“To some extent, Trump’s argument that “A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY,” as he put it in an all-caps Truth Social post last week, mirrors the position his lawyers have taken in seeking dismissal of federal charges stemming from his attempts to remain in office after losing reelection in 2020. Although a former president can be prosecuted for “purely private conduct,” they say, he can be prosecuted for “official acts” only if they resulted in impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.
As one judge noted when a skeptical D.C. Circuit panel probed the implications of that position earlier this month, it could literally give presidents a license to kill by ordering the assassination of their political opponents. Trump’s understanding of presidential immunity is, if anything, even broader.
“ALL PRESIDENTS MUST HAVE COMPLETE & TOTAL PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY,” Trump says, even when their actions “CROSS THE LINE” between legitimate exercises of presidential power and criminality. Otherwise, he warns, presidential “AUTHORITY & DECISIVENESS” will be “STRIPPED & GONE FOREVER.””
https://reason.com/2024/01/24/accused-of-dictatorial-ambitions-trump-doubles-down-on-authoritarianism/
“All investment is risky. What better way to avoid that risk than to use other people’s money? Federal, state, and local governments dispense gifts, grants, and loans to private companies, generously funded by taxpayers and usually with vague promises of economic development in return. While politicians say they don’t like to pick winners and losers, even the “winners” sometimes turn out to be losers for taxpayers.”
https://reason.com/2024/01/25/picking-winners-and-losers/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdo5VRuZd5k
“many Russian banks, including some key ones involved in energy transactions, have not been barred from SWIFT. According to the Atlantic Council, “most of Russia’s regional and smaller banks, over 300, still have access to SWIFT, enabling Russia to conduct cross-border payments and transactions for imports and exports.”
“The fact that the shut out was not universal has left ample scope for Russian banks to continue to benefit from SWIFT messaging services,” said Keatinge of RUSI Europe.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/24/russia-economy-west-sanctions-00142713
“What’s noteworthy in this entire conflict since Oct. 7 has been the lack of reaction or response from the Arab world. Saudi Arabia continues to hold the door open for a peace agreement with Israel. The UAE, Morocco and Bahrain didn’t even withdraw ambassadors. Jordan did, but of course with about half of its population being Palestinian, Jordan has a particular problem. That lack of reaction I think is very telling. If you needed another example that Arab states are not viscerally concerned about the Palestinians and their fate, this would be it.”
…
“The 1967 war and emergence of the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” was a watershed moment. Prior to that, the Palestinians in political terms were effectively a function of other Arab states and Arab militaries. You had the PLA, the Palestine Liberation Army, that was under command of other Arab states — Jordan and Syria in particular. So in a sense, you went from, say, 1947 and 1948 to 1967 without an independent Palestinian voice.
The trauma of ’67 changed that, where the PLO did emerge as the voice of the Palestinians. And what reaction did you get from the other Arabs? Fear and loathing. The 1967 war forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into exile following their brethren from the ’48 war [over the founding of Israel]. Many of them wound up in Lebanon and Jordan. And in Lebanon they emerged as an entity that was increasingly independent of any Lebanese government control. … In 1969, the Cairo accords effectively gave the Palestinians under the PLO virtual autonomy in areas where they were settled. They ran the camps and increasingly ran south Lebanon, and that of course was a precipitating factor for the 1982 Israeli invasion.
But getting back to the main point: The last thing the Arab states, particularly those around Palestine and Israel, wanted to see was an independent Palestinian movement, let alone a state.”
…
“The 1967 war brought two dramatic changes: It ended dreams of the conquest of Israel by force of arms, and it gave rise to the PLO as a somewhat independent force.”
…
“Black September, the 1970 PLO effort to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy. That failed not just because of the prowess of the Jordanian military but also because the Syrians withheld the air support for the Palestinians they had promised, and that allowed the Jordanians to win the day. That Syrian air force was under command of a general named Hafez al-Assad [later ruler of Syria], whose hatred and fear of all things Palestinian was intense.
That was one of the many ironies of the Israeli invasion in 1982, in that Israel did serious work for Syria in dismantling the PLO structures in Lebanon and forcing the PLO to evacuate from Beirut.”
