Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[not guilty]

Noelle Dunphy has sued Rudolph Guiliani and businesses affiliated with him in state court in New York, alleging numerous acts of sexual misconduct. https://eddsa.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/public/650033_2023_Noelle_Dunphy_v_Rudolph_W_Giuliani_et_al_COMPLAINT_10.pdf

In addition to the salacious details which comprise the gravamen of the complaint, Ms. Dunphy avers (¶ 132) that Mr. Giuliani boasted of selling presidential pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split. He allegedly told Ms. Dunphy that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so long as they did not go “the normal channels” of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, because correspondence going to that office would be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

I wonder if the Department of Justice will investigate this claim. I suspect that it would be difficult to prove, unless someone who had sought a pardon (successfully or otherwise) would cooperate in the investigation (with a grant of immunity, I would surmise).

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The Democrats at the DOJ will do every thing it can to bury President Trump. I expect Mar-a-Lago to be raided again, this time lead by the Tranny SEAL team and the Special Drag Queen Ranger Brigade stationed at Ft. McNair.

[not guilty]

"I expect Mar-a-Lago to be raided again, this time lead by the Tranny SEAL team and the Special Drag Queen Ranger Brigade stationed at Ft. McNair."

What on earth are you talking about? What are your supporting facts regarding the military personnel you refer to?

[Martinned]

Don't encourage the crazies, just mute them.

[not guilty]

Louis Brandeis observed that sunlight is the best of disinfectants. I don’t ask for my own benefit, but to show that BCD is getting his information from that noted authority, Otto Hizass.

Like many other commenters on these threads, he runs like a scalded dog when challenged.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Are you autistic? You couldn't tell that was hyperbole to hilariously poke fun at the gay Democract military while simultaneously skewering the partisan DOJ and their institutional abuses?

[not guilty]

Again, what are your supporting facts? Invoking Poe's Law doesn't feed the bulldog.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You want facts to support a joke?

[not guilty]

An Admission that you are making shit up will serve nicely, thank you.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

An Admission that you are making shit up will serve nicely, thank you.

Do you also attend shows at comedy clubs so you can heckle the comics with demands that they substantiate their jokes?

[Gandydancer]

He just did, you moron. Though only your crertinousness provided even the slightest pretense of a necessity for doing so. And yet you imagine that you are disinfecting sunlight and “show[ing where] BCD is getting his information”. Jeez.

This does remind me of that guy thrown in jail for making fun of Hilary supporters by suggesting they should text in their votes. So there's that.

[MistahWhiskas]

"Do you also attend shows at comedy clubs so you can heckle the comics with demands that they substantiate their jokes?"

The Jon Stewart defense!

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

The Jon Stewart defense!

Actually, it's the "Learn how to recognize obvious humor so you don't look like a complete moron" defense.

[Nelson]

Considering it's BCD, there's a solid chance that he really believes it. Reasonable people would realize such hyperbole was meant to be humorous, but BCD says equally insane things regularly.

[Gandydancer]

"...BCD says equally insane things regularly."

To be clear, you're claiming that BCD regularly says with apparent seriousness things like "I expect Mar-a-Lago to be raided again, this time lead by the Tranny SEAL team and the Special Drag Queen Ranger Brigade stationed at Ft. McNair."

And I say that that you're a shameless liar.

[Nelson]

"And I say that that you’re a shameless liar."

People in glass houses, Gandy. If the list of American idioms that the Russians gave you doesn't have that one, Google it.

[Davedave]

The joke was... that you were parodying yourself and no-one could tell the difference?

[Gandydancer]

Well he has certainly exposed the Lefty likes of you as mental defectives. But no one else has so far idiotically failed to note the difference between a statement of fact an an obvious joke.

[Nige]

He's had to explain his joke a few times now, which has been way funnier than the so-called joke istelf.

[Gandydancer]

Nah, he didn't HAVE to do anything of the sort. But by deriding you he did elicit more examples of your self-discrediting stupidity, and there's something to be said for that.

[Nige]

Now YOU'RE explaining his jokes over and over again.

[Gandydancer]

I haven't "explained" his joke even once, liar.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Kristen Beck was a high profile ex-Navy Seal.

The DOJ raided Mar-a-Lago.

The Army recently used a drag queen in a recruiting ad.

None of you smooth brained autists knew of these facts which is why you couldn't recognize the comment.

What a surprise! More shit you people don't know.

[Mr. Bumble]

If ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.

[MistahWhiskas]

"LOL, you don't read the same newsletters I do!"

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Kirsten Bell, the tyranny Navy Seal was all over the news for 8 fucking years you gobs.

He famously detransitioned in 2022 after testifying before Congress about letting trannies serve.

You don't know about it because the people who manage your opinions forbid you from knowing about it.

[MistahWhiskas]

"Kirsten Bell, the tyranny Navy Seal was all over the newsletters I get for 8 years, you didn't know about it, lol!"

[BravoCharlieDelta]

lol yeah people who testify before Congress in support of Democrat stuff only appear in conservative newsletters!!@@

Rofl that's so true lmao

[Martinned]

Louis Brandeis was wrong, as ample research (and experience) has shown since. The marketplace for ideas does not select for the best ideas, but for the most amusing ones, the ones that most appeal to people's base instincts, convenience, etc.

