4 ms·

> The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. The chance of Canada

> The difference here is presumably for the last hundred years, ending last November, there was simply no chance of a invasion of Canada. The chance of Canada being invaded didn't change at all in November. The amount of hyperbole about Trump has been utterly astounding, and fears of an Canadian invasion are an instance of that. And my sense is that actually a fair amount of the bad stuff Trump has done (though definitely not all) is a direct result of the overreactions to him [1], so it's probably best not to overreact. [1] E.g. Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office to damage and destroy him. They failed, he got re-elected, and now only in his second term, he's corrupted the Justice Department into a club to attack those very same people.

triceratops 1y ago
> Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue. It's not so simple: 1) everybody breaks laws, and 2) in at least one case those laws were stretched and abused in unusual ways to specifically target him (his felony convictions, which unsurprisingly were immediately turned into an electoral attack). I'm not a Trump fan, but I'm not a Democratic partisan either, and I think that prosecution was really, really gross.
  - triceratops 1y ago
    > laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I can't recall the details) are another man's politically motivated prosecution. That wasn't the only case against the guy though. It was the only case that concluded. Winning the election saved his skin. He was cooked otherwise.
    - palmotea 1y ago
      >> laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him > Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I'm hazy on the specifics) are another man's politically motivated prosecution. Come on, don't be lazy: it's clear you're totally unfamiliar with the case, and a snowclone dismissal isn't clever. The tl;dr is he was actually guilty of a misdemeanors, which where promoted to felonies through unprecedented prosecutorial maneuvering. And it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it. If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that.
      - gottorf 1y ago
        > it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it. Exactly. There's zero chance that anybody not named Donald Trump would have been prosecuted in the same way for the same circumstances. > If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that. It's unfortunate that America is no exception to "show me the man and I'll show you the crime". One wonders if that had always been the case.
  - naijaboiler 1y ago
    No sir, everybody does not break laws. Only people who routinely do like Trump thinks everyone else is doing it. That’s why he’s so sure he can find cases against his perceived political enemies only to find out the in thing he can find is the woman bough a second home, which she indicated is a second home, and let her neice stay there. Only criminals think everyone else is a criminal
    - gottorf 1y ago
      The U.S. Code is over 20 million words, and the Federal Register was over one hundred thousand pages last year. That's on top of state and local laws. You're sure you haven't contravened a single thing therein? With jaywalking and driving over the speed limit on one end, and murder on the opposite, you're positive that a motivated prosecutor can't ruin your life?
      - wat10000 1y ago
        They probably could, because I only have so much money for lawyers. If I had the exact same life but I had billions of dollars? I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      >No sir, everybody does not break laws. Lol. You just haven't been scrutinized by government yet. Also, FYI you're far, far, far better off having real deal criminal prosecutors coming after you trying to get you on a violation of real deal criminal laws because then you have real deal rights with tons of precedent backing them up and literally everyone in the system being trained on how not to violate them lest you get off. If the EPA, your local zoning code enforcer, the parking ticket people, the USDA, etc, etc. come after you you have basically no rights because it's theoretically a civil and not a criminal matter and these organizations are free to unilaterally run their process however unfairly they see fit limited only by what they feel exposes them to risk of politicians trying to reign them in (see also: everyone's complaints with ICE these days). Yeah they can mostly only fine you but if you don't pay (because you dispute) the whole system acts as a ratchet, they lien your house, etc, etc. and you inevitably wind up in court, but with none of the procedural and precedent protection because once again it's non-criminal. Don't believe me? Try it.
- rayiner 1y ago
  That would be a valid argument if the prosecutions against Trump didn’t involve legal gymnastics like the ones Google uses to make all their profits appear to have been earned in Ireland: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-but-prosecutors-contorted-the-law.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-...
  - Sabinus 1y ago
    That case was a bit weird and motivated. Weird in the same way as the prosecution of Hunter Biden for lying about drug taking when getting a gun license, but weird nonetheless. What wasn't weird were the other cases that didn't complete before Trump was re-elected and ended them. He certainly did try to directly ask for votes 'to be found'(the Georgia case), overturn the previous election with Jan6 and his general rhetoric(the DC case), and steal and conceal boxes of classified material (the Florida case) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(election_obstruction_case) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(classified_documents_case) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_...
    - rayiner 1y ago
      The issue isn’t “motivated” prosecutions, it’s prosecutors engaging in creative lawyering as if they’re corporate lawyers trying to structure an international company’s finances to evade taxes. Trump paid off a pornstar with his own company’s money to keep her from talking about an affair. That’s not illegal. It was only turned into felonies through a triple bank shot that combined a misdemeanor with multiple uncharged and unproven crimes, in what MSNBC’s legal analyst called a “grotesque legal version of Frankenstein’s monster.” https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hush-money-trial-verdict-alvin-bragg-rcna153628 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hus... The prosecution against Hunter Biden, by contrast, was legally uncreative. The federal paperwork for gun purchases asks: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Biden wrote a book about how he was addicted to drugs during the same time he answered “no” to this question in buying a gun. Lying on a federal form is a felony under 18 USC 1001. It’s a slam dunk, mundane prosecution that required zero creative lawyering. Pointing to the other cases against Trump doesn’t undo the egregious abuse of the New York criminal prosecution. If even CNN’s legal analyst has to admit that Democrat prosecutors “contorted the law” to prosecute Trump, why should anyone believe their characterizations of the other cases?
torben-friis 1y ago
In the same message you are accepting the president of the United States has corrupted the justice department into a club to attack personal enemies, and claiming people are overreacting. Don’t you see any trace of contradiction there? And even if you don’t, does that look like a safe partner to have as a neighboring country?
wat10000 1y ago
Obviously the chance of invasion didn’t change in November. Trump took office in January. The chance of invasion definitely changed then. You think the man is incapable of impulsively ordering the military to invade Canada? Or do you think the military would refuse? You’re using the language of an abuse victim. Don’t provoke him, maybe if we’re quiet and good he’ll be nice to us. That doesn’t work. You have to get out of the abusive relationship. The man tried to stay in office past the end of his first term with actions up to and including violence. In any sensible country he would have been thrown in prison at that point. This “don’t overreact, it just makes things worse” attitude is the only reason he’s here to fuck with us again today.
myko 1y ago
Unfathomable that people are still downplaying the disaster trump has been at this point. Extremely sad.