…
“secular Palestinian nationalism. But even that was seen as an existential threat to both Jordan and Syria. For both countries, the PLO was a threat that they dealt with in different ways, but for both it was their top national security concern. Everything else was secondary. I don’t think we grasped that in the case of Syria.
The so-called Arab street [a term for public opinion in the Arab world] was behind the Palestinian cause, but it never really affected policy on part of any of the Arab governments. As you go around the region almost all [the Arab governments] were united on one point, which was that the Palestinians were a threat, a foreign population that should be weakened if not exterminated.
In Syria, you had the orchestration of a campaign against the PLO, and in Jordan, and the same in Egypt. It is noteworthy there is no Palestinian population in Egypt. Going back to the days of [former Egyptian leader] Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptians saw the threat. Again, the Palestinians contributed to their isolation through some spectacular acts like the assassination of a Jordanian prime minister in front of the Sheraton hotel in broad daylight in Cairo by two Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PLPF] gunmen, one of whom stooped down to drink the assassinated prime minister’s blood.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/21/why-arab-states-wont-support-palestinians-qa-00142277
“In dollar terms, Europe is providing more economic assistance to Ukraine than we are and just recently approved an additional $54 billion in aid. As a percentage of GDP, the United States ranks 15th globally in terms of security assistance provided to Ukraine.”
…
“The delay in Congress to approve funding for Ukraine is increasingly demoralizing to Ukrainians, as well as deadly. Ukraine is running low on weapons and ammunition and is having to ration its supplies. “The shortage is increasing day by day,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov, reportedly wrote to a top EU official recently. “The enemy’s ability to outshoot the Armed Forces of Ukraine by more than 3:1 is only getting worse.” All this is shaking Ukrainians’ view that we are a reliable ally.
This problem can be addressed by passage of the additional assistance for Ukraine. Such a move would be a huge morale boost to Ukrainians — and a huge blow to the Russians, whose leaders and mouthpieces in the media — Russian and Western — have concluded that we will abandon Ukraine.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/22/4-myths-about-ukraine-war-00142513
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYUkb49BdmQ
“Long live freedom, damn it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfcd0gWNIog
“The modern presidency has tremendous powers, of course, but this is still quite the stretch. Hawley is asking the White House to engage in central planning at an absurdly micro-level—and there is, thankfully, no law that actually allows the president to order a factory to continue producing aluminum if its owners have decided to stop.
Even so, the fact that Hawley is even making this request illustrates something important about how Republicans now view the relationship between government and business. It also says something about how the failures of protectionism will spur calls for more protectionism. And, finally, about how the phrase “national security” has become warped beyond recognition to justify further governmental intrusions into the economy.”
…
“It might shock Hawley and some of his colleagues to learn that the Defense Production Act is not a set of magic words that allow presidents to do whatever they’d like. In fact, all the law does is require that businesses fulfill orders from the government before other orders from private customers.
That’s because it is a law meant to be used during wartime. Here’s how it works: Let’s say there’s a war going on and the U.S. military desperately needs 10,000 widgets to ensure victory, lasting peace, and blah blah blah. The Pentagon sends a guy to the widget factory in Albuquerque to request those 10,000 widgets, but the owner of the factory says the 10,000 widgets sitting on his lot have already been purchased by his friend Bob and that the government will have to wait until the factory can produce another 10,000 widgets—so come back in two weeks.
Ah, but wait! The president just signed an order invoking the Defense Production Act for widgets, so now the guy from the Pentagon gets to cut the line. He can buy those 10,000 widgets, and Bob has to wait for the next set to come off the assembly line.
That’s what the Defense Production Act allows. It can’t conjure up new solar panels or additional supplies of insulation out of thin air. It doesn’t allow the government to put a gun to anyone’s head and force them to make baby formula or to keep an aluminum smelter running.”
…
“Remember those 10 percent tariffs on imported aluminum imposed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018? That was naked protectionism, and the announced closure of this Missouri smelter seems like pretty good evidence that it failed. There’s other evidence too: As Hawley points out in his letter, this is the third aluminum smelter in the U.S. to announce plans to downsize in recent months. Unfortunately, the failures of protectionism only ever seem to spur calls for more protectionism.”
https://reason.com/2024/01/26/josh-hawley-thinks-the-white-house-can-force-an-aluminum-plant-to-stay-open/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q36f2TqaD30