that's really true, though. Sometimes the framing of things in terms of statecraft is abandoned entirely: There are many other statements from top government officials in this vein. The hatred runs deeeeeeeeeep. Goes both ways, of course, but this is incredibly asymmetric warfare, if it's warfare at all.it's aims aren't genocidal, they're statecraft
This week alone, a parliamentarian from Netanyahu’s Likud party went on television and said it was clear to most Israelis that “all the Gazans need to be destroyed.” Then, Israel’s ambassador in Britain told local radio that there was no other solution for her country than to level “every school, every mosque, every second house” in Gaza to degrade Hamas’s military infrastructure.
Right, but think about the ambassador's words for a minute. Early in the war there was a lot of handwringing about Israeli soldiers shooting up a hospital. The fact is, when you suspect that there's a weapons cache inside a hospital, you try to enter it. When people start shooting at you from inside, then you shoot your way in. The trouble is that Hamas freely admits to using hospitals, schools and mosques as places to shield fighters and materiel. That's the context around what she's saying there. It's shitty, but you still have to leap a giant chasm to get from there to genocide (there's a good reason that Arabs can be doctors, lawyers and cabinet ministers in Israel, but Jews (not Israelis) aren't even allowed to be tourists inside many Muslim countries). From October 7 onward, Hamas could have saved every single Gazan civilian by offering an unconditional surrender. They haven't and they won't. That's on them.
This is not to defend what Hamas did on Oct 7. But Ukraine could also stop all the killings with unconditional surrender. Israel wants complete military domination and will not accept any Palestinian state.
nah, you're right though. this sucks. i'm sorry for hubski being nothing but politics, i take the blame for a lot of that. it's not helpful. it's not fun. i like this place and the people a lot, I don't wanna be the one making it worse. i have a hard time not engaging and its clearly not making things better or anyone including myself happy see you in a while hopefully. can't wait to catch up on the CNC machine progress & the watch drama, that's been my favorite part & it's getting drowned out
It'd be nice if substantive debates were happening anywhere else. The ICJ and UN are about it.
Israel has decided that the only way to eliminate the Palestinian government is to eliminate the people. The exact degree to which this is true is something of a mystery, I agree, but I find it awfully convenient that the timing coincides with when Netanyahu needs to wage "war" for political convenience. And like I've said elsewhere, it would not at all surprise me to learn later that Israeli intel knew of an impending terrorist attack large enough to kill 1,160 Israelis and decided to sit back and let it happen. Supposedly their intel is the best in the world relative to their population size. Makes sense, they have the money for it. But yes, Hamas has lost some of my sympathy by recently refusing any terms of a ceasefire. But they understand that if they surrender, they'll be facing even less representation in Israeli politics than on October 6th. Which is how this all started anyway. edit: well, it really started with Israel being carved out of Palestine, but if we, erm, can.. forgive... the first Nakba... I think Israel should exist, but they sure as hell aren't making it easy for me. The left is correct about this one, but anyone pro-Palestine and also pro-Russia can be discarded.the aim is the elimination of a government, not of a people.
Most of the narrative around the formation of Israel is not grounded in history, unfortunately. My guess is that you're unaware that net migration into the area that is now Israel between the beginning of the Zionist movement and 1948 was far higher among Arabs than Jews. That's due to the fact that (a) only Bedouins lived there until the Jews started irrigating the land, which suddenly made a backwater shithole arable for the first time in centuries, and (b) the British really didn't want to cede territory to the Jews, the "problem" of which they had already "solved" long before the rest of Europe.
it was not.. the vast majority of the growth in the arab population was due to natural population growth and not migration - and more jews than arabs migrated to the country in total. unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by net, you have it backwards. the majority of the arab population was settled even at the time of the mandate censuses. the idea that palestine was an empty land is a colonial myth of convenience.
They've proposed an permanent ceasefire in exchange for all hostages. Israel will only accept a temporary ceasefire.
Ah. Well, yeah. "Give us back our people and we will resume the killings" is not such a great deal, huh.
Speaking of the power of language, crazy how all the Palestinians captured without trial and held and tortured are "prisoners" and not "hostages"
Why didn't they take the case up the first time it was presented to them, or make any sort of expedited judgement? A swift ruling would have been slightly more decisive true, but I do not believe that's their goal. I'm with you that trump will not serve more than his four years.
If I remember right, Trump tried to appeal directly to SCOTUS off the bat, correct? My guess is that Roberts wanted the weight of having district and appellate court opinions on his side before making a judgement. He cares about process, and he was probably terrified that a rushed judgement would just create more chaos, especially when Thomas and probably Alito voted in favor of Trump. They are less likely to go against the majority of the Court now that they would have to refute two absolutely bulletproof opinions. My guess is that Roberts really, really wants this case to be about the President, and not Trump per se. And in that case, it's his judgement that it should be considered with the full weight of their normal process without reference to what's happening in the world at this precise moment. Just a guess, but I think probably a good one.
Then why stick it in the last possible slot and not give a reply until July, virtually guaranteeing that the trial isn't over before he's elected president? I think the idea is to get the best of both worlds, "credibility" by making the obviously correct ruling, while still allowing trump into office
It's not, and treating it like just another normal thing on the docket is a disservice to America. The country needs this resolved by trial ASAP, one way or another.It's just procedure.