triceratops 1y ago

> Democrats fear and loathe him, so they pursued all kinds of legal actions against him while he was out of office So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue.

palmotea 1y ago
> So maybe he should'nt've have broken laws. Not give them anything to pursue. It's not so simple: 1) everybody breaks laws, and 2) in at least one case those laws were stretched and abused in unusual ways to specifically target him (his felony convictions, which unsurprisingly were immediately turned into an electoral attack). I'm not a Trump fan, but I'm not a Democratic partisan either, and I think that prosecution was really, really gross.
- triceratops 1y ago
  > laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I can't recall the details) are another man's politically motivated prosecution. That wasn't the only case against the guy though. It was the only case that concluded. Winning the election saved his skin. He was cooked otherwise.
  - palmotea 1y ago
    >> laws were stretched in unusual ways to specifically target him > Sure one man's campaign finance violations/embezzlement (I'm hazy on the specifics) are another man's politically motivated prosecution. Come on, don't be lazy: it's clear you're totally unfamiliar with the case, and a snowclone dismissal isn't clever. The tl;dr is he was actually guilty of a misdemeanors, which where promoted to felonies through unprecedented prosecutorial maneuvering. And it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it. If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that.
    - gottorf 1y ago
      > it's pretty clear that maneuvering only happened because the prosecutors wanted to get Trump personally for something, and spend a lot of time looking and strategizing how to do it. Exactly. There's zero chance that anybody not named Donald Trump would have been prosecuted in the same way for the same circumstances. > If a prosecutor looked at your conduct that closely, for that long, they could almost certainly nail you (or anyone) for a felony, too. And it's pretty important for a fair and democratic legal system that they don't target individuals like that. It's unfortunate that America is no exception to "show me the man and I'll show you the crime". One wonders if that had always been the case.
- naijaboiler 1y ago
  No sir, everybody does not break laws. Only people who routinely do like Trump thinks everyone else is doing it. That’s why he’s so sure he can find cases against his perceived political enemies only to find out the in thing he can find is the woman bough a second home, which she indicated is a second home, and let her neice stay there. Only criminals think everyone else is a criminal
  - gottorf 1y ago
    The U.S. Code is over 20 million words, and the Federal Register was over one hundred thousand pages last year. That's on top of state and local laws. You're sure you haven't contravened a single thing therein? With jaywalking and driving over the speed limit on one end, and murder on the opposite, you're positive that a motivated prosecutor can't ruin your life?
    - wat10000 1y ago
      They probably could, because I only have so much money for lawyers. If I had the exact same life but I had billions of dollars? I wouldn’t worry about it at all.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    >No sir, everybody does not break laws. Lol. You just haven't been scrutinized by government yet. Also, FYI you're far, far, far better off having real deal criminal prosecutors coming after you trying to get you on a violation of real deal criminal laws because then you have real deal rights with tons of precedent backing them up and literally everyone in the system being trained on how not to violate them lest you get off. If the EPA, your local zoning code enforcer, the parking ticket people, the USDA, etc, etc. come after you you have basically no rights because it's theoretically a civil and not a criminal matter and these organizations are free to unilaterally run their process however unfairly they see fit limited only by what they feel exposes them to risk of politicians trying to reign them in (see also: everyone's complaints with ICE these days). Yeah they can mostly only fine you but if you don't pay (because you dispute) the whole system acts as a ratchet, they lien your house, etc, etc. and you inevitably wind up in court, but with none of the procedural and precedent protection because once again it's non-criminal. Don't believe me? Try it.
