Because congress is controlled by the Republican party and the Republicans are authoritarians who have bent the knee to Donald Trump, elevating him over their country and sworn duty.
That's not a reasonable option, it's a bear-trap. Once troops are on the ground it will be another decades-long slog, and one that ends like Afghanistan at best. At worst, this looks like America's version of Ukraine.
I can argue both sides but under the assumption (which I think is true) that 80%-90% of Iranians want to remove the regime there's some possibility of success. That said there's also the possibility of screwing things up completely and getting the entire population to fight you as an invader.
One thing for sure, it's not going to look like Russia invading Ukraine. The Iranians don't have the resolve or the support or the capabilities that Ukraine had and has. It will look more like Iraq in terms of the ability of the military to put up any resistance.
The problem with "boots on the ground" isn't that it can't succeed. The problem is it has zero support from the American public. People feel about this a lot more strongly than the other topics dividing the public.
> For many metrics, this administration could be painted as the most law abiding administration of a Western Republic, in decades.
Oh. I suspected you weren't arguing in good faith. Now I know. Don't bother replying to my other comments, there is nothing to be gained here.
Decades from now, a child may ask what you did, when fascism was on the rise again. Don't lie to them. Don't claim you didn't know. You were warned, and chose to support the fascists.
Maybe, but many fascists are cowards. They hide their support with silly phrases and cast doubt on criticisms of the administration they support instead of simply owning up to their beliefs.
I think this will be just like Bush's wars - in 20 years, everyone will always have been against this.
> People that repeat this line evince a basic lack of U.S. civics understanding -- the Executive branch simply does not have the authority to cancel or postpone elections.
They don't lack the understanding, they are simply paying enough attention to understand that the administration is already breaking the law and flagrantly violating the constitution. The prediction is not that the administration has the authority to cancel or postpone elections legally, but that they will try anyway. It is a reasonable belief, given all the crimes that they have committed so far.
> If you think they're going to just outright coup and push that past the whole of the other branches of government, say so.
That is the implication, yes. Before you dismiss it out of hand, remember that the president has already attempted a coup once before.
So the situation we are in is apparent to anyone who has actually been paying attention: Congress is functionally non-existent right now, having given up congressional power over both taxation and war. The Supreme Court has demonstrated repeatedly that they are in the pocket of the administration, and even if they change their mind at the last minute when they realize they too will lose power under a dictatorship, they have no way to actually enforce their rulings.
That leaves it to the states, roughly half of which will align with the administration, against the federal government. Bear in mind the distinguished individual currently in charge of the DoD is an alcoholic and religious extremist and under his leadership commanders throughout the military have started to refer to the war with Iran as a Holy War. [0] So it is unlikely the military will side with the constitution.
> They don't lack the understanding, they are simply paying enough attention to understand that the administration is already breaking the law and flagrantly violating the constitution.
Are you asserting that the current administration has materially interfered with elections? How so? Please attribute sources which spring forth from documentary disclosure, court discovery, or attributable sources.
> Congress is functionally non-existent right now, having given up congressional power over both taxation and war.
I'd say the current non-talking filibuster grandstanding shows this to be patently false. As such the conclusions in the rest of the paragraph are unsupportable.
> Iran as a Holy War. [0]
As I have mentioned elsewhere, the only reporting I can see from this comes from a single source activist litiguous organization who says their sources are anonymous. If any of those sources were actionable, IGs, their own lawyers, and numerous members of Congress would absolutely jump on them. It would be a carreer-makibg litigation move against any administration. Why havent they?
> Are you asserting that the current administration has materially interfered with elections?
Yes? They certainly tried to, and failing doesn't wipe that away. You clearly have paid no attention. Go watch the January 6th hearings and report back with your findings. Everything you are looking for is right there, complete with sources.
> I'd say the current non-talking filibuster grandstanding shows this to be patently false.
You think congress failing to exercise it's power shows that it can still exercise its power? What a curious exercise in mental gymnastics. I will maintain my current conclusion - congress has shown repeatedly that it cannot and will not exercise its constitutionally granted power. Don't pull something while you stretch and reach to claim that isn't so.
>> As I have mentioned elsewhere, the only reporting I can see from this comes from a single source activist litiguous organization who says their sources are anonymous.
Is Pete Kegseth quoting the fucking Psalms on a press conference enough?
Donald Trump has tried to overthrow an election once already -- first through conspiracy, then through violence. The fact that he's not rotting in a prison cell is largely due to corruption of the judiciary (Aileen Cannon).
> The fact that he's not rotting in a prison cell is largely due to corruption of the judiciary
That, and a persistent failure of congress to act. The Senate could have removed him from office and preventing him from running again after the insurrection attempt. They failed to.
> And then we haven't even talked about how nice they are to their own citizens.
Oh no, I haven't heard about that lately. What are they doing? Building camps to mass-inter their own citizens? Disappearing people from airports and then lying about where they are being kept? Withholding welfare funds to punish political enemies? Murdering civilians in the street and calling them domestic terrorists? Employing legal threats to force companies to sell technology for domestic mass surveillance?
> While ridiculous, from a technical standpoint, it's not hard to see how this scenario arises. On the one hand, there was probably pressure to implement the tariffs as quickly as possible. Consequently, there likely wasn't much effort put into the "what if we have to undo all this in a year" use case, because that wasn't strictly necessary to get the tariffs implemented.
No, I disagree. It is actually quite hard to see how this scenario arises without intentional malfeasance. This isn't something that was overlooked, the government was specifically asked in court it they would be able to issue refunds quickly if the tariffs were overturned. The government lied and said they could.
This isn't some surprise thing where we can just forgive these guys in the government for not accounting for the potential need for refunds. They were asked. They lied.
My thinking is that it's very unlikely the people actually responsible for implementing it were the same as the ones in court arguing it would be easily reversible. From a strictly technical standpoint, if your boss says "Make this happen ASAP, even if you have to cut corners", and then a year later says, "Undo all of that", it's gonna be a shitshow.
I completely agree that it's malicious, but I'm thinking the people actually responsible for implementing it (the software, procedures, etc.) probably weren't themselves malicious. I think the technical people responsible for implementing it were intentionally put into a position, by their bosses, where they'd basically be the fall guys and provide a reasonable technical excuse for their boss's maliciousness.
> My thinking is that it's very unlikely the people actually responsible for implementing it were the same as the ones in court arguing it would be easily reversible.
I would generally be surprised if the judge just accepted the attorney's answer without instructing them to have that conversation. I can't imagine a judge saying "Yeah, sure, I'm sure you're the right person to ask this technical question".
Can you know in advance where the keyframes will be? I have been under the impression they are usually placed for maximum encoding efficiency (meaning, they are placed where the encoding of the inter-frame differences adds up to the same size as encoding a full frame), it might not be possible to split the work up in advance.
I would argue they are the same thing. What is a procedural oversight if not bias in the system? The existing process missed an obvious issue because of bias.
Putting aside the discussions of who will actually see any money returned, I will note that this haul covers about 100 days of war with Iran. ($1 Billion per day is the initial assessment from the Pentagon.) [0]
For anyone who was still under the illusion that the tariffs would make any impact on the government debt, hopefully this illustrates that both the tariffs and the ridiculous DOGE effort were never really about the budget.
There are three co-equal branches of government. SCOTUS is to blame for the chaos, but so is Congress. The Republican members of Congress could have joined the Democrats at any point to reassert Congressional power over tariffs and taxation. They chose not to.
They also chose to appoint the conservative majority on the Supreme Court which made these choices.
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