United States Politics Thread 47

[keenir]

More great news from the dear leader: He has ended the war between Aberbaijan and Albania! What true diplomatic (and geographic) talent he must have to have completed such a feat!

I realize I was away from my computer for a few days, but I didn't even know those two nations were at loggerheads, much less at war with one another.

[keenir]

RFK Jr thinks that pregnant women taking tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol causes the child to become autistic.
- https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-n ... rcna232909

They complain about declining birthrates and then they take away pain relief in pregnancy.

Thats why we're supposed to swim in sewage. See, it wasn't random idiocy, it was him laying the groundwork.

[Travis B.]

More great news from the dear leader: He has ended the war between Aberbaijan and Albania! What true diplomatic (and geographic) talent he must have to have completed such a feat!

I realize I was away from my computer for a few days, but I didn't even know those two nations were at loggerheads, much less at war with one another.

Every so often you'll hear some story about, say, Berwick-upon-Tweed having been at war with Russia. These generally are urban legends, but occasionally are the result of some political unit being mentioned in a declaration of war but being neglected to be mentioned in the following peace treaty ending it.

[jcb]

More great news from the dear leader: He has ended the war between Aberbaijan and Albania! What true diplomatic (and geographic) talent he must have to have completed such a feat!

I realize I was away from my computer for a few days, but I didn't even know those two nations were at loggerheads, much less at war with one another.

Correction: The two nations involved were actually Cambodia and Armenia!
- https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fI08CqABw1E

[Raphael]

More great news from the dear leader: He has ended the war between Aberbaijan and Albania! What true diplomatic (and geographic) talent he must have to have completed such a feat!
- https://www.reddit.com/r/azerbaijan/com ... berbaijan/

It's not that I disagree with your snark there, jcb, and it's another great sign of how ridiculous the whole Trump thing is.

But, in that post, aren't you doing some of the sneering-at-ignorance thing yourself that usually drives you up the wall when you think you see it coming from other people?

[jcb]

More great news from the dear leader: He has ended the war between Aberbaijan and Albania! What true diplomatic (and geographic) talent he must have to have completed such a feat!
- https://www.reddit.com/r/azerbaijan/com ... berbaijan/

It's not that I disagree with your snark there, jcb, and it's another great sign of how ridiculous the whole Trump thing is.

But, in that post, aren't you doing some of the sneering-at-ignorance thing yourself that usually drives you up the wall when you think you see it coming from other people?

Indeed, most Americans don't know what or where Azerbaijan and Armenia are, or that they were recently at war. (At my old job, I once met an Azeri woman who introduced herself as being from Azerbaijan, and when I said that I knew where that was, and described it's surrounding countries and sea, she told me that I was the first American that she had met that knew where it was.)

I wouldn't mock the average American for lacking this knowledge, because they don't pretend to know while lacking the knowledge, or claim to have stopped a war there, or have a job like being the president of the United States where the knowledge is relevant to their duties, but Trump does all of these things.

[alice]

More great news from the dear leader: He has ended the war between Aberbaijan and Albania! What true diplomatic (and geographic) talent he must have to have completed such a feat!

I realize I was away from my computer for a few days, but I didn't even know those two nations were at loggerheads, much less at war with one another.

Every so often you'll hear some story about, say, Berwick-upon-Tweed having been at war with Russia. These generally are urban legends, but occasionally are the result of some political unit being mentioned in a declaration of war but being neglected to be mentioned in the following peace treaty ending it.

I once read something similar about Andorra fighting both World Wars simultaneously because it was overlooked at Versaillles.

[Raphael]

By the way, alice, I really like your current signature!

(In case anyone in the future reads this post after alice got another signature, at the time I wrote this post, the signature said:

Disciple: "Buddha, what makes us human?"
Buddha: "Selecting all imgaes with traffic lights."

)

[Travis B.]

I realize I was away from my computer for a few days, but I didn't even know those two nations were at loggerheads, much less at war with one another.

Every so often you'll hear some story about, say, Berwick-upon-Tweed having been at war with Russia. These generally are urban legends, but occasionally are the result of some political unit being mentioned in a declaration of war but being neglected to be mentioned in the following peace treaty ending it.

I once read something similar about Andorra fighting both World Wars simultaneously because it was overlooked at Versaillles.

