volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@EndIsraeliApartheid Independent press reports from around the world dispute that narrative, saying that the ceasefire had already been violated and was over before Israel acted.

@karlauerbach I mean you can believe whatever you want, but you're talking about going to institutions to impose your beliefs when they, for better or worse, don't really agree with you.

You can yell at the umpire all you want, but if he doesn't agree with you about where you kind of believe the strike zone should be, you're not going to make any headway that way.

And that's my point. It sounds like you're trying to follow a strategy that is not only futile but can be actually counterproductive, actually supporting the exact behaviors that you are against.

If you want to improve things, especially if you want to convince other people over to your personal beliefs, then you have to think strategically, not just act on reflex like that.

@susankayequinn

Well, there's a complication that people have started talking about your truth and my truth.

You get to the point where people value truth... for a certain meaning of truth.

@Deixis9 Musk isn't an engineer... which is why he's not the one engineering these projects.

Company engineers are engineers, though, and they're the ones doing the engineering.

People need to stop being so obsessed with Musk.

@bibliolater that gets the argument backwards, though.

The idea isn't that the Court would grant Trump more power but rather that it would remove power from other branches, that have been throwing the system off-kilter for years, recognizing that the president has more responsibilities and accountability than he's had lately.

It's not granting power. It's recognizing the system of checks and balances at the core of the US design.

@bibliolater that gets the argument backwards, though.

The idea isn't that the Court would grant Trump more power but rather that it would remove power from other branches, that have been throwing the system off-kilter for years, recognizing that the president has more responsibilities and accountability than he's had lately.

It's not granting power. It's recognizing the system of checks and balances at the core of the US design.

@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