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The Wall

Keith&Co. said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
So Trump is going for the National Emergency. He's been outplayed by Pelosi already, and she has a few viable paths (court, House resolution based on existing National Emergency Powers law that must be voted on by the Senate to take with Trump's dubious idea. I know SCOTUS won't want to touch this with a 1,000,000 AU long pole.
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And whatever Trump does, if it succeeds, that sets a nice precedent for the next Democrat president.
Maybe make Global Warming a national emergency. Or healthcare.
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Or having a second state funeral for John McCain, most likely.
 
Re: moat

Well, so does ours, actually. Though the Rio Grande is perhaps a tad easier to wade across at certain times of year. I've never heard of a good plan to secure the oceanfront.
 
Politesse said:
Re: moat

Well, so does ours, actually. Though the Rio Grande is perhaps a tad easier to wade across at certain times of year. I've never heard of a good plan to secure the oceanfront.
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Well, you have all of those icebergs falling off of Antarctica. Just tow a bunch of them up and line them along the coast. Mexico is a tropical country, so the drug smugglers and terrorists won't have the skills to climb over giant ice mountains, so you'll be safe.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Politesse said:
Re: moat

Well, so does ours, actually. Though the Rio Grande is perhaps a tad easier to wade across at certain times of year. I've never heard of a good plan to secure the oceanfront.
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Well, you have all of those icebergs falling off of Antarctica. Just tow a bunch of them up and line them along the coast. Mexico is a tropical country, so the drug smugglers and terrorists won't have the skills to climb over giant ice mountains, so you'll be safe.
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But that might interfere with my existing scheme to send amphetamines into the US (via ice drones floating across Lake Superior).
 
They gave a test on security on one of my subs. The question was how to maximize security when the ship was in port for refit.
The navigator answered: Close the hatches, submerge the ship at the pier, snorkel for fresh air.. (kind of the ultimate moat defense)

They marked it wrong. Can't do a refit, loading supplies and performing repairs, if the ship is under water. The answer was diligent watchstanders, and up-to-date access list, search all people and packages coming aboard.

He argued that we didn't ask about the way to balance security with operational requirements. We only asked about security.
His answer was technically correct, but not terribly useful in the real world where we need things to move on and off the ship for a month.
 
Keith&Co. said:
They gave a test on security on one of my subs. The question was how to maximize security when the ship was in port for refit.
The navigator answered: Close the hatches, submerge the ship at the pier, snorkel for fresh air.. (kind of the ultimate moat defense)

They marked it wrong. Can't do a refit, loading supplies and performing repairs, if the ship is under water. The answer was diligent watchstanders, and up-to-date access list, search all people and packages coming aboard.

He argued that we didn't ask about the way to balance security with operational requirements. We only asked about security.
His answer was technically correct, but not terribly useful in the real world where we need things to move on and off the ship for a month.
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Clearly a 40 foot see-through wall was needed around the sub. So obvious to me.

Oh, and a Black Gate for access, like Mordor.
 
Keith&Co. said:
They gave a test on security on one of my subs. The question was how to maximize security when the ship was in port for refit.
The navigator answered: Close the hatches, submerge the ship at the pier, snorkel for fresh air.. (kind of the ultimate moat defense)
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No need for all of that. Just build a port further out to sea.
 
What a weird announcement about the state of emergency.

What was that little song about being sued, losing, losing, winning? Almost expected him to break into dancing...



He said he expects to be sued in 9th Circuit, though it doesn't belong there, and lose.
When has Trump ever known enough about how the actual government actually works to be able to say which circuit court gets to decide a lawsuit?
Does he just think the 9th is the Obstructionist court?
 
So part of the $8 billion comes from $2.5 billion for counter narcotic enforcement. Bet those guys are happy about that! Their funding evaporates into a wall that addresses a bare fraction of drugs crossing the border.
Keith&Co. said:
What a weird announcement about the state of emergency.

What was that little song about being sued, losing, losing, winning? Almost expected him to break into dancing...



