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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • Look man I know what Agile is, and I can guarantee fucking Halliburton is not amongst the most Agile companies in software. I’ve worked for government contractors (not defense contractors, sorry, I like my soul right where it is) and they all claim to follow Agile methodologies and do everything but.

    However, even if they were very “Agile”, why the fuck would you plaster their logo on your homepage as if it’s a great thing that they’re using your software?

    The company that makes this software is dying to become more evil and/or more terrible than even Atlassian, and I would very much not bother investing my time to learn the nuances of their begging to be acquired by Satan products.











  • As for Trump’s supposed “immunity,” I think we’ll eventually discover that it isn’t as wide-reaching as many think, and especially as he thinks. SCOTUS said he has immunity for his official presidential duties, but that’s a serious limitation.

    It’s not a big limitation for Republicans. They can simply make the argument to a sympathetic Supreme Court that the charged violation was part of his official presidential duties.

    That’s the thing in general as well. “The law is the law” is a meaningless platitude. Humans interpret (and reinterpret) the law as they see fit. We also pick and choose which portions to enforce.

    That all set aside:

    On July 1, 2024, the Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

    (Emphasis mine)

    “At least presumptive immunity” is another bit of legal worminess that makes whomever is president with a sympathetic make-up on the Supreme Court effectively a king with one exception reiterated throughout the opinion: impeachment, conviction, and removal.

    Sure, there’s “unofficial acts”, but that is another bit of subjective non-sense that can be argued away before the trial even starts.

    The idea that “the law applies to everyone” is not shared by our current Supreme Court. Despite Democrats being fairly useless and spineless, this part of the deconstruction of our country (along with the disastrous decision in Citizen’s United) belongs solely upon the shoulders of the gowned guys and gals of the Supreme Court. He acts with impunity because he can. He acts without fear of prosecution because his supplicants in Congress and the Supreme Court allow him to do so.



  • We are still a nation of laws, and they extend to all of us, including Trump.

    This is not true according to the Supreme Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States.

    He’s just choosing to break them openly, because he knows the Dems are too cowardly to stop him, and he is 100% right.

    Once you accept that the highest court in the land is the one who decides which people are subject to the law, the path for accountability for Trump within the status quo of the system only has a single outlet: impeachment, conviction, and removal from office (followed by subsequent prosecution in the criminal system outside of Congress).

    While impeachment has occurred (or been threatened) multiple times, nobody has ever convicted a president nor removed one from office in the country’s history. The “Dems” – who you are somewhat unjustly demonizing here given the current make-up of Congress – got the closest anyone has ever gotten to removing one in Trump’s second impeachment.

    The status quo responded by saying “he’s close to out of office anyway, it doesn’t matter” and then allowed Trump’s propaganda machine to re-write history and turn the participants in the January 6th insurrection into pardoned, misunderstood heroes.

    Inside the system (which you still think will save us), the “Dems” also attempted (though halfheartedly) to prosecute Trump after he was out of office, and this Supreme Court carve out for a sitting President was the reward for them trying to enforce the law under Biden.

    The Democrats have plenty of blame to take here for the rise of Trump both generally speaking and in particular him being allowed to run for and win re-election. But they did much more than any single Republican has ever done to stop Trump.

    I’d argue that Biden’s true mistake was not acting as Lula did and arresting Trump immediately upon entry to office.



  • We’ve seen with Ukraine that drone warfare is highly effective and if the US wants to clear a supposed guerilla location they’ll just carpet bomb it all.

    That’s what you get from Ukraine? Cuz what I got is that a dime a dozen drone can take down millions of dollars of military equipment. Our shit is bloated, expensive, and built by organizations that rival the largest governments on the planet in terms of bureaucracy. Do you remember any of that recent shit with Boeing?

    In this scenario, we’re Russia.

    It’s easy to move in and destabilize a government. It’s another entirely to control a whole region that doesn’t want you there.

    We can compare this to Vietnam or whatever, but a lot has changed in 50 years and with Venezuela it’s clear that South America is not ready for this type of aggression.

    Why Vietnam? Try Iraq or Afghanistan except the destabilized nations we’re “building” are in our backyard. Great. 👍