Apparently that's an urban legend, since Andorra was actually neutral during World War II. (Technically Andorra was on the Entente side of World War I, and it is true that Andorra was forgotten at Versailles though -- however, only three Andorrans actually fought in WWI.)

[jcb]

Fox News' Jesse Watters Calls to 'Bomb' U.N., or 'Maybe Gas It,' After Broken Escalator and Teleprompter During Trump's Visit

Watters characterized the malfunctions at the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday as an "insurrection"

[alice]

By the way, alice, I really like your current signature!

(In case anyone in the future reads this post after alice got another signature, at the time I wrote this post, the signature said:

Disciple: "Buddha, what makes us human?"
Buddha: "Selecting all imgaes with traffic lights."

)

I've changed it to take out the spelling mistake. It comes from here:

[alice]

I once read something similar about Andorra fighting both World Wars simultaneously because it was overlooked at Versaillles.

Apparently that's an urban legend, since Andorra was actually neutral during World War II. (Technically Andorra was on the Entente side of World War I, and it is true that Andorra was forgotten at Versailles though -- however, only three Andorrans actually fought in WWI.)

I read it in someting called The Book of Heroic Failures forty years ago. Mind you, this book also mentioned Norway getting "nul points" from every jury in that notorious Eurovision Song Contest, which also didn't actually happen.

Meanwhile, back on topic... how much of the authoritarian MAGA agenda is actually legally and practically achievable? I suspect the answer is "not much".

[Raphael]

Fox News' Jesse Watters Calls to 'Bomb' U.N., or 'Maybe Gas It,' After Broken Escalator and Teleprompter During Trump's Visit

Watters characterized the malfunctions at the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday as an "insurrection"

How can people who are not under the authority of the US Government in the first place do an insurrection against it? And how can people who constantly call for murdering people simultaneously make big speeches about the importance of fighting crime?

[Raphael]

I read it in someting called The Book of Heroic Failures forty years ago. Mind you, this book also mentioned Norway getting "nul points" from every jury in that notorious Eurovision Song Contest, which also didn't actually happen.

Sounds like that book had a very fitting title! As in, a self-referential one.

Meanwhile, back on topic... how much of the authoritarian MAGA agenda is actually legally and practically achievable? I suspect the answer is "not much".

Those are two different questions. Legally? Not much. Practically? Unfortunately, a lot more.

[Ares Land]

Meanwhile, back on topic... how much of the authoritarian MAGA agenda is actually legally and practically achievable? I suspect the answer is "not much".

Those are two different questions. Legally? Not much. Practically? Unfortunately, a lot more.

I'd say "not much" on both. Though as Raphael said, there's a lot that can be done by extra legal means. Will it do what the MAGA agenda claims it does? Probably not.

The MAGA agenda, like all right-wing platforms and ideologies is an incoherent mess that can't possibly achieve anything (except misery.)

[zompist]

Meanwhile, back on topic... how much of the authoritarian MAGA agenda is actually legally and practically achievable? I suspect the answer is "not much".

Those are two different questions. Legally? Not much. Practically? Unfortunately, a lot more.

I'd say "not much" on both. Though as Raphael said, there's a lot that can be done by extra legal means. Will it do what the MAGA agenda claims it does? Probably not.

The MAGA agenda, like all right-wing platforms and ideologies is an incoherent mess that can't possibly achieve anything (except misery.)

Depends on what you mean by the "MAGA agenda", since there is no central agenda, only various groups with contradictory aims. The Republicans have basically given various groups of cranks wide latitude to do what they want, so we variously have health cranks undermining public health, anti-immigrant groups deporting legal immigrants, yet other cranks going after academic and press freedom or trying to destroy the university system, and of course Trump himself trying to get a combination of high tariffs and low interest rates, both of which will goose up inflation. Every one of these policies has detractors within the Republican coalition, though usually not enough to bring things to a halt. (E.g. Congressmen in poorer states are aware of the danger of closing hospitals in their areas; business people hate the tariffs and the deportations; we even have the spectacle of Ted Cruz opposing attacks on talk show hosts.)

