Trump is going into office instead of prison because of one bad hire, and he’ll have two popular things to brag about because of another bad hire and a bad decision.
Let’s start with Normy McNormerson and his slavish devotion to the norms surrounding the rule of law. This is from Garland’s farewell address:
We must understand that there is a difference between what we can do — and what we should do.
That is where our norms come in.
[…]Our norms are a promise to treat like cases alike — that we will not have one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for friends and another for foes. [ed: LMFAO with tears in my eyes.] […]
Those norms include our commitment to guaranteeing the independence of the Justice Department from both the White House and the Congress concerning law enforcement investigations and prosecutions.
“Norms” occurs ten times in that speech. This is like the Captain of the Titanic giving a farewell address on the bridge after the collision, explaining that the White Star line must always be on time, he was right to go as fast as possible through a sea full of icebergs, and that the ocean isn’t as cold as it looks.
Second, Trump is going to take credit for the ceasefire in Gaza and he’s going to spin it as Bibi being scared that Trump will actually do something, unlike Biden. I’m sorry to report that that explanation will be well-received, because Bibi sure showed that he wasn’t scared of Biden, as this ProPublica piece shows:
- Empty Threats: Since Oct. 7, 2023, Biden has repeatedly issued threats that Israel ignored. U.S. officials tried to enforce consequences — but they couldn’t.
- Internal Dissent: The State Department disregarded its own experts and cracked down on leaks. Some human rights officials said they were prevented from pursuing evidence of Israeli abuses.
- Costs of Inaction: Experts say Biden’s failure to follow through led to impunity for widespread human rights abuses, including blocking aid deliveries, even after explicit U.S. warnings.
Blinken was another bad hire, though this one might be more on Biden, and he’s certainly getting the blame.
Finally, here’s the thing that’s really going to get Trump some good press: he’s going to stop the TikTok ban and work out some deal to “sell” TikTok’s owner to a US company. Let’s remember who wanted that ban: 174 Democrats and 186 Republicans in the House, including Pelosi, Jeffries and some other local heroes. Of course the Progressive caucus and a few other House members with brains (e.g., Andy Kim) got it right, as usual, and opposed it. Then, in the Senate, only Voldemort, Merkley and Welch opposed it from the Democratic side. Yesterday, Schumer went to the floor to beg for an extension of the ban he voted for. (That link goes to a press release from Senate Democrats, insert mordant chuckle here) And even though the ban should happen on Sunday, Biden says he won’t enforce the ban he signed. As he shouldn’t, because if you’re going to ban foreign influence from social media companies, you need to look at US companies, too, but we won’t, because money. (John Oliver has a good, evenhanded overview of the TikTok stuff that ends up with that conclusion.)
My view of losing is that you need to figure out what went wrong and not do it again. Hiring a DC insider for AG who didn’t get the job done, looking like Bibi Netanyahu led you around on a leash, and supporting a dumb ban of a service that is very popular with younger voters (who should be our voters) are three big mistakes. The first led to Trump even being eligible to run. The second gives Trump a “win” that he’ll be happy to claim as he and Bibi hold each other in multiple warm, loving embraces. And, yeah, Trump supported the third (TikTok ban), but just like Chuck Schumer, he sees that it’s unpopular now, so he’ll be more than happy to do exactly what Schumer is doing, which is to reverse his bad decision, and do something that will be very popular.
These are three things we need to sear into our minds and demand better from the next set of Dems who ask for our vote, if elections still exist in 2026 and beyond.
Ksmiami
Garland will go down as the man who ultimately destroyed the country.
Omnes Omnibus
Well, I can see how this thread is going to go. Have fun.
trollhattan
Is it already Fitzmas again? How time flies.
Baud
The biggest mistake IMHO was following liberal advice about what actions would be popular.
With that, I’m with Omnes. Have a good day, folks.
VFX Lurker
Ain’t that the truth.
I’ll skip the rest of this thread, too.
Tom Levenson
My reaction to the Garland hire has been the same from the beginning: Doug Jones was RIGHT THERE.
And that’s all I’m going to have to say on this thread.
ALurkSupreme
I’m noping on out of here as well. Cheers.
RepubAnon
It’s hard to say whether Garland’s slow pace endured Trump’s win – Judge Cannon and the Supremes may have blocked things anyway. However, not stopping the slaughter in Gaza and passing the Tik Tok ban while allowing the same abuses at all the other social media platforms was really stupid and short-sighted.
ArchTeryx
From last thread:
The current version of SC(R)OTUS is completely lawless. They just ignore or outright rewrite amendments as suits them. They’ve turned the whole field of constitutional law into the sort of complete mockery that Lewis Carroll and Samuel Clemens used to write about.
They seriously, SERIOUSLY need to be neutered. But the other branches just don’t have the political will to make them irrelevant. And plenty of fascists will use their pronouncements as a cudgel, which is why they have any power at all
And they gained that power by being exactly what they were never supposed to be – nakedly partisan actors.
ExPatExDem
If there was one thing chiseled in motherfucking stone during the last four years, it’s that the U.S. has one law for the Nobility and one for the peasants.
Old Man Shadow
George Floyd would like to laugh in bitter irony, but he’s dead.
Glory b
Trump isn’t saying that. His people are saying that Hamas & Muslims in the Middle East are afraid of him.
Remember, he spent the campaign promising to immediately give Bibi everything he needed to finish the job & Jared had stars in his eyes about Gaza beachfront condos.
A la the Nixon/Reagan playback, those brown, third world countries are scared of the powerful white man.
We all know that’s what Republicans saw, not that right wing Israelis had anything to fear.
Glory b
@Old Man Shadow: Missouri God Damn.
(With apologies to Nina Simone).
May I note that the officer got just shy of a million dollars via Go Fund Me, if I recall correctly.
eclare
@Tom Levenson:
Amen.
And I’m out.
Doug R
Dunno why you’re so eager to keep an app that’s a data harvester disguised as a social media app.
buzzfeednews.com/article/emilybakerwhite/tiktok-tapes-us-user-data-china-bytedance-access
theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/
Glory b
@ALurkSupreme: Yeah, I’m going to do the same.
ExPatExDem
@Doug R: As opposed to…literally every other social media app.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami: Trump and the Supremes fully own credit for destroying the country. Don’t blame ineffective firemen. Blame arsonists.
Steve LaBonne
@Omnes Omnibus: Same old bullshit. Apparently it needs to be repeated every goddamn day. We’re heading for LGM territory at this rate.
Old Man Shadow
@Doug R: I think I’m okay with the Chinese government knowing I like to watch cute animal videos.
John S.