He said he expects to be sued in 9th Circuit, though it doesn't belong there, and lose.
When has Trump ever known enough about how the actual government actually works to be able to say which circuit court gets to decide a lawsuit?
Does he just think the 9th is the Obstructionist court?
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Naw, the 9th court at one point had a good deal of "liberal" justices. At one point they were, in aggregate, the most or close to the most overturned appellate court. These numbers mean less when looking at a total percentage of cases addressed.

Regardless, Trump must have bumped his head because last time I checked, Congress was in DC, not the west coast. The court with Merrick Garland, unless I'm mistaken, will be the one to deal with this... eventually.
 
Trump's disgraceful 'national emergency' was inevitabile | TheHill
In doing so, Donald Trump is crossing an egregious line of presidential overreach unprecedented in history that could have dire repercussions for years to come.

In allowing it to happen, Republicans are demonstrating their collective lack of spine, their loss of any moral compass and their willingness to sacrifice what is best for the country at the altar of political expediency and avoidance of wrathful backlash from Trump and his base. As history immortalizes this moment in time, it will not be kind to the GOP.

It is left to the Democrats to try to do what they can to prevent this atrocious power grab.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "“I didn’t need to do this” is admitting this isn’t an emergency at all. “I didn’t need to do this” means he’s faking a crisis.… https://t.co/FpvQRvDdFB"
responding to
Tal Kopan on Twitter: "“I didn’t need to do this,” Trump says of an emergency declaration that his attorneys will have to defend in court was justified by an emergency… “I just want to get it done faster, that’s all.""
 
I think that what TheHill author Maria Cardona is arguing is that this is Caesarism, a leader making himself an autocrat, like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon river with his army.
 
Well, it's a good way to implement universal health care and ban handguns despite a recalcitrant congress, so I guess it's not all bad.
 
ksen said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Well, it's a good way to implement universal health care and ban handguns despite a recalcitrant congress, so I guess it's not all bad.
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I can't wait for President Harris to do this.
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I say that jokingly, but I've been trying to think of an instance where one President increased the power of the office and then future Presidents did not continue to exercise that increased power. I can't think of any.
 
:The Imperial Presidency" is a book by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a book that he wrote in 1973 in response to Richard Nixon's presidency. He chronicled the history of US Presidents doing stuff on their own without bothering to seek Congress's approval, and RN gave him a lot to write about.

Claiming emergency powers is dangerous, because that sort of thing can be used to take over in Julius Caesar fashion.

 Reichstag fire: On 27 February 1933, a fire started in the German Reichstag building, its parliament building. The authorities found a Communist anarchist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who tried to start a fire there, but another theory is that Nazi leaders started it and that MvdL's presence there was pure luck.

When someone phoned Nazi leader Josef Goebbels about the fire, he dismissed it as a "tall tale", and he only reported it to Adolf Hitler the second time. Nazi leader Hermann Göring said about it "This is Communist outrage! One of the Communist culprits has been arrested." Hitler considered it a "sign from God" that the Communists were starting a revolt. German news services stated about the fire that "this act of incendiarism is the most monstrous act of terrorism carried out by Bolshevism in Germany" and "the government is of the opinion that the situation is such that a danger to the state and nation existed and still exists".

The day after the fire, at Hitler's request, President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree into law by using Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag Fire Decree suspended most civil liberties in Germany, including habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone.
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The German authorities then outlawed the Communist party, arresting many of its members, because of this fire.

This helped the Nazis in the parliamentary election soon after. This led to the Enabling Act, a law which gave Adolf Hitler the right to rule by decree without consulting the Reichstag. It was passed a few months later. Over the coming months, Hitler and his henchmen consolidated their power, outlawing other political parties and carrying out a purge of the SA "Brownshirts" militia that had supported them in their rise to ower.
 
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaLoko8Ut20[/YOUTUBE]

trump being president is a real national disaster and emergency.
 
Look, your stats are even worse than the stats I use... and I use the best stats, so if yours indicate things are worse than mine, then things are real bad.
 
lpetrich said:
I think that what TheHill author Maria Cardona is arguing is that this is Caesarism, a leader making himself an autocrat, like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon river with his army.
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Trump is no Caesar. He is not a leader. He's a misleader.

Caesar had a plan when he crossed the Rubicon.

Trump is nothing but a capitalist boss. A petty little dictator.
 
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