The betting is that te retired Madison, Wis. law professor and longtime bloggress will still vote for Biden and the Democrats—like Bill Maher, Ann talks a good neutrality game, but always seems to come home again—but still, her observations are frequently spot-on.
This morning she notes that “the top-rated comment — by a lot — at “A.I. Is Getting Better Fast. Can You Tell What’s Real Now?” is..
“Passing AI images off as real ones for the sake of commercial or political gain should be prosecuted as fraud.The severity of the penalties should match the level of risk that disseminating these images poses to our society; i.e., they should be extreme.”
Ann adds, “How terribly punitive and repressive, and yet, isn’t it what you’ve come to expect from the segment of America that reads the New York Times?Notice the aggression mixed with passivity. The comment-writer doesn’t want to face the challenge of becoming more perceptive and skeptical dealing with the onslaught of A.I. images. They want the government to do the dirty work and do it good and hard.”
She also notes that a Times reader response to that comment says in part, “The first amendment protects even speech that is a lie. If these images should be prosecuted as fraud, so should Donald Trump’s outright lies.” Wow, talk about Trump derangement! These people can find a route to attacking Trump in any discussion, on any topic. Of this, Ann writes, “There’s already selective prosecution of Donald Trump — and civil suits costing him hundreds of millions — and this commenter wants even more of it. And I suspect that the first commenter envisioned their political enemies getting the worst of those “extreme” penalties that “match the level of risk.”
Remind me again: who’s the existential threat to democracy?
[I’m sure you’ve noticed that Bruce has been introducing a lot of posts lately, most recently the one about the suspiciously tardy Snopes realization that Democrats have been lying about what President Trump said about the Charlottesville demonstrators for seven years. I have no idea what that signifies, if anything, other than that I really like that “Die Hard” clip…]
Ethics Alarms 
Correct. When the Far Left (and even some of their less far left fellow travelers) come down hard on a practice and demand extreme penalties, they mean their political opponents. You see, AI images can sway an election which means election interference and we all know that only Republicans and other conservatives engage in that.
Which also means that these dolts are swallowing the ridiculous and insulting “cheap fakes/deepfakes” explanations for Biden looking like he wandered off the set of a zombie movie.
Not exactly on topic, but in the realm of what is real and what is not, we have the following article:
https://modernity.news/2024/06/24/biden-camp-caught-red-handed-spreading-a-blatant-cheap-fake/
Now, I have not heard of modernity news before, so I have no idea of their reliability. I tried to search to see if any other site mentioned this (other than ZeroHedge, which linked to this article), but was unable in a short period of time to substantiate the claim.
The claim is this: in trying to make a Trump rally in Philadelphia look smaller than a Biden rally, the Biden campaigned compared photographs of events that showed empty seats for Trump’s crowd, but no empty seats for Biden’s. However, the allegation is that the event was a Fetterman rally, and that half the arena was curtained off (ah, I just used “curtain” as a verb…), so the comparison was completely faked.
So we have an article that comes from an unknown source making (as far as I currently know) an unsubstantiated claim accusing the administration that is supposedly battling misinformation of promulgating misinformation.
I’m sure the answer to what to do is to take the article with a grain of salt and either research more, or don’t rely on it in my political analysis. I hope I’m mature enough to do that.
Wake me when the far left tries to subvert an election, recruits fake electors, pressures election officials to change the vote totals, sends a mob to the Capitol to stop the count, denies the legitimacy of the successor, refuses to attend inauguration, jams up the peaceful transfer of power in the bureaucracy for weeks (thus delaying transition in a way that endangered our national security)…if even one of those happens, do let me know. The “totalitarian” left has a lot of catching up to do.
Come on, come on, you know better than that, I know you do. The far left already subverted an election by engineering tow fake impeachments and three year witch hunt redesigned to tar the President of the United States as a traitor. Then it pushed for relaxed election regulations and went ahead with some even without proper process. The “fake electors” trope is factually and intellectually dishonest: they were alternate electors who would only come into play if the votes in certain states were determined to be fraudulent, a method recommended by lawyers who were, I would say, deluded. Saying in a state with lots of voting irregularities that an official needs to “find votes” is completely ambiguous: I assumed at the time it meant “the totals are wrong: prove it.” Nobody sent a mob to the Capitol to “stop the count,” a) because a mob couldn’t stop anything, and b) because it was told to protest, a Constitutional right. The whole Congressional Black Causcus boycotted Trump’s inauguration; Trump wasn’t even that first POTUS bitter enough about losing to refuse to participate in his adversary’s swearing in. John Adams was—a Founder. The “jamming up” claim is really a stretch.
Gee, I count on you to be a voice of moderation and reality around here. I guess you just had to get that out of your system. As Jimmy Durante used to say when he sang a clunker, “I’m glad that note came out! On my last X-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”
And I guess Gore v. Bush never happened.
Kazoo is Chris reincarnate.
If you are going to compare Bush V. Gore to Jan 6th, that’s madness. There were valid questions as to who won Florida. There were 4 counties doing recounts. The overall state was incredibly close (500 votes in a state the size of Florida???). Both sides filed lawsuits. Both sides engaged in legal battles. One side had the Brooks Brothers riot, but compared to Jan 6th, it was peaceful. And it was resolved by…Al Gore accepting the 5-4 SC ruling, while deeply disagreeing with it. He counted the votes in the senate a month later, HIMSELF, and attended inauguration because he’s a patriot and plays by the rules.
Seriously, your comparison makes my argument. Thanks.
With all due respect, why do you assume that Bill is comparing the two? Your list of grievances wasn’t limited to the January 6 mess, after all.
Gore v Bush was litigated after multiple recounts. Even after the SCOTUS decision, Bush was still deemed an illegitimate President by a big chunk of the left.
I hope you’re not falling back on the internet talking point that some of my Facebook friends post that says that, when Democrats question election results, it’s because there are legitimate concerns, while Republicans question results because they can’t give up power.
Just as a note, I kind of miss Chris, though he could turn downright ugly in his commentary. I really appreciate Jerry sticking around, because he’s very well-written, he adds nuance (instead of just beating the same point over and over and over again), and he has a great deal of research and experience that he can easily cite. That doesn’t mean I agree with him on anything, but I’m glad he’s been sticking around.
I assume he is a paid social media monitor. His comments are canned material.
That’s very kind. Thanks.
To say nothing of how they claimed George W. Bush’s presidency was illegitimate (the Left has been questioning the results of Presidential elections won by Republicans for 20 years).
Further, didn’t they press electors to change their votes and one of them did, taking away votes from Mrs. Clinton?
And weren’t there violent protests the day of Trump’s Inauguration in 2017? Was that a mob trying to impede democracy?
Attending the Inauguration may symbolically represent the peaceful transition of power on the part of the man leaving office, but it hardly constitutes acceptance of the outcome. There was no love lost between Hoover and FDR on Inauguration Day nor between Truman and Ike. Does anyone remember the way departing Clinton/Gore staff members sabotaged and vandalized government property, notably the Vice-President’s house (leading Tipper Gore to apologize to Liz Cheney) and removing all the W’s from keyboards when the Clintons/Gores moved out and the Bushes/Cheneys moved in?
We all know that, if swing state votes had been going for Biden in 2020, then vote counting shut down and, when resumed hours later, suddenly Trump was ahead, the Democratic Party and its allies in the media would still be crying bloody murder. We know this because of their pattern of behavior for years.
it’s non-stop projection, AM. It’s what they do. Delusional.
The thing about Clinton people trashing the WH has been debunked.
Protesting on inauguration day is wildly different than trying to get inside the Capitol to stop the count on January 6th. One is legal, one is illegal. And what violent protests are you referencing? I was there, it was tame as fuck. Granted, I was only at the DC one, but I don’t remember there being much upheaval or violence. Happy to learn differently.
And again, the caterwauling in Dem circles about 2004 was nothing compared to 2016. let me explain some key differences:
Kerry didn’t support it, neither did any prominent Democrat
The lines in Ohio were a big embarrassment (6+ hours to vote?) and it’s a structural flaw in our system, but most Dems didn’t think it was a CONSPIRACY that RIGGED the election.