Maybe be one day we can find a happy medium between slavish devotion to Democrats and shitting all over them.
I guess today isn’t that day.
Jackie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m right behind ya.
Scout211
I don’t know if this has been posted yet, but SCOTUS upheld the law banning/selling TikTok.
ETA: I guess I’m late to this news. Never mind.
Carry on.
Old School
Because the only thing people cared about in that bill was the TikTok portion. Nobody voted yay or nay because of other issues apparently.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m sorry about Professor A.
Yeah, I started to draft a reply to this post but it’s not worth it.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@John S.: I feel like I live there. Sadly, not enough people are there with me.
lowtechcyclist
I have never waded into the details of what Garland could have done when, so I’ll stay out of that one.
But wrt Israel, we had a hammer lying on the table that we didn’t bother to use: we could have cut off the flow of arms and money from the U.S. to Israel.
I mean, c’mon, that’s hardly ‘one weird trick.’ Either they need our aid or they don’t. If they need our aid, cutting it off would soon bring them around. If they don’t, then why the fuck are we giving it to them??
Either way, we should not be assisting a nation that’s in the midst of a genocidal attack on another people. That’s about as goddamn morally straightforward as it gets. Maybe cutting off our aid would have stopped the genocide. Maybe not. But the only way to find out was to try, and we didn’t try.
kindness
Joe Biden is going to look like Budda after you see what Bibi & Trump do to the place.
tobie
Harry Litman and Jack Smith beg to differ. But, heck, what would they know as former federal prosecutors about the difficulties of mounting a case compared to the BJ commentariat. Have a nice day.
bsky.app/profile/harrylitman.bsky.social/post/3lfs5tfqmx22b
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I last saw him at a reunion 15 years age. 97 was a good run.
RevRick
@Ksmiami: Lets put the blame where it belongs:Trump.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: Oh, we need to include corrupt media and ignorant voters too.
montanareddog
@Doug R:
Because they are all data harvesters disguised as social media apps (with the exception of Mastodon and, probably, BlueSky – for now).
What should have been banned is not TikTok but data harvesting as a practive which would affect all of them equally. But Dems were running scared of being targetted by SV, which happened anyway
oldgold
Does anyone know why the DOJ in the classified documents case did not dismiss Trump’s co -defendants Walt Natua and Carlos de Olveira? After all, it is certain that Trump’s DOJ is going to.
Had the DOJ dismissed these two defendants, Jack Smith’s report on the classified documents could have been released.
Garland’s DOJ not doing this makes no sense to me.
narya
Okay, what the hell, I’ll wade in.
First, SCOTUS was never going to let any of these cases go to trial. Doesn’t matter how quickly anyone moved, doesn’t matter what evidence got brought or when, neither case was ever going to trial. That wildly corrupt decision on immunity puts paid to that–and even if that decision had somehow come about a year earlier, they would have had plenty of opportunity to delay further. And Thomas was itching to make Smith an illegal hire; dunno if that gambit would have succeeded, but, with the pick-me cooperation of Cannon, that was another avenue for delay in the documents case.
Second, Marcy Wheeler’s defense of Garland brings way more receipts than I have the patience to accumulate, so just go there.
Third, the argument that somehow Garland should have broken all kinds of rules and processes is wild to me. What, exactly, should he have done? (And do you really think that SCOTUS would have sat by for that?) I laud Garland for what he did, not least because the corrupt bullshit that is about to rain down upon us will be in stark contrast to that. Yeah I know, I, too, would prefer something other than a “stark contrast.” And let’s not forget the many, many people brought to trial and convicted, including for seditious conspiracy.
I’m not gonna defend Blinken; I do think Biden could have done a whole lot better with Israel/Gaza, and I wish he had stopped sending arms to Israel.
Harrison Wesley
Oh my stars and Garland.
catclub
The only abuse that mattered is that TikTok was much more likely to give private( eg locations of special forces stupidly using it) info to the Chinese government than to the US government.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: “This is the song that never ends…it just goes on and on, my friends…”
Kirk
@tobie: What I notice is that those who work with or adjacent to the justice system tend to defend Garland, and those who’ve never had to do so castigate Garland.
It’s kind of typical of a lot of fields. Heck, consider your own field and how often you have idiots not understanding why something has to be done a certain way even though it takes longer or costs more.
That said I get part of the frustration. If the opposition is using a wrecking ball that’s going to demolish the building, why can’t we just use it first? That’s the underlying issue about objecting to defending norms, after all. And the answer is, maybe you’re right.
but.
There’s a chance we get to rebuild after – arguments exist as to how good a chance it is. If we’ve held to norms and principles and standards then we get a solid foundation from which to rebuild. If we abandoned those, however, then even if we win we lose. And that’s why I stand on that side of the Garland et al issue.
Kay
I joke about following MAGA accounts on TikTok to troll, which is fun, but I actually stay on TikTok longer than the five minutes it takes me to enrage MAGAs because there are so many normie Dems accounts on there – partisan Dem, not ideological liberal or Left like Bluesky. Frankly a lot of them are NON COLLEGE Dems, if my class radar is right and it almost always is.
People need an entry point into a group. TikTok seems to be a good place for that. Think of TikTok like Dems 101 where Bluesky is liberalism graduate school. We’re missing the intro course. TikTok has it.
I also get a ton of engagement on there and I don’t even post main content! I REPLY and I’ll get double digit responses in under a minute. It’s ACTIVE.
Jim Appleton
John/WG made a good pick making you a front pager.
RevRick
Thanks for nothing mistermix. You have single-handedly rendered hope and the will to resist as futile and stupid. I refuse to accept the inevitability of Trump’s triumph. I will fight for it with every fiber of my being.
Kay
The partisan Dem account on TimTok looks a certain way – just a normal Democrat in front of a camera talking (heatedly and with passion) about politics. It’s not slick or practiced at all. No one makes ultra clever “arguments” – it’s like “Republicans just voted against 35 dollar insulin!” and then 5000 replies.
We need more of those people to win.
Barry
Test
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … WhiteHouse.gov:
Win, win.
Joe’s still getting the job done for all Americans.
Best wishes,
Scott.
rikyrah
What was the TikTok vote?
5-4?
6-3?
WTFGhost
Trump is going into office instead of prison because the Republican Party, as a whole, in general, and specific, renounced justice and truth at all levels, up to and including mass death of Americans.
*FUCK* “bad hire”. If Republicans had any sense of justice, they’d have refused to allow him to run again, but they were too chickenshit about losing their jobs. Oh, yeah, and living with the hate that they, themselves, stirred up, which is all their own responsibility, and not a bit of ours.
