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Messages - honk

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1
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: Today at 03:01:59 AM »
That headline is extremely misleading, in case anyone is wondering. Certainly no fraud was involved.

2
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 08, 2025, 07:02:04 PM »
Yeah, sure. If one of the right-wing techbro oligarchs pulling Trump's strings says these things, they must be true. It's not like he'd lie, right? If he's really concerned about this country's debt, maybe he should support rolling back the enormous tax cuts that Trump gave him and his fellow oligarchs.

3
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 06, 2025, 09:36:14 PM »
Bitch away, LD, bitch away...

Triggered...LOL!

This is the real Trumpian Manifesto. At its core, it's a juvenile eagerness to upset, hurt, or otherwise oppress the people they hate. Conservatives don't vote in their own best interests; they vote in whatever they think will be the worst interests of the people they hate. They'd rather ensure everyone, including themselves, are miserable rather than be happy and risk the people they hate being happy too. The cruelty is the point.

4
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 06, 2025, 06:39:06 PM »
It's really interesting how the men who are deeply concerned about trans people ruining women's sports are the exact same men who ordinarily show zero interest in women's sports except to mock them. I'm qualifying this as "men" because there are a number of female transphobes, as well as a few mediocre female athletes who have seen profit in complaining about supposedly being unfairly beaten by trans athletes. But 100% of the men who treat this as a huge issue have nothing but disdain for women's sports to begin with. Not 90%, not 99%, 100%.

5
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 06, 2025, 03:27:43 AM »
Then why does the President have the power to assassinate US Citizens at will?

That's a dubious piece of hyperbole, but even if we assume it to be true, there's an easy answer - because the Supreme Court, the body representing the judicial branch of government, chose to allow him to. They didn't have to. They could have - and, needless to say, absolutely should have - ruled against him, and if they had, Trump couldn't have done anything about it, just as Biden couldn't do anything about them ruling in Trump's favor. Like Congress, the Supreme Court has a number of ways to check Trump's power, and also like Congress, they're refusing to use them.

6
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 05, 2025, 03:07:43 AM »
Okay, there's a lot of wildly incorrect stuff being posted here. No, the president is not a king or dictator, nor were they ever intended to be. Avoiding having a single ruler with overwhelming power is arguably the one issue that every single one of the Founding Fathers were agreed upon. We have separation of powers, and Congress has several means at its disposal to check the executive branch. They are currently choosing to exercise none of them.

Personally, I think a strong case to impeach Trump could be made over his essential abdication of his office to a group of unelected oligarchs and ideologues. The president has the right to choose their advisors and listen to them, certainly, but I'd argue that he doesn't have the right to let them govern in his stead, which is clearly what's going on right now. It's very obvious that Trump has had no input or involvement in planning the orders he's been obediently signing off on, and he doesn't seem to be involved in any way with the current systematic crippling of the federal government. Trump was the one elected president, not Elon Musk. If he doesn't want to do the job anymore, then there's a line of succession that needs to be followed.

7
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 02, 2025, 01:19:19 AM »
Trump was the one who made this political by immediately insisting without evidence (and incorrectly, as it turned out) that this was caused by DEI policies. Any other president would have offered consolation and enjoyed some positive press for leading the country through tragedy, but Trump can't let a single incident pass without turning it into an us-vs-them moment. Of course, Trump's cynical strategy of fostering division rather than unity has now gotten him elected twice, so who am I to say it's ineffective?

8
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 01, 2025, 12:52:36 AM »
I guess "needs training" is its own DEI category, then? Clearly, the military should only be recruiting people who are already fully trained to do the job.

9
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: January 31, 2025, 10:54:48 PM »
Apparently the pilot was an unidentified woman who was undergoing flight instruction. Close enough.

I don't understand how that's even remotely close to DEI being responsible for what happened. If the argument is that the pilot's lack of extensive experience is what caused the crash, then why assume that her being a woman is relevant? All pilots need to be trained.

