orclev @ orclev @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Wouldn't take the military, he can call on federal marshals, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, and probably even some of the local police would be willing to become his dogs. He could also in theory deploy one states national guard into a different state although that's a little shakier legal ground. That's assuming of course that the local officials would refuse to appear in court or a congressional summons voluntarily. There's also other ways of exerting pressure like refusing to issue federal funds (although that's far less effective against Democrat states since they contribute more federal funds than they receive, particularly California).

Nothing. Anything a Democrat proposed the Republicans would object to on principle. The only thing they'd agree on would be things they were paid to agree on.

According Trumps bootlickers the Supreme Court the answer is no. They ruled any action the president takes officially while in office is de facto legal. He could drop a nuke on Texas if he felt like and as long as it was an official act of his office he's untouchable.

That's not actually true, there are things the federal government can do. First it's a grey area legally. The constitution says trade deals (and trade outside the borders of any one state) is the domain of the federal government.

The argument in this case would be "Is this a trade deal?". It certainly sounds like a deal, and it involves trade, but the key technicality would be if California is giving anything in return. Are they promising anything in exchange for no or reduced tariffs or are they just asking with the promise of nothing in return? If they're not promising anything there's a pretty good chance they could win the argument that this isn't a trade deal and therefore the federal government has no legal basis to intervene (although it's worth pointing out that the current administration hasn't particularly let legality influence their actions).

On the other hand if California is promising something in return there's a decent chance the federal government could successfully argue that that meets the definition of a trade deal and is therefore prohibited. This also raises the question of why another country would agree to remove tariffs from California if they aren't promising anything in return. The only answer I can come up with is to figuratively (and maybe literally at the same time) give the middle finger to Trump.

Meanwhile over here in the US the clowns we have in the supreme court ruled that anything the president does while in office is de facto not a crime.

Just because Trump and his goons are ignoring it doesn't mean his cronies in congress and the supreme court won't still use it to attack anyone they want to.

Did you mean to respond to someone else? This seems like a bit of a non-sequitur from my comment.

Economics in general. California is responsible for a significant chunk of the entire US GDP as well as being one of the primary shipping hubs. My point was more along the lines that these other problems are tractable, you could for instance negotiate trade deals between the rest of the US and California. The military on the other hand is a much tougher problem akin to unscrambling an egg. There's no obvious way to disentangle California from the greater US military.

See my other response to peregrin5 but in addition you're assuming rational actors all around. Actual reality is far more messy with many of those involved making decisions based more on feelings than any in depth reasoning. States stay together because there's no obvious alternative. There's no mechanism for a state to leave the union and doing so requires solving many problems that have no obvious answers.

That's great in theory but just as unrealistic in practice for California as it always has been for Texas. The single biggest stumbling block for any state to leave the union for any reason is the military. Most of the other problems can be resolved within the borders of the state, but the disposition of existing and theoretical new military hardware, personnel, and bases will always be a sticking point even assuming the federal government and the other states are willing to let them leave.

Any attempt to leave the US that has any hope of succeeding would be a very long and protracted process that would make Brexit look breakneck in comparison. We're talking at least a couple decades at a minimum.

It's either that or another civil war and that has so many variables I'm not sure anyone has any hope of predicting how that would turn out.

Unfortunately this runs into constitutional problems. While the spineless subhuman creatures in congress and the supreme court seem to have no problem with Trump and his administration ignoring the constitution I fully expect them to come down hard on any state that does so (at least in cases that go against Trump and his policies).

You're right, essentially all so called Christian holidays and traditions are just rebranded older traditions from other religions. People were far more amenable to converting to or at least tolerating Christianity if they could continue their existing holidays and traditions largely unchanged, so Christian churches came up with various explanations for why those holidays were now Christian. It's why for instance Christmas is in December suspiciously close to the winter solstice despite all evidence pointing to Jesus being born at a different time of the year. Sometimes they don't even bother with trying to pretend like with Christmas trees and the Easter bunny (also the name Easter).

The real irony of course is that this will have literally the exact opposite effect from what he wants. For some unknown reason Trump is thoroughly obsessed with trade deficits, specifically the eliminating of them. He actually used a formula based on each country's trade deficit when deciding what each tariff would be.

