rsuri
@rsuri@lemmy.world
- Comment on Post-election blues 1 month ago:
What would rioting do though besides serve as an excuse to ram in fascism
- Comment on Realistically... How fucked is the US? 1 month ago:
We should remember that most Americans still live in blue states with sane governments. The federal government can’t just barge in and do whatever it wants, and if tries to do so, the social contract that binds the nation together is broken and secession becomes a real possibility. But that’s unlikely because Trump is far too clueless to know about any of the problems he’ll run into if he tries to implement any of his plans.
Which is fine for him because it was always a con anyway. He talks and acts out of his ass. What he will do is anyone’s guess, but it’ll at least be restrained by what’s realistically possible.
- Comment on How is it that "protecting basic democracy and the rule of law, and not crowning a criminal dictator" wasn't even on the chart?! 1 month ago:
Race stuff gets clicks and views
- Comment on True Story 1 month ago:
I think the key is to stop trying to explain why. There’s a million reasons people have given me for voting Trump, none of them rational. But the classic tropes of fear and disgust won out again. I’m old enough to remember the 2004 election, then it was gay people. Now it’s trans people and dark-skinned migrants. I really didn’t think those old tropes would work this time, but it just keeps working. Americans will just keep falling for it, apparently.
- Comment on Is there as much enthusiasm for Trump online today as eight years ago? 1 month ago:
So as I understand it, overarching priorities of Trump supporters are:
- ending sex trafficking
- stop making the poor poorer and
- fighting election fraud
So they’re excited about a guy who:
- Had by his own admission/bragging, had a 15 year long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
- Passed the largest corporate tax cut in history, and plans to eliminate income tax which is paid at a higher rate by high income individuals, replacing it with tariffs that fall disproportionately on the poor.
- Made numerous fraudulent claims and tried to submit a fraudulent slate of electors after the last election.
- Comment on No excuse 1 month ago:
Probably just someone traumatized by a sidewall puncture.
- Comment on Is American politics really as seemingly satirical of itself as it is portrayed? 1 month ago:
Yeah it’s terrible, but look at the rest of the world. Putin enjoys a lot of support from the same people he’s sending to die, Modi in India wins elections by a large margin on a platform of basically “Fuck Sikhs and Muslims”. Add China and basically most of humanity lives under someone who is blatantly racist, corrupt, generally horrible, or a combination thereof. And Western Europe doesn’t have a leg to stand on either, the UK ignored dire warnings and voted for Brexit without even understanding what it is.
Humans don’t believe what’s objectively correct, they believe what they want to believe. This makes feeding people what they want to hear a very successful strategy, and one that psychopaths have an advantage in pursuing.
- Comment on Is Lemmy an effective alternative to Reddit? 2 months ago:
It works for me because I’m into a lot of the stuff discussed on Lemmy. My biggest problem with reddit was that at some point they seemed eager to smoosh all the subs together into one big Basic Betty fest. For example having r/all be a mandatory sub and having a million default subs…It kind of felt like towards the end everyone was discussing the same stuff on every sub.
I know Lemmy kinda has some similar issues, but because the whole ecosystem is its own niche it still works for me.
- Comment on Why am I seeing "plan your voting day strategy" so often? 2 months ago:
Wait what? And that sort of things is legal? Technically no, if it can be proven that the goal is racial discrimination specifically. Every so often there’s a lawsuit claiming just that. Problem is, due to the way federal judges are chosen and confirmed in the US, combined with how the Senate is apportioned, the vast majority of federal judges are in the “lets make it hard to vote” party.
- Comment on Absolutely nothing happened June 1989 2 months ago:
Your comment after being imported into China:
The chinese narrative isn’t thatnothing happened, it’s that there was a battle outside the square, including protesters lynching and burning cops and cops gunning down unarmed protesters on bikes from their trucks. This is corroborated by videos and pictures.The western narrative
of tanks going into the square and gunning down tens of thousands of protesters (after getting delayed by tank man)is blatantly false,as you can see in the uncut tankman video pans over to show the square the tanks are leaving was emptyexcept for some bikes. - Comment on Octopus 2 months ago:
Obligatory video (click at your own risk)
- Comment on If Biden wanted to could he have people kill Trump since he is in office and SCOTUS said it was ok? 2 months ago:
The catch-22 is that the 3 liberal justices dissented from the opinion. So all 9 can be presumed to vote against Biden being immune for assassinating his opponent, and eliminating justices won’t really help.