There was never a chance it would stop the electoral count.
I don’t know what vote switching in 2016 is being referenced. There were a number of faithless electors that year, but the majority were GOP electors who looked at Trump and said “holy fuck that guy is a blathering idiot with impulse issues and seething resentment…I’m voting for Kasich or Colin Powell!” There was no organized effort to switch voters FROM Hillary (what would the point be?). You may be conflating it with 2000, when if ONE Gop elector had switched to Gore, we would have had a tie, and if two had, we would have had Al Gore President. There was an effort to contact electors to change their votes. It was not led by clinton, or gore, and it was doomed to fail and it very much did. And guess what–talking to electors is actually kind of what the Founders ENVISIONED when they created the electoral college. It was supposed to be an elite filter on democracy. Now it’s a pathetic undemocratic anachronism that we should trash, but certainly asking electors to exercise judgement is not illegal or unconstitutional.
The Electoral College is “a pathetic undemocratic anachronism that we should trash?”
I’m glad the one you attended was peaceful.
Here is a link by WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/protesters-bring-shouts-skirmishes-and-shutdowns-to-inauguration-celebration/2017/01/20/00ea4c72-df11-11e6-acdf-14da832ae861_story.html
When I google violent protests on Inauguration Day 2017, I get many results. From Reuters, from NBC News, CBS News. I’d link to them here, but WordPress doesn’t like multiple links in a post and it would end up in Spam.
They all use the word “violent” to characterize some of the protests that day. The WaPo article above even includes in the headline that they tried to disrupt Trump’s oath. Isn’t the Oath a part of the Constitutional process of transitioning leadership? Could someone characterize that as interference?
My statement about changing electors’ votes was referring to attempts to sway electors away from Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton, in 2016:
“On December 14, the Unite For America campaign released a video[36] published on YouTube and other media addressed directly to Republican electors urging that each of them individually, plus 36 of their colleagues (at least 37 Republican electors in total), vote for a Republican other than Donald Trump for President. The video featured numerous public figures,[37] including Debra Messing, Martin Sheen, and Bob Odenkirk, urging Republican electors to prevent a Trump presidency, expressing several times the message: “I’m not asking you to vote for Hillary Clinton”. In electing an alternative Republican, the featured speakers ask the elector to become an “American hero” by using the elector’s constitutional “authority” to give “service and patriotism to the American people” through a vote of “conscience.”[36]”
The Washington elector changed his vote to Faith Spotted Eagle in protest of Mrs. Clinton’s support for the Dakota Pipeline.
This is from the Wikipedia page for Faithless Electors in the 2016 United States Presidential election. Again, I’d link to it, but…
The effort does not have to have been successful to argue that it was tried.
While there were claims of illegitimacy of George W. Bush’s 2004 win, the aspect of my comment dealing with him was concerned about the 2000 election which Democrats have spent years using to undermine the legitimacy of, not only Bush’s election, but also the Supreme Court by claiming that SCOTUS stopping the recounts constituted interfering with the election and the will of the people (hence, a conservative SCOTUS is a danger to democracy theme we are still hearing today).
I think that Trump richly deserved both impeachments, sorry. On a factual basis, conditioning aid to a country based on whether they dig dirt on your political opponent is worthy of impeachment. Your interpretation of his conversation, taped, with the Georgia election official is laughable in its willingness to see Trump in the best possible light. He asked the guy to find the EXACT NUMBER OF VOTES NEEDED TO WIN THE STATE. He wasn’t interested in detecting fraud. He was interested in overturning the results. As Jimmy Durante should have said “wake up and smell the creeping authoritarianism.”
As I’ve said before, Trump never ever thinks he lost. Every time he loses, it’s rigged, whether it’s the Republican primary in Iowa in 2016, or the Nielsen ratings in 2005. He can’t admit a mistake or a defeat. So to suggest that he wasn’t sending a mob to the capitol is just avoiding reality. He told them he would march with them! We all have a constitutional right to protest. We don’t have a right to violently attack capitol police and force our way into government buildings to try and stop the orderly counting of electoral votes. That was what they SAID they were doing.
Don’t be sorry: you’re just factually wrong. A president has every write to use leverage to get foreign leaders to do what’s in the US’s best interest, and exposing the corruption of a US VP is in the US’s best interest. Biden did exactly the same thing to try to make Israel quit defending itself…and as in the Trump case, the money he threatened to withhold had been authorized by Congress. He was impeached because the Democrats had made up their minds to find some justification to impeach him because they had the votes. In the hearings, they never made the case. In the second impeachment, they didn’t even have hearings.
I’ve heard the tape of the Georgia appeal. It means, “Find me the buried or elicit votes sufficient to show I won,” not “manufacture votes.” So Trump used the exact number needed to win the state: so what? Yeah, I don’t begin every assessment of DT’s conduct with the assumption that since he’s a bad guy, the worst possible interpretation is the right one. That is the ethical and fair approach, and the only ethical and fair approach.
What fact am I getting wrong?
If you don’t think someone asking for the specific number of votes to be found is prima facie evidence of a desire just to win, not to find fraud, I have nothing to say. you can’t be convinced if you don’t want to be. Sometimes, excessive gullibility means you just want to swallow bullshit until you get full. I hope you eventually get full.
It was an assertion that many votes had been uncounted or fabricated, and that there were sufficient numbers of such votes to flip the state.
If, in the middle of a World Series game, the owner calls the manager of the team that is losing by 5 runs and says, “Get us six runs!,” is he telling his manager to cheat?
Well, if Trump was the owner, I bet you’d think so. No?
The analogy is more like if the owner called up the home plate umpire the day before Game 7 of the WS and said “we really need to get more runs than the other team this game, also more balls and less strikes for our batters too”
Nice try, but clearly wrong. A manager can no more make runs appear than a governor can make votes appear. An umpire has direct control over the elements essential to scoring or preventing runs. Not analogous. At all.
The manager is Trump, the governor is the umpire.
The point is that I was fixing your baseball analogy to be more in line with what Trump did.
I’m very certain a governor can make votes appear if they wanted to.
Trump didn’t call the MANAGER. That would be his campaign manager, somebody hired by his team to win. He called the umpire, the guy who is supposed to call the game, just as your other poster said. You do get that, right? Your analogy is the flawed one. No one would be complaining if Trump had called up his campaign manager and said “send teams of lawyers down to Georgia! Find out if there are any ballots uncounted!” That’s what you do in very close elections. What’s problematic is calling up the top election officials in AZ, in GA, and elsewhere, and pressuring them to find precisely enough “fraudulent” votes to win.
If you don’t think someone asking for the specific number of votes to be found is prima facie evidence of a desire just to win, not to find fraud, I have nothing to say.
Can I have a quick clarifier, and not just from Jerry, but from anyone else interested in this specific point? Let’s imagine that we had the 2020 votes swing from Biden to Trump overnight. We’ve focused a lot on the likelihood of a Democratic meltdown, so let’s set that aside. Would anyone believe that Trump would have fought to have all those tallies recalculated and pushed to find fraud? (Does anyone else feel guilty in Monopoly when a bank error in your favor hands you $200 completely unearned?) I don’t think he would have, and I would bet no one here believes that Trump would have had that integrity.
In my view of Trump demanding that votes be found in Georgia, I have no doubt that his entire goal was to win. The possibility of fraud was the mechanism that gave him the cover of legitimacy in making his demands. Now the real question remains: is making that demand, under the pretext that there was suspicion of fraud, wrong?
It is trying to get someone to commit the felony of fraud.
There are other crimes involved, as laid out by the special prosecutor.
Also, at the basic fundamental level of respect for democratic norms, it is corrosive of the Republic, and the virtues necessary for self government. It is profoundly irresponsible, one might even say evil.
