RugbyRebels

Mikey Brown wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:27 am So... Guantanamo eh?

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:04 am

Mikey Brown wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:27 am So... Guantanamo eh?

People before the election: "Stop being alarmist - Trump won't set up actual concentration camps if he wins. You just compare everything you don't like to the Nazis."

Although, I suppose in fairness, he's not setting a concentration camp up, just expanding the one that the US already had in case of emergencies/suspicious foreigners, so technically speaking they're still correct.

Puja

Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:32 am

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:04 am

Mikey Brown wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 10:27 am So... Guantanamo eh?

People before the election: "Stop being alarmist - Trump won't set up actual concentration camps if he wins. You just compare everything you don't like to the Nazis."

Although, I suppose in fairness, he's not setting a concentration camp up, just expanding the one that the US already had in case of emergencies/suspicious foreigners, so technically speaking they're still correct.

Puja

I'm sure the detainees will have nothing to worry about, America always respects international law.

Obama should have shut the place down.

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 12:19 pm

Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:32 am

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:04 am

People before the election: "Stop being alarmist - Trump won't set up actual concentration camps if he wins. You just compare everything you don't like to the Nazis."

Although, I suppose in fairness, he's not setting a concentration camp up, just expanding the one that the US already had in case of emergencies/suspicious foreigners, so technically speaking they're still correct.

Puja

I'm sure the detainees will have nothing to worry about, America always respects international law.

Obama should have shut the place down.

Obama should've done a lot of things more ethically, but that one is pretty high on the list.

In retrospect, he should've used his incredibly short time (24 working days between illnesses, death, appeals over elections, special elections, etc) with a supermajority to fix US democracy rather than pass the Affordable Care Act. The latter was hugely more important in terms of the impact it had on American lives and his legacy, so I understand why he made the choices that he did, but with 20:20 hindsight, over the long-term, life would've been a fuck of a lot easier for Democrats if he'd used that time to get rid of the electoral college, and get DC and Puerto Rico in as states. An additional 4 votes in the Senate would've made it easier to pass legislation later (not to mention preventing the Mitch McConnell fuckery over judge confirmations) and Trump could not have won 2016 without the electoral college.

Puja

Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 1:31 pm

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 12:19 pm

Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 11:32 am
I'm sure the detainees will have nothing to worry about, America always respects international law.

Obama should have shut the place down.

Obama should've done a lot of things more ethically, but that one is pretty high on the list.

In retrospect, he should've used his incredibly short time (24 working days between illnesses, death, appeals over elections, special elections, etc) with a supermajority to fix US democracy rather than pass the Affordable Care Act. The latter was hugely more important in terms of the impact it had on American lives and his legacy, so I understand why he made the choices that he did, but with 20:20 hindsight, over the long-term, life would've been a fuck of a lot easier for Democrats if he'd used that time to get rid of the electoral college, and get DC and Puerto Rico in as states. An additional 4 votes in the Senate would've made it easier to pass legislation later (not to mention preventing the Mitch McConnell fuckery over judge confirmations) and Trump could not have won 2016 without the electoral college.

Puja

Agreed there are more important things (fixing the Supreme Court too, in addition to your list), and more difficult things. Getting rid of Guantanamo would have been far easier (as far as I'm aware), as it wouldn't have required a supermajority, not even sure it would have needed a vote in the houses at all? Isn't it like declaring war, just a decision for the President?

Of course, closing Guantanamo as a detention centre/gulag wouldn't stop a future Trump or Bush from reopening it or building one elsewhere (Greenland, perhaps?) but it would have made it more difficult, it would have pushed back the excesses of the far-right, which is, kind-of, one of the jobs of the left (or what passes for it in the states).

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 5:44 pm

Son of Mathonwy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 1:31 pm

Puja wrote: ↑Thu Jan 30, 2025 12:19 pm

Obama should've done a lot of things more ethically, but that one is pretty high on the list.