If Republicans were merely chickenshit, they would have let Georgia savage Trump’s reelection chances, but, they actively undermined the prosecution, pretending that a lawyer couldn’t get a job that no other lawyer wanted, at an ordinary pay scale. But they didn’t do that either.
Now, if you want to say that Merrick Garland made a *terrible* decision – cool. I personally agree that he likely made several terrible decisions. But blaming “one bad hire” when the real cause was a tsunami of lies and distortion isn’t fair.
Scout211
unanimous
tobie
@Kirk: I’m less concerned about norms than rules and laws. Getting admissible evidence can take boatloads of time. The fight to get Scott Perry’s phone to read his Signal messages took almost two years because of legal wrangling. None of this is what I wanted but here we are. It hurts like hell.
New Deal democrat
@narya: We are still left with the same ultimate choice. Either:
1. the Institutionalists (e.g., Garland) failed.
2. The Institutions (Congress and the Courts) failed.
There is no third option.
A President launched a coup in plain sight and could not be held to account, given four full years to do so.
BlueGuitarist
@Kay:
Yay Kay!
Highlighting:
Matt McIrvin
I just keep thinking of something Bret Devereaux said a while ago, which is that, based on historical experience, you can never expect the justice system to put away criminal politicians when the political will isn’t there. When mainstream Republicans decided retroactively that they were OK with Jan. 6th, which happened pretty quickly, the window was probably closed.
Kosh III
Those are some of the reasons why Biden was never my choice for Prez unless he was the only choice. Not in 88: homeboy Al Gore.
Jerry Brown in 92 or really every time
Not in 00 Again homeboy Gore
Not in 04
Not in 08
Not in 16
Not in 20
Nevertheless, The Felon and his cult followers are the MAIN reason we are in this spot
Buttigieg/AOC 2028
Old School
@Another Scott:
The selected drug list for the second cycle of negotiations is:
David_C
@tobie: Thank you.
@RevRick: As a fed, I can only do my job and fulfill my oath. Our loyalty is to the Constitution and we serve the American people.
#2 on Tim Snyder’s list is to defend institutions.
Kay
@New Deal democrat:
I think the DOJ has been risk averse to the point of irrelevance for a long time. It predates Garland.
It isn’t true across all federal agencies either – Bidens labor dept counsel was an absolute bulldog and so was his SEC head. This is a DOJ problem. They’d prefer not to fight if they could lose. They’re so risk averse they can’t move.
Marcopolo
@Glory b: hey, Missouri has a lot of problems—trust me i live here—but the George Floyd stuff happened in Minnesota. Maybe you were thinking of Micheal Brown.
As for the points made by mm. Agree with all of them. Not sure there’s some magic fix. Or, hell, any kind of fix. We need to elect better leaders but looking @ todays information environment & the current level of money in politics that’s a Sisyphusian task atm.
Now I too am leaving this thread behind, lol.
Old School
Old School
rikyrah
@Kay:
I like the political people on TikTok. I think that they are smart. There are two rural women, one from Oklahoma, and one from Missouri, that I truly love. They knock it out of the park always.
Almost Retired
@Old School: I watch enough cable news that I can sing the advertising jingle for most of these medications.
Kay
I think one can acknowledge the trouble we’re in without perceiving that as somehow contagious hopelessness. If mistermix can put you off your mission and pitch you into despair I would suggest you may not hold up defending the Republic.
He thinks it’s bad. I do too. That’s not a surrender – it’s his honest analysis of what happened.
Geo Wilcox
This will give you nightmares, as if we don’t have enough sources for that shit:
mind-war.com/p/bidens-alternate-reality
Kay
@rikyrah:
I do too. There’s this stay at home mom from NJ who is just charming. She crackles with energy. You can almost see sparks. I actually like base Democrats. They’re the only reason I still am one :)
I wish Mark Cuban would just buy it. He’s a normal businessperson rather than a megalomaniac control freak- he won’t bother us. I’m not sure he’s wealthy enough though.
Parfigliano
@oldgold: Not dismissing them makes total sense when you accept as fact that DOJ never EVER had any interest in seeing any Trump prosecution happen.
Garland did his one only job…make sure nothing adverse to the power structure happened.
zhena gogolia
@Old School: Here I’ll indulge in the ageism I so often decry: Frail old man is afraid of catching cold. He doesn’t have the physical strength to withstand an outdoor Inauguration.
Great start!
Citizen Alan
@Ksmiami: a lot of people play the role in the ultimate destruction of this country. Garland certainly belongs on that list, i agree. But his role in our ongoing train wreck of a nation is not as great as, say, james comey.
Lobo
@New Deal democrat:
All I can say, as a I minority with extensive interaction with the legal system, is that institutionalists and institutions can move quickly when they want to. See 14th amendment insurrection decisions.
lowtechcyclist
@kindness:
Well sure, but the reality that Trump’s Middle East policy will be abhorrent has no bearing on whether Biden’s could have been better than it was.
I’ll say it one more time, for emphasis: Joe Biden has been the best President of my lifetime. That doesn’t mean he never made any mistakes.
dc
I understand that legacy media will grant the Asshole’s crowing about the Gaza deal (should it hold), but if Bibi wanted to be sure the Asshole got credit he would have waited until next week, like Iran did for Reagan. Being this week and after all the work that the Biden administration put into it (and I agree there should have been way more stick behind that work) means that it is on Biden’s watch and can always be emphasized, repeated and crowed about (as long as it holds). If it fails, it’s on the Asshole, of course.
lowtechcyclist
@Harrison Wesley:
Well played, sir. :-)
Kay
NYC or state never went after Trump in 50 years of lawbreaking so if we’re hitting prosecutors ( and we should) let’s include them. The deference to rich assholes in this country has been a justice issue for a long, long time. It is the norm. A deviation from the norm is holding one of them accountable, for anything.
trollhattan
Feel the comity.
Imagine going to work with this guy.
Kay
Trump is such a wuss. Obama’s inauguration was freezing, an east coast “wet” cold that to me is worse than drier and colder. We were next to people from Utah dressed for the ski slopes and they were freezing too.
Not very manly!
trollhattan
@lowtechcyclist: Extended BBC interview with a former Likud member, now in the opposition, who said Bibi torpedoed an identical* ceasefire deal last fall that the Biden admin had been pushing and everybody else was on board with. Hard to imagine why that might have been.
*Except it included releasing ALL hostages at once, and not piecemeal, as the current deal includes.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ksmiami:
I dunno, he’s got plenty of company in that regard, Moscow Mitch being a contenduh.