[MistahWhiskas]

This.

[Brett Bellmore]

This is a common conclusion among people whose ideas are rejected in the marketplace for ideas.

[Nige]

Really? I thought it was to accuse universities of being full of communists.

[Martinned]

O, and separately, you can't shame people who are immune to embarrassment. And writing anonymously on the internet brings that out in people.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Are you aware that each statement in my comment was an exaggeration of real facts?

[Nige]

And nobody could spot any difference between it and your other comments.

[Gandydancer]

^^^^ Moron #4 speaks.

Somehow all the retards who assert that no one got the joke are all Lefty retards.

[Nige]

Gandy was proper rolling on the floor laughing his ass off at that knee-slapper!

[Gandydancer]

Recognizing that something is a joke and laughing hard at it are two different things. I don't laugh hard at you, either. What's called forth by you is disgust,

[BravoCharlieDelta]

That disgust is a scientifically proven amd valid human response to people like him.

I’ve showed him the data already.

[Nige]

You guys really are getting the hang of this "humour" thing.

[Gandydancer]

YOU haven't, that's for sure. All you've done is lie and pee on yourself.

[MistahWhiskas]

"an exaggeration of real facts?"

Truthiness!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It was hyperbole you retarded morons

Unless you honestly believe I was claiming there was a whole platoon of drag queens in the military stationed at Ft. McNair?

Maybe you did because as gay as the Democrat military has become its entirely believable that the Army would have one. lol yikes

[MistahWhiskas]

Hyperbole is another word for bullshit.

[Gandydancer]

No, the word appropriate to your bullshit is "bullshit".

[Don Nico]

Exactly!

[John F. Carr]

As I read the complaint it alleges he offered pardons for $2 million. There may have been no buyers. As Giuliani knows, there are ways to track large amounts of money. The scheme is not risk free.

If Giuliani offers a pardon to a specific person for a specific offense for a specific price, does that complete a crime?

And as a customer would you trust Trump era Giuliani?

I recall a Massachusetts case involving contingent fees for lobbying. A dispute over the contract ended up in court. The court ruled the contract was void. Contingent fees for lobbying are illegal. The court also refused to order the customer's money refunded. It was one of those highly illegal contracts where the courts stay away entirely. Whoever has the cash in hand gets to keep it.

[not guilty]

"If Giuliani offers a pardon to a specific person for a specific offense for a specific price, does that complete a crime?"

The offer would be attempt or solicitation to obtain money under false pretenses, in that Giuliani had no ability to carry out his promise of a pardon. If the offer was made by mail or by private or commercial interstate carrier, it would constitute federal mail fraud. If he transmitted the offer or caused it to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, it would be federal wire fraud. If the money were received, it would be obtaining money under false pretenses.

[Davedave]

He was acting as Trump's bagman, FFS. The pardons would have been delivered once the cash was handed over.

[not guilty]

That was not part of Mr. Carr’s hypothetical, and I did not presume to add to the facts he posited.

If Giuliani and Trump were acting in concert to sell pardons, that would at least be conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, with Giuliani’s offer to the prospective recipient furnishing the overt act. Trump's conduct would also constitute bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(2), and Giuliani would be liable as an aider and abettor under 18 U.S.C. § 2(a).

[Gandydancer]

^^^^ Moron #5 conflates his fantasies with unmade allegations of fact.

Lefty retards are thick on the ground here.

[John F. Carr]

I should have written, "If Giuliani offers to act as an agent to obtain a pardon from Trump." He might have thought he could deliver on that. (Or the pardon sale allegation could be fabricated.)

[Moderation4ever]

I suspect that if he made the statement it is just pointless bragging by Guiliani. This a sexual harassment lawsuit and he might have been trying to impress the woman. I don't see any real chance that Guiliani or Trump would actually do this, it is simply too stupid for either.

[not guilty]

I am not sure what the pardon sale averment adds to the lawsuit, other than to malign Giuliani for the sake of doing so. It doesn't seem to be germane to liability toward the plaintiff or to damages.

[Brett Bellmore]

It adds implicating Trump in a criminal act, obviously.

"We've got you dead to rights on this, but we'll go easy on you if you'll just claim that Trump is guilty of the following." has featured in a lot of legal attacks on people associated with Trump.

[bernard11]

Maybe, Brett, but isn't it fairly common for prosecutors to offer to go light on lower-level crooks if they will help nail the capo?

So, nothing new.

[not guilty]

Ms. Dunphy's allegation, without more, does not implicate Trump in a criminal act -- at least not one that can be proven; it implicates Giuliani.

