volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@fsinn Well that's not right.

We know that the threat from Gaza makes it likely that far more than one life will be at stake. The incoming rockets threaten more than one person.

So the person who wrote this is just clearly factually wrong.

@bobwyman revenue divided by GDP is a pretty slanted metric to use, though.

Might as well have multiplied by astrological sign or Powerball numbers at that point.

The government doesn't run on GDP, so dividing by that just really doesn't make sense unless a person is trying to sell a story where that statistic conveniently happens to support their rhetoric.

That's not even getting into the issue of the tax reforms applying to previous years where revenue increased. Not only are they choosing a nonsensical statistic, but they are cherry picking only years of the statistic that match their conclusions!

@angiebaby what?

@lrreynolds Well, part of it was probably that it was easier to move SpaceX closer to the Gulf of Mexico than it was to move the Gulf of Mexico to California 🙂
@TheConversationUS

@jackiegardina wow no.

Sounds like French focuses on the way Biden is responding to these events but missing that Biden was at the least not proactive in heading them off, and at the worst actually set the stage for them.

It paints Biden as being a good defensive player, which itself I would dispute but never mind, while overlooking his failures on the offense.

Each of these events to which Biden is playing the reactive role is an example of his NOT leading, letting others set the stage, and fumbling to keep up, poorly.

So no, I would say the exact things that French is pointing out here really go against the guy, not for him.

@BigAngBlack what this misses is that the Supreme Court merely recognized the laws written by Congress.

The court didn't scale anything down. Congress had the authority and the court just pointed that out.

If Congress wants to expand administrative authority it can, it can do it today. That our representatives never did that sets the boundaries.

It's not the court narrowing protections. It's Congress declining to give the president very extensive control over so much of US territory.

@mnutty but I didn't use the term wrong. I am 100% on board with your definition.

The Constitution provides that voters still have the power to elect Trump regardless of whether he was impeached and/or convicted.

The difference between impeachment and conviction has no bearing to that issue.

We can elect a person who has been impeached, and we can elect a person who has been convicted.

Yes we can spend our time arguing about minutiae but I don't see the point in it. And I'd rather not.

@quinn so do you know what his motivation is? Is this something he has clarified before?

@mnutty nope! I emphatically say they are different.

@mnutty Oh no, you're completely wrong. The justice department is an executive agency operating under presidential authority, and that is critical because if the federal police were allowed to operate with impunity, without any oversight, we would all be in big trouble.

So the justice department is absolutely part of the executive branch and the president is absolutely responsible for everything it does.

Anytime anybody talks about the justice department being separate, they are effectively talking about a police state without accountability since the connection to the president is the one route of accountability that it has.

We need to emphatically emphasize that the police are accountable. We should not falsely say that it's on its own course like that.

This is very core to the American system of government, The restraint of authority at the core of the US system.

@Lassielmr I'm not, and I would be very interested in hearing about how such actions would have concrete results. That's why I asked.
@alexlac51

@muratk5n Right, but that makes it a difference in magnitude but not in kind.

So the chaos was already there.

We can say that the chaos may have been made worse or better or whatever, but history shows that the chaos was already there.

@timberwraith

(I just want to be clear, because this is getting boosted and I'm a pedantic sort of person, that the "whose" is the joke)

@mnutty what are you talking about?

Nothing in your reply contradicts what I said. So I don't know what you are asking. You seem to be agreeing with me.

@mnutty the justice department is part of the executive branch and so it is completely dependent on the president.

And it's a good thing that we don't let the federal investigators just run wild across the country!

I absolutely wouldn't say that the justice department is totally removed from the political pressure. I would say that political pressure 100% controls the justice department since the justice department is 100% under the auspices of who we elect.

As the justice department decides who to prosecute and who to let off the hook, these are political questions up to the people that we elect, and we need to hold the people we elect accountable for those decisions.

Thoughtful? Reasonable? Well it's up to us voters to vote for or against the people who set the policies, as at the end of the day the people we vote for get to set the rules.

I sure wish we would stop footing for idiots.

@CdaleCO Well that would be undemocratic, but we could go that way, it would take a constitutional amendment to solidify the option.

@mnutty

@mnutty but again you have that wrong.

You can be elected after being impeached.

A lot of people misunderstand how impeachment works and what the Constitution says about it, but in general, the Constitution respects the democratic process, and this is no exception, if the people want to they can elect even an impeached person.

Voters have that power.

@michael_martinez I don't see how you get the idea that I'm making excuses for Biden out of my saying flat out that he makes bad decisions and shouldn't be allowed to scapegoat.

@elduvelle sounds like the thing is all of those rules silence and censor people, and a person needs to start by accepting that if they're going to go on to figure out who to silence and censor.

Maybe the censorship is for the best, but a person needs to at least admit that that's what they're doing.