In retrospect, he should've used his incredibly short time (24 working days between illnesses, death, appeals over elections, special elections, etc) with a supermajority to fix US democracy rather than pass the Affordable Care Act. The latter was hugely more important in terms of the impact it had on American lives and his legacy, so I understand why he made the choices that he did, but with 20:20 hindsight, over the long-term, life would've been a fuck of a lot easier for Democrats if he'd used that time to get rid of the electoral college, and get DC and Puerto Rico in as states. An additional 4 votes in the Senate would've made it easier to pass legislation later (not to mention preventing the Mitch McConnell fuckery over judge confirmations) and Trump could not have won 2016 without the electoral college.

Puja

Agreed there are more important things (fixing the Supreme Court too, in addition to your list), and more difficult things. Getting rid of Guantanamo would have been far easier (as far as I'm aware), as it wouldn't have required a supermajority, not even sure it would have needed a vote in the houses at all? Isn't it like declaring war, just a decision for the President?

Of course, closing Guantanamo as a detention centre/gulag wouldn't stop a future Trump or Bush from reopening it or building one elsewhere (Greenland, perhaps?) but it would have made it more difficult, it would have pushed back the excesses of the far-right, which is, kind-of, one of the jobs of the left (or what passes for it in the states).

I think the issue was partly the political capital it would've cost him (in a post 9/11 America, being "soft on terrorism" loses you votes in Congress, even Democratic ones), and partly the actual logistics of doing it, because closing it would mean finding a place for all the people who are there, a lot of whom have not been through any kind of legal process that could result in them being imprisoned anywhere else (not to mention that, if they tried to go through the legal process, they don't have the evidence for them).

Easier to promise that you're going to close Guantanamo when you're running for re-election than it is to actually get into the 100s of small, difficult decisions that would acutally be required for it to happen.

Puja

Which Tyler wrote: ↑Sun Feb 02, 2025 1:42 pm No, no, it's not "to solve the trade deficit" it's "to solve the national emergency of Fentanyl smuggling"


Elsewhere in USA, in Tennessee, it's now "illegal for lawmakers to vote for policies perceived as opposing President Donald Trump's agenda."
Because nothing says "healthy democracy" like imprisoning people who vote against you
https://www.newsweek.com/tennessee-bill ... es-2023749

Puja wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:33 pm Elon Musk and his highly amusingly meme-named department have been given complete and unfettered access to the US Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is the US Treasury's financial payment system. This has happened through several long-standing and well-respected civil servants standing up to Trump and refusing to hand over the keys to the kingdom, and then being forcibly removed from their positions by security and being forced to resign, until there was no-one left in the way.

To confirm, DOGE is not an official government department, Musk has not been confirmed by Congress as any formal agent of the government, and he has no legal authority other than Trump's ear. And he now has access to a system which controls nearly 90% of all government payments (including social security, the wages of civil servants, and grants and tax credits that go to Musk's companies and to his competitors), $5.47 TRILLION of government income, and which contains the confidential financial information of hundreds of millions of Americans. He has the capability to stop payments on pretty much anything he likes (or doesn't like, probably more accurately), including the wages of government employees who disagree with him, funding for departments he disagrees with, and his business competitors.

To say that again, because I can't take it all in with just one repetition, Musk has literally no authority and now has power to decide what the US government spends money on, regardless of Congress's wishes.

Even if we require no malevolence to the man who spent $44billion buying a tech empire because he was upset that people insulted him on it (and who has now declared that criticising the Trump administration will be a bannable offence going forwards on said tech empire) and assume that he has no ill intentions at all, this is also the same dude that tried to make Twitter "more efficient" by firing a bunch of people based on facile assumptions that he knew what he was doing and caused massive outages. That kind of "I don't understand what that's for, so therefore we can get rid of it" attitude is not something that should be interacting with the US Government's ability to make financial transactions.