It’s funny, I’ve always been neutral on Garland but damned if in retrospect, seeing how things have played out, he’s been awful. Almost makes me think we might have dodged a bullet with him not getting onto the SC (a reverse Souter?). Of course, if he had, then maybe we would have had Doug Jones (as noted above) as AG and things might have played out very differently. WTF knows.
lowtechcyclist
@Old School:
What a liar, even about small stuff. He can’t order anything yet. For another 71 hours and 16 minutes, he’s a private citizen. He requested, and someone else ordered. End of story.
trollhattan
@Kay:
I do not want my William Henry Harrison 2.0 dream shattered.
Soprano2
I wanna add something – Jack Smith should have dropped the charges against the other two guys in the documents case, because the new DOJ isn’t going to prosecute them anyway, and if he did that then the DOJ could publish the report on the documents case, which to me is much more damning than the Jan 6th case.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan: In the other thread, Princess reminds us that he’ll be indoors with people who don’t believe in vaccines.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Kay: But that’s too complicated to get all righteous about!
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
“Can I get a big ‘achoo!’ for President Donald John Trump!”
“Achooooooo!!!”
Ksmiami
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: oh there’s plenty of blame esp on the voters, but we needed Garland to fight not to tap dance. It makes me wonder if he ever really was a Democratic Party member at all
Ksmiami
@Old School: I’m hoping for an Ebola outbreak then
Ksmiami
@New Deal democrat: I say all of the above.
zhena gogolia
My god, we’re not going to get through the next four years if we concentrate our fire on Merrick Garland. Just stop. Enough has been said. Just stop. Look at the real villains.
TBone
Joyce Vance has a great explainer on the Supremacists Court re: TikTok.
joycevance.substack.com/p/tiktok
It’s not that long and led me to a better understanding of what’s going on.
TBone
@zhena gogolia: COME SIT BY ME, PLEASE.
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: after this, I’m done, but any normal country would have strung Trump up after 1/6/21. End of story
Harrison Wesley
@Old School: “J.D. is leaving us a mighty big hole in the couch to fill…”
Chris Johnson
@New Deal democrat: This is because the primary target of those running Trump and his ilk, IS to wreck the institutions. That’s a lot easier than setting up real and effective power.
It all goes back to Russia. Pretty sure Hillary Clinton said that. Pretty sure Nancy Pelosi has said that. I even suspect Merrick Garland has said that, perhaps in less direct language. THEY AREN’T FOOLING.
And what that means, practically, is open warfare by other means, and directed very specifically at every institution we rely upon, and we’re just not set up to defend against that. Being civilized is a CHOICE and the ability to fall back on, y’know, law and justice and a functioning political system is a choice we usually get to make because the alternative is openly horrible and awful.
Those doing this to us do not have to pay the penalty for it being awful. That’s their win state. They do not have to be sad when MAGA is betrayed and exploding with rage in every direction. That’s the intention! They don’t have to make choices that will lead to a strong stable fascist regime that will last for generations because they don’t want OUR regime to last in the first place, they want theirs to look great by comparison, even amid bombing rubble. ‘At least we aren’t the imperialist USA!’
Fuckers. Fuck’em.
TBone
@Another Scott: States’ Rights advocates never stop trying.
The Republicans want to repeal the $35 insulin cap.
pennsylvaniaindependent.com/politics/republicans-health-care-costs-inflation-reduction-act-repeal-sc…
They want to repeal the entire Inflation Reduction Act.
sixthdoctor
@trollhattan: “Hey, mind if I bring in my flock of sick chickens?”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ksmiami:
We didn’t string up leaders of the Confederacy so why would we have started on 1/6/21?
narya
@New Deal democrat: and I think SCOTUS was sitting on the fucking scales, number one, and the Rs in Congress (like McConnell) did their part.
Kay
@trollhattan:
Michelle Obama is a hero on TikTok generally, another reason to like it, but her star has risen even further for not attending Trump’s inauguration.This is what I mean with the difference between partisan Dems and liberals. Posts that liberals would consider cringy and not serious enough are bread and butter to normie Dems. Hope Walz is super popular too. She’s funny.
Parfigliano
@Ksmiami: Garland is a disguised Bill Barr. Coverup is his game. He just doesn’t play it out in the open. Still gets the same results.
Kay
@TBone:
Right? Its full-on oligarch now.
cmorenc
@narya: Not sure even this SCOTUS could have found a way to block the documents case but/for the unlucky straw-draw in the Fla Fed District Court judicial pool that Cannon won. The inherently problematic element that could have given SCOTUS a basis to reverse a guilty verdict could have been the awkwardness of the crucial trial evidence involving classified docs without disclosure of the actual classified docs – a 5A defense confrontation issue. Nominally, all Jack Smith should have needed to prove was the fact that Trump willfully retained and concealed classified docs (knowing they were such) without need to go into the actual contents , but that is where the SCOTUS 6 could have inserted their malevolent mischief to overturn the verdict, notwithstanding contrary precedent.
I suppose they could have even intervened to delay trial by granting an interlocutory appeal to decide the issue, and maybe dragged their feet long enough to keep the trial from happening bf the election, which is exactly what they did with the immunity issue in the J6 case. But with a District Ct judge disinclined to slow-walk the case to a standstill, it would have been far more difficult for SCOTUS to run out the clock and the case still could have gone to trial by at least limited declassification of still obviously sensitive material.
Parfigliano
@zhena gogolia: Real villains like Garland.
TBone
@Kay: it’s a class war with Nazis added in for good measure!
Kay
I mean, we never held GWB accountable and he lied us into a war and killed half a million civilians who did nothing to the United States.
I think this lack of accountability at the top is a bigger problem than Garland, but I do agree it’s a problem and has landed us in real trouble.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Parfigliano: What utter BS. I guess you are today’s captain of The Circular Firing Squad(TM)! Don’t forget to direct all your attacks over what the GOP has done to Democrats, because mumble, mumble reasons.
TBone
We must keep the “big picture” in mind as we choose which battles to show up for.
Like I said recently, we are all now living on Animal Farm but with Nazis. Remember Orwell’s Battle of the Windmill!!!
gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/the-battle-of-the-windmill-a-turning-point-in-animal-farms-strug…
sparknotes.com/lit/animalfarm/section8/
zhena gogolia
@Ksmiami: No, that would not have happened in “any normal country.” That would have happened in a collapsing country with no laws.
MagdInBlack
@zhena gogolia: Oh no, we must “shoulda coulda woulda” because that will fix everything.
I’ll be sitting on the couch with you and Tbone while the shouldacouldawoulda’s solve it all.
JFC
oldgold
@lowtechcyclist: “Joe Biden has been the best President of my lifetime.”