- Comment on If Biden wanted to could he have people kill Trump since he is in office and SCOTUS said it was ok? 2 months ago:
To give a serious answer: The short answer is probably, the long answer is no.
The opinion was deliberately vague on that issue. A dissent said they could under Roberts’ opinion, but Roberts calls that “fear mongering” without elaborating whether that’s true or not.
It’s also a pretty complicated opinion so bear with me. The whole thing comes down to this vague idea of official vs. unofficial acts which are supposed to be immune according to the court. Really, there’s multiple factual allegations and the court said each one has some level of immunity (and if you think these are full of contradictions, I know):
- Asking the DOJ to pressure states to investigate obvious spurious “fraud” claims and pressure states to throw out their results, and threatening to fire them if they refuse - here Trump is “absolutely immune” because the DOJ is part of the executive branch and the president has power to fire them, I guess for any reason now.
- Trying to get Mike Pence to refuse the vote count and throw the whole country into a chaotic power struggle - presumptively immune, because the president and vice president can talk about their duties. Can be rebutted if the government can prove a prosecution wouldn’t pose a danger of intrusion into executive branch functions, whatever the hell that means.
- Trump personally telling state officials to change electoral votes - here Roberts says there’s no basis for Trump to claim immunity because there’s no presidential power to try and coerce state officials. However, he then says it’s up to the lower court to consider if it’s official or not before proceeding, and is entirely unclear on who has the burden of proof here.
- Using twitter and a speech to organize and then start a riot at the capitol - similar to the above, the president has official duties relating to speaking but yada yada yada it’s sent back to the lower court to decide whether this is official or not.
Conclusion: Ordering an assassination of a rival certainly sounds most like the first - the president has several official duties relating to giving military orders, and the military is part of the executive branch. The FBI is also part of the DOJ, so if Trump can order the DOJ to do something criminal, that itself could be an assassination. But as described in the article below, one could make an argument that no, the opinion doesn’t actually say he do that with the military specifically, because congress has some powers relating to war (not convincing). However, to be fair to that opinion, this immunity ruling is such a stinker that lower and future courts will limit its holding as much as humanly possible. Plus seemingly contradictory aspects to it (Trump can order the DOJ to do things he can’t do himself?) could be used to argue for exceptions to the overall immunity. But reading the opinion at face value, yes the president could order an assassination, and even fire generals who refuse to pass along those orders.
Longer answer though: This is the real world. If Biden gave such an order, it would likely result in a coup and an overthowing of the Constitutional order as a whole. And if order were somehow restored and Biden brought up on criminal charges, you could be your life that the 6-3 Republican majority on the court would find a way to either limit or perhaps overturn their prior ruling as it pertains to Biden.
For an alternative perspective on the same topic, here’s a right-leaning law professor’s take on this which does a pretty plausible job sane-washing the opinion.
- Comment on If Trump loses the election and flees to another country to avoid his sentencing in his (multiple) lawsuits, does the Secret Service have to go with him? 2 months ago:
The former presidents act seems to imply that the president can decline Secret Service protection and even get $1 million for doing so. So I imagine he could just decline protection and hire his own security. But that would make it pretty obvious that he’s planning on fleeing.
- Comment on Threw a wrestling watch party, made special food, and was very disappointed in the outcome. 2 months ago:
This is why I always eat all the food I can at a party. Everyone else is being too polite and someone’s gotta eat all that food.
- Comment on Seriously, what the f*** is keeping Donald Trump in this presidential race? 3 months ago:
That obviously has more to do with Trump and the GOP than Kamala. It was inevitable when they kicked his daughter out of the party.
- Comment on Seriously, what the f*** is keeping Donald Trump in this presidential race? 3 months ago:
You have to remember that the voters are human beings, complete with areas of ignorance, prejudices, and logical fallibility. Trump certainly is aware of that and exploits it to the maximum extent.
