The General US Politics Thread

Hey, Heidi. I want my campaign donation back.

In regards to the France thing:

The last months of the orange cunt's presidency just got even scarier. If Mark Milley hadn't interceded with China, the greedy whore would've taken us down with it!

Edited by ryanasaurus0077 on Sep 17th 2021 at 6:37:11 AM

We know that already...

I posted this link in the context of its going madder than King George III after being creamed by Biden last November. Apparently, the tosser's mental health is much worse than we thought it was several months ago.

Edited by ryanasaurus0077 on Sep 17th 2021 at 6:37:23 AM

What did the General do to intervene?

I'm assuming this is about Milley calling China to reassure them in case Trump tried ordering an attack on them

Edited by sgamer82 on Sep 17th 2021 at 2:54:33 AM

Hey ~ryanasaurus0077 can you please avoid using whore as a pejorative? Sex workers don't really deserve to being used to attack anyone much less Trump. And given the history and meaning of the word that connection is pretty much unavoidable.

Indeed.

Going back a bit, why tf does Barret even pretend to care about the reputation of the SC at this point?

...is that a serious question? There is nothing that forces anyone to follow its rulings, if folks deem it illegitimate you might see people deciding to ignore Supreme Court rulings which would render her irrelevant.

x2 Self-preservation. She doesn't want to be seen as a Karen by the majority of the U.S. population who disagree with her beliefs.

@ Septimus: I didn't know that.

Either way, this is like an arsonist suddenly getting concerned about their reputation ruining their little hobby and assuring us that the house isn't already on fire.

Edited by BearyScary on Sep 17th 2021 at 2:19:28 AM

She and other justices pretend to care (and at some level, I don't doubt that they do) about being apolitical. Because the thing is, being apolitical goes right to the heart of the republic and its separation of the three branches.

The fundamental quality of the SCOTUS is that it be fully independent from the other two branches, including from political influence. This is because when they stop being independent from the other branches, lawmakers can start influencing how the laws they make are interpreted, or worse, have a law they made declared in accordance with the constitution, which lends that law more legitimacy, when technically it doesn't do so. It can also allow the executive branch (mainly the president) to do an end run around the law, since the Supreme Court is supposed to provide oversight for what the president can and cannot do. So if these barriers are taken down (for instance by political appointments to the Supreme Court), that means the country's legal system can be degraded and eroded by politicians, and in the worst case could lead to a total collapse of the republic into a dictatorship of one sort or another.

This is why you see people making such a fuss over politicizing the courts, and over Republicans manipulating the process to favour their own party over the Democrats. It is also why many justices are desperate to uphold the facade of impartiality, even when they know better (and Democratic justices can be just as guilty of this). They don't just do this out of malice, but also because they know that admitting as much would be tantamount to declaring a constitutional crisis.

And another reason they want to maintain that facade is because the Court is the last major American institution most Americans still trust to some degree, even if they don't always agree with their decisions. Once the public stops believing that the highest court in the land is essentially fair and impartial, you have a big problem on your hands.

@Fourthspartan56 Well, it certainly wants more attention than it deserved after four years of disservice to our country.

Edited by ryanasaurus0077 on Sep 17th 2021 at 6:37:01 AM

I think we should generally avoid throwing around those words in here. We want to hold civil discussions here, not turn the place into a pub.

I’d also like to raise an objection to the use of cunt as a pejorative/negative comparison.

Why on Earth would you think Trump has either the depth or warmth of a cunt?

Yeah, I think we really can do without throwing around slurs.

We come back to the idea that any insult to Trump is inherently an Insult to Rocks

Damn, I'd completely forgotten about the wise words of the British Army Drill Sergeant Nasty regarding Country Matters, under the Real Life section of Insult to Rocks.

Edited by ryanasaurus0077 on Sep 17th 2021 at 7:50:43 AM

Apparently there's an issue with the debt ceiling that has the potential for a recession and a risk of another government shutdown next month, why haven't we been hearing more about it?

This is little more than the usual freak-out that happens whenever the debt ceiling comes up. For reasons I will not get into now, Congress has to do two things to enable federal spending.

• Pass a budget.
• Allow the federal government to borrow enough money to cover the budget if it results in a deficit.

That second one has been held up several times, mostly by Republicans, as a way to blackmail the other party into delivering on some demand. "If you don't give us what we want, we'll torpedo the economy."

While it is true that being unable to issue new federal debt would have serious consequences, there are several tricks that the Federal Reserve can use to temporarily get around it, and some more esoteric ones that have never been tried because of their dubious legal status (the "trillion dollar coin" comes to mind).

The important part is that we have never once failed to honor the federal debt and the hostage-taking party has always backed down due to the immense political backlash they always get (yet never seem to learn from).

It’s the debt ceiling, it’s a regular thing that if not raised would cause the US government to default on its loans and thus destroy its credit rating and potentially the US economy.

It happens every so often, the ceiling got raised three times during Trump’s presidency and I believe six times under Obama. There’s no reason to believe it won’t be raised this time. A debt dealing raise can’t be filibustered.

Now it should be pointed out that the entire process is unnecessary, Congress created the debt ceiling and could just authorise the Treasury Department to borrow as necessary to meeting spending authorised by Congress. Like rational countries do.

But the US Congress is economically illiterate and enjoys regularly strapping a bomb to the US economy, letting the timer get down to about 3 seconds and then turning the bomb off.

Edited by Silasw on Sep 17th 2021 at 1:28:30 PM

I suspect the reason they never learn is that the backlash never lasts until the next election. If you don't receive noteworthy harm there's not much incentive to learn from your misdeeds.

It is not clear to me that the debt ceiling is Constitutional, as it appears to violate the Fourteenth Amendment. However, it has never been tested before the Supreme Court.

I wouldn't automatically assume the republicans will always back down, they've been especially brazen and aggressive this year.

The debt ceiling got raised three times under Trump. There seems to be literally no benefit to blowing up the economy, seemingly.

I’ll wait for rainy clouds before I get flood insurance.

Edited by fredhot16 on Sep 17th 2021 at 5:52:42 AM