For me, it is difficult to concur with this judgment of the Biden presidency, when at the end of his 4 year term we have the restoration of Donald Trump.
My hope and expectation of the Biden presidency was that it would serve as a bridge back normalcy. Of course, many factors led to this bridge not being successfully realized. Many of which were outside of Biden’s control. Still, that this did not occur precludes me from deeming Biden the best President of my lifetime.
zhena gogolia
@Parfigliano: Yob tvoiu mat
Anonymous At Work
I found this a little harsh.
Garland wasn’t as bad as all that. He ran into a SCOTUS intent on restoring the Hanoverian dynasty in America and the young Aileen being assigned a case in Florida beyond her scope, intelligence, and understanding, but not beyond her ability to f^*k up.
Blinken was the right call from 2021-2022. After 2022, especially as Russian invasion/attempted genocide in Ukraine heated up, he wasn’t the war-time consiglieri that Biden needed. At some point, his caution and focus on slow and international cooperation became too obvious and played into Putin’s playbook, just like in Die Hard.
Finally, on Israel, Biden and Blinken did screw up by not recognizing the obvious trap: Bibi would demand immediate US capitulation to his demands or accuse Biden of antisemitism. Biden’s only responses were capitulation or forcefully breaking with the US’s tradition of backing Israel over everyone everywhere on everything. And Biden was not the person to do that.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@MagdInBlack: Save a seat for me?
Ohio Mom
@Old School: Thank you for this list. It explains why my Part D insurer wants to take me off the asthma medicine that has worked successfully for me for decades for (the much weaker) Breo Ellipta.
TBone
@MagdInBlack: there’s plenty of room and snax while we gather ammo.
Another Scott
@Ksmiami: Question – Is South Korea a “normal country”?
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kay
@TBone:
The only thing that scares me is the unreality – the lying (which has spread, btw, its much worse than in ’16.)
As long as I can touch bottom in the murky water I’m okay. But that gets harder and harder.
Some of the NC flood victims wouldn’t accept aid because media and Republicans told them doing so would give the federal government title to their property. Shit like that scares me. The pervasive, daily lying. It can strike me dumb in the law practice. I don’t know how to respond to these complete fantasies. I feel utterly defeated.
But stating the mess we’re in doesn’t scare me. I think its true and amid all these lies that’s a touchstone for me.
trollhattan
@sixthdoctor: Heh. :-)
Would shorthand be eflickens?
TBone
@Kay: bingo. Someone I posted recently with that Google docs list of community and individual actions we can take advised writing a letter to yourself NOW that you can check back in on periodically to remember the truth and see if you’ve been swayed by propaganda.
Andrya
@montanareddog: It isn’t just social media. I used to grocery shop at Whole Foods because they appear to be health food oriented- and a while back a clerk asked me if I had Amazon Prime. I said “not sure, but I think not” and gave no Amazon related information. Later, I was checking my past Amazon purchases (on the Amazon website) and guess what? All my Whole Foods grocery purchases are recorded on Amazon- without any permission from me! Truly, Big Brother is watching you.
It’s not that there’s anything terribly incriminating in my grocery purchases- though they could probably figure out that I’m a vegetarian. It’s the principle of the thing. I turned down a discount to avoid having my grocery data given to Amazon- and they gave Amazon the data anyway.
John S.
@TBone:
The lot of you on that couch will hopefully remember to use all that “ammo” on Republicans. Because lately, all you folks seem to use it for is to shoot at anyone who y’all perceive to be even the slightest bit critical about Democrats.
zhena gogolia
@John S.: We’re looking for a community that will focus on the enemy. We’re not finding that here. I don’t know where to find it, honestly. All the people on our side seem to talk about is how terrible our side is.
ExPatExDem
The problem with Garland and those who think like him is that those norms he cherishes so much have been incinerated by the Republican Party starting with the theft of the Presidency in 2000. The house he thinks he’s protecting is a pile of ashes.
TBone
@John S.: Archie Bunker used the phrase “you people” also. I am not folks. I have not attacked anyone here except trolls. And even then, indirectly and with pizzazz.
sab
Interesting. A thread about legal things with no lawyers participating. Should be informative.
Oh good. Some lawyers turned up.
TBone
@sab: I posted Joyce Vance’s explainer. Repost
joycevance.substack.com/p/tiktok
Soprano2
@rikyrah: The one from MO is probably PIper, she’s great.
sab
@Old School: Fuck! So now we’ll get Yost as our next governor.Maybe we’ll see a tiny bit of action against corruption, but the bird flu pandemic will be a humdinger.
MagdInBlack
@John S.: Try to pay attention. You take a whole lot more shots at “folks” than do the 3 of us together.
I am so done with this bs.
A Ghost to Most
“Some of them knew pleasure
Some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers once so fine grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love’s bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge”
Jackson Browne, “Before the Deluge”
KsMiami
@Another Scott: yes. and they actually value democracy
Another Scott
@KsMiami: And yet they haven’t immediately strung up Yoon.
Funny, that.
Have fun.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
From the post:
This is projection. According to the linked roll call, 33 Democrats voted against the bill That’s barely over one third of the House Progressive Caucus, which numbered in the mid-90s in the last Congress. Many more Progressive Caucus members voted for the bill than voted against. These included “local heros” Jaime Raskin, Katie Porter and Marcy Kaptur.
However, a quick review of the Republican “Nay” votes shows that the Freedom Caucus definitely “got it right,” so there’s that.
TBone
@A Ghost to Most: excellent portrait. I will add Samuel Ullman.
Harrison Wesley
@zhena gogolia: Perhaps the happiest thought expressed in this thread. And it’s not even that happy.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Lied us into TWO wars
sab
@zhena gogolia: He just wants an excuse for the tiny turnout.
zhena gogolia
@sab: True. But I think his physical cowardice plays a big role as well.
Soprano2
@TBone: Wow, “We want your insulin pens to cost $300 for a 30-day supply again” is not a popular position for a politician to take. It’s going to take at least another couple of years to pay off the balances on the two credit cards hubby used to pay for insulin pens before he got the doc to switch to vials because they were a lot cheaper. We use pens now because they’re the same price as the vials and are a lot more convenient to carry in my purse.
Steve in the ATl
@sab:
Did you forget to add the sarcasm tag? Or “said no one ever”?
Melancholy Jaques
@zhena gogolia:
We really do need to leave all that behind. We all wish things had been done differently with different outcomes, but we are here now, in this horrible situation, & we need to work together to get through it & out of it.
