Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[unclevlad]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/opinion/republicans-congress-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk0.enen.h5AAWeCFJQTT&smid=url-share

[DShomshak]

10 hours ago, unclevlad said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/opinion/republicans-congress-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jk0.enen.h5AAWeCFJQTT&smid=url-share

Quote

They’re half partisan, half courtesan.

Best summary I've ever read of Congressional Republicans.

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

The Daily reviews Donald Trump's success in getting his trials delayed until after the election. At this point, it looks like onlhy the hush money case -- which legal experts deem the weakest -- has a trial date.

 

The Staggering Success of Trump’s Trial Delay Tactics - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

As noted, his lawyers have figured out how to game all the defenses developed to prevent rogue prosecutors and judges from railroading the innocent. The host and guest shrug and say, Well, we're stuck. I say, this shows why our legal system *does* need the capacity to railroad defendants -- not easily, Glod forbid, but when it really, really matters -- the state needs to be able to put a case before a judge who knows and accepts that his job is to deliver a swift and guilty verdict. Yes, a political show trial.

 

I could go on, discussing conditions of extremis, but I think that's enough unpleasantness for one post. And the argument does lead into some nasty territory. For now, I'll just repeat the suggestion that the Constitution is not a suicide pact.

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

35 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

As noted, his lawyers have figured out how to game all the defenses developed to prevent rogue prosecutors and judges from railroading the innocent. The host and guest shrug and say, Well, we're stuck. I say, this shows why our legal system *does* need the capacity to railroad defendants -- not easily, Glod forbid, but when it really, really matters -- the state needs to be able to put a case before a judge who knows and accepts that his job is to deliver a swift and guilty verdict. Yes, a political show trial.

Dean Shomshak

 

Yeah, the tactic to abuse the system has been clear.

 

But if the state has a means to effect such a trial...imagine what would be going on with the current House Republican clown show.  Imagine what *Trump* would've done with it.

 

The problem is the partisanship that's corrupted the judicial system.  Several aspects could've been sped up with, say, the Supreme Court quickly and summarily rejecting the appeals.  Another aspect would be to review judicial assignments...Cannon's shown that she's biased in Trump's favor, and she shouldn't be hearing any cases involving him.  But the deepest root is that any government is composed of people.  When they fail the people of the country, the only means to address it is through the election process...and that has become so corrupt as to be almost meaningless.

[Starlord]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/13/iran-israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine/

[Iuz the Evil]

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-tries-to-calibrate-response-against-israel-after-deadly-bombing-abb38b57
 

Yeah sounds like this is going to continue to escalate. I think there is little chance Israel does not counterattack Iran in some way, basically that’s the policy. Attack on Israeli territory = IDF counter.
 

There’s also news that most of the Israeli hostages may be dead. Hamas stating they can’t come up with 40 to exchange (of the IIRC 136 In captivity).

 

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/10/middleeast/hamas-israel-hostages-ceasefire-talks-intl

 

That’s going to make ceasefire options less appealing to Israel, I would expect. The situation is even more fraught with peril than is typically the case for the region right now, and there’s some pretty significant global implications.

[Lord Liaden]

Iran has actually displayed remarkable restraint during this whole affair in Gaza. It's clear that the Iranian government does not want a wider conflict, just as it's clear Bibi wants to provoke one. That's why I don't think escalation is inevitable. This time Israel launched the attack, so Iran for political and military reasons must respond; but they're trying to keep any response proportional to the provocation.

 

Hamas is a big part of the problem here. They do want escalation, to radicalize more Palestinians. Unfortunately Iran does not have enough influence over Hamas' leadership to outright stop them, but I don't doubt they're putting as much pressure on Hamas to modify their actions, as the United States is putting on Israel.

[Pattern Ghost]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Iran has actually displayed remarkable restraint during this whole affair in Gaza.

 

Let's not forget they helped engineer the 10/7 attack:

 

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25

 

Israel may have hit them first in this round of Poke the Bear, but I don't think Iran deserves any praise for restraint. 

[Lord Liaden]

6 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Israel may have hit them first in this round of Poke the Bear, but I don't think Iran deserves any praise for restraint. 

 

I wasn't praising them. Just pointing out a fact.

 

Below is a thorough, non-partisan analysis of Iran's response to the Israeli strike, its implications and possible outcomes. If you want a clearer understanding of the dynamics involved, it's worth investing eight minutes forty seconds.

 

 

Edited April 14 by Lord Liaden

[unclevlad]

Story being updated now.  The aerial attack did very little damage.  NYT is reporting minor damage to 1 military base, with no injuries.  CNN says Biden administration says "almost all" drones and missiles were shot down.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

There’s also news that most of the Israeli hostages may be dead. Hamas stating they can’t come up with 40 to exchange (of the IIRC 136 In captivity).

