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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • My response was to a comment that did nothing to further your position whatsoever:

    “Your opinions don’t represent reality.”

    That comment does not address anything about Bernie Sanders, genocide, expulsion, censure, or any other topic previously raised. That comment wasn’t your first ad hominem argument; you previously declared I was “out of touch with reality”. I ignored the ad hominem part and focused solely on the actual issue.

    Your argument is based primarily on the false idea that Tlaib was censured for calling Israel’s actions a “genocide”. That is not true. The Democratic legislators who joined the Republicans in censuring her cited not “genocide”, but “from the river to the sea”, which they deemed to be a call for the destruction of Israel and the murdering of Jews.

    The remainder of your argument is based on the idea that the UN deems “genocide” to be an act that justifies military intervention. You presented the idea that a senator could be expelled for suggesting military intervention should be used against an “ally”. You have yet to provide any sort of citation or other support for that point. You pivoted instead to Tlaib’s censure, without further addressing that point.

    I have argued that the Senate is specifically empowered to discuss military intervention, including intervention against an ally. I will generally cite Article I, Section 8 of the constitution to support that point.

    I would say that if a senator is expelled for doing something the Senate is specifically empowered to do, everyone who supports such an expulsion is an enemy of the constitution, and we have much, much bigger problems to contend with than the Israel/Palestine debate.




  • He certainly will face severe consequences: from his constituents. They could recall him, or replace him in the next election. He faces consequences from the Democratic party: they can refuse to support his re-election.

    He faces serious consequences from the people he represents, but not from the Senate or the federal government.

    Censure is nothing. It carries no penalty. Democratic support for Tlaib’s censure was easy to give because it carried no actual cost. There is no way that Democratic support for censure would translate to support for her expulsion. A legislator who isn’t facing censure just isn’t trying hard enough.

    Bernie is free to call it a genocide if he wants. The fact that he isn’t (ostensibly) tells us that his constituency doesn’t want him to do that.


  • Tlaib wasn’t censured for using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions toward Palestinians. She was censured for repeating the slogan “from the river to the sea”, which has been described as “nothing else but the call for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews”.

    She was only censured because a sufficient number of Democrats agreed with Republicans to issue a censure. None of those Democrats would support a Republican call for her expulsion.

    My point is that Bernie is free to call it a genocide if he wants to. He’s free to call for American military intervention against Israel if he wants to.

    There is a huge constitutional issue with the expulsion of a legislator for making a statement that is well within the scope of their constitutional duties.

    I don’t need evidence of genocide being considered justification to intervene. I readily concede that point. My concern here is the constitutional issue that would arise if a legislator is effectively prohibited from representing their constituency, including a constituency that thinks Israel is engaged in Genocide.





  • the hospital did a CAT scan of little Nikki and found a swollen, bleeding brain believed at the time to be a classic sign of shaken baby syndrome.

    There are, indeed, conditions that will cause a brain to bleed inside the skull. Those conditions don’t explain all the head injuries outside the skull: the hematomas and hemmorhaging between the skin and the skull.

    If you want to argue against the death penalty, go ahead. I lean against it; you don’t have to convince me.

    But we do a disservice to every actual innocent convict when we pretend a guilty man is innocent just to avoid a sentence we abhor.

    If you want to explain the myriad serious head injuries in some way that absolves him of responsibility, I’m listening.




  • From wiki:

    According to prosecutors, physicians reported that Nikki suffered and ultimately died of “massive head trauma”. Prosecutors argued that in the emergency room, Nikki was found to have “[a] bruise on the back of her shoulder, a scraped elbow, a bruise over her right eyebrow, bruises on her chin, a bruise on her left cheek, an abrasion next to her left eye, multiple bruises on the back of her head, a torn frenulum in her mouth, bruising on the inner surface of the lower lip, subscapular and subgaleal hemorrhaging between her skin and her skull, subarachnoid bleeding, subdural hematoma, both pre-retinal and retinal hemorrhages and brain edema.”[12] Additionally, four separate doctors testified Nikki had “multiple blows to different points on the head,” which could not have been caused by falling off a bed.[13] At trial, Roberson’s defense expert admitted that Roberson “lost it” and shook Nikki because he could not stop her from crying.[13]



  • The national popular vote interstate compact is a pipe dream.

    In the extremely unlikely event it is ever enacted, it will be dissolved as soon as a supporting state realizes it is likely to affect the outcome of the upcoming election.

    If it ever actually affects an election, it will likely be deemed unconstitutional at the supreme court.

    Even if it is not deemed unconstitutional, states bound to vote against their own voters will withdraw from it immediately.

    At most, it will directly affect no more than one election, and probably not in the direction expected.