volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@FreedomBrigade that conspiracy theory doesn't match the actual decisions coming out of the SCOTUS, though.

Just for example, SCOTUS ordered prosecution of Trump to continue in lower courts. That's hardly friendly to Trump.

It just doesn't make sensational headlines or political points scoring to look at what's actually in the rulings.

@bespacific Americans are already paying for it.

The idea of providing no-cost preventive care has always been a sham.

There is necessarily a cost to it. The question is just one of how the costs get to Americans, whether it's transparent or hidden in indirect charges.

@Thumper1964

That's not quite how it works.

Really, it comes down to whether CONGRESS, not SCOTUS, says it's OK. The major enforcement tools rest among those we elect democratically, not in the judicial branch.

We need to emphasize this much more and stop reelecting congresspeople who continually fail to do their jobs, all while pointing fingers at other branches.

@CatDragon @GottaLaff

@karlauerbach again, the operational ideal of taking someone to the ICC over crimes against humanity and seeking a warrant for arrest isn't just vague handwaving that you don't like someone or their policies.

It's not about here's the person, now find the crime.

It's about bringing specific charges, which sounds opposite from your larger point.

Such a use of the ICC undermines its legitimacy and gets us nowhere.

@karlauerbach again, specifically what?

Broad hand waving doesn't do any good. Nothing happens without specific charges.

@VeroniqueB99 his administration has been very publicly emphasizing plans for lowering egg prices.

That's not to say they're good plans, but it is to say whoever put up this billboard isn't going to win over many people who are actually informed.

@BlueBeachSong No that really misunderstands Trump. The theory of Trump being proposed there doesn't stand against what he actually does.

Hatred of immigrants? He goes out of his way to praise and associate with immigrants. So that can't be right.

Disdain for the legal process? He doesn't even seem to know what the legal process is. Don't give him too much credit.

Etc.

There are other explanations and theories that are more aligned with what we see from him, most of them simply echoing Hanlon's Razor and reflecting an old man whose mind is going.

@stevevladeck.bsky.social for the most part I don't think most of the people involved at the DOJ have much of a plan at all. The boss told them to do it, so they're doing it. That says deep as the thinking goes.

BUT to the extent that there is some sort of strategy, I think a couple of the officials involved might be trying to make a side point by challenging the procedural issues in a way that will be applied positively to other cases that are more serious.

The boss told him to do this, so a few of them are trying to make the best out of it. Most of them are probably just punching the clock though.

@kfogel off the top of my head I think the majority of the time I hear the word semantics it's referring to the topic, singular topic, like how physics is not really a collection of things.

@metacurity The whole thing is a mess, so one can imagine that they're not really taking this any more seriously than it deserves.

No point in putting a lot of effort into something that may or may not still be a thing next week.

@karlauerbach What would be the specific charge?

@normative.bsky.social

There's an important distinction here: the laws that Trump is trying to use are broad and don't include much in the way of protections for the people they're being used against.

The reason this is so important is because we need to emphasize the need to fix those laws and stop continuing to pass other laws with similar grants of barely restrained authority.

@enbrown.bsky.social the case might be so weak as to not be worth pursuing, but it's not right to completely dismiss it so completely.

Harris's presentation was part of the information that viewers want to see from an interview segment. That the editing was to "make sense of and condense" is is exactly the part of this issue that many people take exception with.

One could say that the editing to make sense of her words hid from the public that Harris didn't make sense, and that's not something journalism should so easily waive away.

@TCatInReality

Put it a different way: in the US system, in contrast with so many other systems around the globe, I vote for specific representatives, not a party. That is how the US system works, very intentionally.

If you start focusing on party instead of the actual representatives that we are supposed to be holding personally accountable then you excuse those personally accountable Representatives from accountability, directly undermining the democratic structure of the US system.

If you don't like that some legislation passed, don't blame the party, yell at your representative to oppose it. It doesn't matter one bit what the party says because your representatives were hired by you to do the right thing, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the party.

The US system is based on relationships between voters and individual Representatives, not parties. The more you promote this idea of parties being central the more you shield those representatives from accountability.

Yes, the US does not have a parliamentary system. That makes it different. Whether for better or for worse. But it's what we have, so try not to undermine it so much.

@georgetakei

@TCatInReality

It's really important to realize that different forms of government, the US representative system versus parliamentary systems in particular, have fundamentally different mechanisms when it comes to voting, when it comes to what they present to voters, so if you lump them all together you're missing vital differences between how those different systems work.

In many parliamentary systems the parties are put first as fundamental elements, but in stark contrast, in the US system parties form to market to voters, as voters, voting in their districts for their particular representatives, form the fundamental movers.

The two systems are fundamentally opposite. And the difference is so important to keep in mind as you talk about the realities of the US system. The contrast with parliamentary systems is not only academic but it is fundamental and it is practically strategically vital to recognize.

It does nobody any good to ignore the way the US system actually works, especially in contrast with parliamentary systems. And anyone who's not interested in that distinction just isn't really interested in facing realities of where we are in the world today.

@georgetakei

@TCatInReality to me that comes across as saying you don't have the time or interest to discuss how the world actually works, how the US system actually functions in reality. And I think that's a big problem.

And yeah I see that a whole lot on the Republican side. I see Republicans constantly chirping about being part of the team when really, that promotes a false understanding of how all of this works, it buys into this very antisocial norm about how the US system of government is set up.

If you don't have the time or interest in speaking back against these norms that do such a grave disservice to the democratic principles underlying the US system of government, well, what's the point then?

I would encourage you not to play their game. I would encourage you to prioritize the interest in speaking out against this misframing about how the world works.

@georgetakei

@TCatInReality it wasn't up to Schumer, though. He's not the king of the Senate. He's just one of 100 senators.

We seriously need to stop letting senators use majority and minority leaders as scapegoats for their own positions.

It wasn't up to Schumer to hold out or not. It was up to every single Senator to decide whether to shut down government and accept that blame, and it's not crazy that they didn't want to do that.

And yes, technically this was a vote for cloture. I wasn't going to bring that up, but now that you mention it, that just proves that it wasn't what you said.

@georgetakei

@TCatInReality No, there aren't plenty of ways to keep the government funded.

There is a single legal way. Congress votes to appropriate money. Other than that one specific way, there is no other way.

This was not a vote to slash funding. That is literally false, that is factually not what this was a vote for.

You're off talking about things that just aren't true. You're spreading misinformation here. And anyone with a basic knowledge of how the US government functions would know better than to believe this kind of nonsense.

No, what you're saying is not true, it's not how the federal government works and it never has been, even if certain politicians are promoting that story for political gain and certain media outfits are getting clicks from putting that kind of story out.

But it's not factual.

@georgetakei

@cdarwin Right, because that's not how the judicial branch works in the United States.

A whole lot of judges seem to have been put on benches when they don't actually know what their job is or how to do it.

@kdwarn I just wish we could all get on the same page about it, because if we emphasized what an impotent loser Trump has been according to his track record, he never would have been elected again.

Unfortunately Democrats kept building him up as this great leader succeeding in leading his people, when he never was, and so his people voted for him again.

The dumbass is a dumbass. We should have spent the last years pointing that out instead of acting like he knew what he was doing.