Sure, and what do you call a doctor without an employer?

Either rich or unemployed.

If they don’t come from money then they aren’t going to work for themselves until late in their career. Just like good trades people. Having toys doesn’t mean shit if your existence is still predicated on employment.

The problem is Trump has no credibility. Nobody is going to believe it.

Nobody is disputing that.

Then the term definitely doesn’t apply to the “professional” class in the US. You generally aren’t hanging your own shingle until late in your career or if you came from money. Doctors are very much reliant on employers here and most of the West.

If you look at the polling on the universal policies then you’ll see they very much do. It’s hard not to be aware that you would starve if you didn’t have a job.

Record levels of military spending while the administration is openly blowing up the procurement process to grab fistfuls of cash from the procurement of stuff we neither want nor need.

Don’t forget about Greenland! We have to go help them answer correctly on their referendum.

Hey, I have an idea. We can have the military run the school system. That way kids will get 3 meals a day from 5-24 years old!

^{3 Meals a day does not include a promise of nutrition, heat, or food. Water and motrin available on demand in amounts that make doctors cry.}

This is one of many areas we have a false choice in. We can have party A spend 901 Billion or Party B spend 902 Billion. There is an out and good people are working on bringing up candidates outside the old system. But it will take time.

I think that’s easier than self investigation though. We can always fend that off by calling it whataboutism. In fact that’s exactly how we handle calling out Chinese and Iranian abuses. Israel quite simply has a loyal voting block in the US that our politicians are afraid of. They don’t run the country or any of that conspiracy crap but they are incredibly active in defending Israel.

What happens if the petit-bourgeoisie stop working? No food? Oh shiiiiit.

It’s almost like that’s a term used to discredit members of the working class. Don’t go throwing away allies in the fight to end the rich.

Put the litmus test away. PPP is a real thing and pretending it isn’t is not going to earn you any friends. A two bedroom condo in the US is easily 600,000 USD. The problem isn’t the people trying to get off the rental treadmill it’s the people making prices that high so we need high wages to live. In other words, the elite in the wealthiest countries are fucking everyone over, not just Panamanian farmers.

The far more troubling problem to me is the division of wealth inside the countries. If we tackled that then there would also be a lot more money for the workers at the foreign owned factory in Hungary. You are right that the national income isn’t the problem, but you’re missing that the wealth gap in the wealthiest countries feeds the gap between countries and regions too.

That’s because they left giant loopholes in those laws. Like allowing the ultra wealthy to remove their money from the country. They got that money because of the country, they don’t get to then fuck off and take that wealth out of the country. They’re free to leave, the majority of their wealth is not.

And poor nobles can cry me a river, sell the assets. Take the stocks too. The entire idea of shareholders running the company needs to die anyways.

We’ve seen them voluntarily do homeless stints. It’s just not the same thing when you know you’re going back to your mansion in a few weeks. Just fucking tax their wealth bracket out of existence.

You had me in the first half…

More people need to get this. Obama and Biden conducted airstrikes with the exact same expectations and the exact same “unlawful combatant” policy allowing us to ignore the Geneva conventions.

I guarantee anyone reading this that the guy calling these strikes has done the same thing his entire career. If they want to change that policy then go for it. But don’t expect anyone to be prosecuted over doing it before that.

That’s what these court battles in Los Angeles and Chicago have been about. I’ve been staying very top level but suffice to say he cannot just yell martial law and charge into a blue city. Laws describe when and how it is proper to do so. The court push back is important not because we think it will restrain Trump, but because the generals are not personally loyal to Trump. As a reminder, Trump wanted to shoot Americans in his first term. It was the establishment that told him no. He tried to directly order the military and a general literally yelled at him for it.

The threat is overwhelmingly from DHS and DOJ. They have the authority, ability, and will. ICE just got funded to an amount equal the British military. The only thing missing is the volunteers and the federal law enforcement training centers have pushed back training for anyone other than ICE to handle the glut of new ICE agents. ICE’s detention budget is also now far larger than the federal prison budget. They could theoretically hold about 8 percent of the US population with the budget they got.

Everyone is worried about the military while our federal law enforcement is doing military style presence patrols in Los Angeles.

Oh it’s definitely been US policy for decades. The videos are out there. If you want to talk about what constitutes being “out of combat” and whether the Hague would take the case it could certainly be an interesting exercise. However I doubt the Hague would take it up and neither the Department of Justice nor the military courts are going to take it up without a directive from the President. Democrats aren’t going to fall all over themselves to give that directive either though because it would mean Biden and Obama also officially presided over a regime of war crimes.

At the end of the day it comes down to the US having X policy that lies in a gray area of international law. Which leads me to another Bush era policy that we’ve never really rescinded. If you’re not a uniformed soldier in service to an enemy country the US doesn’t consider you to have the protections that a soldier would have after surrendering. It was a neat little policy that we used to allow ourselves to torture people labeled terrorists. So yeah that’s another thing I expect to hear in the next few days, “cartel members are unlawful combatants.”

To use force against Americans inside America without martial law, an act of Congress, or an extenuating circumstance like self defense.

Trump really pushed the envelope by ordering troops to accompany ICE raids under the authorization to guard federal property. But they still couldn’t do anything but defend themselves technically. It’s just that he effectively tied their self defense to the ICE agents defense. I’m pretty sure the courts knocked that one back and the military pulled back though. Which is why they’ve gone so hard with Border Patrol, ICE, and any volunteers from within DHS/DOJ that have badges.