ralphio

For now, pretty much unfortunately. Once oil demand drops the ME will be less of a priority for the US, but then will have to contend with the Israel lobby which won't go down easy.

You're right that most Americans don't care about this and, to the extent they do the pro-Israel group has more resources and have it as a higher political priority. On the other hand the pentagon and state dept definitely see it as a security issue. They see a highly militarized Israel as an asset as a detterent and an insurance policy if things pop off in the ME. This is the conventional wisdom, but it's far from controversial if it's the best policy given that Arab forces refuse to fight on the same side as the Israelis, and modern US war stategy calls for using local indigenous forces they prop up. Overall the US will never except not having a strong military presence in the ME (atleast until oil demand drops in the coming decades when renewables become very cheap) and Israel is one of the ways they achieve this.

Edit: for some reason I said far from controversial, but I meant it is controversial.

Not sure I understand the reasoning here. Making the judiciary elected directly instead of appointed would make them less independent? Seems like they'd be more independent from the rest of the state. There certainly are pros and cons to different judicial systems but this particular complaint doesn't make sense.

I wonder if the real concern is that instead buying off just the president they'd also have to buy off the judiciary if they wanred to have more influence in Mexican politics. To be fair they seem to have trouble buying off the president anyway.

The most high value targets are probably close to the actual battle lines. The oil refineries are also decently high value, but they don't need to go deep into Russia to disrupt that.

Typically it means there is no criminal offense to prosecute. It turns it into the equivalant of a speeding ticket.

Ah I get what you're saying, I think the smart money would have been to lie about whether she smoked weed. Could have avoided all of this lol.

I do see that Nashville had decriminalized it in 2016, but it's kinda weird since the article I posted definitely acts like it was still criminalized in 2020. I can't find where the chief of police says anything about it being decriminalized, in the article he just says

“I agree that General Funk, as District Attorney, has the authority to determine what cases to prosecute,” Chief Anderson said. “Marijuana possession remains a violation of Tennessee law, and we cannot be in a position of telling our officers to begin ignoring lawful statutes passed by the legislature. Nashville police officers continue to be encouraged to use their discretion in carrying out their duties, as guided by MNPD policy.”

Maybe a bad article or it had be recriminalized?

FYI it's pretty normal for DA's to juat say were not gonna prosecute a crime. This is just the first result when I searched for examples with weed:

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/nashville-da-will-no-longer-prosecute-minor-marijuana-possession-charges

Also if she has trouble countering lies, she'll get smoked by Trump so prep is really important here.

I don't think there's anything special that Gabbard did in that debate to make Kamala selfdestruct. She just asked her about the laughing about smoking weed after locking people up for smoking weed. Kamala had no answer prepared and in general isn't great at thinking on her feet. Kamala's prep needs to be better this time, otherwise it could be a repeat of the dem debates which could be catastropic in a close race.

I don't see a ton of value to a Fox and NBC debate. ABC and even CNN at this point are considerably less biased.

Yeah I remember this one. The "intelligence dossier" was just the same claims Israel was making publicly without additional evidence. Now maybe it's all true, but clearly most media outlets implied there was stronger evidence than actually existed. UK's Channel 4 was the exception.

Original Channel 4 video which shows the actual dossier which is just a list of the people Israel was accusing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tqG2yeF_4sg

Kind of an interesting conundrum. What comes out in the trial will likely look bad on the US, mainly the tourture, but the plea deal could be a liability for the current admin, since they'd be accused of being soft on terrorism.

ETA: Plus more could come out about the security failures of 9/11 which could be pretty embarrassing to the US.