mtutiger

Definitely not the point I'm trying to make fwiw.

At the risk of being told that I'm whistling past the graveyard, we're talking about an agency of 20k officers in a country of 340 million. And an agency that has had significant issues recruiting new people despite added appropriations from the OBBB (ie. all the ads and signing bonuses), probably because unless you are a complete sociopath, it is demoralizing work. What they are doing in the Twin Cities is awful, it's certainly what they spent a lot of time down here doing during the fall months. But the reason they are surging resources up there, in all likelihood, is because they do not have the ability to do what they want to at scale. It's basically a large traveling roadshow at time point... This month its the cities, next month it could be another metro area. And they'll continue to do so until something breaks this cycle. (Whatever that thing is, I hope it happens sooner rather than later) As far as my neighbors are concerned, having sympathy for what the administration is doing and actually going out and signing up and putting skin in the game are two different things. Hence the aforementioned recruiting issues. The reality is that people want to go along to get along for the most part. They aren't disrupting their lives for this ****

Just a random observation, but while ICE's ostensible charge is centered around enforcing immigration law, it's noticable how little "immigration" factors in to this operation. Or that they aren't even bothering with the pretense that this operation is about "immigration"... It's purely about harassing a large metropolitan area because they can. If they keep this up, they are going to end up turning "abolish ICE" into something the median voter actually agrees with.

Nothing against the people of Iran and their struggle for freedom, but when people can't drive around the suburbs of Minneapolis St Paul without a nonzero chance of being accosted by our own government, it's a little hard to divide one's attention And it's certainly hard for me to take our own government's commitment to "democracy" and "freedom" seriously. Particularly as events in the Cities unfold and as they have endorsed the rump of Nicolas Maduro's government to stay in power after his ouster.

Imagine touting an aggregator that shows your guy being disliked by the majority of Americans as some sort of achievement.

I guess I'm unclear as to what part of that video is exculpatory of the state here.... if anything, it's only going to make things worse to their case, at least in terms of how the general public views what happened.

Also funny coming from the guy that is constantly posting Twitter links from said right wing grifters caught grifting lol

Have these Republicans seen who is President and how he speaks and drops expletives? Their "Disney ears" are quite selective, aren't they?

Even beyond that, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, speaking on behalf of an administration that is supposed to represent all Americans, called this 37 year old mom a "domestic terrorist". This administration lies and defames and circles the wagons every single chance they get. Even when they commit murder. There is no defense here... this woman should still be alive, and they all know it.

Yay, more taxpayer dollars to cover the tariffs... lol

The retort that one suspects would come from the MAGA types is that changes in the Trump tax bill to EV credits and other incentives toward green energy will take time to develop and be seen in the marketplace, which means that over time more people may again rely on fossil fuel production. The problem with that logic is that the rest of the world isn't going to react in the same way, the trends toward EV usage will inevitably continue in the EU/China/etc. Which will continue to impact the global demand for oil (by reducing it). The administration and MAGA at-large can whine and cry and vice signal about green energy all they want... it isn't going to stop it from becoming more and more of a reality as time goes on. We can either act like we are in the 21st Century and try to continue to create an economy for it domestically, or we can further cede the playing field to others (ie. China) to our economic detriment. The administration is choosing the latter to all of our detriment. One additional point regarding Venezuelan oil - how does this administration plan to exploit Venezuelan oil reserves without American boots on the ground?

This is where we are at: The kids who had their parents murdered in a politically motivated attack having to ask a President of the United States to take down disinformation and conspiracy theories that he pushed on his social media website. Shameful stuff.

The reality is that the push by the administration to open up further drilling and to disincentivize the use of green energy doesn't change the fundamental economics. And it will not stop the long term growth of green sources of energy domestically relative to fossil fuels. The only thing additional I would say is that, in a time when this administration is pushing the development of AI (and all the energy it will require), it's insane to disincentivize *any* source of energy development. But these are not serious people... And we will all have to pay the price for it in our power bills

It's a good question, and given this DOJ's track record, the odds of acquittal are most definitely non-zero

Exactly... or as The Who once screamed, "meet the new boss.... same as the old boss..." The question I'll keep asking is what's in all of this for the average American. How does this *materially* make anyone's life better? How does it make the country itself better off? I'm not seeing it. These guys clearly care more about creating some bread and circuses content for the base but don't give a **** about rising health care premiums or the rising cost of groceries, that's clear.

So to be clear, for all the celebrating about "freedom and democracy" for the Venezuelan people on the right, their solution is to take out Maduro and to replace Maduro with someone from his own government who, in all likelihood, will be just as repressive as he was to the Venezuelan people. So we killed 40 innocent Venezuelans and burned up taxpayer dollars for.... what exactly?

Another example of it would be their "SCIF" pictures from the raid (clearly trying to cosplay the Obama-OBL raid) where they have three tabs of Twitter open.... We are being led by morons who continually sous vide their brains on social media lol

Uhh, the government is still in tact?

Oil is running ~$60/barrel right now... it'd have to be a lot higher for the oil companies to be enthusiastic about refining Venezuelan crude. But the President is an idiot who doesn't understand economics, so lol

Broader point here but the reality is that when you lie as much as this administration does, it's not surprising when people no longer give you the benefit of the doubt

But other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?

That's very 2003 leadup to Iraq logic as well, isn't it?