I am not defending or condemning Garland, but it is most important to recognize that Americans were fully informed that Trump is a corrupt, lying bigot who was judged a sexual assailant, who was convicted of financial fraud, and who led an assault on the congress in an effort to overthrow an election. They knew all this & voted for him anyway. The idea that some court action by the DOJ would have been that one more thing that caused his popularity to drop seems far-fetched to me.
Our problem is that slight majorities of Americans who vote every time are really awful people who express the worst parts of themselves when they vote.
TBone
@Soprano2: that part is for the donors. Oops, repeal of the entire Inflation Reduction Act is also too. They’ll spin it up in webs of lies for their rubes.
Battle of the Windmill
John S.
@TBone:
Oh please. I was referring to the group that YOU associated YOURSELF with. Namely, the clique that are all sitting on the couch together.
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
It is Piper :)
Soprano2
I wish this is something the Dem leaders would take to heart. People don’t want to listen to politicians drone on endlessly about their political positions, they want normal engagement. The R’s have kind of figured this out, at least some of them have. I think some of ours have figured it out too, but not nearly enough.
John S.
@MagdInBlack:
You are full of shit.
TBone
@John S.: yet here YOU are, personally attacking women with insults. Archie Bunker style.
LeftCoastYankee
Well, failure to hold Republicans accountable for their crimes is a norm.
Seriously Garland was lame but he’s not the cause. Hell, even if Trump was in prison he’d have probably at least been the Republican nominee.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Via the NYT on Bluesky:
Shakti
@lowtechcyclist: Genuinely cannot even rank Presidents in terms of being the “best”.
The only President* I was excited to vote for specifically, in a positive way, was Obama.
*who won
I know both Obama & Biden did a lot, which is why I’m so very disappointed all or most of that will be unraveled, possibly back to before they were in office, like worse than it was before I started to vote.
For my foreseeable life.
Old School
@MagdInBlack: @KsMiami: @Steve in the ATl:
Why do so many nyms looks different today?
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: I want that too. I think part of what’s happening is that we honestly thought we were going to win, that the country was with us and wouldn’t restore TCFG. It was unthinkable to me. So when it happened, we started to question everything we thought was true. It’s a big shock to find out the majority of the voters in this country don’t care that the president is a convicted felon if they think he can restore things to what they were in 2019. I truly believe part of the reason so many voters turned on Biden is because he promised to restore normalcy; I believe most people thought that meant making things the way they were before Covid happened, which is of course impossible. So when Biden didn’t do that (and especially when the Delta variant showed that the vaccine didn’t keep you from catching Covid again) people soured on him because they thought he didn’t keep his promise.
John S.
@TBone:
Are you all women? I didn’t know, and I don’t really care to be honest.
I’m “attacking” (if that’s what you want to call pointing out behavior I disagree with) the group of commenters that derailed a thread yesterday when gene108 made a comment that many of you perceived to be critical of Biden, which most others agreed really wasn’t. But it didn’t stop you from haranguing him out of the thread.
I fail to see what your gender had to do with that behavior.
And here you and your fellow travelers are yet again, doing the same old thing. In every thread. Especially the mistermix threads where he is critical of Democrats.
TBone
@John S.: I’m SO not surprised by your failure hahahahaha! Do you have me confused with someone else who attacked the nym you mentioned? Clean the spittle off your glasses and try again.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
Wasn’t there a thread just yesterday about how the Cletus Safaris are reporters groveling at the cool kids’ tables trying to convince everyone that they’re “authentic”?
Honestly (putting aside the stupid amount of money reporters get for these stupid things) not seeing a huge amount of light between that and picking a designated scapegoat from our side so no one has to own up to the fact we’re the underdogs working from a disadvantage.
Yeah, it’s just this one hire. Or this one weird trick we didn’t do. Or-
Soprano2
Last semester (and now, at the MMEA convention at Lake of the Ozarks on January 31st) we performed “Hope for Resolution”, a song written for Mandela and De Klerk. It uses the text of a European chant about the birth of Jesus and a South African anti-apartheid anthem combined together. I keep trying to remind myself that in the world things have been worse than now and then gotten better.
John S.
@TBone:
Riiiight. Because I fail to expend mental energy keeping track of a bunch of fake names of anonymous people on a blog??
That’s hilarious.
And no, it was definitely YOU who piled on with zhena ghogolia. That much I can remember since it was just yesterday.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: I never honestly thought we were going to win, once the elected Democrats led the charge in unseating our nominee.
prostratedragon
@narya:
Well as I see it he had two clear choices: convene a star chamber, or organize a lynch mob.
Soprano2
@Kay: It worries me too that so many people live in completely different realities now. That’s a new thing in my lifetime, enabled by the internet and streaming media. Everyone used to watch the 5:30 or 6:30 evening news on one of three network channels, so we mostly agreed on what had happened. Not anymore.
zhena gogolia
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Exactly.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
Kellyanne Alternative Facts Conway has thoughts.
Anybody recall the anniversary date for the Bowling Green Massacre?
Bobby Thomson
Another bad hire, Jake Sullivan, lost the defense of Ukraine.
Re Tiktok, Biden had too many in his own party eager to do some insider trading on Meta.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: I did, I was hopeful because it seemed that she gained a lot of ground over where Biden was. I love Biden and a lot of what he did, but at 40% popularity he was never going to win the election. I didn’t always think that, but I’ve come to believe it from a lot of stuff I’ve heard from people like Sarah Longwell and her focus groups. She says that way before July 2024 – at least a year – voters were telling her that they didn’t want Biden to run again. We love Biden, but a lot of “normies” didn’t, and we need their votes to win.
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: I know how you feel. There is nothing more depressing than throwing darts under the pretext that you are assessing the battle plan that was needed to fight the last war — as if the next one will be identical. I am trying to focus on action oriented posts and actions, and following along with Hopium.
Another Scott
This seems to fit here… The Last Straw.
;-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Bobby Thomson
@oldgold: Every president gets remembered for one, maybe two things. Biden allowing Trump to escape justice is going to overshadow the rest of his otherwise surprisingly effective presidency. He will be compared to Buchanan.
pajaro
Those of you who blame Garland for the failure to convict Trump act as if the the Supreme Court immunity decision, which occurred after one year of delay, never took place. You act as if once the case was restored to Chutkin’s calendar, there would have been no delays in coming up with a ruling on immunity, and that, somehow, Trump would not have appealed Chutkin’s decision. You act as if the DC Circuit would not have taken months to issue its decision, that Trump would not have appealed it, and that the Supreme Court would not have taken its sweet time in its second decision deciding whatever shred of conduct for which Trump might not be immune. You assume that whatever trial was going to take place after that second remand would not have taken at least a few months, and that any verdict and sentencing would not have been appealed, during which Trump would of course, still be out on bail and running for President. You assume that the case would not have taken close to a year to get back to the Supreme Court, and that the Supreme Court would not have ruled in Trump’s favor.
