Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025

News bits: Discontent with democracy in Europe; Authoritarianism update; The Palestinian plight

In the US, the 2024 elections apparently were significantly driven by a combination of discontent, anger and feelings of alienation mostly from inflation, immigration, and perceived aggressive, dictatorial wokeness and DEI. A scary NYT article reports about the same anti-democratic sentiments that have engulfed America and are apparently starting to rise in Canada too (not paywalled): 
Voters in Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands have shown the potency of this new populist wave. What’s behind their dramatic shift? We asked them. In more than two dozen interviews across the continent, Europeans who voted for far-right parties talked about casting their ballots in fury, in frustration, in protest, but perhaps most of all in a bid to bring change to a system they believe has failed to fulfill the contract between their democratically elected governments and the people.

They talked openly about nationalism, immigration, stagnant economies, the cost of living, housing shortages, anger at the elite and their countries’ perceived buckling to what many consider politically correct views. 

For 2025, the main event will be a Feb. 23 snap federal election following the collapse of the governing coalition in Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has made tremendous gains. Voters in Italy, Poland, Norway, Ireland, Romania and the Czech Republic — all countries where populist movements are either well established or on the rise — are also expected to choose leaders on the local or national levels.

Europe is changing.

Europe’s largest economy is stagnating, afflicted by high energy prices, industrial decline and job cuts. Fierce debates over immigration have raged on for a decade and Germany’s military aid to Ukraine has grown increasingly controversial.
Tarah Wild, Kindergarten assistant in Munich, 46: “I don’t like the fact that we are supposed to send our tax money for this war in Ukraine. We’re not asked whether we want this war at all. The migration policy doesn’t work here either. They bring everyone in, supposedly because they want to help the people who are doing badly. But somehow everyone comes in and takes advantage of Germany. A lot of people just don’t want to assimilate here.” 
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The second-term president likely will seek to cut off spending that lawmakers have already appropriated, setting off a constitutional struggle within the branches. If successful, he could wield the power to punish perceived foes.

DJT is entering his second term with vows to cut a vast array of government services and a radical plan to do so. Rather than relying on his party’s control of Congress to trim the budget, Trump and his advisers intend to test an obscure legal theory holding that presidents have sweeping power to withhold funding from programs they dislike.

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.
Trump’s claim to have impoundment power contravenes a Nixon-era law that forbids presidents from blocking spending over policy disagreements as well as a string of federal court rulings that prevent presidents from refusing to spend money unless Congress grants them the flexibility.  
Trump and his aides have been telegraphing his plans for a hostile takeover of the budgeting process for months. Trump has decried the 1974 law as “not a very good act” in his campaign video and said, “Bringing back impoundment will give us a crucial tool with which to obliterate the Deep State.”
By Deep State, DJT means reasonably competent, honest and transparent government. He wants government that is incompetent, corrupt and opaque.

And, being a full-blown authoritarian, DJT does not care about the 1974 law that made impoundment illegal. He is going to force the issue into the USSC in the hope that the court will give him unlimited, or at least significant, impoundment power. A supreme court decision to give a president the power to block congressionally approved funding he wants would seriously neuter congress. 
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DJT proposed moving all Palestinians out of Gaza so that Gaza can be rebuilt. He wants Egypt and Jordan to take them and settle them. Obviously, this nonsense is a thinly disguised trick too ethnically cleanse Gaza and give all the land to Israel. CNN writes:

Trump suggests his plan for Gaza Strip is to 
‘clean out the whole thing’
DJT indicated Saturday that he had spoken with the king of Jordan about potentially building housing and moving more than 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, a remarkable proposal from a sitting US president.

Trump said he asked Jordan’s Abdullah II, a key US partner in the region, to take in more Palestinians in a Saturday phone call.

“I said to him that I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The kingdom is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN.

Trump, who noted there have been centuries-long conflicts in the region, said Saturday, “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”

DJT's attitude toward the Palestinians is quite clear. He is very hostile to them. He acts like he hates their guts. Consortium News reports: Trump Lifts Settler Sanctions, West-Bank Violence Explodes -- On his first day in office, Donald Trump lifted all sanctions previously placed on Israeli settlers in the West Bank, a political move that coincided with a series of violent attacks by Israeli settlers targeting Palestinians that same night. While the president has publicly committed to combating violent extremism, extremist settler groups continue to finance their activities through American charities. On Monday night, with the backing of the Israeli military, settler groups launched a series of violent assaults on residents in the West Bank. The most severe attacks occurred in two villages near Qalqilya, where masked settlers set fires and fired indiscriminately. Amid the chaos, Israeli soldiers deployed tear gas against villagers attempting to flee, leaving 21 people injured.



The chances of a separate Palestinian state seem to be basically nil at this point.