Thought exercise: Which would be the most effective assassination target, trump, Musk, someone else?

So, should I then attribute their collective inaction, lack of planning, and capitulation to malice instead?

It’s my understanding that his voice condition may very well have been caused by his heroin use.

There’s not much room at Guantanamo. They are really going to have to CONCENTRATE those people into that CAMP.

But, he and his supporters keep telling me that they restored free speech.

Every time I look at this dude, he looks like five giant cockroaches scrambling around inside a human suit.

Exactly. People and media need to realize what looking glass we have just traveled through.

That ruling removes any kind of criminal check on the president.

Theoretically there is still a congressional check, via impeachment, but we have learned that is not terribly viable given how difficult it is to convict.

There is the check provided by the 25th amendment, but again, the hurdle is so large that it may not be viable.

Of course there is also a political check, via elections and the 22nd amendment, but that takes years to kick in under the best circumstances, and has limited immediate influence on a second term president.

There is also violence. The president could be checked by an assassin, for example. But that is extremely unlikely.

Under the rules, the president has a limited scope of action as you’ve described. The problem arises when the president decides to overstep those rules, violate laws, or do things that the constitution assigns to other branches. We are in a situation where the checks on such overreach are vanishingly weak as described above. trump is already attempting such violations, such as with the freeze yesterday. Yes, a court has intervened for now, but there is every reason to believe that will be reversed or overturned. But, even if it isn’t, consider what happens if the president chooses to violate the courts ruling.

I understand that the president can’t literate do anything. But no king in history has ever actually has unlimited power and we are in the early days of this new imperial presidency. This is a group project between all three branches. Both congress and the court are working diligently to enshrine the president as a king and the populace has shown little willingness to resist any of this. I would argue that we are effectively there already, but I suppose there are a few remaining hypothetical threads holding him back.

According to the Supreme Court, he is a king. I do not know why everyone hasn’t been absolutely freaking out about that ruling since it came down. According to that court, he is allowed to do literally anything as long as it’s an official act. This is not a rules-based society anymore.

Shit, it reproduced?

I will think back to threads like this every time I wonder why Democrats never achieve anything meaningful and the country continues to lurch toward fascism. You all seem to be more interested in team sports than actually having principles and expectations for your own party.

Just fucking kill him already.

Fuck off with this nonsense. Kamala would literally push the same policies, just like Joe did. The only difference would be that she’d use vague and hollow language to keep a pretense of humanity up so people could continue pretending that they themselves are not contributing to this atrocity. Your naive picture of mainstream Democrats is why that party continues to be as ineffective as it’s been for 50 years. I welcome all the neoliberal Lemmy downvotes. Assholes.

JFC, I hate this place so much.

Are you un-ironically suggesting that impeachment is actually a viable check on a US president?

Tolerance for this nonsense attitude is why the Democrats never feel a need to respond to their own constituents. You are berating people for choosing the ‘burn Palestinians’ party instead of the ‘turn Palestinians into ground meat’ party. Neither vote would have changed anything about the circumstances on the ground, but for some reason, people like you want to perpetuate the myth that Democrats as a party are even slightly better than Republicans on this issue. Your attitude makes progress on this issue in US politics dramatically less likely.

Lindsey Graham breathing is a mistake.

Unfortunately it is probably unrealistic at this point to hope for some motivated patriot to cap his ass. He’s too well protected. We must instead hope for the benevolence of a chunky fat mass in one or annother artery to do the job the world needs.

No way that is ever happening. We are a dying empire, rotting from the inside out. Because of a massive amount of inertia, the decline is really only starting to become obvious widely, but we are well into the phase where the ruling class has given up and is just looting the carcass before it hits the ground. They have succeeded in distracting the general public from the dire circumstances for a long time, but things are so far gone at this point, that won’t really be necessary much longer. As we proceed to give up on democracy, the efficacy of political influence withers away. The real danger for the world is that we have a massive military infrastructure ready to lash out in increasingly desperate spasms as the organism desperately tries to prolong agency. It is past time for the world community to organize against the threat the US poses to them. This is just getting started.

I would be shocked if the company was actually breaking even.