And, while we're at it, let's not bother with assuming that he has no ill intentions at all. He's a paper billionaire, with Twitter being bought on credit and losing money hand over fist and Tesla massively overvalued and trading on his reputation, and he is absolutely planning on looting the fuck out of the USA to bolster his fortune and "win" the prize of becoming the first trillionaire.

Puja

Puja wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:33 pm Elon Musk and his highly amusingly meme-named department have been given complete and unfettered access to the US Bureau of Fiscal Service, which is the US Treasury's financial payment system. This has happened through several long-standing and well-respected civil servants standing up to Trump and refusing to hand over the keys to the kingdom, and then being forcibly removed from their positions by security and being forced to resign, until there was no-one left in the way.

To confirm, DOGE is not an official government department, Musk has not been confirmed by Congress as any formal agent of the government, and he has no legal authority other than Trump's ear. And he now has access to a system which controls nearly 90% of all government payments (including social security, the wages of civil servants, and grants and tax credits that go to Musk's companies and to his competitors), $5.47 TRILLION of government income, and which contains the confidential financial information of hundreds of millions of Americans. He has the capability to stop payments on pretty much anything he likes (or doesn't like, probably more accurately), including the wages of government employees who disagree with him, funding for departments he disagrees with, and his business competitors.

To say that again, because I can't take it all in with just one repetition, Musk has literally no authority and now has power to decide what the US government spends money on, regardless of Congress's wishes.

Even if we require no malevolence to the man who spent $44billion buying a tech empire because he was upset that people insulted him on it (and who has now declared that criticising the Trump administration will be a bannable offence going forwards on said tech empire) and assume that he has no ill intentions at all, this is also the same dude that tried to make Twitter "more efficient" by firing a bunch of people based on facile assumptions that he knew what he was doing and caused massive outages. That kind of "I don't understand what that's for, so therefore we can get rid of it" attitude is not something that should be interacting with the US Government's ability to make financial transactions.

And, while we're at it, let's not bother with assuming that he has no ill intentions at all. He's a paper billionaire, with Twitter being bought on credit and losing money hand over fist and Tesla massively overvalued and trading on his reputation, and he is absolutely planning on looting the fuck out of the USA to bolster his fortune and "win" the prize of becoming the first trillionaire.

Puja

Which Tyler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:24 pm Define "bend over re Trumps demands"
From what I can tell, Canada continued doing exactly what they were already doing - with maybe a name change.
Mexico sent some troops to sit around in a different barracks.

Puja wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 9:34 pm

Which Tyler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:24 pm Define "bend over re Trumps demands"
From what I can tell, Canada continued doing exactly what they were already doing - with maybe a name change.
Mexico sent some troops to sit around in a different barracks.

As I understand it, both of them are taking actions that had already been agreed in a deal with Biden and are allowing Trump to believe that he's forced them into it. Smart play.

Puja

Which Tyler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:40 pm Thank duck that this hunt isn't anything to do with government anymore
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... de-tariffs

If Trumps starts a trade war with the UK, the UK shouldn't start a trade war by standing up for itself, but bend over and take it, because we don't have the economic might of Canada or Mexico

Mellsblue wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:30 pm Not how it’s being reported by the BBC, The Times and a few others but hey ho. The general consensus is that Columbia caved over accepting deported migrants.
Who knows who’s falling for what.

Which Tyler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:55 pm

Mellsblue wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 10:30 pm Not how it’s being reported by the BBC, The Times and a few others but hey ho. The general consensus is that Columbia caved over accepting deported migrants.
Who knows who’s falling for what.

They always accepted the deportations.
They rejected two(?) aeroplanes' worth because Trump did a publicity stunt, and sent them handcuffed etc on a military flight, instead of not handcuffed, and on civilian flights, as they always had been before, and we're again after the stunt.

I believe I mentioned about the press falling for it.
They also fell for the Canada and Mexico caving in line as well.
And so many lies from so many politicians.