I don't think it'll be a good time in the short term.

Long term, maybe. I don't know. But short term it'd result in massacres with no restraint whatsoever, not even what little restraint they have now.

It's hard to believe, but Israel currently has restraint. Yes, they're slow-motion genociding the Palestinians in a grindingly cruel manner, but the reason it's slow-motion is because they have endless debates and factions and desire not to completely rip their masks off while the rest of the world watches and could maybe react on some level.

If Israel turns into full blown civil war all that restraint goes away. If you're already at the point where you're willing to gun down fellow Jews, why not mow down a bunch of Palestinian refugees along the way? If you're not even in control of all of Israel, where can you move Palestinians to get them out of your way? Just kill 'em.

I have no idea what is best in the short term. I have no idea what is best in the long term. Israel is just fucked. I wish there was some way for all the people who want to kill each other to just go ahead and do that without everyone else getting trapped in the crossfire.

I think she also missed the fact that a lot of people wanted a lunatic. They were dissatisfied with "the system" and someone like Trump promised to blow the system up.

Which he has, frankly. Not the ideal way to go about it but it was effective. They're also starting to learn how good the old system was for them, too late alas.

This is the thing people keep missing. Democracy is usually reactionary. What gets people to come vote is to "throw the bums out", to bring in change. It's hard to get people to rally around the boring old status quo, especially if people think the status quo sucks.

Ah, so as this progresses the Republicans steadily run out of "competent" lawyers because they keep getting disbarred (or quitting to save their legal skins), leaving them with increasingly incompetent ones that have an even harder time accomplishing stuff.

Here's hoping their legal wells run dry quickly, I suppose.

Federal judges still do threaten and issue contempt of court penalties and disciplinary referrals to officials who blatantly disobey court orders.

I guess this is my main point of concern right now, as an outsider. I know that the courts are still ruling against Trump and the Republicans fairly regularly, but then I hear about situations where they're simply ignoring the courts' rulings and little seems to actually happen as a result.

What do those "disciplinary referrals" actually do? Do people actually get fired, or is it just something else for the Republicans to ignore?

My guess would be because the "we're trying to kill her" thing is an extreme aberration of the regular order of things so as soon as the narrow window where that was somehow okay is closed the default practice of trying to help people kicks back in. Especially once she's in the hands of actual medical practitioners who take their oathes seriously.

It made both of us richer. Spare us this Trumpian zero-sum view, it's normal for both trading partners to benefit.

It wouldn't have been if it was reliable.

Fundamentally, trade happens when you've got something that you don't want as much as your neighbour does, but he has something that you want more than he does. The result is that each side gets something they wanted more.

We can build a pipeline a lot faster than we can build refineries. By all means do both, but the refineries won't be online for many years after we're already selling the unrefined stuff.

Because trade is good for everyone involved? That's something the Americans have completely lost the plot on.

Your avatar image checks out. :)