The problem I have with claiming fraud when Trump asked Georgia “to find the votes” is that he very plainly laid dozens of ways his internal team determined there could be miscounts in the Georgia election. Trump and the Georgia team went over a lot of details in that call, with the Georgia team explaining why Trump’s assertions mostly did not pass muster. Still, Trump was convinced that the votes could be found and he wanted Georgia to do everything they could eliminate the votes Trump was sure were cast illegally. He certainly indicated that he felt Georgia was not doing its due diligence, and he certainly was pressuring them not to end their investigations. I’ll grant that. But he had a laundry list of ideas he wanted them to investigate, all of which, to me, pass the red-face test. Nowhere in the call did Trump demand votes be invented or fraudulent methods be applied to get him his result. When questions of the legality of passing information came up, they agreed to find the proper ways to do so without violating confidentiality or privacy laws.
In isolation, the phone call to Georgia seems to be at best a Rorshach test. If you think Trump was doing something underhanded, it seems highly suspect, with the undertones of demanding something illegal be done without coming out and saying it directly. If you think Trump was frantically trying to find a path to victory and exploring all options, the conversation seems on the up and up.
Well argued. But I return to my central point–if all he was interested in were finding evidence of fraud, of having a clean election–why the focus on the number of votes PRECISELY enough to win by one?
Just remember that I agree with you here, that Trump didn’t care about fraud except as a means to find a way to victory. That’s why he insisted on searching for enough to push him across the finish line. Once he was across, the volume of fraud wouldn’t matter. Nor would he have been keen to find fraud, I maintain, if the fraud happened to benefit him.
On the other hand, what is the significance of stopping looking for fraud once enough fraud has been found to change the results? At some point the effort of chasing down the people who committed fraud has diminishing returns, costing far more than it is really worth. Once enough fraud has been uncovered, you have evidence there was enough fraud to change the election. Yes, the object is to win. But there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re playing within the rules. Nothing says you have to have pure motives to demand that charges of fraud be investigated. It would be nice if your motives were pure, certainly…
Your defense of his phone call to Ukraine as just trying to wipe out corruption from the US government falls apart with these simple questions:
So let me see if I understand your argument. You’re saying that Trump was just interested in investigating allegations about corruption at Burisma involving US officials, generally. It had nothing to do with the fact that Biden had JUST emerged as his likely opponent? Just a coincidence, huh? Just a weird coincidence that at the same time, people linked to Trump were making that argument about Biden? You are seriously making that argument about one of the most transactional, least ideological, least policy focused humans on planet earth? Seriously? I would think very carefully about my reputation for successful cogitation before adopting that argument.
Did Trump raise corruption issues with ANY other US political figure in his conversations with Zelensky or any other foreign leader? (nope) So what? If doing that is valid, and it is, and a legitimate matter for national concern, and it is, then one cannot claim that it’s a “high crime or misdemeanor.” I also think that when all the dirty laundry comes out, it is likely that we we will learn that the Bidens were either letting foreign graft influence public policy, or communicating to foreign powers that they were. In either case, a President has a legitimate reason to want to root that out when he has the leverage to do so.
“Was fighting international corruption part of Trump’s foreign policy agenda” (hint: no) Again, so what? If an act is legal and justifiable, it doesn’t matter if there aren’t similar acts that are similarly justifiable. That’s not the standard for evaluating Presidential conduct. Or anyone’s conduct. What’s left is supposition.
Let’s review: Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy, is out there making wild claims about Hunter, Joe, and Burisma. At that exact moment, Trump asks, in return for weapons Ukraine desperately needs, that the President get dirt on Biden, who is about to be Trump’s political opponent in an election.
And again, you’re making the argument, with your brain working, that this is just Trump doing his job as president, investigating corruption?
I mean–really?
At best, the argument seems to rest on the assumption that it was more important to the U.S.’s interests to root out “corruption” by Biden in Ukraine than to help Ukraine against Russian aggression.
Of course, Trump does believe that, because Trump is selfish and corrupt and doesn’t care about our allies and also likes Russian aggression. But we’re supposed to believe impeaching him is the problem.
“Don’t be sorry: you’re just factually wrong. A president has every right to use leverage to get foreign leaders to do what’s in the US’s best interest, and exposing the corruption of a US VP is in the US’s best interest.”
Except there was no corruption, and the idea that there was is nonsensical. Biden was implementing official US policy, one that had bipartisan and international support, in pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin. Unless you think the IMF, Republicans in Congress, and pro-reform activists in Ukraine also wanted Shokin out for the whole purpose of helping Hunter Biden (who was not personally under investigation at any point, and whose tenure at Burisma post-dated the period of time that the investigation was covering; not to mention that Shokin was a lazy and incompetent prosecutor whose whole thing was that he *wasn’t* giving the Burisma investigation, among others, proper attention), the notion that Biden withheld money from Ukraine in order to help his son (who saw no benefit from Shokin’s firing) just doesn’t hold up to any kind of scrutiny.
“Biden did exactly the same thing to try to make Israel quit defending itself…and as in the Trump case, the money he threatened to withhold had been authorized by Congress.”
Biden never “tried to make Israel quit defending itself,” and it’s not at all the same thing. Biden’s demands on Israel, as with Ukraine, were made publicly and transparently; Trump’s were not. And of course, demanding a country not indiscriminately kill civilians in the one place that country has previously told civilians to flee to is absolutely nothing like calling on the leader of a foreign country to announce an investigation into one’s election opponent.
You just keep shifting the goal lines. There’s no requirement that diplomatic negotiating must be done in public, in fact, it usually should be. That Hunter was involved in any discussions with Ukraine at all before, after or during Biden’s dealings with the nation is suspicious on its face: in many states, that kind of thing would be a serious ethics violation for an elected official. The fact that no regulations cover it for a VP doesn’t make such machinations any more ethical. Maybe it was innocent, maybe it wasn’t. A President telling a foreign leader, “Do me a favor, find out what went on here” is, again, not a crime, not a misdemeanor, not even unusual.
“And of course, demanding a country not indiscriminately kill civilians in the one place that country has previously told civilians to flee to is absolutely nothing like calling on the leader of a foreign country to announce an investigation into one’s election opponent.”
Debate honestly or shut up. There was and is no “indiscriminate killing of civilians” by Israel. If you’re going to mouth Hamas propaganda, be my guest, but you forfeit any right to be taken seriously here, and I won’t waste my time debating with the kind of character who would stand by something that outrageous.
I am being as honest as I can about my opinion, one shared by many people across the political spectrum. It is not “Hamas propaganda” to say that Israel has been killing too many civilians; even many Israelis agree. I am in fact far to the right of many I know in not using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions; “indiscriminate killing” would be seen as moderate language in my circles. I agree that actual pro-Hamas or antisemitic language should not be tolerated, but one can oppose Hamas and support Israel’s right to exist while also thinking Netanyahu’s strategy is counterproductive and inhumane. If expressing such opinions here is a bannable offense, I can accept that.
Jack–you’re a lawyer, and an ethical expert, and a theater expert.
What you just said is so gobsmackingly wrong about US Foreign Policy that I’m stunned.
***
A President telling a foreign leader, “Do me a favor, find out what went on here” is, again, not a crime, not a misdemeanor, not even unusual.
***
This was so weird when it happened that a career military guy took it to the IG at CIA and he immediately said–that’s a HUGE violation of the law, must be reported.
You have just made a howler equivalent to me saying, in your areas of expertise “there’s never been a good musical that featured a female lead” or “lawyers don’t need to worry about ethics, as long as they stay on the right side of the law.”
This is just wrong all the ways something can be wrong. It is so unusual for a president to bring up a political rival with a foreign leader and ask him to investigate it, and get evidence about it, that I cannot think of a single other example. Not one. So for you to say it is “not unusual” is just WRONG. It’s unprecedented. It’s oxygen turning into gold rare.
We’re now at a point of testing for you–are you going to be able to admit that this act of reducing Trump’s acts to normal is just false?
I’m really interested to see if you can admit you’re wrong.
Would love to see a response to this…..
I can and have admitted that I’m wrong, here and elsewhere. Not on this topic. And as juror 8 in “Twelve Angry Men” says to the members of the jury still voting GUILTY, I’d love to know how you can be so sure.