 

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/04/10/middleeast/hamas-israel-hostages-ceasefire-talks-intl

 

Last time I read that article it said that there weren't 40 women, children, and elderly for the initial exchange, but that there were still ~100 hostages left that haven't been bombed, shot, or starved to death by the Israelis.

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Story being updated now.  The aerial attack did very little damage.  NYT is reporting minor damage to 1 military base, with no injuries.  CNN says Biden administration says "almost all" drones and missiles were shot down.

 

Per Beau's breakdown above, probably the best outcome we could have hoped for under the circumstances.

[Iuz the Evil]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/14/middleeast/israel-iran-attack-response-intl/index.html
 

Israel determining scope and nature of their planned response. They’re obviously being urged to show restraint.

[Cygnia]

Trump’s Brain Is Not Okay

Quote

The evidence for Trump’s dementia is this: Trump shows an overall decline from his own cognitive baseline, with marked progressive deterioration in 4 areas: memory, ability to use language, behavior, and gross and fine motor skills.

Let’s take these one by one:

1) Decline from baseline:

Overall, he shows a shocking decline in verbal fluency from his previous baseline. Trump was once highly articulate. He spoke in polished paragraphs with a sophisticated vocabulary. Now, his vocabulary is impoverished, and he often can’t finish a sentence or even a word. Typical of dementia patients, he repeats himself and overuses superlatives and filler words.
…

2) Memory:

Forgetting names and dates is normal for people who are aging, like Joe Biden, and me, and millions of others. By stark contrast, the Dementia Care Society says “confusing people and generations” is a sign of advanced dementia. And this is the type of profound memory disturbance we’re seeing in Trump.

Recently, Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. You can kind of intuit how the demented thought process works in Trump’s mind to combine people. There’s an archetype in his head of a hated powerful female politician he is fighting. Fragments of Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi stick to this miasma of ill-defined thought and feeling, and combine in his imagination to form a new combined person who doesn’t really exist: Bad, bad, Nikki-Pelosi woman. Me hate her.

8 times he’s said he’s running against Obama. How often does he say and think it in private? I think this suggests that Trump has also combined Obama and Biden into one imaginary hated Joe-Obama person. The Trump campaign is trying to spin it as if Trump was either joking or suggesting Biden is an Obama puppet or some such thing. Nice try. Trump said it plainly, over and over. He didn’t look like he was joking (does he ever?) and said literally nothing to suggest he was referring to some Biden-Obama cabal.

The more plausible explanation is that once again we are watching the workings of his demented mind in real time. Obama and Biden have something very important in common in Trump’s brain that can allow them to be fused in his molten mind: two Democratic presidents who bested and humiliated him have become one imaginary super-villain.

What happens to a nation when its chief executive has lost his capacity for executive functioning? Michael Wolff wrote that Trump not infrequently failed to recognize old friends. I don’t mean he forgot their names. He acted as if he’d never seen them before in his life. If you’ve ever had a relative with dementia you know how heartbreaking that stage of decline can be-- to have to remind a loved one of who you are.

Trump is almost there.

3) Language

Trump shows formal signs of disordered speech we typically see only in organically impaired dementia patients:

A) “phonemic aphasia”

Trump uses non-words in place of real words, that usually include a fragment of the actual word. For example saying “mishuz” instead of missile, or “Chrishus” instead of Christmas. You can look at supercut reels assembled by Ron Filipkowski on Twitter, The Daily Show, and now by the Democratic House Judiciary Committee, as well. Both Chairman Nadler and Rep. Swalwell showed their own supercuts of Trump’s cognitive decline at the Hur hearings, to counteract Hur’s partisan slur about Biden’s “poor memory.”

To demonstrate how pervasive these errors are, I present this long but far from exhaustive list of Trump’s phonemic aphasias:
 

“President U-licious S Grant” (For Ulysses S. Grant)
“space-capsicle” (for space capsule)
“combat infantroopen”(for combat infantry)
“sahhven country”(for sovereign country)
“renoversh” (For renovations)
“Anonmmiss” (for anonymous).
“transpants” (for transplants)
“lawmarkers” (for lawmakers)
“supply churn” (for supply chain)
“Rusher” (for Russia)
“raydoh” (for radio)
“Liberal-ation (for liberation”)
“benefishers” (for benificiaries)
“con-ducking” (for conducting)
“stat-tics, suh-tic-six” (for statistics)
“crimakle” (for criminal)
“armed forsiva” (for armed forces)
“internate” (for Internet)
“transjija” (for transition)
“stanktuary” (for sanctuary)

That last example took place during Trump’s State of the Union Address, just to contrast that with the SOTU we just witnessed. In recent rallies in GA, NC, and VA over the course of just a few days Trump evidenced more examples:
 

“We have becrumb a nation”
“All comp-ply-ments” to Joe Biden.
“I know Poten.”
“He can’t cam-pay. He can’t campaign.”
“We will expel the wald-mongers.”