What Giuliani said to her would be inadmissible hearsay if offered against Trump. If Giuliani and Trump could be shown to have conspired together to sell pardons, Giuliani's statement might be admissible against Trump under Fed.R.Evid 801(d)(2)(E), but that would require a preliminary finding that Giuliani's boast was made during the course of and in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Proving the existence of such a conspiracy could be difficult. Neither Giuliani nor Trump could be compelled to testify unless the DOJ granted one or the other immunity. I surmise that any such offer would be unlikely. Ms. Dunphy could testify under Rule 104(a) about the content of Giuliani's statement, and the trial court could consider that in determining whether a conspiracy did or did not exist. Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 179-81 (1987). Her testimony in that regard could be attacked as self-serving, in light of her status as a civil plaintiff seeking damages against one of the putative conspirators. The standard of proof as to the existence vel non of the conspiracy under Rule 104(a) would be a preponderance of evidence. Id., at 176.

[Davedave]

Nothing is too stupid.

[Gandydancer]

Nothing is too stupid or mendacious to believe that DaveLiarDave would say it.

See previous thread where he continued to baldly lie about what was said at a link provided provided by Brett Bellmore about election totals even after it was quoted back to him.

[gVOR08]

Here's a similar story. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/17/rudy-giuliani-associate-john-kiriakou-trump-pardon. Dated over two years ago, so not prompted by adding anything to this current suit. One does wonder what, if anything, DoJ has done with this.

[Gandydancer]

Looks not so much "similar" as the inspiration for Dunphy's story. According to the Guardian it was, two years ago, "the latest bombshell". Now the walls are again closing in!

[Gandydancer]

I don't think there's any real chance that Trump raped Carroll on an inexplicably vacant Bergsdorf lingerie floor in a dressing room inexplicably left unlocked contrary to store practice when both individuals ought to have been accompanied by personal shoppers according to store practice, but why Noelle Dunphy's bare accusations won't constitute a preponderance of the evidence in THIS case is non-obvious.

[Nelson]

"I don’t see any real chance that Guiliani or Trump would actually do this, it is simply too stupid for either."

History would suggest otherwise.

[Life of Brian]

I muscled through the first dozen or so red flags, but stopped reading at the gratuitous photo from the Borat movie. This is not a serious case.

A former attorney as astute as Mr. guilty certainly would have observed that Ms. Dunphy actually filed this case pro se in January sans complaint, which Rudy demanded in early February and did not receive for more than 3 months. I wonder who she finally found to bankroll Abrams Fensterman's participation in this circus.

[Brett Bellmore]

Does Dunphy have any evidence for this boast beyond her own unsupported word?

I mean, I see that the complaint states the existence of actual evidence for SOME of the assertions. Most of them, even.

The pardon claim is, conspicuously, not one of them.

[not guilty]

She claims in her complaint to have recordings of Giuliani, but not as to his boast of selling pardons.

[Gandydancer]

Is NY a state where recordings are permitted with the consent of only one party?

[not guilty]

I don't know, but the complaint avers that Ms. Dunphy had Giuliani's consent to record.

[Gandydancer]

If she claims to have asked for and gotten it then she presumably needs it.

[David Nieporent]

Yes; NY is a one-party state.

[Jerry B.]

Sounds like Ms. Dunphy is riding the “get Trump et. al.” Wave to obtain either money or revenge.

[Gandydancer]

After the Carroll v Trump verdict she figures she doesn’t need to have any evidence to make it highly profitable for her to crawl out from beneath her rock and file suit in New York.

And if Giuliani denies that he did it that's defamation, right?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

WE GOT HIM! Probably the best day in America since we dragged Saddam from that rat hole or when SEAL Team 6 shot OBL between the eyes! Sam Brinton could run but he couldn’t hide. My fellow Americans, your luggage is now safe…unless you’re flying Spirit. 😉

[David Nieporent]

She filed suit before the Carroll v. Trump verdict, but you do you.

EDIT: And, no, it's not defamation "if Giuliani denies that he did it." {Even assuming his denial is false.} If, however, he says that she's a money-grubbing whore who filed suit for political reasons, then that could be defamation.

[Gandydancer]

Yeah, nobody could see that verdict coming.

That the suit wasn't thrown out was proof enough that her type of suit was on average a money-maker.

[Drbusybody]

For more than 30 years, Taco John's has had a registered trademark to the term Taco Tuesday as it pertains to the restaurant industry in 49 states. (A small business has the trademark in New Jersey.)

The trademark by Taco John's to the restaurant market does not affect how the grocery industry can use the term Taco Tuesday.

Taco John's has aggressively enforced this trademark by sending cease and desist orders to small bars and restaurants that use the phrase Taco Tuesday. If these establishments fail to cease and desist, they hear from a local lawyer hired by Taco John's.

Now Taco Bell has filed a petition with the USPTO alleging that Taco Tuesday has become a generic phrase and that no one, including themselves and Taco John's, is entitled to a trademark registration for it.

Taco John's only does business in 19 states, so it is borderline outrageous that they claim trademark rights in 30 states where they don't do business. It is at best facetious to believe that consumers generally associate Taco Tuesday with Taco John's, especially in those 30 states where they've probably never even heard of Taco John's.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The term is generic and never should have been trademarked.

[Moderation4ever]

I can see it originally being trademarked, but what happens when a trademarked term simply becomes part of the common usage? Is there a point where the trademark disappears and really is of no value to your company because it is so commonly used? I know restaurants that discount tacos on Tuesday, they don't use the term Taco Tuesday, but we all think it in our heads.