To begin with, characterizing Biden as just a “political rival” is fatally misleading. He was the previous Vice-President, and dealt directly with Zelenski, while having a corrupt son who was influence-peddling in that nation using his father’s position and influence. The potentially illicit activities of a recent VP with a foreign power is absolutely a matter of national interest, and that fact that Biden was a potential candidate against Trump—and at that point, it was far from certain that he would be the nominee–should not have insulated him from Trump’s legitimate concerns. (That was a theory some even put on paper. Nice!) Maybe Trump was only concerned with Biden because of his potential candidacy, but since there were other legitimate reasons for his call, only the intractable Trump-demonizers can be so certain that this was the motive.
Meanwhile, the “whistleblower,” Vindman, was and is a Democrat with a history of going around the Chain of Command, as Tim Morrison, the National Security Council’s senior director for European affairs, described him in testimony under oath. Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the US Constitution is clear: “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” It is not an army officer’s role to second guess the President’s decisions. As was done an epic number of times to this President, Vindman took it upon himself to interfere with Trump’s ability to be President. A lieutenant colonel has no right to interfere with the President’s discretion or attempt to undermine the President’s authority over policy disagreements. Vindman testified that he never discussed his concerns about the call with Trump, which he had an obligation to do if he was so concerned about it. He knew that the Democratic majority was hunting for a justification, however strained, to impeach Trump, so he leaked a conversation he was honor- and legally bound not to reveal.
You trust this dubious character who was engaged in a legal and ethics violation—he’s now running for office by appealing to Trump-haters—over a President of the United States because you just don’t like Trump. The jurors in Manhattan did the same thing, trusting one of the least credible witnesses in litigation history, Michael Cohen, because they hated Trump more.
What is unusual, and my study of Presidents and their use of power informs me so, is highly sensitive, back-channel communications with foreign leaders being leaked and unethically revealed by Presidential subordinates. You want to draw the line so tightly that nothing fits—OK, no previous Presidential arm-twisting of a leader of a leader of a country receiving foreign aid to have him investigate a highly dubious former VP with an influence-peddling son and who was also a possible nominee by the other party in the next election. But there have been plenty of deals using questionable tactics and promises that exceeded proper channels and legal authorization in Presdential history. I wonder where we would be, if anywhere, if an ambitious 1962 Vindman type who was an ally of Curtis Lemay decided to “blow the whistle” on JFK’s secret promise to Khrushchev to pull our missiles out of Turkey to resolve the Cuban Missle Crisis.
Hmmm..why didn’t Congress impeach Lincoln for relieving McClellan from command of the Union forces? It was well known that the General was critical of Lincoln and positioning himself to run against him in 1864: did Abe abuse his power, removing a qualified leader in a desperate Civil War because he wanted to make sure he didn’t become a more formidable Democratic candidate with battlefield triumph? Why didn’t Congress impeach him? The answer is that the Congress then was not actively looking for a way to “get” Lincoln, and wasn’t stacked with assholes. Other examples of Presidential arm-twisting behind closed doors and mouths? We don’t know about them because once Presidential aides and subordinates understood the duties of loyalty and confidentiality.
I will take my reply to this to the other thread.
There is no coherent way to argue that it was inappropriate for Biden to condition weapons to Ukraine on the removal of Shokin while his son had business in Ukraine, while also arguing that it was totally appropriate for Trump to condition weapons to Ukraine on the promise of an investigation into Joe Biden.
They are both inappropriate. Biden should not have been the point-man on this issue.
The difference is that the benefit to Trump is much clearer than the benefit to Biden. The claims that Shokin was investigating Hunter were false. Therefore, Shokin’s firing (and replacement with a more ethical prosecutor) could not have actually benefitted him. But an announcement into an investigation into Biden corruption in Ukraine would obviously help Trump politically.
Then there is the fact that firing Shokin had international and bipartisan support, whereas the Biden investigation Trump wanted did not–the idea came from entirely from the right-wing fringe. This further weakens the narrative that Biden only made this move to help his son (and he could not have made this call without the president’s approval).
Trump easily could have discovered these facts without ever calling the president of Ukraine. And if he were really interested in investigating corruption, he would have.
But he was not interested in genuinely fighting corruption. He was interested in hurting Joe Biden. That’s not an assumption; it’s the only logical conclusion based on the facts I have provided.
“Yeah, I don’t begin every assessment of DT’s conduct with the assumption that since he’s a bad guy, the worst possible interpretation is the right one. That is the ethical and fair approach, and the only ethical and fair approach.”
Why, then, do you not apply this approach to Joe Biden?
When he pressured Ukraine to fire Shokin, you did not assume he was simply following existing and popular anti-corruption policy regarding Ukraine, and pressuring them to get rid of a corrupt and lazy prosecutor. You assumed, and still seem to assume, that he was trying to protect his son from being investigated by Shokin–something Shokin was very much not doing (and which seems especially unlikely now that Biden has allowed his son to be convicted of a crime in the U.S., by his own Justice Department, while president, without so much as a pardon).
But when Trump called up Ukraine and threatened to withhold funds unless they announce an investigation into Joe Biden specifically, you assume he was doing so for the best interests of our country, because he cares deeply about stopping corruption. In this case, assuming personal motives is biased and unethical.
And when Biden threatens to withhold one singular type of weapon from Israel, after previously bypassing Congress to give Israel even more weapons, and after repeated warnings that crossing into Rafah would be a red line, you take this as Biden “trying to make Israel quit defending itself.”
This is a clear double standard. You frequently assume the worst intentions of Biden, regardless of the evidence (the Ukraine conspiracy theory has been debunked for years), while assuming the best intentions of Trump, even though you know he is of terrible character. This skews your analysis and takes you to some very inaccurate conclusions.
I make no assumptions about what Biden was trying to do, but it certainly warranted investigation.
“And when Biden threatens to withhold one singular type of weapon from Israel, after previously bypassing Congress to give Israel even more weapons, and after repeated warnings that crossing into Rafah would be a red line, you take this as Biden “trying to make Israel quit defending itself.” What do you call it? Read my posts about that, and then I’ll entertain your rebuttal, if you have one. Anything that allows Hamas to escape the consequences of its attack on Israel without unconditional surrender or being eliminated makes its terrorism effective and successful. All Biden is doing is pandering to the worst of the Democratic base. I’m not assuming the worst of Biden in this: there is no other plausible explanation. Absurdly, he simultaneously says he is 100% supporting Israel, while trying to tie its hands in the war. It’s a cynical and insulting,two-faced policy.
The key point is, nobody’s trying to impeach Biden for doing the same kind of carrot and stick maneuvering so many of his predecessors have done in the past. Only Trump has been impeached for that purely Presidential tactic, whether it was ill-conceived or not. That’s the double standard. I didn’t argue Biden should be impeached, and I know Trump should not have been impeached. My position is consistent
“there is no other plausible explanation”
Of course there is. The explanation is that he doesn’t want Israel to kill civilians in Rafah–the very place Israel told Gazans to flee to. Israel can certainly defend itself from Hamas without doing that. I know of no military strategist on the left or right who thinks this is responsible policy.
If Biden were “pandering to the worst of the Democratic base” he’d be cutting off all military aid to Israel; that’s what the extremists want him to do. This is a middle ground approach. It’s also a completely sensible one. Continuing to write a blank check to an ally as they commit war crimes is not.
“The key point is, nobody’s trying to impeach Biden for doing the same kind of carrot and stick maneuvering so many of his predecessors have done in the past. Only Trump has been impeached for that purely Presidential tactic,”
I already explained how they are not the same. Withholding weapons for the purposes of protecting civilian life and changing the failing and counterproductive strategy of an ally is not at all the same as withholding weapons to bribe an ally into announcing a sham nvestigation of your political opponent based on a debunked conspiracy theory that makes no sense. One is clearly valid and the other is plainly corrupt.