Ultimately though these tariffs are going to massively increase the trade deficits though as the counter tariffs hurt US exports of goods that are either luxuries or else readily available from other countries. Meanwhile while the tariffs will somewhat reduce US demand for imports the fact that there's no real domestic alternatives for the overwhelming majority of goods means they'll still be imported. The net result will be little if any reduction of imports combined with a significant reduction of exports leading to record trade deficits.

Looking at his history I'm a bit confused. I do see one instance where he was apparently accused of posting a Russian misinformation site and banned for it, although playing devils advocate I could see that as a genuine mistake as well. Looking at the rest of his history nothing really jumps out at me as being that unusual. Most of the articles do seem to have a slightly anti-European bent to them, and I did see one exchange that seemed slightly anti-Ukraine, but I'm not really seeing anything else that looks like actual propaganda.

It seems like a tough call to make. On the one hand propaganda works best when it's subtle so the fact nothing jumps out is somewhat expected, but on the other hand we don't want to start witch trials and start branding people as agents with only really flimsy evidence. McCarthyism was a terrible point in US history and did far more harm than any possible good and I'd hate to see something like that happen again. Equally though Russia is known for spreading propaganda on social media though, and there is danger there.

He still has over three years left in this term, why the fuck is he already talking about trying for a third? Particularly when there are already so many ways for him to fuck this up so badly he'd never even win a primary let alone a general election.

My best guess is that he's already out of ideas for things to do that his base would support so he's floating a third term as a distraction from the ongoing trash fire that his brand new second term is already turning into.

Possible but it would be an incredibly risky move on Trump's part as nukes are a very touchy subject and frankly Trump doesn't have either the brains nor the charisma to pull it off. He's as likely to make things worse and unite the rest of the world against Russia (including China who won't want to see nukes deployed in essentially their backyard) as he is to help in a meaningful fashion. Putin knows how limited a tool Trump is and wouldn't want to risk that. Trump is essentially useless for international purposes and limited to only domestic affairs.

Despite his claims he is not and never has been a negotiator, he only ever "wins" when his opponents are at an overwhelming disadvantage. It's why he prefers working with companies on the verge of bankruptcy because they're desperate and easier to push around.

As for deploying nuclear weapons, not only would that unit the entire world against the US, it would ignite the biggest shit storm within the US in its entire history, assuming the military even went along with it in the first place. If anything was going to convince the US military to stage a coup against Trump, giving the order to nuke a recent ally in a war the US is only tangentially connected to would.

Trump doesn't have enough pull yet to make that happen, and it's unlikely he will anytime soon. He could manage to get the US to sit out the fight, but actively committing US forces to help Russia isn't going to happen.

Considering that Putin got his ass absolutely beat by a small country using second hand and surplus military hardware he'd have to be an absolute moron to pick a fight with NATO. Literally the only card he has to play is nukes and that's kind of an all or nothing sort of move. If nukes are off the table any concerted push by NATO is going to be mopping up in moscow within a few months.

That's also assuming the US doesn't get serious about it, but considering Putin's puppet in the Whitehouse there's a pretty good chance the US would quit NATO and so wouldn't factor in. Even without the US though Russia has demonstrated the rest of NATO is far more than sufficient to handle Russia.

He questioned on social media why the Pentagon chief would have a Russian email account, though he did not confirm whether it was genuine or fabricated.

So, in short someone alleged that he has an email address at mail.ru but nobody has actually verified if that's actually true or utter bullshit.

This is such a click bait-y non-story. Like I would not be surprised at all if it was true, and if it was this would be a pretty massive deal that raises a lot of questions (plus even if true there could still be reasonable explanations), but without verification this is nothing at all. I could just as easily claim I have photos of Trump fellating Putin and it would be just as big a story as this

Well no, many of them will have only decided they have a problem with fluoride now that Dear Leaders proxy in the FDA has decided it's a problem. And if you think for one minute the pharmaceutical companies won't all rush out new fluoride free versions of their existing toothpaste brands to try to get a chunk of those morons money you haven't been paying attention to corporate America for the last century.