- Comment on Thank you! 3 months ago:
TeaSoup - Comment on Inflation? 3 months ago:
We’ve had six straight administrations of almost total non-enforcement of antitrust. I’m happy with Biden bringing lots civil cases when no one else has done anything about the problem, especially because civil cases are much easier to win. The goal should be to fix the problem more than punish people for what past administrations effectively legalized.
- Comment on How the fuck do you meet new people? 3 months ago:
It tends to be pretty random. I’d say just maximize opportunity by doing more things that involve other people. In my experience I’d say about 95% of my attempts to meet people, whether that be for friends or dating, go nowhere. Then of the remaining 5%, only 10% of that lasts longer than a year. So 99.5% of your efforts will be unrewarded or only slightly rewarded.
So what can you do that involves other people? Meetups, volunteer, find an activity like climbing or trivia or whatever. It depends on your area. Since you’re in a rural area there won’t be much but take what you can get. Of course there’s a wide variety of rural areas, but there’s usually some activity prevalent in the area. Golf? Hiking? Hunting? Find wherever those people hang out and go hang out there.
- Comment on Love the smell, and what they do to my health 3 months ago:
Great now some fancy restaurant is gonna start offering a basket of fries cooked in lavender oil for $200.
- Comment on No thanks. I'm good. 3 months ago:
I bet this started as a troll and then everyone lost the plot
- Comment on Big plans 3 months ago:
source did not disappoint:
Allow some time to just relax and melt into the communion. Let the tree lead you into the wonders of its own inner life. Working with trees in this way can help to ease sexual frustration. You may find that some of the practices presented here can be easily adapted for use in lovemaking.
- Comment on Hail our true supreme leader 4 months ago:
The drawing guy is merely tilted at the hips, Trump looks like two 10 year old kids where one is sitting on the other’s shoulders, with his legs out in front.
Actually that would explain a lot.
- Comment on Ah sweet! 4 months ago:
Well it’s not actually available yet (and perhaps won’t ever be), so it’s more cantibalism.
- Comment on Does anyone else feel like fireworks are a complete waste of money and a ridiculous amount of unnecessary Pollution? 5 months ago:
I wouldn’t say it’s ridiculous if it’s once a year. If we did it every night…yeah. But people spend more money on a lot dumber stuff, like expensive purses and giant luxury trucks.
- Comment on why isn't anyone calling for Trump to drop out. 5 months ago:
Anybody but Biden. Kamala seems to be the expected replacement, that works. If not her, pretty much anyone else. Trump is a terrible candidate. While he has experience in show business, he’s way past his prime and pretty much any person should be able to beat him in a debate at this point.
I was actually recently thinking through people I’ve known and whether they could’ve done a better job debating Trump than Biden did. Generally any adult with a functioning mind would do better. Adults I’ve known with a HS education could’ve crushed Trump in that debate. I’m actually not sure if a homeless guy I once debated on the street regarding the meaning of pi would do better or worse than Biden, he seemed to be at about Trump’s level of sanity and if Trump won this last debate, well yeah even he’d do better than Biden. I can also think of some older teenage jocks I once knew, and while they were dumb as rocks their teenager swagger would’ve been more convincing than Biden’s rambling failed attempts to remember rote speeches.
If I try to think of who is actually about at Biden’s level, I think of myself at the age of 13, when I had a presentation in front of the class on an issue and for some reason I was struck by that early teenager nervousness, and haltingly tried to give a presentation as the class tried failingly to hide their laughter at how terribly it was going. It was probably the most embarrassing day of my life. That’s Biden’s level right there. So any person in their late teens or older with a full grasp on sanity should be a much better candidate than Biden.
- Comment on why isn't anyone calling for Trump to drop out. 5 months ago:
Lots of people have a problem with Trump. All the more reason to want someone opposing him who can beat him.
- Comment on Is my girlfriend gaslighting me? 5 months ago:
if you’re planning to kill the guy, what would you do with our cat?”
So…this makes no sense. If I had to guess, I’d imagine your girlfriend exhibits this kind of strange obsessive behavior inconsistently, has occasional bouts of depression, and is no older than 30. Regardless of whether I’m right (but especially if I am), you should consider whether your girlfriend is suffering from something that requires a psych evaluation and get her one.
- Comment on Have rock 5 months ago:
