• alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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    15 days ago

    The president appoints the head of the DoJ and DEA. Just appoint someone who says “I’ll hold the hearing and we’ll have the judgement within the hour”. Instead they appointed someone who scheduled the hearing for after they’ll have been kicked out by Trump’s guy. There is no way to read that as anything but they never intended for it to be rescheduled at all.

    Expecting the US to prevent other countries from going to war would require a level of intervention

    Or just not sending them the weapons they’re using to carry out that war.

    • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      The president appoints the head of the DoJ and DEA. Just appoint someone who says “I’ll hold the hearing and we’ll have the judgement within the hour”. Instead they appointed someone who scheduled the hearing for after they’ll have been kicked out by Trump’s guy. There is no way to read that as anything but they never intended for it to be rescheduled at all.

      I would consider that corruption. People should be appointed based on competency, not dogmatic loyalty to the person appointing them. Sidestepping the review process would open it up to challenge and set a precedent that would allow it and other drugs to similarly be casually reassigned based on the whims of whoever is in power in the future. It’s also almost certainly illegal, since the process for reassignment was part of the laws passed from Congress. Additionally, Biden first instructed the Attorney General to re-evaluate its scheduling in 2022, so it didn’t just start now. The review process just takes a long time I guess, but it’s fair to assume it hasn’t been a priority.

      Or just not sending them the weapons they’re using to carry out that war.

      If you mean Gaza, that started long before Biden’s presidency, and Hamas instigated the most recent conflict. If you mean Ukraine, that also started before Biden’s presidency, but I would consider leaving the country to conquest from Russia to be abandoning a responsibility to safeguard peaceful nations’ sovereignty. I would compare it to European nations appeasing Hitler by allowing him to conquer Austria and Czechoslovakia without consequences.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        13 days ago

        People should be appointed based on competency, not dogmatic loyalty to the person appointing them

        People should be appointed based on what the people elected you to do, anything else is a betrayal of the constituents. If someone voted for you because they believed you would reschedule cannabis, and you don’t get it done, that is a betrayal of your voters.

        Sidestepping the review process would open it up to challenge and set a precedent that would allow it and other drugs to similarly be casually reassigned based on the whims of whoever is in power in the future

        And then they will face electoral consequences.

        The review process just takes a long time I guess, but it’s fair to assume it hasn’t been a priority.

        The review process takes as long as the head of the DEA wants it to.

        Hamas instigated the most recent conflict

        Israel instigated the conflict by ethnically cleansing a million Palestinians and driving them into Gaza, and then building a wall around it and responding to peaceful protests such as the march of return by shooting doctors, women, and children.

        They were only able to do this and are only able to continue to do this because of American weapons and diplomatic support.

        I would compare it to European nations appeasing Hitler by allowing him to conquer Austria and Czechoslovakia without consequences

        The western allies who gave up Austria and Czechoslovakia were expecting consequences; they were expecting Hitler (and Poland, who also got territory from Czechoslovakia) to invade their common enemy, the USSR.

        In any case, there’s a good chance we’ll get to see the consequences under the next administration. Spoiler:

        spoiler

        Russia isn’t going to invade Europe.

        • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          People should be appointed based on what the people elected you to do, anything else is a betrayal of the constituents. If someone voted for you because they believed you would reschedule cannabis, and you don’t get it done, that is a betrayal of your voters.

          Yes, but “what the people elected you to do” isn’t as straightforward as you make it out to be. Yes, in this case, it means working to get cannabis legalized. But that doesn’t mean by any means necessary. You would certainly lose supporters if you specified legalizing it would require jeopardizing future access to other prescriptions or undermining the procedural standards set by Congress and earlier administrations. The people are electing a president to influence the direction of government, not a tyrant to remake it.

          And then they will face electoral consequences.

          Re-election prospects represent a deterrent, but only a purely reactive one in a system of checks and balances. Constitutional restrictions are better since by design they preemptively address overreach. Namely, the president has to work with other branches to get policy changed. Also, particularly drastic action can result in ending their current term early through impeachment.

          Israel instigated the conflict by…

          I was not trying to say history started on Oct. 7. In fact, my point was that the history of it started long before Biden’s administration and limited how much control he had over it. And you may argue that completely withdrawing support would limit Israel’s options. I frankly think that giving Israel nothing to lose would make them attack with less discrimination than they do now, assuming Biden was even willing to face the massive amount of pushback for that in the first place. Because calling back to your earlier point, that would definitely be against the will of the majority of his constituents.

          The western allies who gave up Austria and Czechoslovakia were expecting consequences; they were expecting Hitler (and Poland, who also got territory from Czechoslovakia) to invade their common enemy, the USSR.

          Is this true? It’s hard for me to believe that two major European powers wanted to stand idly by while a rival power (especially for France given their history) conquered much of Eastern Europe just on the hope it would end up fighting another rival power. Especially since they already had justification to keep Germany declawed from the Treaty of Versailles, and later chose to go to war when it came to the invasion of Poland, which the USSR was much more likely to care about and start a war over.