But of course, this is exactly what we should expect. As he deteriorates, these deficits will make themselves apparent more and more often. Now he can’t get through a rally without an example. Cornell psychologist Harry Segal speculated Trump may be “sundowning” and hence most vulnerable to going off the rails at night-time rallies.

Some have argued that Trump’s impaired speech could be an articulation problem, rather than a brain problem. Some have argued he could be slurring from a variety of causes, from loose dentures to drug toxicity (indeed many have speculated that Trump might be abusing or even snorting Adderall or some other stimulant.)

But all those competing explanations are disproven by one fact. Trump commits these aphasic errors in his written posts, as well, proving the problem is in his brain, not his articulation.

For example, he recently posted:
 

“Joe Buden DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES”

“Semantic aphasia”

Semantic aphasia is using a real word, but in a way that doesn’t correspond to its meaning. For example, when Trump referred to the “oranges of the investigation.” Another example would be “midtown and midturn elections.” Recently, when apparently trying to say “three years later,” Trump said:

 

 

“Three years, lady, lady, lady.”

More recently Trump said at a rally:

 

 

“We’re going to protect pro-God…”

In mid-sentence he goes blank and looks at the ceiling. When he reboots, the words he uses to complete the sentence don’t make sense:

 

 

“…context and content.”

C) Complete loss of all verbal language

Like an infant sometimes, Trump just makes sounds:

 

 

“Gang boong. This is me. I hear bing.”

Until finally, he is reduced to silence.

 

 

“Saudi Arabia and Russia will re-ve-du. Ohhh…”

Trump’s face went blank, followed by a sigh, and a silent pause while he looked at the ceiling.

D) Tangential Thinking

Trump evidences “tangential thinking” where he drifts from one unrelated thought fragment to another, and sometimes tries to “confabulate” them into a story. But the narrative is literally incoherent. When the press describes Trump’s speeches as “rambling,” they are gaslighting us with a euphemistic word that normalizes the grossly abnormal. Trump regularly degenerates into incomprehensible strings of words.

Just recently outside a New York courtroom, Trump declared:

 

 

“We can’t have an election in the middle of a political season. We just had Super Tuesday. And we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.”

Other examples would be:

 

 

“We are an institute in a powerful death penalty. We will put this on.”

“I could tell you about aircraft carriers, where they use electric catapults. They couldn’t go to the steam, which works better for about 1/100th the price, you know? The electric catapult, you know that story? I could tell you about the elevators on a tremendous carrier, the Gerald Ford, and they decided not to use hydraulic like the John Deere tractor, they decided to use magnets, ‘we’re gonna use magnets!’ to lift up the elevators with seven planes.”

In a recent string of rallies in GA, SC, and VA he said:
 

“They say I’m cognitively impaired. I’m not cognitively.”

“They don’t want illegal immigrants knocking on their front door and saying I’m going to use your kitchen. And I’m going to use your bedroom and there’s not a damn thing. And that’s the nice ones, okay?”

“They raided my house in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, they raided. With no raid, they had no reason to do so.”

Some of his utterances are incomprehensible for a different reason. They suggest Trump is so disoriented he’s occupying a different reality than everyone else.

For example:
 

“They’re weaponizing law enforcement for high-level interference against Joe Biden’s top and only political appointment. A guy named me. A guy named me.”

At a recent rally, he said:
 

“Biden beat Barack Hussein Obama. Ever heard of him?”

Biden never beat Obama. So we have to conclude that Trump is confused about basic reality, and living in a different reality that changes unpredictably. When a confused patient is evaluated in an emergency room, a standard psychiatric question to determine if a patient is disoriented is:
 

“Who is President of the United States?”

If you get that wrong the most probable explanations are dementia, psychosis or drug toxicity, and most probably you’d be admitted for observation in any case.

4) Motor Performance:

Dementia expert Elisabeth Zoffmann, assistant professor of Forensic Psychiatry at the

University of British Columbia, told Salon that Trump evidences a “wide-based gait, commonly found among patients with dementia. Video online shows that he swings his right leg in a semi-circle as if it were dragging a dead weight. He has also shown deterioration in his fine motor coordination, for example having difficulty drinking a bottle or a glass of water without two hands.

Some doctors have also pointed out the peculiar way he leans forward as a typical sign of a type of dementia known as frontotemporal dementia. It could be frontotemporal, or it could be Alzheimer’s like his father had. There’s more than one cause of dementia and that’s where a brain scan would be helpful, but we’re never going to get to see that.