You didn’t read the posts. when you read the posts, I might deign to explain where you’re wrong. (Biden can’t pull all support from Israel because he’d lose more votes for that than he could gain. He’s literally trying to play both sides of the issue at once.) And its none of Biden’s business to tell another leader what’s in the best interest of that nation. The Pearl Harbor /WWII analogy is spot on. Russia didn’t try to tell Roosevelt or Truman that we were killing too many Axis civilians, women and children. Israel’s existence is on the line. Biden has protesters? Too bad.
“And its none of Biden’s business to tell another leader what’s in the best interest of that nation.”
When we are supplying them with weapons? Of course it is.
“Russia didn’t try to tell Roosevelt or Truman that we were killing too many Axis civilians, women and children.”
I don’t tend to base my ethics regarding civilian casualties on those of the Soviet Union, sorry.
That wasn’t my point, and I am giving you credit for being smart enough to know that. The nature of the messenger does not change teh validity, or not, of the message. That’s Ethics 101. If you don’t gasp that, you have some homework to do. before you’re qualified to have this discussion. For example, while supplying weapons may confer the power to interfere with an ally’s assessment of its own best interests, it still doesn’t make such interference right, responsible, or ethical unless the interests driving the ally’s interference is aligned with that of the nation. In this case, it clearly isn’t Biden wants Israel to go easy on Hamas so he can keep the Muslin, pro-terrorist vote in Michigan, and if Hamas launches another sneak attack on Israel after Biden wins the election, well, it will be worth it. Despicable.
I just don’t understand how you can say that mere hours after lecturing someone for always assuming the worst of Donald Trump. Again, the alternate explanation is that Biden is legitimately concerned with civilian life in Rafah, as lots of people (not just American Democrats or Hamas agents) are. You seem to think this is impossible and that he can only be acting to help his electoral chances. But that we must also assume that Trump pressured Ukraine, he was acting out of a genuine desire to stop corruption and he just so happened to only express interest in this when it involved his chief political rival. And you still don’t see the double standard here?
I concur with these questions. A president of the United States is frequently concerned with human rights and humanitarian questions. Some more than others. Trump didn’t seem at all concerned, Carter was arguably TOO concerned.
Also, there are geopolitical reasons for Biden to be concerned with Israeli conduct. It is making us look terrible. Many in the world see us as immense hypocrites–we caterwaul about civilian casualties when they are White and in Ukraine, but we ignore/subsidize civilian deaths in the Gaza. So even if Biden is a cold unfeeling human, there are non-partisan reasons for him to care about the bloodshed in the Gaza that have nothing to do with elections.
The suffering in Gaza is also a legal matter. The Leahy Amendment and a few other laws and regulations govern whether we can give weapons to a government or military that is conducting human rights abuses. The tying of a wounded Palestinian on the hood of an Israeli vehicle this week, for example, seemed to be an obvious example of a human shield, which is strictly forbidden.
By contrast, it is hard (although Jack has done some remarkable stretches to get there) to come up with a non-partisan reason for Trump to SUDDENLY be concerned about corruption in one country when it involves his expected opponent months later.
“Many in the world” are being ridiculous. Russia started the war. Ukraine’s citizens are victims. Hamas started that war. Israel’s civilians were victims. Gaza put a terrorist group in charge; it brought a just war down on Gaza, necessary to stop Hamas from killing more Jewish civilians, because that’s what they do. There’s no hypocrisy
Jack, you brought up the Israel-Palestine conflict, while making what I found to be a biased and unfair assumption about Biden’s motives, right after saying it was unethical to assume the worst motives on Trump’s part. I don’t see how I am supposed to challenge that without pointing out the nuances of the conflict, which of course have a ton of ethical ramifications. Is it against the comment policies to talk about the ethics of war?
I do not dispute that Hamas started the war or that fighting Hamas is a just war. That does not mean any and all tactics in the war are justified. And there are as many differences between this and the Russia-Ukraine war as there are similarities; Ukraine has not killed anywhere near as many Russian civilians as Israel has in Palestine, for instance, and if they had, a reevaluation of our commitments would be justified. Of course, Russia is the occupying power in that case; can’t be compared to Hamas, which is not occupying Israel.
Your comments on this issue are also full of more contradictions and double standards. You condemn Hamas for not recognizing Israel (as you should) but then say “There is no Palestine.” You condemn them for refusing a two-state solution while arguing that we should continue to give unlimited funds and weapons to Netanyahu’s government, which also opposes a two-state solution. (You know who does support a two-state solution? Biden.)
That you see this conflict as completely black and white, and have no concern for the massive civilian casualties in Gaza, does not mean others are incapable of doing so and that the only reason anyone would claim to is because they “support terrorists” or want to pander to those who do.
I simply do not accept that Netanyahu’s strategy in this war is the only way to fight Hamas, and neither does Joe Biden. That’s the motive. And comparing it to Trump’s threat to withhold weapons in exchange for a sham investigation into non-existent corruption by his chief political rival is…well…it’s completely unethical, and shows a warped view of ethics.
In addition, smart people don’t think the ethics of this conflict is easy. It’s not. Yes, Hamas is awful. So are the settlers. Are the settlers as bad? Surely not. But if you haven’t heard settlers and rightwing Israels marching through Jerusalem or settlements or Palestinian towns screaming Death to Arabs Death to Arabs pay attention. The settlers and IDF have killed over 400 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, two of them American citizens. Many of them utterly innocent.
And if you are always against terrorism, how do you feel about Irgun? Israel was founded in part by terrorist acts, in which civilians were killed in cowardly bombings.
And if there is no Palestine, remember–there once was no Israel. Contested nationalisms are often like that. There’s no Kurdistan either, yet….but there could be.
I’ve studied this conflict for 30 years, and I don’t have your degree of certainty. I envy you your confidence in your ability to figure it all out.
The basic ethics principle here is “actions have consequences, and one is responsible for the actions one takes.” The problem could have been settled in 1948: the Palestinians could have accepted the UN plan of having their own state, they could have agreed to accept Isreal’s existence, and let bygones be bygones. Instead, the Arab nations all tried to wipe Israel out, and were certain they would succeed. They didn’t they kept trying. They lost territory when their wars failed: that happens when you start wars and lose. Don’t start wars.
I know all about the terrorism waged against the British and others as Israel sought to get control of a homeland. Terrorism is wrong. I doubt that terrorism “worked” for the Jews—I think the collective guilt of the international community over the Holocaust was the catalyst. The situation was what I call ethics zugswang: some action had to be taken, but there were no ethical options: all of them were unjust. The Palestinians lost. There is no reason why they should have felt then, or feel now, that this was fair or that they deserved what happened. The natural emotional response to an injustice (from their perspective) of that magnitude is anger and hate. But the ethical response in that situation is clear, at least from an objective perspective. Make the best of a bad situation. Stay rational. Avoid violence and making the problem worse. It is completely understandable why the Palestinians wouldn’t or couldn’t do that. It is similarly completely understandable why the Jews, after what they had endured during Hitler’s rampage while the rest of the world, including the U.S. pretended not to see, were not disposed to be sympathetic or charitable. After finding themselves under attack again, even less so.
The political complexities, constant turmoil and shifting power-players are dizzying, but the basic ethical principles are not. Zero sum games are not ethical: win-wins can’t exist. After decades and generations, the loudest voices in this conflict lack perspective or sufficient context to be rational or altruistic.Meanwhile, the US Left’s habit of reducing everything to oppressors and oppressed, victims and villains, has, absurdly managed to make the most historically abused and mistreated people on earth the villains in their warped construct, and the current terrorists the martyrs.
“Smart people” may buy it, but only after bias has made them stupid. Again, we are back to not starting wars, but if you do, the suffering you endure is entirely your own responsibility. If you want the suffering to stop, quit, surrender. And if you started the war by engaging in terrorism, anyone supporting your attempts to achieve any advance or advantage as a result of that war is thereby validating terrorism as a tool and strategy.
The basic ethics principle here is “actions have consequences, and one is responsible for the actions one takes.”