10
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: January 30, 2025, 02:30:19 AM »
The vast majority of the government employees Trump is targeting have very little power to impede or enact a MAGA agenda, and even if they did, vetting and hiring hundreds of thousands - or even just tens of thousands - of loyalists to fill all these positions isn't a feasible task. Trump himself might not realize that, but the people actually setting the agenda for his time in office certainly do. My bet is that these guys - a mix of greedy oligarchs and wild-eyed Christian fundamentalists - have a more drastic plan of outright crippling the federal government and using that as an excuse to create a whole new government of their own design from the ground up. They'll inevitably end up fighting once their goals become incompatible, but for the moment, they're united, and Trump's marching orders are clear.

11
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: January 25, 2025, 06:34:17 PM »
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/24/nx-s1-5272854/trump-cabinet-picks-pete-hegseth-senate-confirmation-vote

Even setting aside the spousal abuse and rape allegations, Hegseth is ludicrously, absurdly unqualified for this role. He was a major in the National Guard, and he ran a small lobbying group before he was forced out for (at best) incompetence. That's it. That's all his relevant experience with the government, military, or general leadership/managerial roles. He's also an alcoholic, but don't worry - he plans to stop drinking now that he has this very difficult and stressful job. Of course, it was never the point for him to be actually qualified. What Trump wants is someone who'll do what they're told, not someone who can actually do their job well. We're well past the point of actual professionals wanting to work for Trump.

12
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 24, 2025, 05:07:23 AM »
It was not "dicta." It was part of the actual basis leading them to the decision they rendered in the case.

...which is called dicta, and is distinct from the ruling itself. Look at the link to Burdick I posted. This was the ruling of the Supreme Court:

Quote
  • A pardoned person must introduce the pardon into court proceedings, otherwise the pardon is considered a private matter, unknown to and unable to be acted on by the court.
  • No formal acceptance is necessary to give effect to the pardons. If a pardon is rejected, it cannot be forced upon its subject.

The ruling doesn't say that accepting a pardon means that the recipient has admitted guilt, therefore the SC didn't rule that accepting a pardon means that the recipient has admitted guilt. It really is as simple as that. As per the Constitution, courts can only rule on specific cases that specific parties have brought before them. They aren't allowed to go on a tangent and issue as many rulings as they like on related subjects within the majority opinion. Again, it just isn't how case law works in this country.

I'm not fazed by your transparent appeals to authority, although it is a funny argument coming from you, of all people. People make mistakes all the time, even experts in their own areas of expertise. I suspect that whoever wrote the article for the National Constitution Center just added a bit of trivia without double-checking to see if it was true, as their focus was on writing an article about Nixon and Ford's pardon of him.  I must have missed the occasion where every member of Congress apparently made a unanimous statement about how accepting a pardon legally means that the recipient has admitted guilt, but even if they really had done that, they would still be wrong.

13
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 23, 2025, 04:29:17 AM »
The US Supreme Court has disagreed with you:

"...:a 1915 Supreme Court decision. In Burdick v. United States, the Court ruled that a pardon carried an "imputation of guilt" and accepting a pardon was "an admission of guilt.”. Thus, this decision implied that Nixon accepted his guilt in the Watergate controversy by also accepting Ford’s pardon."

So, even a scumbag like Nixon knew the deal.

The Supreme Court didn't "rule" any such thing. I'm not surprised that Ford would have been eager to believe this, but the National Constitution Center should have known better than to phrase it so misleadingly. The actual ruling of Burlick had nothing to do with whether or not accepting a pardon meant admitting guilt. They said it in the majority opinion, and maybe it really was how they felt, but it wasn't their ruling. It was dicta, one line among many in the majority opinion explaining how they made their ruling, not a legal ruling in and of itself. You could come up with a thousand radical new legal rulings if you combed through the SC's majority opinions and treated each separate line in them as a ruling unto itself. But that's not how case law in this country works, as a federal court of appeals has ruled. The only ones who can overrule them now are the SC.

14
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 22, 2025, 07:28:17 PM »
Okay? It doesn't really matter what term you use. The point is that the idea that receiving a pardon legally signifies an admission of guilt becomes nonsensical when you take into account people who haven't been charged with any crime and have been pardoned of all possible crimes. The Bidens have no more admitted they're guilty of whatever corruption scheme you have in mind than Nixon admitted he was guilty of smuggling cocaine in from Colombia.