[Voize]

Is there a point where the trademark disappears

You mean the trademark protection disappears, yes. The mark itself is still around of course, just not your exclusive rights to it.

and really is of no value to your company because it is so commonly used

No, you just switch to marketing yours as "the original Taco Tuesday".

[Mr. Bumble]

Switch to Taco Thursday.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Switch to Taco Thursday.

Anarchist.

[Stephen Lathrop]

More than 30 years? Seems like a useful trademark. I can see why Taco Bell might want to steal it.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

More than 30 years? Seems like a useful trademark.

Given that the overwhelming vast majority of Americans have never even heard of Taco John's, let alone spent any money at one, it wouldn't seem to be all that useful.

I can see why Taco Bell might want to steal it.

So we can add "steal" the long list of words you don't understand the meaning of.

[Gandydancer]

I've certainly never heard of Taco John's here in California.

[AmosArch]

If you can swap whether you’re a man or a woman why can’t you swap other things like your race or age?

Why can’t a white woman decide she’s actually black and not get mocked for it? Why does a 40 year old man who decides he’s actually 14 get harassed when he starts hanging around the high school and people who defend transgender drag hours don’t come to his rescue? Sure chronologically he’s older than 14 but maybe he really really feels like he is a teenager just like someone might really really feel that they’re a woman even though they are biologically a man.

Seems kinda backwards since race and biological age is a lot fuzzier than your sex.

PS And before any of you use the argument that gender is technically different from sex its treated as biological sex for almost all intents and purposes. So that argument fails since you could just invent a fantasy age that anyone can change to their hearts desire and force everybody to treat it like real age like everyone is forced to acknowledge gender.

[Drbusybody]

Here is an argument that one should be able to change his or her legal age:
https://bigthink.com/the-present/change-your-age/

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If people can identify as any age, the LGBT people are going to be grooming kids to identify as 18 so they can gain lawful sexual access to them.

They're going to try and get lawful sexual access to the infants and children first, probably.

[Commenter_XY]

Personally, I would like to identify as 27, ain't happening. 🙂

[John F. Carr]

A line from a song I like: "I get older and Lisa keeps on turning 21." "Lisa's Birthday" by Mike Cooley and the Drive-By Truckers.

[Commenter_XY]

I think I want to meet Lisa....

[Martinned]

OK, so we're back to the 2010 "soon they'll want to marry refrigerators" level of argument? How did that work out for you?

[AmosArch]

Nah I’m not making that argument. Just trying to understand. By the logic of your philosophy the transracists and the transageists et al are getting screwed. Blowing it off simply because extending the same rights to everyone is unpopular is not really any sort of answer. Unless you're saying if transgenders were unpopular enough it would be completely fine not to give them rights.

[Brett Bellmore]

They are unpopular enough. 60% of all people say 'transgenders' are really their biological sex, not their assumed one, and the only subgroup that disagrees with this are Democrats.

The thing is that transgenders DO have the same rights as everyone else, already. They have the rights of their actual sex, just like everybody else.

[Sarcastr0]

1) Brett says not to believe opinion polls except when he doesn't.

2) The headline is: "most favor protecting trans people from discrimination even as a growing share say gender is determined by birth."
Leaving out the first part is leaving out some very important context! Don't be deceitful when you link something.

[Michael P]

Lots of people think we should protect mentally ill people from discrimination. That doesn't mean we should leave that illness untreated, much less encourage it.

[Sarcastr0]

Your theory of motivations is just you trying to jam your enthusiastic hating into a narrative.
Everyone I've seen argue trans people are mentally ill is in the hate-them camp, and does not want them protected.

Maybe the truth is different, but I at least have you as an example, and you have nothing.

[Michael P]

No, you just have deranged and incoherent ranting. I have a relevant distinction that escaped your notice.

[Sarcastr0]

What distinction?

You posit that people supporting legal protections may due so because they think trans people are mentally ill. You have no support. And you yourself seem to be really angry that trans people have any legal protections.

The rest is strawman and insults.

[Michael P]

The distinction is between wanting to prevent discrimination against a group and thinking that group is right or natural or merits government endorsement. Take Scientologists as another analogy if you are so triggered by the mental illness analogy: as a country, we believe religious discrimination is bad, and do not allow government to favor one religion over any other, even though very few people believe the whole Xenu thing.

[grb]

Michael P : “that group is right or natural or merits government endorsement”

Right-types have such sicko hang-ups. Let’s run thru this again: Sex is first all those physical differences we love and cherish. But it’s also mental traits hardwired into the brain. In the vast majority of people these two things are in sync, but in a tiny number of people they aren’t. This same phenomena has been extensively documented in the natural world; it’s hardly seen in human alone.

So what kind of sick freaks build an entire national movement on tormenting that tiny percentage of people? The answer is today’s Right, a political movement devoid of ethics, understanding, or basic human decency. My natural inclination is to treat a trans person as I would any other. After all, why not?

But today’s Rightist sees politics as pro-wrestling-grade entertainment. Trans-folk as just more sport for their viewing pleasure.

[Sarcastr0]

right or natural

That's a tell right there. Government policy in service of what seems natural has quite a history. Almost all of it targeting out-groups by populist authoritarians.