You could of course apply this logic to any Trump’s impeachments and prosecutions, which would not have happened had he not taken extremely unethical if not illegal actions, but you don’t. And in that case, the only person suffering for Trump’s actions is Donald Trump; the issue in the Israel-Palestine conflict is that lots of innocent people, including children, are suffering for what Hamas has done. Biden has done nothing but try to minimize the suffering; he is still supportive of Israel’s fight against Hamas, he simply wants them to fight this war in a way that minimizes civilian casualties. That is completely rational and ethical. Your framing of this as “trying to make Israel quit defending itself” while pandering to the left for political gain remains misleading, as well as an unresolved double standard when you condemn others for ascribing selfish motives to Trump for far more clearly selfishly motivated actions.
“You could of course apply this logic to any Trump’s impeachments and prosecutions, which would not have happened had he not taken extremely unethical if not illegal actions”
I’m not going to finish any comment that starts like that, because it is 1) a straw man 2) irrelevant and 3) stupid. You’re on thin ice here.
The question is whether an impeachment, which has specific constitutional and historical standards, is legitimate and legal, not whither the target of an illicit impeachment engaged in any conduct that was unwise, irresponsible, ill considered or unethical.
This is your last warning.
The question is whether an impeachment, which has specific constitutional and historical standards, is legitimate and legal…
I didn’t know the second part was in question at all; impeachment can’t be illegal. “High crimes and misdemeanors” has no legal definition. Article 1 says the House “has the sole power of impeachment” and the Senate has “the sole power to try all impeachments.” They can impeach for whatever reason they deem valid.
Whether it’s “legitimate” is a matter of opinion. The USA Today writer her has laid out the case that the J6 impeachment was valid; I won’t go more into that. I have laid out the evidence that the Ukraine impeachment was valid, as the evidence shows there was no “national interest” basis for Trump to secretly request Ukraine investigate Biden’s role in the firing of Shokin, let alone tie this to the threat of withholding aid. All the available evidence, accessible to Trump in the U.S. at the time, showed that the firing of Shokin was an extension of bipartisan, internationally supported U.S. policy–not, as Trump and others falsely claimed, a unilateral attempt by Biden to protect his son (who was never being investigated by Shokin, a lazy and corrrupt prosecutor).
Again, Trump could have found this out at any time. He was POTUS. He could have asked anyone who worked in the White House, or the Republican senators who also favored Shokin’s firing. Thus, it is only logical to conclude he was not actually after the truth, and that Trump’s phone call was made for purely selfish and political reasons. He put his desire to get Joe Biden ahead of our national interests and commitment to our allies. That is corrupt. The defense that “exposing the corruption of a US VP is in the US’s best interest” cannot hold up when there was clearly no corruption. And even if there had been, you’d have to then make the case that exposing Joe Biden was more important than ensuring Ukraine had the weapons it needed to defend itself against Russian aggression. (Trump does believe that, because of course he thinks smearing his political opponent is more important than Ukrainian sovereignty.)
You have not rebutted any of this evidence nor have you explained how this conclusion of Trump’s motives lacks support. These are necessary conditions to proving your claim that the Ukraine impeachment was invalid.
NTA: I’m not debating the illicit Trump impeachments with you: plenty of non-Trump deranged constitutional experts have made persuasive (and correct—Presidential history and law is one of my fields) arguments that they were purely political, weak, partisan, and permanently damaged the value of the device.
My point was and is that you flipping to Trump’s impeachments in a discussion about the Hamas-Israel conflict is breathtakingly deranged.
“My point was and is that you flipping to Trump’s impeachments in a discussion about the Hamas-Israel conflict is breathtakingly deranged.”
You brought both of these topics up. And the comparison I made between your stance on the two topics was a direct response to your injunction against Jdkazoo123 for assuming bad faith on Trump’s part for his actions that led to his first impeachment, while simultaneously assuming the worst possible motive of Biden for his Israel policy.
You keep doing this: you make extremely controversial statements about a given subject, often as an aside, then when people respond with evidence that your assessment of that topic isn’t entirely accurate or fair, you complain that we’re not addressing the point or that we’re going off topic, without ever addressing the substance of the counterargument. I can only interpret this as a deliberate tactic meant to deflect from criticism of your positions. If you want to ban me for pointing this out, that is your preorogative, but I hope you will consider how it demonstrates the weakness of your positions.
NAL, can I ask what you re trying to accomplish here? You’re not going to change Jack’s opinion on this matter, and the dogged insistence that he finally admit he’s wrong really makes you look pathetic. There will plenty of other opportunities to hash out these issues, and we only have limited bandwidth to work with. When it comes to a debate, I think it is prudent to follow a structure that limits how much back and forth you do. Make your case, make a rebuttal, make a closing statement, and be willing to let the topic end and move on to the next one. All of people who come on blogs and just keep worrying an issue like a terrier remind me of my favorite xkcd: https://xkcd.com/386/
Excellent advice. Also commenters who behave this way tend to get banned.
Ryan,
My intent is twofold.
One, I am trying to see if Jack understands that he is employing an ethical double standard: castigating some for assuming the worst possible intent on Trump’s part, while frequently assuming the worst possible intent on Biden’s part. (That Trump strikes me as, objectively, a more selfish and unethical individual makes this double standard particularly galling.)
Two, I am trying to shut down a pervasive yet debunked conspiracy theory that has existed for years on the right, and which led to Trump’s first impeachment.
I understand your belief that I should just let it go, but every reply Jack makes to me comes with new arguments that I find more than just unpersuasive, but unfair and illogical; forgive me for feeling the need to continue prodding to get to the heart of why such a smart person, who operates in the field of legal ethics, makes such arguments.
This is really simple: Biden made his intent clear when he made a wholly fascist “Soul of the Nation” speech accusing anyone who opposed him and his policies of being clear and present danger to the democracy. There is no ambiguity: if you give that speech, your intent is to strangle democracy. Then Democrats started prosecuting Trump to stop him from beating Biden. There no doubt to give Biden the benefit of, unless the theory is that he’s so disabled that he doesn’t know what’s happening. Trump never gave a speech like that. No President has. Biden has given two of them. For there to be a double standard, the two standards have to be applied to the same conduct.
He’s literally trying to play both sides of the issue at once
Sometimes this is what must be done for good diplomacy and what’s best. This conflict is super complicated and has been going on for decades.
It’s not WWII where the ethical lines were easily drawn.
A good politician and leader knows this.
A truth that both sides refuse to acknowledge, but nonetheless true. Jack says that Israel’s existence is on the line, but what about Palestine’s existence? Hamas is evil, but Netanyahu is, at best, corrupt and careless. The far left won’t be satisfied by anything less than total defunding of Israel, a recognition of “genocide,” and a one-state Palestine “from the river to the sea.” The far right wants to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians to build more beachfront condos in Gaza. The difference is that the far left hates Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and the far right person I just described is…Trump’s son-in-law and the guy he put in charge of Middle East policy last time. I’ll take Joe Biden’s “middle of the road” approach any day of the week.
OK, NAL, this is not an ethics comment. 1) Read the Comment policies. 2) There is no “Palestine” 3) I am well-aware of the history of this mess: it will never be resolved. The Palestinians have rejected two-state solutions multiple times. Now they have many generations that have been taught to hate Jews and Israel, and from their perspective, they have good reason. Too bad. Hamas and the the other Palestinian power-brokers won’t admit Israel’s right to exist, and believe terrorism is justified. On this blog, that makes them the bad guys. All the rest is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
This hopeless situation being protested by people who know nothing about the origins of Israel and its many botches and lost opportunities for peace is not a topic for discussion here. Take it outside, someplace else, but not here. There is no ethical way out of the problem: the Palestinians made certain of that. Now they are tied to Hamas. Hopeless.
Biden is not a good leader, or a competent leader. The ethical lines here are also easily drawn. Terrorists BAD. People who support terrorists BAD. Hamas is a terrorist organization: BAD It uses its own people as shields: BAD. Those people put Hamas in charge: Irresponsible (BAD). Any support for them or their terrorist government supports terrorism and the killing of Jews. BAD. It’s ugly, and its a mess, but it isn’t complicated ethically.
What do you mean by there’s no Palestine?
