BillDaCatt

The only danger I see in communism is that no matter how benevolent it starts, communism will always (eventually) become a dictatorship. If we could somehow take human greed out of the equation, communism could be really nice for everyone. As long as humans are in charge, communism will suck for nearly everyone.

I do.

The better question is this: How does trying to make Biden lose the primary in Michigan help the people in Gaza?

Right… Because there is another real choice in this race.

The orange con-man is even friendlier to Israel and would help to escalate this tragedy.

I don’t like the choices either, but the one that isn’t Biden is so much worse!

I’ve got fifty cents that says this dude watches an extraordinary amount of gay porn and somehow he thinks that is shameful. It isn’t, but he thinks it is.

Those red hats do seem to have a “mark of the beast” flair to them. They aren’t the permanent mark indicated in Revelation 13:16, but I think if you wear it every day it may as well be.

I’m not a Christian, but his followers certainly are. I wonder how they don’t see it?

American citizens who reside in one state are not the property of that state and cannot be prohibited from traveling to other states. Case closed.

UPS used to give real time tracking info here, but that disappeared sometime in mid to late-2023.

Agreed on the rest though, Amazon and UPS delivery are both much better than FedEx. I could not think of FedEx being a good retailer until they can improve the quality of their deliveries.

I was looking at one of those new washer/dryer combo units recently (I have heard these are common in Europe but they are fairly new to the US market) and it had a unique feature where you could fill the detergent reservoir, scan the barcode on the bottle, and the machine would dispense the appropriate amount of detergent for the load.

I can see connecting to the Internet on occasion might be helpful here to update the local barcode database, but I doubt it should need updating more often than once or twice a year. Does that mean the feature will work without constant live updates? Probably not, but I doubt it needs to update very often to remain current.

What he should have said is this:

“On January 6, 2021 former President Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection against the United States. Under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution Section 3, Colorado, Maine, and every other State in the nation should permanently remove him from the ballot because he is disqualified from running for office. Sadly this action might actually endear him to his supporters even more, but it is still the right thing to do.”

There just needs to be due process to make it harder to abuse.

I can see where you might think that. I previously thought the same. I don’t think so anymore.

Because an insurrection against the government is fundamentally a criminal act, one would naturally think that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would require a criminal conviction to apply. For most crimes you have to be convicted before there is a penalty. This is basic due process (which, BTW, is described in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment), however I don’t think that is the case here.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads as follows:

Section 3

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. (emphasis mine)

Section 3 describes how participating in an insurrection will result in disqualification to hold office. It has no requirement for a criminal conviction. If a State believes that a person who previously took an oath to support the US Constitution engaged in an insurrection, then that person is disqualified from running for office. There is no due process requirement for disqualification due to age or citizenship, so there is no need for due process for any other disqualification.

If Congress feels that the person should be allowed to run for office, they can remove the qualification disability with a two-thirds vote in both houses.

The States can decide for themselves if Trump is disqualified, if Congress disagrees they alone have the ability to fix it.

Look! A republican waving the flag of surrender. What a fucking coward. He’s not from my state and I’m still embarrassed that he is in Congress.

Trump lost Michigan in 2020 and then in 2022 Gretchen Whitmer (D) won a second term as Governor. Also in 2022, both the Michigan State Legislature and Michigan State Senate flipped to Democratic majorities for the first time in over a decade. I don’t know how things will go in 2024, but I don’t think flying the Trump banner will find any significant wins in Michigan.

I agree that more needs to be done regarding the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, but our hands are a pretty tied because of our obligations in the US treaty with Israel. Keeping those promises makes helping the Palestinian people very difficult, but breaking that treaty would likely destabilize the balance of power there and make things worse not better for everyone in the region. US Secretary of State Blinken has already strongly urged Israel to avoid civilian casualties. If Governor Whitmer said anything on the matter it would probably be seen as speaking out of turn.

It is odd to me how many people claim to be guided by a 400+ year old European version of a 2000+ year old Middle-Eastern text.