rayiner 1y ago
That would be a valid argument if the prosecutions against Trump didn’t involve legal gymnastics like the ones Google uses to make all their profits appear to have been earned in Ireland: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-but-prosecutors-contorted-the-law.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-...
- Sabinus 1y ago
  That case was a bit weird and motivated. Weird in the same way as the prosecution of Hunter Biden for lying about drug taking when getting a gun license, but weird nonetheless. What wasn't weird were the other cases that didn't complete before Trump was re-elected and ended them. He certainly did try to directly ask for votes 'to be found'(the Georgia case), overturn the previous election with Jan6 and his general rhetoric(the DC case), and steal and conceal boxes of classified material (the Florida case) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(election_obstruction_case) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(classified_documents_case) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_election_racketeering_...
  - rayiner 1y ago
    The issue isn’t “motivated” prosecutions, it’s prosecutors engaging in creative lawyering as if they’re corporate lawyers trying to structure an international company’s finances to evade taxes. Trump paid off a pornstar with his own company’s money to keep her from talking about an affair. That’s not illegal. It was only turned into felonies through a triple bank shot that combined a misdemeanor with multiple uncharged and unproven crimes, in what MSNBC’s legal analyst called a “grotesque legal version of Frankenstein’s monster.” https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hush-money-trial-verdict-alvin-bragg-rcna153628 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hus... The prosecution against Hunter Biden, by contrast, was legally uncreative. The federal paperwork for gun purchases asks: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Biden wrote a book about how he was addicted to drugs during the same time he answered “no” to this question in buying a gun. Lying on a federal form is a felony under 18 USC 1001. It’s a slam dunk, mundane prosecution that required zero creative lawyering. Pointing to the other cases against Trump doesn’t undo the egregious abuse of the New York criminal prosecution. If even CNN’s legal analyst has to admit that Democrat prosecutors “contorted the law” to prosecute Trump, why should anyone believe their characterizations of the other cases?

torben-friis 1y ago

In the same message you are accepting the president of the United States has corrupted the justice department into a club to attack personal enemies, and claiming people are overreacting. Don’t you see any trace of contradiction there? And even if you don’t, does that look like a safe partner to have as a neighboring country?

wat10000 1y ago

Obviously the chance of invasion didn’t change in November. Trump took office in January. The chance of invasion definitely changed then. You think the man is incapable of impulsively ordering the military to invade Canada? Or do you think the military would refuse? You’re using the language of an abuse victim. Don’t provoke him, maybe if we’re quiet and good he’ll be nice to us. That doesn’t work. You have to get out of the abusive relationship. The man tried to stay in office past the end of his first term with actions up to and including violence. In any sensible country he would have been thrown in prison at that point. This “don’t overreact, it just makes things worse” attitude is the only reason he’s here to fuck with us again today.

myko 1y ago

Unfathomable that people are still downplaying the disaster trump has been at this point. Extremely sad.