15
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 22, 2025, 04:33:57 PM »
If accepting a pardon requires an admission of guilt, then what are people who receive general pardons for all federal offenses - like the Bidens - even admitting guilt to? All federal offenses, from drug trafficking to mail fraud to terrorism? They've been pardoned for those crimes just as much as they've been pardoned for whatever crime you or Trump or anyone might have thought they really were guilty of. Doesn't make much sense, does it? Adding to that, no court has ever treated being pardoned as evidence of guilt. Like I said, the DoJ were just mad that years of work were about to go up in smoke, so they made a weak effort at saving face. The Jan. 6th rioters aren't implicated by being pardoned, and neither is anyone whom Biden has pardoned.

16
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 22, 2025, 02:35:47 PM »
The DOJ under Biden clearly stated that acceptance of a pardon required an admission of guilt of the crime.

It doesn't. That was simply them trying to save face in anticipation of the Jan. 6th participants being pardoned.

You might be more convincing if the family members Biden pardoned weren't being investigated by a congressional committee over the last two years, who have shown evidence of them receiving millions of dollars from foreign sources despite offering no known product or service.

Two years of liars telling Republicans what they wanted to hear, general FUD, and miscellaneous failson sleaze, all presided over by a body that didn't lift a finger when Trump openly monetized his office, ushered government business his way, and sold access to himself far more blatantly than any Biden did.

17
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 22, 2025, 04:07:31 AM »
The most famous presidential pardon is Ford's pardon of Nixon, which conspicuously lacked a conviction, indictment, or even a criminal investigation. As to the rest of it, not all pardons are created equal. There is no logical or ethical conflict between criticizing pardons that reward the corrupt and unrepentant and being okay with pardons that protect the innocent. I mentioned earlier in this thread that I'd support the pardon power being removed in a constitutional amendment, but until that happens, I'm not going to object to Biden using it to protect innocent people from a corrupt incoming president who's looking for payback.

18
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: January 21, 2025, 04:44:04 AM »
Regardless of whether or not this is a stable or wise investment, it's not something that the president should be attaching their name to or otherwise getting involved in. The presidency is a full-time job, with no room for side gigs. We don't want a president who has one eye on the country and one eye on their business interests. That's just inviting all sorts of conflicts of interests - not legal conflicts of interest, which the president is exempt from, but factual conflicts of interest, where they're tempted to do something that benefits their bank account but doesn't necessarily benefit the country. And when I say "we," I really do mean it, because this isn't a partisan point. Ten years ago, the overwhelming majority of Americans (along with every single person who's posted in this thread) would have agreed that of course the president shouldn't be in business for themselves while running the country.

19
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: January 20, 2025, 04:11:29 PM »
Ideally he wouldn't have to do something like this, but Trump would have very likely abused his office to pursue revenge against the people who investigated him instead. It's also very likely he'd have targeted Fauci to pander to the conspiracy nuts who still think that covid was a false flag and the vaccine was a time bomb or whatever. Those same conspiracy nuts regularly ignore the fact that Trump took credit for the vaccine and encouraged people to take it, but as I've said before, Trumpism is inherently contradictory.

20
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: January 20, 2025, 04:01:34 AM »
You're overthinking things. What it really came down to was this - TikTok praising and flattering Trump in several different public messages. That's what Trump responds to more than anything. He doesn't believe in any ideals or hold any actual political positions of his own. He makes his decisions based on gut impulses and personal whims. That's why TikTok felt the need to glowingly refer to Trump by name in their messages, and it's why we saw people like Zelenskyy and the Greenland PM rushing to kiss Trump's ass in anticipation of him handing over Ukraine to Putin and doing something incredibly stupid and reckless to try and get control of Greenland, respectively. Trump fans undoubtedly see these public shows of fealty as a sign of Trump's strength, but in reality, it's the opposite. Someone who's this susceptible to flattery and lets their own emotions and personal feelings overrule their policy positions is not fit to be a leader.

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