5) Behavior:

He is showing marked deterioration in impulse control and judgment, becoming ever more paranoid, aggressive and confused. Even the judges in his cases are throwing up their hands because they see Trump actually can’t control his outbursts at this point, it’s like a Tourette’s tic.

What are the real risks to our nation of a president who is exhibiting signs of dementia? I can imagine a list of horribles, but what are some of the ones that spring foremost to mind?

It’s an axiom that when a patient with a personality disorder becomes demented, everything about their personality-disordered behavior gets exponentially worse. Trump will become more horribly Trumpian, if you can believe it. Everything evil and destructive about him will become even more exaggerated in an unbound, and even more erratic way, until he is nothing but rageful id, with no rational control or inhibitions. It will be pure chaos. From that point, there’s simply no bad outcome that you can think of that’s inconceivable.

People need to understand dementia is a progressive illness, which means the Trump you see today is the best Trump you’re ever going to see. It’s all downhill from here. Trump’s rate of decline is accelerating, and if he’s typical, at some point, he will “fall off a cognitive cliff” and become completely disabled.

Trump could be found wandering the lawn of the White House in his pajamas confused about where he is. I’m not joking. I honestly believe that will happen if he’s reelected. At the rate that he’s deteriorating, I don’t believe it would be possible for him to get through the next 4 and a half years without becoming incapacitated while in office.

 

[Lord Liaden]

I want to emphasize that Joe Biden's condition is not remotely similar to Donald Trump's. Any perceivable decline in any of the abovementioned areas from his baseline of ten years ago is slight, and in no way indicative of dementia.

[DShomshak]

3 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Trump’s Brain Is Not Okay

 

Even more unfortunately, I can imagine many of his backers thinking this wouldn't be bad. Just sit him behind the Resolute Desk, send in a stream of sycophants, put things in front of him to sign, and you can do anything with, or to, the country that you want. One of Trump's weaknesses as a figurehead for a radical reactionary movement was his tendency to go off script. But if he's coccooned in a layer of movement-loyal underlings and too incapacitated to recognize his confinement, why, such a figurehead President could be quite useful. A horrible thought, but Trump has taught us that what used to be horribly unthinkable is now all too plausible.

 

I do feel sorry for any family members or other people who might care about Trump as a person.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Old Man]

13 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Even more unfortunately, I can imagine many of his backers thinking this wouldn't be bad. Just sit him behind the Resolute Desk, send in a stream of sycophants, put things in front of him to sign, and you can do anything with, or to, the country that you want. One of Trump's weaknesses as a figurehead for a radical reactionary movement was his tendency to go off script. But if he's coccooned in a layer of movement-loyal underlings and too incapacitated to recognize his confinement, why, such a figurehead President could be quite useful. A horrible thought, but Trump has taught us that what used to be horribly unthinkable is now all too plausible.

 

I can only imagine the kind of backroom dealings going on right now as people vie for the VP position on his ticket, since that person is guaranteed to become president at some point if Trump wins.  You could even defenestrate Trump on Inauguration Day +1, literally or figuratively via the 25th Amendment.

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, DShomshak said:

I do feel sorry for any family members or other people who might care about Trump as a person.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

I imagine this sounds heartless, but I don't. Looking at Trump's behavior and history, I have serious doubts there are such people, at least any more. And considering his family and friends whom I've seen, if there actually are any who care, they're not the type I would feel sorry for.

 

I'm in mind of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and what the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come showed Ebenezer Scrooge.

[DShomshak]

You do notice I said, "might"...

 

I was being kind.

 

Perhaps little Barron has not yet been warped too badly.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

Barron turned 18 last month. It's now up to him what kind of person he becomes.

[Cygnia]

The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states

Quote

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.

It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.

 

[Starlord]

Hmmm, what about DC?  Trump essentially organized a protest at the capitol, right?

Edited April 15 by Starlord

[Lord Liaden]

Rules for thee, not for me.

[unclevlad]

DC doesn't have the anti-protest law.

[Cygnia]

Trump just 'touched the third rail' in hush money trial: former prosecutor

Quote

Former President Donald Trump just touched the third rail during his hush money trial as prosecutors executed a powerful courtroom chess move, a former prosecutor told CNN Tuesday.

 

Karen Agnifilo, an ex-assistant district attorney in the borough where Trump faces his first criminal trial, appeared on the network to discuss the stern warning that a muttering and glaring Trump received from Judge Juan Merchan.

"The third rail is if anyone starts to make the jury feel any kind of intimidation whatsoever, the jury has to be protected at all costs and not just for safety reasons," Agnifilo explained.

"You want to make sure that their verdict is not influenced by anything other than the evidence in the facts of the case — so you saw that Donald Trump touched that third rail."