I would have preferred Doug Jones myself as AG, but it wouldn’t have made a difference–the Sedition Six on the Supreme Court were never going to allow a conviction against Trump to stand. As to the documents case, you’ve seen what Cannon did, what difference do you think a different AG would have made?
Trump is where he is because the Republican Senators who should have voted to convict the man who ruined their place of business refused to do so, and because the Judges they put on the bench abetted the miscarriages of justice. Garland’s dithering did not make a dime’s worth of difference.
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: You and I must have the same zeitgeist.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
It seems to boil down to “China would be free to manipulate Americans as if they were Elon or Zuck or somebody.” I know that distinction should matter to me, but it’s hard for me to get worked up about it.
But switching gears, I couldn’t help but notice that she said, “China is, as Congress has designated it in the Act, a foreign adversary.”
Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela are the other “foreign adversaries,” per Wikipedia, but it didn’t have anything to say about what consequences befall a nation that we’ve listed as a foreign adversary, other than not being able to purchase real estate in some states, which I doubt has any of our adversaries shaking in their boots. I’m wondering if any of our legal eagles knows more about this.
JoyceH
“Word on the street” (translation- I just made it up) is that Trump moved the inauguration indoors because he’s hearing estimates of a smaller crowd than his last one.
Steve in the ATl
@Old School: typo in mine. Once again, sans serif fonts are to blame!
sab
@Soprano2: I think that is as good an explanation as I have seen.
My elderly next door neighbor when I was growing up had lost both her parents to the 1918 flu pandemic when she was a child. It completely upended her life.
On the other hand, my grandmother was in her early twenties during the pandemic. She never once even mentionned it. I only learned about it by reading an Arthur Conan Doyle short story.
MagdInBlack
@Old School:Because I’m a wee bit testy about this continued rehashing of things that are DONE and cannot be UNDONE, so I was hasty in my typing. Ok by you?
Bobby Thomson
@pajaro: We would have had an actual trial.
tam1MI
I butted heads with you on previous threads, but this is one topic where I stand shoulder to shoulder with you in full throated agreement!
Old School
@MagdInBlack:
Fine with me. I just thought it was odd.
Another Scott
@TBone:
Thanks for the drugs list.
Yup. They never give up.
(Not picking on you, just making a segue below!)
This reminds me of an essay that I think is clarifying. States do not have rights, people do:
Bumper-sticker slogans are fine and good and maybe even important. But they aren’t the same as clear language. Something something Tyranny of Words.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: Thank you for saying that
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
And yet that logic stops there, at the state level, and goes no lower or closer to the people. Red states feel free to override their blue cities with great regularity.
Apparently their theory is that there’s something magical about states being the perfect level of government in all ways: the Federal government shouldn’t be able to tell states what to do, but states should have free and unrestricted rein in telling localities what to do.
TBone
@Another Scott: excellent point. Of course I agree, but I also agreed with Judge Luttig about the simple, clear language of the Constitution, and remember what that got me. Burned.
TBone
@Another Scott: hahahaha sometimes people are blinded by their “accessories.” Thanks for lightening things up!
@mistermix.bsky.social
I went to the gym, the store, wrote the most recent post, and WordPress ate my comment, so I’m very late to this party, but I wanted to make a couple of points:
TBone
@TBone: Judge Luttig was the guy who I first heard remind us that the Constitution is NOT a suicide pact. That’s where he had me the most…
kalakal
@lowtechcyclist: To the GQP the perfect level of goverment is the one that they control at any given time.
Geminid
@JoyceH: I like how on Monday night, while Republicans and their wealthy sycophants are partying at glittery Inauguration Balls, “Real America” will be watching Notre Dame and Ohio State fight it out in the College Football Playoff.
Someone might remark, “I thought I’d hit Krogers and grab the wings and chips and bean dip during that guy’s speech so i could escape the crowds. But that place was as busy as I’ve ever seen it. You’d think there was a blizzard on the way!”
gene108
@WTFGhost:
The lies and distortions against Democrats and in support of Republicans are not going to stop anytime soon.
Democrats need to fight those with every tool available. An AG has a lot of tools at their disposal, if they can move past how things were done 40 to 50 years ago and focus on the how things are now.
@New Deal democrat:
All institutions are run by people. They will be as good or bad as the people running them. It doesn’t matter if it’s a local Girl Scout troop, church potluck dinner, pickleball league, Enron, or the U.S. government, if the people running institutions want to make them function poorly, the institutions will fail.
Republicans have shown for decades* they have no interest in preserving any institution that stands in their way of obtaining and maintaining power.
Republicans have turned to rot any institution that hinders their hold on power. Trying to stay within the proscribed bounds of a rotted structure, while Republicans run wild “smashing windows, busting down doors, etc.” has proven ineffective. It was ineffective, when Republicans used blue slips to hold up Clinton and Obama federal judicial appointments, which left openings for Bush, Jr. and Trump to fill.
Ending the filibuster on federal court nominees stopped an abuse of power by Republicans. A norm was tossed aside. No one misses it.
*I say this goes back to Nixon, in 1968, scuttling the North and South Vietnam peace talks and has only gotten worse.
Doug R
@tobie: Thanks.
Here’s the naked link:
newrepublic.com/article/190248/merrick-garland-trump-prosecution-delays
japa21
SIgh.
Same old disingenuous thinking.
Maybe I’ll be back later.
Steve in the ATL
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
I’ve been neutral on Garland, giving him the benefit of the doubt in the face of voluminous criticism, but his closing speech…shee-it he has lost me completely. He’s clearly missed everything that’s happened in the IS since Gingrich became Speaker. JFC.
brantl
What TF IS the Democrat “Voldemort” in the Senate? Can posts be any MORE “inside baseball” to ruin readability?
TBone
@MagdInBlack: he can’t find a single quote by me that would qualify as an attack, so he uses “you folks” because I said I agreed with Zhena that we should be looking forward instead of backwards. There is no such comment by me where I attacked anyone for their opinion. I don’t even engage with trolls directly, I never name them. That’s why he “can’t remember every nym” – it didn’t happen.
The Truffle
There will be elections in 2026 and afterward. I’m predicting Trump/MAGA have jumped the shark. The cracks are already appearing. He is turning on other Republicans. The GOP circular firing squad has begun.
Also Bibi has carte blanche to annex Gaza/the West Bank or whatever else he likes. Trump will turn a blind eye to it. I’m guessing the ceasefire will be short lived.