Various MAGAts are upset over the Epstein files, or the bombing of Iran, or Gaza, or tariffs, or the deportations, or allowing Chinese students. Musk broke with Trump over the "Big Beautiful Bill". The Republicans have been terrible for Ukraine— but policy changes day to day depending on who Trump talked to last, and Trump's Russophilia is not widely shared.

alice asked specifically about the "authoritarian MAGA agenda", which could be taken as asking if the GOP can establish an authoritarian regime like Orbán's. It would be a lot harder to say no if the Supreme Court wasn't such a Republican lapdog, going along with clearly unconstitutional shenanigans. On the other hand, as Paul Krugman pointed out, both Orbán and Putin dived into authoritarianism at times when they were personally very popular, and presiding over an expanding economy. The GOP has neither advantage.

The lower courts have already declared the GOP tariffs illegal. The Supreme Court will have an interesting time defending Trump's power grab there, as well as his attempt to end the independence of the central bank.

It's important not to overreact to the headlines of one particular week. E.g. it was outrageous for the Republicans to stifle Jimmy Kimmel; on the other hand, the decision was reversed in a week after all the outrage (and cancellations of Disney services).

The prosecution of James Comey (former FBI director) is another attempt at totalitarianism, but reaction on the left has been muted, since Comey is widely blamed for handing the 2016 election to Trump. (Probably not entirely correctly, but it was a huge misstep for sure.)

[MacAnDàil]

Fox News' Jesse Watters Calls to 'Bomb' U.N., or 'Maybe Gas It,' After Broken Escalator and Teleprompter During Trump's Visit

Watters characterized the malfunctions at the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday as an "insurrection"

This really does not take into account the idea that malfunctions might be accident... or due to underfunding.

[Lērisama]

Fox News' Jesse Watters Calls to 'Bomb' U.N., or 'Maybe Gas It,' After Broken Escalator and Teleprompter During Trump's Visit

Watters characterized the malfunctions at the U.N. headquarters on Tuesday as an "insurrection"

This really does not take into account the idea that malfunctions might be accident... or due to underfunding.

When was the last time the US paid the UN on time again?

[keenir]

Now I'm wondering just who is responsible for upkeep at the UN building. You know, changing lightbulbs, stopping wires from shorting out, etc.

This really does not take into account the idea that malfunctions might be accident... or due to underfunding.

When was the last time the US paid the UN on time again?

I imagine the current administration would give one of these responses:

a. "Pay them? Was that what was on one of those million papers we shredded without looking at?"

b. "When Biden's people told us we were supposed to pay the UN, we figured either it was one of their lies, or that the UN had tricked them."

c. "Excuse you, we're trying not to pay anybody in this country!"

[Raphael]

Now I'm wondering just who is responsible for upkeep at the UN building. You know, changing lightbulbs, stopping wires from shorting out, etc.

UN employees, I guess.

This really does not take into account the idea that malfunctions might be accident... or due to underfunding.

When was the last time the US paid the UN on time again?

I imagine the current administration would give one of these responses:

a. "Pay them? Was that what was on one of those million papers we shredded without looking at?"

b. "When Biden's people told us we were supposed to pay the UN, we figured either it was one of their lies, or that the UN had tricked them."

c. "Excuse you, we're trying not to pay anybody in this country!"

Well, for once that's not a specialty of the current administration. US right-wingers have been ideologically opposed to the UN for a very long time. Paleoconservatives had their usual nonsensical conspiracy theories about the UN supposedly being a tyrannical one world government. Neoconservatives, back when they were a serious force, hated the UN for not going along with their utopian schemes to reshape the world by bombing it to rubble. The Religious Right saw it as a tool of the Antichrist supposedly prophesized by the prophetic parts of the Bible.

And, right-wingers in the US have traditionally argued that the USA don't have any obligations under international law, because international law is supposedly not legally valid in the first place, based on some pseudo-philosophical ruminations about the nature of law itself. That position is, of course, directly contradicted by the explicit text of the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution* - but US right-wingers traditionally haven't been fans of that clause, either.

Thing is, the UN is one of the few issues where I myself kind of, somewhat, agree with right-wingers. Of course it's not a tyrannical one world government or a tool of the Antichrist. But it is a joke, a farce, and a dictators' club. If we would live in a world where the governments of all or almost all countries would be democratic or at least close to democratic, something like the UN might be a good idea. But in our current world, any institution where all the really important decisions are made by a majority of the world's governments is likely to do more harm than good.

But the problem is that, right now, saying anything like the above makes you look like the kind of people who fantasize about the Antichrist or want to bomb or gas buildings because some of the people who work there may or may not have played pranks on people they like.

*To save you the hassle of looking that one up, it's from Article VI, Clause 2, and says:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.