Politics Thread!

[tufty]

Devin's argument there is bullshit pearl-clutching. Hunter got an unreasonably harsh sentence for 2 very small crimes, purely because he was Biden's son. Anyone else would have got off with a suspended sentence. And Trump's DOJ is going to be all about retribution, they have been very explicit about that. As a relatively recently clean addict, being pushed into a jail which *will* be made hard on him at both an institutional and internal level, it's a death sentence. He'd be dead from an overdose or a shiv within the week.

You want to get angry about nepotistic pardons? Get angry about trump pardoning his son's father-in-law and then appointing them as ambassador to France, despite them not even speaking French. Wait until January and get angry about Trump pardoning the January 6th "hostages". Get angry about Trump pardoning himself. Both of those are coming.
Don't get angry about a man who, against his better judgement, has been forced to do this to save his son's life. And who is, y'know, absolutely allowed to do that.

[Barney]

And who is, y'know, absolutely allowed to do that.

This. How is it an abuse of his power when it's explicitly allowed?

[Dio]

Are you arguing that it's impossible to abuse a power to excuse anyone from any legal penalty, known or unknown, even if you personally benefit from that use of the power?

[SuperMappy]

And who is, y'know, absolutely allowed to do that.

This. How is it an abuse of his power when it's explicitly allowed?

The pardoning power of the president was initially established to deal with severe miscarriages of justice and of course, knowing human behavior, it's degraded down to a "doing favors" status.

I am actually anxiously awaiting to see what happens when Trump leaves office and he will, of course they all do, pardon friends and cohorts. Then maybe we might actually learn from our mistakes (I'm trying not to giggle here) and fix a few things like 'not allowing convicted felons' to be president and some how limiting the pardoning power of the president.

[tufty]

The pardoning power of the president was initially established to deal with severe miscarriages of justice

Not really. It's been there from the start, and was pretty much a copy paste from English law as applied during the colonial period; that goes back to the monarch's "prerogative of mercy" which originally started some time in the mediaeval period. Indeed, the fact that it doesn't overturn a conviction, and implies a tacit acceptance of guilt, is still the same between the two implementations.

Yeah, it gets abused.Saying it should be taken away is like saying al social cover should be taken away because there are fraudsters. There's pretty good reasons why it's presidential and not congressional.

[SuperMappy]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/rcna183163

"Biden weighs pre-emptive pardons for potential targets of Trump’s retribution."

HAHAHAhaha, only in America, baby! This bulls**t will never end.

[KlaxonCow]

I am actually anxiously awaiting to see what happens when Trump leaves office

I am actually anxiously awaiting to see IF Trump leaves office.

He already instigated a riot on the Capitol building - in which 10 people were killed - to physically prevent the peaceful transfer of power and where the rioters were not only openly talking about killing the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, but more directly Trump's own Vice President, Mike Pence, as a "traitor" to physically stop the election result from being confirmed.

He did not disabuse his supporters from continuing, even after people started dying. He has, in fact, not disabused his supporters that the election was "stolen" to this very day and maintains the election fraud narrative, despite umpteen investigations - independently, at state level - confirming over and over that Trump's talking complete bollocks. I suspect he maintains it, as he's a narcissistic conspiracy theorist, and genuinely believes it (which is way worse than if he was just being malicious, because "true believers" will never concede that they're wrong).

It is absolutely insane that he was not prosecuted and barred from running for office again. That, through inaction, he was effectively granted a full pardon for this.

If the rioters had succeeded in finding Pelosi and Pence, and actually murdered them to prevent the ritual of a peaceful transfer of power continuing, as was their openly stated intent (and 10 people did actually die in the midst of it all) - and perhaps the army would have to be called in to force the restoration of the civil power - then would we be so lenient on this, just because the "Qanon Shaman" looks ridiculous and like a clown, and it's hard to take their "peadophiles in the basement of a pizza shop" narrative seriously (but, like, they believe it, however stupid it is, because they attacked the Capitol and 10 people died because of it - it's frivolously stupid to rational folk, sure, but they showed they're willing to fight, die and kill for it).

Utterly insane. A ton of bricks should have been dropped on them all - Trump most urgently - because, from January, the convicted criminal who the rigged Supreme Court have confirmed will now have "the Divine Right of Kings" is going to let them all off. Not even as an outgoing Presidential pardon of tradition, like we're talking about now, but pardon them immediately on entering office. To reward them for their loyalty and release his "foot soldiers" for round 2, when he's meant to permanently leave office forever.