Sorry….but Trump is gonna crash the car again.
Quinerly
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
Thank you for saying this.
Old School
@brantl:
Bernie Sanders
Yes.
Steve in the ATl
@brantl: @Old School: yeah, that’s lame. Voldemort is clearly Rick Scott. Can’t change the rules now.
Miki
@Scout211: Nope. Per curiam is not always unanimous. See, e.g., Bush v Gore.
Ksmiami
@TBone: I’d rather not be attached to MAGA and the Broligarchy – time to go
Ksmiami
@pajaro: a tough energetic and faster acting AG would have at least prosecuted the case in the court of public opinion- when Garland acted supine, he allowed space for people to reconsider Trump as not so bad
Lyrebird
WHat previous president sanctioned settlers?
What previous president went iN PERSON to sit on the Israeli administration to make sure there was at least a humanitarian corridor?
Waiting…
Actually not waiting, just saying this is definitely a “with friends like these, who needs Putin’s disinformation campaigns?” level remark.
Citizen Alan
@oldgold: then, by that metric, who would be the best Democratic president of your lifetime, given the fact that every democratic president since LBJ has been replaced by a republican who was worse than the last republican president to come before him?
Ksmiami
@zhena gogolia: no federal taxes from Blue states and no abiding this illegitimate Supreme Court is a fucking start
Citizen Alan
@Melancholy Jaques:
I’ve been saying for a while that even if we ran the table last november and won the white house and both branches of congress, we would still have to deal with the fact that seventy five million americans clearly want to live in a fascist white supremacist dictatorship. I don’t think secession is either feasible or desirable, but I can’t think of any other solutions at all to the problem of half the voting population literally hating is for existing.
TBone
@Ksmiami: Judge Luttig argued for, and filed Friend of the Court (Amicus) legal briefs for our side, We The People. He is not MAGA but might could qualify as a broligarch.
msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-eligibility-supreme-court-14-amendment-lutt…
Old School
@Steve in the ATl:
He’s already Bat Boy.
Old School
@Citizen Alan:
Wait – so has Biden ended that streak? Or paradoxically continued it?
hopefullyNotcassandra
@Ksmiami:
I think you mean Chief Justice John Roberts. Without even delving into all of the delays Mumpy the elder caused, we can all see the Supreme Court delayed Jack Smith more than one year.
Why is it that only democrats have agency even at a blog like this?
oldgold
The distinction is that none of the others were followed by the President who had preceded them and had led a violent coup on their way out.
Bobby Thomson
@Old School: I disagree vehemently that Bush the Elder was worse than Reagan, or that Ford was worse than Nixon. And strong arguments can be made that in retrospect, Reagan caused the most damage.
Old School
@Bobby Thomson: Since neither Ford or Bush I replaced a Democratic president, you don’t have to disagree!
@mistermix.bsky.social
@brantl: I’ll stop using that term, it’s a dig at some of the commenters here who are allergic to hearing Bernie Sanders’ name.
@Lyrebird: This is just a species of “Trump is worse” which, though true, does not excuse the Biden Administration’s failure to do the bare minimum to rein in Bibi.
Citizen Alan
@Bobby Thomson: neither both of them followed a democrat either.
YY_Sima Qian
@TBone: The strictly legal analysis is completely divorced from the politics & policy making necessary for defense of liberal democracy. At this moment of national peril, that makes it worse than useless ivory tower musing.
There are a lot of unexamined & little debated assertions in the series of Congressional & Executive actions that built up to TikTok divestment or ban. Designating the PRC as a “foreign adversary” has been used to justify literally hundreds of bipartisan legislative motions every year to limit trade & investment, scientific & technological collaboration, people-to-people exchanges, & twisting the arms of allies/partners/neutrals to do the same, making a slide toward a new Cold War irreversible. Unexamined is whether a new Cold War w/ the PRC is actually good policy for the U.S., whether it would benefit the middle working classes in the U.S., & whether it would be conduce to the defense of liberal democracy.
Congress & Administration asserted that TikTok represented a dire natsec threat due to data privacy & foreign influence concerns, w/o presenting evidence. TikTok & ByteDance had not broken any existing US laws, or it would have been prosecuted for these violations, until Congress outlawed its existence under current ownership. Unexamined is whether why TikTok under nominally US ownership (such as Musk) would prevent the platform from being a conduit for siphoning US user data & influencing the minds of US residence, by the PRC or anyone else. Also unexamined is the clear disconnect between the current bipartisan rush to “save” TikTok versus the original claims of a dire threat, or how that squares w/ efforts to ban TikTok languishing for a couple of years, until pro-Palestinian voices came to dominate the platform post 10/7/23.
Politically, any effort to defend/restore liberal democracy in the U.S. is hampered by the fact that young people of all backgrounds are increasingly disaffected & disengaged from the political establishment represented by both parties. Fewer percentage of young people turned out in ‘24 than ‘20, & fewer percentage of those who did voted for Harris than did for Biden. TikTok is by far their referred social media platform, & one that has been the most favorable to Dem/liberal/progressive/Left messaging. Good luck achieving the same discursive dominance on X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube & MSM.
Finally, imagine what Trump & the transparently malevolent reactionaries will do w/ such a precedent, to both suppress domestic opposition & coerce foreign countries. Now that Biden has spent 4 years legitimizing & solidifying the idea that economic security is national security, & that economic nationalism is the path toward national rejuvenation, you think Trump & the R in Congress couldn’t designate hitherto US geopolitical allies/partners as “foreign economic adversaries” & use the threat of seizing their assets in the U.S. to coerce concessions? Trump & his econ/trade nominees are already talking in this way, & Biden just vetoed the take over of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel on “national security” grounds.
Seriously, have people memory holed how detrimental the original Cold War & the GWOT had been to liberal democracy in America, & how often the Dems just went along? Instead, most people, even on this site, just seem to shrug at the prospect of a new Cold War. I for one do not believe the U.S. can wage Cold War against the PRC and mount a defense of liberal democracy at home at the same time, the former is bound to undermine the latter. Institutions & elites & average people will tend to defer on matters of “natsec”, as SCOTUS just proved.
frosty
Observation: The first half dozen commenters noped out and this still got 200+ comments. This is my “Nope, out.”
TONYG
@Bobby Thomson: It’s hard to compare the series of terrible Republican presidents starting with Nixon; they were all bad. From my point of view a key (bad) moment in the history of this country was Ford’s post-Watergate pardon of Nixon. That set the stage for a lot of presidential lawlessness up to the present day.
Johannes
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Just so. Also blame the voters, both Trump supporting and feckless.