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by jghn8 hours ago |
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upvoteby mikkupikku7 hours ago|
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Yep. Remember when people were expecting Obama to prosecute Bush for war crimes? He should have, but chickened out and decided he would instead carry on Bush's transgressions as the new status quo.
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upvoteby Schmerika5 hours ago|
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> He should have, but chickened out and decided he would instead carry on Bush's transgressions as the new status quo.

With hindsight, it's pretty hard to believe that wasn't always the plan.

It was a pretty clever plan too, because everyone calling Obama out for [mass surveillance, illegal wars, promoting the '08 crash bankers, torture, funding ICE, bombing a wedding/s, assassinating US citizens without trial, attacking whistleblowers, using his supermajority to implement a Heritage Foundation healthcare plan, etc] was dismissed as a racist.

To this day I see people talk about the tan suit and the dijon mustard thing as if those fake outrage stories were the worst things he did. 'Wasn't it nice to have a President who could talk in complete sentences'.

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upvoteby mikkupikku4 hours ago|
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To be fair, it was nice to have a president that could speak in complete sentences. But yes, I agree that people go way too easy on Obama and present fake controversies as his worst. It should be possible to simultaneously recognize a president's strengths while also being critical of his flaws, but unfortunately American culture seems to have a growing personality cult problem, and it's generally just assumed that if you're not glazing a politician, you're an extremist from the other side doing false flag rhetoric or something inane like that.
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upvoteby coldpie8 hours ago|
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Your scepticism is well warranted. That's exactly the playbook Biden chose to follow, and I agree the most likely outcome is the next admin will follow it again.

However, I am unfortunately an incurable optimist, and sometimes we Americans really do pull off amazing feats. I live in the Twin Cities and we actually defeated DHS/CBP/ICE here. It was an amazing thing to witness, and maybe there is enough outrage at this admin's looting of the US that we can build the support nationally to do that kind of thing again.

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upvoteby jghn7 hours ago|
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It wasn't just Biden. This is how it played out with Obama as well, except that Romney lost in 2012.

Heck, Obama won the peace prize for no other reason than he wasn't George W Bush

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upvoteby lotsofpulp8 hours ago|
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"Defeated" is an interesting way to look at it. My perception is that the administration was just using the Twin Cities as a distraction, like they do for basically everything. In the mean time, the higher ups get their business deals done while the commoners are busy wasting energy cleaning up the mess. In which case, they succeeded. Now, onto the next distraction, and then the next one, and so on and so forth.

Minnesota has a very high probability of sending 2 Democrat senators and all their electoral votes to the Democrat presidential candidate. Minnesota and the Twin Cities are of zero consequence to this administration, so why not use them as a distraction?

The primary goal of the administration, sweeping tax cuts, was already accomplished in Jul 2025, so even Congress is of limited value now until after the next presidential election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

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upvoteby pchristensen7 hours ago|
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They certainly liked the distraction, but the invasion of MN allowed them to 1) catch some illegal immigrants, 2) intimidate legal immigrants, encouraging them to "self deport", 3) flex their power and demonstrate the ability to cause pain and harm to political enemies, and 4) give agents practice and training for the next city they invade. So far they have had these "surges" in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Minneapolis. There are plenty more cities in blue states and plenty of money left in their budget, and almost 3 years left in this administration.
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upvoteby insane_dreamer7 hours ago|
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I blame Garland for much of the mess we are in. If the DOJ had done their job regarding the Jan 6 insurrection we wouldn't be here talking about stupid tarrifs that caused a year of turbulence for US businesses and contributed to inflation, for no good reason (and this might be the least of the problems caused by the Trump admin).
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upvoteby wat100006 hours ago|
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It seemed like the Democrats selected Garland just so they could poke the Republicans in the eye. "You blocked him from SCOTUS so now we're going to make him Attorney General, how you like them apples?" Without really considering whether he'd actually do a good job.
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upvoteby ceejayoz6 hours ago|
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An alternative view is his personality used to be what you want (in theory) as both AG and SCOTUS justice - slow, deliberate, non-partisan.
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upvoteby wat100003 hours ago|
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There's slow, and then there's taking more than four years to prosecute high-profile crimes committed in plain view.
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upvoteby insane_dreamer6 hours ago|
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I agree; but different times called for different measures. There was also too much of a feeling of "whew, that was close, but now we can get back to normal" instead of "let's make sure that never happens again".
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upvoteby Schmerika5 hours ago|
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If you care to read a bit more about it [0], then the Garland pick looks a lot more sinister.

That's Sarah Kendzior, one of the few journalists who was talking about Epstein long before all that started to became well known.

'Fun' fact: The Attorney General is able to unseal court documents at will. And for four years Garland didn't do that with the Epstein files. It was beyond clear that the SC were slow rolling Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal, and still nothing even leaked.

0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-s...

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upvoteby dr-detroit8 hours ago|
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