He's had a dry run of attempting a coup. And the stakes are higher - he has to overturn the transfer of power this next time around, or he loses the Presidency forever. It's his last chance, so the attempt will be even more desperate.

The Republicans own all three branches of government right now. They have the Presidency, the Supreme Court (who have already acted as his lap dogs, granting "Divine Right of Kings" to the President, which should be the most "anti-American" concept ever), the House and the Senate.

So there's every possibility that the next time doesn't involve any rioting, and they'll actually just legislatively crown him the first King of America. Oh, I'm sure, like all previous dictatorships, they'll rename "King" to "Fuehrer" or "Lord Protector" or "Caesar" or "Chairman" or whatever to try to pretend otherwise, but there's every possibility here that his lackeys - who will own every lever of power, thanks to the elections - name him King (or "President for Life" or something), as they've pre-prepared the position to have "the Divine Right of Kings" already.

It was a bad election strategy for the Democrats to have lead on this notion that "democracy itself was in the balance", while neither Biden nor Kamala acknowledged the crippling inflation or even gave the pretence of "Change", as Obama did, but they were not wrong in principle. The Chess pieces have already been moved into position - Trump will have Divine Right of Kings, the Republicans will own every branch of government to have the mechanism to actually begin re-writing the Constitution and they've openly bragged that "Project 2025" was the agenda all along (arrogantly punctuated by "fooled ya, you morons").

The remaining hope is, through such insane nepotistic "loyalty" picks for positions of power in government, Trump and his allies prove too fucking incompetent to actually pull it off.

Because the grand problem is that, come January, there's technically no preventative mechanisms in their way anymore and they can actually legally do anything they damn well please.

[Harlequin]

He already instigated a riot on the Capitol building - in which 10 people were killed …

You words seem a tad too wild for me there. Should they not be "at which one person was directly killed and to which eight other deaths may be related …", possibly repeating and clarifying in later paragraphs that, aside from the shooting of Ms Babbitt, one person died of an accidental amphetamine overdose, one person died of heart failure related to high blood pressure (as did another, before the rioters had reached the Capitol) and that the events likely contributed to the death of one person by natural stroke and two people by suicide later that January, and two more deaths by suicide the following July?

[KlaxonCow]

Honestly, I searched for the number - because I didn't remember what it was off the top of my head - and it said "10 people died", so I went with that.

Not least because I feel those do still count, as my argument was not about the amount of violence on the day, but the damage that the coup attempt caused. And the main point was the openly murderous intent of the mob, as they were looking to hang Mike Pence - their own man - from the nearest tree, for "betraying" their coup attempt.

Like, thanks for the fine details, but I feel that they don't alter the overall point. This shit should absolutely have been punished and prevented much harder than the effective pardon that Trump essentially got. Because he's never shown an inch or iota of regret nor remorse, still maintains it was entirely correct and those were "good people" who he's going to release back in the wild, come January.

Inside Trump's mind, why should he not do it again? Inside Trump's mind, there's zero lessons learnt here - other than, perhaps, "this will be your last chance, go much much harder next time" and, from the "dry run", he knows what to expect as a response to avoid what didn't work last time.

[PFVA]

Our news have been explaining that the jihad group taking over Syria is not that radical because it's connected to Turkey and not to other more radical areas.

I hope so.

Note: even though it seems that they are heading back to the the pre-WWI situation when Turkey controlled those areas. Geo politics is too complicated.

[venusian]

I think it all remains to be seen. The leader of the recently successful rebels is ex-ISIS. Whether he's "ex" because of theological/cultural differences or just needed to be "ex" for political expediency, only time will time.

One thing I'm sure of: our enemy's enemy is not our friend.

[PFVA]

According to my TV news the farmers are planning to block the streets of London in protest.

[Mat]

According to my TV news the farmers are planning to block the streets of London in protest.

Initially I was quite sympathetic to them, having grown up in rural England, but then I remembered that even the farmers who aren't using it to evade tax (like Clarkson) get a stupid amount of benefits, despite having asset wealth above and beyond even an average homeowner, and these farms have been in the same families for decades and even centuries in some cases.

So fuck 'em.

This guy does a great breakdown on it here:

[PFVA]

Elon Musk endorses far-right German political party, wading deeper into global politics

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/20/medi ... index.html

[PFVA]

I have superficially watched the news fm South Korea and I can't keep myself fm wondering if this is going to be isolated case or we will be seeing more of this in other countries.