Are you talking about the speech where Biden said “Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology?” That is the opposite of accusing “everyone who opposes him and his policies” of being fascists. Biden named specific threats from the MAGA wing, including their defense of January 6th. That isn’t fascist. Even if it was, you’re arguing that this means he must have had corrupt motives for his Ukraine actions, or his policy regarding Israel? That doesn’t make any sense. This is just you saying that your bias against Biden means you can always assume worst motives on his part, but a similar bias against Trump is unfair. Trump calls people who disagree with him “human scum,” says we need to “suspend the Constitution,” and said his vice president should have “overturned the election.” But Biden pointing out that this guy and his followers are a threat to democracy is the real fascism? Hopeless bias.
”but it certainly warranted investigation.”
I hope you apply the same standard to Trump.
These are really good points I had not considered. There definitely seems to be a double standard.
I would also argue that EA is missing the forest for the trees when analyzing Trump’s behavior.
Like JD pointed out in another post, even before Trump was President he had similar behavior. To ignore that past behavior as some sort of clean slate when he became President is nonsensical.
Like when Trump claimed if he lost the election, it would only be because it’s rigged. And, wow surprise, when he lost the election he claimed the election was rigged. And even more shock was when all Trump’s allegations of a rigged election was proven false.
It doesn’t make logical sense to assume Trump’s motives were pure or correct.
Incidentally, Jack, as I pointed out the last time you minimized Trump post election subversion activities–the “relaxing” of the election laws has been upheld EVERY SINGLE TIME IT GETS TO COURT. BY REPUBLICAN and Democratic appointed judges. The rules changed because of a global pandemic. That happened in every democracy during that time. Republicans knew about it. Dems knew about it. When Trump lost…suddenly it was a crime? And, oddly, the Republicans elected under those rules NOT named Donald J. Trump had no trouble with their own victories.
Again–don’t fall for Trump’s bullshit. Whenever he loses, it’s rigged. Be smart.
And, oddly, the Republicans elected under those rules NOT named Donald J. Trump had no trouble with their own victories.
Jerry, I fully believe that the all the rules changes caught the Republicans with their pants down. I’m willing to concede quite a bit in that. But I’m curious what your thoughts are on this:
Your assertion that Republicans who were NOT Trump had no trouble with their victories actually works to support some of the allegations of fraud. At least one line of reasoning was that Trump underperformed in those swing states because so many ballots came through with only a vote for Biden, with blanks for every other candidate and issue. Now, this could be because so many people only cared about the presidential election and knew nothing about their local issues, but again, the accusation was that so many of those ballots were filled out in bulk by the harvesters, as it would have taken too long to go through the entirety of all the ballots.
In light of that, I don’t think your assertion I quoted is near as strong an argument as you do. Again, I’m just referring to this one specific argument, and I’m not agreeing nor disagreeing with the ballot harvesting allegations. I’m merely proposing that as an argument, it seems it can be used by either side of the debate, and so is not helpful in reaching a conclusion one way or another. Thoughts?
Localities historically differ in their number of down ballot drop-offs. It happens in every election but the rate is affected by ballot type, voting technology AND the number of races and length of the ballot. The longer the ballot, the more drop-off is a good rule. IF drop off rates jumped substantially AND the drop-off ballots were heavily favored towards one side, then that might be a reason to look at ballot harvesting. BUT–there have been no credible claims of such statistical abnormalities that have been reported, no evidence produced in any of the dozens of court proceedings of such harvesting.
in theory, I may be a direct lineal descendant of Edward the Confessor. But until I show some evidence of that, it’s just a claim. Indeed, if I have been offered numerous legal venues in which to make my claim, and I have failed to do so even at a minimal level of evidentiary standards, it creates a strong impression that I’m a fucking liar when I claim the throne of England.
Yes, there have been very few credible instances of fraud found from the 2020 election, and certainly nowhere enough to tilt the election. And at this point, it doesn’t matter, because the election was certified, which means (to me at least) that it is a done deal. If there were shenanigans that caught the Republicans flat-footed, that just means they better try harder the next go around. But I do appreciate the different view on the absentee ballots, since it is a better explanation of why I should accept the results we saw than by simply saying (as many others have done) that I’m some profanity-laced simpleton.
And while your unsubstantiated claims to being the direct descendant of Edward the Confessor might construe you to be a liar, charity would still demand that I merely insist you are mistaken. You might sincerely believe it, after all, which means you are not a liar. Deluded, maybe. Insane, maybe. It would only be after I had good evidence that you know you’re not what you claim that I would call you a liar.
I’m still of the opinion that the day of the Presidential Election should be a paid national holiday, and voting should only be done in person…with the possible exception of absentee/out-of-the-country military ballots. The states are in charge of the voting systems, but the federal government could do that one thing on behalf of the country.
Citizens in most districts would have a full 12 hours (7am-7pm) to devote to making their voices heard, and we eliminate most of the ways that alternate voting methods can create doubt in the process. You want President Trump to shut up about “stolen” elections? Then take it away from him by eliminating all methods most prone to accusation and/or abuse.
Vote in-person at your designated site during valid voting hours, verify your status as a citizen and a member of the precinct in which you’re voting (we do it here with some form of driver’s license/ID), cast your ballot, and leave.
Neither Trump, nor Biden, nor anyone else has any way to argue that it’s unfair or rigged.
I agree with a lot of this. We definitely should nationalize voting. Some states just suck at it, even after the Feds stepped in with billions of federal election assistance money in the aftermath of 2000. We should have national, portable registration with biometric voter IDs (Mexico, I repeat…. MEXICO…has this).
Yes to holiday–almost every other democracy on earth has this. If you are working two minimum wage jobs in most states, and have kids, voting costs you lost money one way or another.
Yes to one way of voting, coast to coast. There are actually pretty large differences in how we vote (whether we have referenda, names of various offices, hours for voting, machinery used, etc etc). Differences are even greater with regards to primaries/caucuses/conventions. Although for those, I could be persuaded that state parties should have autonomy to decide.
I think we do need to maintain some allowance for those who are home bound to vote, either online or mail in, or SOMETHING.
National registry, so that folks with 2+ homes don’t vote in two places. It’s one of the most common forms of fraud, even though of course that’s like saying most common form of an endangered species. We don’t have a lot of fraud, but the rich folks voting in Florida and NY or NJ is one.
Cut the link between jury duty and voter registration. It depresses registration. Or have it be an opt in–when you register to vote, would you be willing to serve on jury etc.
I’d also love to see Rank Choice voting implemented. It’s one of the only structural ways to fight polarization.
“Cut the link between jury duty and voter registration. It depresses registration. Or have it be an opt in–when you register to vote, would you be willing to serve on jury etc.”
Good point. My mother is irked because she’s got a jury duty summons. She says she’s going to lie on the form. I told her not to do that.
There’s nothing wrong with Mom. She just doesn’t want the hassle. Of course, she probably shouldn’t be voting, either.
I might disagree with the nationalized voting system (and I think there is some Constitutional language to deal with), simply because, as a software guy, I think a single system is easier to hack/manipulate. Having written that, if I were in a position of influence, I would certainly be open to ideas.
I agree with the national registry. My wife and I live in an apartment in one county, but own a retirement home in another county (where we plan to move full time in a couple of years). We would never think of attempting to vote twice. Others might. Good idea.
I disagree with the jury duty stipulation, mostly because I’ve been called many times (and served twice) and I think it’s our duties as citizens to serve, but I could give ground on that if it meant getting the other things.
Yeah, I hear you on a single national system. It’s a worry. But it has vast advantages, which is why even other federal nations (Canada, Germany, Australia, etc) don’t let each sub governmental level have its own voting system. In 2000, there was a close national election in Canada. They did a national recount in…24 hours. We couldn’t manage to count four counties in Florida in a month of bickering and fighting.
But if we keep it at the state level, Congress should at least mandate non-partisan administration of elections. It is MADNESS that states have partisans running elections in most of the country. When we set up democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, Italy…we didn’t set up partisans running elections (or sub governments for that matter). Why? Because that would be stupid. It’s a loaded gun left lying around for any hyper-partisan appointee or elected official to pick up, and shoot democracy.
I think we are in agreement on this.
Agreement is not allowed on the Internet. The point is to endlessly argue. Let me insist that you are wrong in how you understood my point, and also, your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.
🙂
Don’t forget that some of Biden’s first acts were the wholesale revocation of many of Trump’s policies that benefited the country. Whether out of spite or stupidity, he chose to facilitate a flood of illegals into the States. This endangers citizens and dilutes and skews the representation that is their due.
Which justice department sent their third in line to help facilitate the lawfare of a NY prosecutor who ran on a promise to “get Trump”? Even ex NY governor, Andrew Cuomo, not a Trump fan or even Republican, sees how dirty that was: “If his name was not Donald Trump, and if he wasn’t running for president … I’m the former AG of in New York, [and] I’m telling you that case would’ve never been brought….That’s what is offensive to people, and it should be because if there’s anything left, it’s belief in the justice system,”
But Trump is the “threat to democracy” because he’s rude, acts like a player in the bare-knuckles NY construction and real estate game, and is unschooled in the proper methods for a normal politician to sell access and launder Chinese and Ukrainian money to himself and family.
To be fair, I do think Trump is a risky leader for a democracy to put in charge, particularly after the Democrats essentially ruined impeachment as the essential safety valve it was designed to be. He’s risky: the current version of the Democrats are a suicidal choice for the country to keep in power. It’s a terrible choice, but it should still be an easy one.
Exactly. I never did, and still don’t, personally like Trump or his “type”. The description “short-fingered vulgarian” has always seemed appropriate (I thought that was a P.J. O’Rourke line…just recently found out otherwise.)
Still, allowing an endless foreign invasion and catering to the invaders, tolerating ever-increasing community-destroying street crime, and demanding society favor and even celebrate the whims of its most bizarrely dysfunctional members, and our children be schooled with that as a prime directive, all the while scheming how to extract more from the productive, somehow doesn’t drive me to support Biden and his democrat puppeteers.
Crime is down.
Immigration is a problem, but immigration also, legal and illegal, kept our economy booming coming out of the pandemic. It kept inflation lower than it otherwise would have been. Economists have pointed out that our rapid return to positive GDP after the pandemic, particularly compared to the anemic recovery of other industrialized democracies, was partially a result of immigrant labor. There’s a bipartisan solution on the table for immigration, we should take it. Long path to citizenship for law-abiding folks already here, big price tag on getting it, stronger border control so we don’t get another 11 million illegals, AND fix and expand legal immigration while cracking down on businesses that hire illegals AND deport the criminals among the illegal immigrants. Both parties keep choosing the issue, instead of compromise.
The economy is doing very well. The stock market is at record highs. Unemployment at near record lows. Inflation came back down rapidly. Most industrialized nations would KILL for our numbers.
What exactly is suicidal about voting for Biden? The arguments I can think of are: national debt crisis, but Trump was worse on the deficit/debt than Biden has been. Corruption? There’s no way you can seriously argue that the Biden administration is more corrupt than Trump, whether measured by money to the President or by number of Cabinet officials buried in corrupt scandals. Trump’s Interior Secretary ALONE had more financial scandals than the entire Biden administration.
Suicidal? make the argument–I’m curious.
How do you explain the 2 billion dollars Kushner got from Saudi Arabia for his investment firm? And remember–he doesn’t have a track record for running such a large portfolio successfully? And he was in charge of our Middle East policy for 4 years. (and also–this is so much bigger than anything Hunter ever got from anywhere–it’s exponentially larger levels of corruption).
It takes a lot of chutzpah for a Trump defender to bring up corruption in office. But since you did, let’s review. There is no evidence, NONE, that Biden received anything from Hunter or James. There IS evidence that Hunter is a relatively untalented sleaze ball particularly during the time when he was an addict. He traded on his last name, aggressively. If they put everyone behind bars in DC who traded on a famous parent’s last name, the jails would be full. If Hunter Biden broke laws, his father has said two very important things: one–he should be prosecuted and two–I won’t pardon him. Is there anyone here who thinks that Trump would say/do the same about his sons?
If evidence emerges that Joe Biden unlawfully got money from Ukraine or China, he should also be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It could happen. Biden is human, and humans are often greedy, and many in politics begin to believe they are above the law, or (and this was the Clintons malady) that they gave up SO MUCH MONEY to go into politics that they DESERVE to make some $ on cattle futures or real estate or whatever.
But so far, unlike the money kicked to Trump by foreign governments staying at his wildly over-priced DC hotel, there is simply no evidence of Biden benefitting from his son or brother’s overseas ventures.
THIS IS YOUR HOST. Let me again remind everyone that A Friend banned himself months—years?—ago. He is going for the all-time record for attempted illicit posts after being banned, which AF already holds—you gotta admire the persistence. I guess.
I’m letting his name hang out here rather than send the whole post to SPAM Hell as usual because the assertion in this comment was unusually silly: “this blog could be as popular as Althouse’s and Turley’s if a real discussion could develop rather than the host within 15 minutes jumping back on to squash dissent.” And just as I was thinking abut relenting and giving AF another chance if he promised to abide by the commenter rules!
1. Althouse and Turley were/are professors, and their blog traffic is inflated by current and former students. Turley is also a public figure, a columnist, and TV commentator.
2. Althouse tightly moderates her commenters and doesn’t allow any debates or arguments at all, with her or anyone else. No back and forth is allowed. That’s not how I envision this forum. She also once banned ALL of her commenters. Turley doesn’t moderate his comments much at all, and as a result the quality of discussion is low. They are not role models for Ethics Alarms.
3. Except in the rare cases of complete idiots, I spend days, weeks or months trying to get obnoxious dissenters to debate fairly, stop trolling and sealioning, and to support their arguments civilly and with substance. Calling that “15 minutes” would normally mandate an apology, it the writer weren’t already banned.
Right. More DNC talking points! That’s what we need in the comments! Brilliant.
From Your Host: Aaaaand ANDY issues his first unauthorized comment! I was about to compliment him for at least respecting this forum’s rules AFTER he’s been banned. No such luck.
I’m leaving the shell of the now spammed comment so Ryan’s response isn’t obliterated, but please, don’t respond to banned commenters.
I would potentially agree that all those that Jack bans disagree with him, but there are certainly many commenters here who disagree with Jack and haven’t been banned. I disagree with Jack on a number of issues — definitions of morality and ethics, atheism, the morality of homosexuality, where the line is crossed between artistic talent and public accommodation, the value of American Football and our willingness as a culture to submit athletes to the possibility of CTE, robo-umpires, all off the top of my head.
The difference is that most of know how to disagree and do so in a civilized fashion, or at least by the rules Jack has established on his blog. Now, Jack doesn’t need me to defend him, but what I’ve witnessed with people who are banned are the following. They keep at a subject, demanding that Jack admit that he’s wrong, and will never, ever let the issue go. They refuse to engage Jack on his points. They distort what he is saying. They descend into profanity-laced name-calling. Jack gives them warnings, and they ignore them. They ultimately show they aren’t commenting to have a dialogue, they are stepping into the arena to win arguments. When it becomes apparent that Jack isn’t backing down, they double down and often become condescendingly nasty. Fundamentally, they contribute nothing to having a conversation at all.
Conversely, Jack even awards COTDs to thought-provoking stances that he fundamentally disagrees with. I think it is a gross mischaracterization to state that Jack eventually bans people who don’t agree with him.
Sorry, Jack! I must have missed Andy being banned. I’ve been very tempted to respond to “A Friend”, but so far have resisted, so please chalk this one up from ignorance!
Well, what happens on other threads are easily missed. Maybe I should have a list of banned commenters on the home page for easy reference….
It could be a nice “In Requiem” link, with the date and cause of banning. Maybe some suggestions of where flowers could be sent…
The January 6 “Insurrection” argument is complete hoakum though. Is there a point to relitigate it in detail every single time someone who buys into the narrative pops off?
And speaking of misinformation. Have you seen the Biden campaign TV commercials? Absolute whoppers from start to finish. Breathtaking.