Welcome to the party.

[hoppy025]

They are mentally ill. It's not up for debate. It's settled science.

[Michael P]

I see I triggered a lot of leftist projection. Again.

[David Nieporent]

But it’s also mental traits hardwired into the brain.

No. This is an incredibly anti-feminist thing to say. There are no women's brains and men's brains. Having "traits" more stereotypically associated with men doesn't make a woman not a real woman (or vice versa).

[grb]

David Nieporent : “No. This is an incredibly anti-feminist thing to say”

No. I’m going to have to disagree with you all all fronts.

(1) When a child feels their identity is the opposite gender of the physical attributes between their legs, something innate and central to the core of their being is usually involved. If you don’t object to Wikipedia (it brings out the snob in many), there’s a massive post on the “Causes of gender incongruence” that explores many possible explanations. Bottom line? Usually those factors (whichever is correct – or some future one to come) align between sense of gender self & physical gender attributes. In trans folk they don’t.

(2) Of course you define it as "stereotypically traits", presumably forgetting to add "superficial" as well. Per my understanding it runs a little deeper than that.

(3) No, it’s not an “anti-feminist thing to say”. Or maybe it is, if you think a feminine sense of self debars you from some human capability. Given I don’t, your criticism rolls off my back. Of course even if you do, there’s still another problem: It goes the other way, remember? There are people born with vaginas & vulvas (it’s amazing how often people confuse those terms), who have a male sense of self. It’s interesting to see you reacted to only one side of the equation. I’d love to see your “anti-*****” formulation” for the opposite phenomena. Perhaps you don’t have one….

(4) You want to say they’re not “real”, despite everything in their core identity saying otherwise? Fine. I don’t give a shit. As long as your not part of the mob tormenting them, you can smugly define what’s “real” to your heart’s content.

[David Nieporent]

What is a "male sense of self"? What do those words even mean? I've never heard a non-circular definition. And assuming they had meaning, how could a person AFAB¹ possibly even know how a male senses himself? At most it could mean "I feel internally what I guess that men feel like internally" "(But that's not really coherent because there is no one way that men feel internally, and it's completely unknowable. What is knowable is stereotypes about how men and women present themselves and conduct themselves.)
​
​​
I did not "react only one way." I said "or vice versa." It's anti-feminist because it says that a real woman thinks and feels a certain way, and a woman who doesn't isn't really a woman; she's actually a man. It says that a real man thinks and feels a certain way, and a man who doesn't isn't really a man; he's actually a woman. That's not true externally or internally.
​
​
¹I use this not because I believe it's a valid concept, but just for the sake of intelligibility.

[Michael P]

Or maybe S_0 thinks the EEOC is morally and legally wrong: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/depression-ptsd-other-mental-health-conditions-workplace-your-legal-rights

[Nige]

It's not a philosophy. It's a recognised medical condition with a fairly successful set of estabished treatments.

[Mr. Bumble]

There is no medical treatment that can make a man into a woman or a woman into a man.

[Nige]

If that makes you feel less insecure, go with it. Nonetheless, it is a medical condition, there are treatments.

[Mr. Bumble]

Yes, there are treatments which should start with psychiatric counseling.

[Nige]

They do. There is a whole series of therapy sessions and evaluations.

[bernard11]

Bumble no doubt means counseling with people who share his views of the matter.

[Mr. Bumble]

As you're so fond of saying lately; FUCK YOU!
I meant just what I said. Counseling to find out how and why they feel the way they do.

[bernard11]

OK. And then what?

And did you miss Nige's comment just before mine?

[Tom for equal rights]

Nige 4 hours ago
Flag Comment Mute User
If that makes you feel less insecure, go with it. Nonetheless, it is a medical condition, there are treatments."

Nige - transgender is a mental illness.
The term "medical condition" implies that the mental illness can be treated successfully with surgery and hormones.

A male can never become a female and a female can never become a male.

[Nige]

No. It's not a mental illness. It's a medical condition.

[Gandydancer]

The "condition" in question is that the patient is a delusional nutcase.

[Nige]

No, it isn't.

[Gandydancer]

Delusional nutcases like you aren't qualified to judge that question.

[Tom for equal rights]

Nige 39 mins ago
Flag Comment Mute User
"No. It’s not a mental illness. It’s a medical condition."

So in Nige's world - A person who believes the were born in the body of the wrong sex is caused by a "medical condition" and not a mental illness -

curious where you learned your basic biology or do you just enjoy encouraging a mentally ill persons delusions.
and science.

[Noscitur a sociis]

with a fairly successful set of estabished treatments.

What is your basis for this claim?

[Nige]

The fact that satisfaction ratings for the treatments are in the high 90s.

[Tom for equal rights]

Nige 40 mins ago
Flag Comment Mute User
The fact that satisfaction ratings for the treatments are in the high 90s."

Nige - again proves he lacks the ability to recognize junk science.

Those "surveys " showing 90%+ satisfaction rate have extremely high non response rates and typically short follow up periods. But we dont expect the advocates to recognize the shoddiness of those agenda driven surveys

[Nige]

So what? First of all you hate trans people so of course you'd make these claims. Second of all, that's what the data we have shows. If you had data that showed otherwise, I'm sure you'd be all over it, but you don't.

[Tom for equal rights]

Nige – is that your go to response – hating trans people.

What is real hate of people suffering from a mental illness are people promoting/embracing and encouraging their delusions.

Regarding the studies showing high satisfaction rates – not surprising from someone who believes in participating in their delusions would fail to see the deceptions in the high satisfaction surveys. Very low response rates, short follow up periods. Those studies would be considered academic fraud in a real science, but treated as gold standard in social science.

[Sarcastr0]

You're outcome oriented.
We have ways to statistically address both low response rates and quick timelines.
You've argued that the confidence interval of the study may not be 90%. I personally find your points have some merit. But you've not shown it is utterly invalid.

However, it is enough for you because you've lowered your requirements because, again, outcome-oriented.

[Life of Brian]

We have ways to statistically address both low response rates and quick timelines.

Of course. The intellectually honest term for those would be "guessing."

[Tom for equal rights]

Sarcastro – A response rate in the low 50%’s is a serious red flag with this population, especially since the primary stated reason is that the facility “lost contact” with the person.

This is a population that requires lifetime hormone treatment and lifelong mental health therapy. Due to the nature of the illness, the individual is never cured.

[Sarcastr0]

A response rate in the low 50%’s is a serious red flag with this population, especially since the primary stated reason is that the facility “lost contact” with the person.

I'm not sure I think that's right - that's well above a lot of social science self-reporting surveys. If you want to say all social science is bunk go ahead, but I'm going to go with the accepted standard unless there is indeed something unique about this population.

This is a population that requires lifetime hormone treatment and lifelong mental health therapy. Due to the nature of the illness, the individual is never cured.
This is a decent criticism - that the time window is not capturing the whole picture. But that doesn't say anything about what the approval rate would be.

As noted above, with the information we have, things look more good than bad.

LoB - it's not tock solid, but there's enough decent interpolation that can be done that calling it guessing is ignorant.

[Tom for equal rights]

Sarcastro - the low 50% response rate is only a minor problem with most social science studies. You can deal with that problem with good statistical analysis, sample size, random samples, etc.

In the case of transgender, the total population is too small to develop good statistical sample to solve the low response rate problem.

[Sarcastr0]

In the case of transgender, the total population is too small to develop good statistical sample to solve the low response rate problem.

That seems legit.

I'd be willing to be convinced otherwise, but at least at this point you've convinced me that cited study is not probative.

[Nige]

First of all if you didn't hate trans people you wpuldn;t keep calling it a mental illness, when that is not its medical classification.

I would find the focus on the supposed faults of the studies more compelling if there were any studies that showed otherwise.

Sarc - they only have to be probative for trans people.

[Life of Brian]

there’s enough decent interpolation that can be done that calling it guessing is ignorant.

Far less ignorant than pretending you can predict the future on behalf of people who responded, much less those who didn't respond.

Perhaps you conceded this point by your appeal to "interpolation" -- if so, ignoring one of OP's criticisms just to take a cheap swipe at me is pretty sad even for you.

[Gandydancer]

"Second of all, that’s what the data we have shows."

Identifiably junk data "shows" nothing other than the corruption of those who compile and promote it.

[Nige]

Of course it must be junk - because you don't like the results.

[Gandydancer]

You already defended it ("the data we have") as meaningful despite being junk. It’s too late to pretend it isn’t.

[Mr. Bumble]

Nige is speaking from personal experience.

[Nelson]

"Those “surveys ” showing 90%+ satisfaction rate have extremely high non response rates and typically short follow up periods."

First, putting the word survey in scare quotes doesn't discredit it.

Second, non-response is common in medical follow-up studies regardless of what procedure is being studied. It doesn't invalidate the data set. It's been over a hundred years since the math was created to handle them.

Third, unless studies with follow-up periods of 10, 20, and 30 years are "short", you are mistaken (probably intentionally so) when you claim they are short.

"the shoddiness of those agenda driven surveys"

Only an agenda-driven critique would claim that multiple surveys, with the same scientific rigor as other medical follow-up studies, were "shoddy" based on fabricated claims of short follow-up periods and response rates.

Any study not intentionally manipulated (like then one that claimed that 38% of patients detransitioned, when in fact it was 38% of those who expressed doubts, which was 4% of the entire cohort) finds regret rates in the single digits and detransitioning even lower.

The "junk science" in this area is every single attempt by cultural conservatives to manufacture high regret and detransition rates.

Wait, that's not really true since they can't manage to fake-up high rates no matter how badly they manipulate the data. Even manufacturing low-to-moderate levels takes so much manipulation that it is obvious, like in the "38% detransition rate".

When one conclusion is supported by multiple, consistent, data-driven, long-term studies and another can't create their preferred result without massive and blatant data manipulation, which one is the dishonest side?

[Noscitur a sociis]

What is one of the stronger studies you would rely on for that proposition?

[Nige]

I've never seen one that says otherwise.

[Noscitur a sociis]

That's really not an answer to my question.

[Mr. Bumble]

From Nige, it's as good as you'll get.

[Gandydancer]

Why insert "really" into that sentence?

It's an intentional evasion and you know it.

[Nige]

Of course it is. There are no studies that say otherwise.

[Gandydancer]

"What is one of the stronger studies you would rely on for that proposition?"

To repeat, "All of them" is a dishonest intentionally evasive answer.

[SimonP]

By the same token, given that religious belief is very clearly something that is chosen, and can be "swapped" easily, is there any reason whatsoever that religious belief and practice ought to be protected by law and social convention to the extent that it is?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

No. In fact I thought it would have been funny on Trump’s last day in office for him to transition to a female while converting to Islam…then we would have had the first female president and the first Muslim president.

[AmosArch]

Its debatable that deeply held beliefs can be easily swapped even to the extent that people swap genders today. But I think most religions would love to have the same deference transgenderism has in modern western society.

[ducksalad]

Actually, with respect to public schools and universities, giving sexual preference and gender identity precisely the same status as religion would work pretty well.

Should public universities print posters to hang on office doors urging non-Christians to “Be a Christian Ally”? No.

Should public universities remove Christian texts from their libraries because some atheists complained? No.

Should public universities have personnel in their DEI offices hired to specialize in Christian issues? No.

Should public universities allow Christian student groups to organize, recruit, and reserve rooms? Yes, but only under general rules available to every other student group.

Should public universities be sponsoring or funding Christian student groups? Not unless the funding process is strictly formulaic (e.g. proportional to membership) using a formula applicable to every other group. Certainly no situation where student government or a DEI office “decided” to fund a Christian group.

Should public university instructors be devoting class time to discussing Christianity? Maybe in the context of a comparative religion or literature course, but it better not look or smell like an endorsement. Definitely inappropriate to bring it up at all in a management or engineering course.

Should public universities determine which religions aren’t getting fair recognition in society, and take action to make society more fair toward those religions? No.

Sub in LGBT for Christian or religion and IMO it’s a reasonable position.

[Nige]

'If you can swap whether you’re a man or a woman'

That's not what they're doing.

[AmosArch]

what are they doing then?

[Nige]

They have a recognised medical condition, and they're trying to secure treatment in the face of monstrous opposition.

[AmosArch]

why is transageism and transracism any less of a valid condition that deserves the same treatment in the face of monstrous opposition?

[Nige]

Get them medically recognised, then we'll talk.

[Gandydancer]

How does "hav[ing] a recognised medical condition" change the fact that they are, due to that condition, trying to "swap whether [they]’re a man or a woman’?

[Nige]

It's not a swap.

[Gandydancer]

It is absolutely an attempted swap.

[MistahWhiskas]

Uh, gender is a lot fuzzier than age. Gender has to do with presentation, expectations, etc., it'd be hard to deny how much that has changed over the years, even for traditionalists.

[AmosArch]

Most transgenders define themselves as man or woman. Some choose nonbinary but in practice its far fewer categories than than the life span of a typical human. Are you claiming the difference between a 40 and 41 year old is greater than a man vs woman?

[EscherEnigma]

If you can swap whether you’re a man or a woman why can’t you swap other things like your race or age?

Go for it. Once someone is past 18, the number of scenarios where I care what age someone is drops away almost entirely.

As for race? Hell, my husband routinely laughs at how bad I am at recognizing race/ethnicity. You could tell me whatever you want and I'd be like "okay".

Now sure, you'll have to explain the nuance of your identity to doctors and bureaucrats, but it's not like that's a unique experience.

[AmosArch]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Go for it. Once someone is past 18, the number of scenarios where I care what age someone is drops away almost entirely.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

in other words 'I'm not bigoted against transageists except for xyz' got it.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
As for race? Hell, my husband routinely laughs at how bad I am at recognizing race/ethnicity. You could tell me whatever you want and I’d be like “okay”.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Thats great that you are personally accepting of transracists but the Left on the whole is hypocritically not. But on second thought that is not being personally accepting thats actually a rude dismissal and you'd be fired or ostracized in many cases if you openly treated a transgender person in a similar manner. So you are hypocritically bigoted toward transracists like the rest of the left.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now sure, you’ll have to explain the nuance of your identity to doctors and bureaucrats, but it’s not like that’s a unique experience.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

So in other words like conservatives say transgenders should get over themselves. Everybody has problems with the system. Doesn't mean you are entitled to special catering over everyone else.

[Nige]

See? Absolutely nobody thought you were proposing this argument-by-analogy in good faith.

[AmosArch]

What are you talking about? She rudely dismisses the experience of transageists and transracists in the same way she would not accept for transgenders. I'm simply pointing that out.

[EscherEnigma]

To be clear, was "she" supposed to be a dig, or are you legitimately confused?

Regardless, "indifference" is a perfectly acceptable reaction to someone telling you they're trans. That you've convinced yourself otherwise is more about how you've turned transfolk into a personal bogeyman then anything else.

[AmosArch]

Repeat your last two sentences in the previous post with the appropriate tweaks in a transsupport group or out loud middle of a pride parade after a discussion where LGBTKDFSLFSLLS share how hard they’ve had it and see how popular you are.

[EscherEnigma]

Why would you go to a support group if you don't intend to be supportive? That's just being a dick.

More broadly though... sorry dude, but the trans folk I know are 100% A-OK with my laid-back attitude.

[Nige]

Yeah, you're being an edgelord shitposter. Very 2016.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What punishment should Adam Schiff receive for his lies regarding the Russian Collusion Hoax?

What punishment should the Democrats at the DOJ/FBI receive for their collusion with the Clinton campaign to interfere with the 2016 elections and attack our Democracy?

What punishment should the Democrats at the CIA receive for their interference in recruiting for the 50 Intelligence Expert letter claiming Hunter’s Laptop was Russian Disinfo, providing excuses for the major media outlets and big tech firms to censor the issue, and thus interfering with the 2020 election and attacking our Democracy?

[Commenter_XY]

The political tool available is expulsion. It requires a 2/3rds vote.

[Michael P]

What group would vote to expel FBI agents or CIA employees, and from what?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Impeach the directors.

[Commenter_XY]

I was referring to Schiff = expulsion as a political tool to enforce accountability

Federal bureaucrats? Dismissal.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Issue is, it goes further down.

Let's take the recent DoJ "order" to remove the entire IRS team that was investigating Hunter's tax crimes from the case.

Who ordered that? Why?

[David Nieporent]

Nobody ordered that. What kind of gibberish is it? The IRS is not part of the DOJ and thus the DOJ cannot order any IRS teams removed from anything.

[Armchair Lawyer]

That is what is reported. The IRS team investigating Hunter Biden was removed on the orders of the Department of Justice.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/irs-removes-entire-investigative-team-hunter-biden-probe-whistleblower-claims-retaliation-report

If you have actual facts to contradict this, please present them

[Sarcastr0]

"Now, the whistleblower’s attorneys claim the team’s removal from the investigation is retaliation for his decision to come forward.

“Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice,” attorneys Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote to Congress."

This doesn't raise any red flags for you, AL?

[David Nieporent]

No, that's not what was reported. What that linked article says is that a lawyer for a purported whistleblower says that his client says that he was told that the IRS was replacing its team at the request of the DOJ.

So you've got double hearsay, and you've misrepresented what that hearsay said to turn a request into an order.

[Armchair Lawyer]

No, that is actually literally what was reported by the newspaper. There's a link to the article and everything.

Just because you seem to need it.

"IRS removes ‘entire investigative team’ in Hunter Biden probe, whistleblower claims retaliation: report
The removal was on the order of the DOJ, according to the whistleblower's attorneys"

Now, I asked if you had any facts to the contrary, and you presented no facts to the contrary. So....bugger off.

[Nelson]

"No, that is actually literally what was reported by the newspaper"

With a second source to corroborate the facts? Or was it just reporting on what the lawer said?

"Today the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he ... [is] being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress."

This is a fact, with some editorializing.

"The removal was on the order of the DOJ, according to the whistleblower’s attorneys"

His attorneys said that he said that someone else said it was the DOJ. What is hearsay's weaker second cousin? This is.

"Now, I asked if you had any facts to the contrary, and you presented no facts to the contrary. So….bugger off."

To be fair, you presented no facts in support, so there's that.

One guy saying other people said a bunch of stuff doesn't constitute facts.

[Moderation4ever]

Try this put together a case and take it to court. That is what John Durham did twice and lost each time.

You're not going to get any action on Russian Hoax because there was no hoax. There is plenty of information on Russian contacts with the Trump campaign and Trump associates, several like Rodger Stone and Paul Manafort have admitted contacts. Take it into court and everything is the Mueller report will be rehashed in public and you will not have AG Bill Barr running interference.

[grb]

Moderation4ever : "You’re not going to get any action on Russian Hoax because there was no hoax"

I’ve asked this before and got incoherent answers back, but let’s try again: What is the “Russia collusion hoax” anyway?

1. The Justice Department Inspector General found the initial investigation of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign was warranted. So that’s not the R.C.H.

2. Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel came after Trump bragged about firing Comey to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” After that, a special counsel was inevitable; no R.C.H. can be found there either.

3. Mueller was actually one of the best special counsels in the whole sordid history of the species. He was quick, didn’t leak to the media, and proved excessively conservative in his findings. No R.C.H. can be found in his conduct.

4. And his investigation uncovered so much unsettling detail. You had Don Jr. saying (in writing) he’d welcome secret help from the Russian government for Daddy’s campaign, you had Trump’s campaign head giving secret briefings to a listed Russian spy, you had Trump’s fixer Cohen going to Moscow throughout the campaign to negotiate a secret business deal with Kremlin officials, you had Trump associates discussing a bribe to Putin to sweeten that deal, you had Trump lying when asked about his Russian business dealings during the campaign, you had Trump’s son-in-law asking if he could use Russia’s secure communication lines to talk to Moscow – just so his own government couldn’t hear.

On and on and on. The complete list is much longer. There was never any lack of things discovered, which makes Mueller’s brisk investigation even more remarkable. No R.C.H. can be seen.

5. And that includes this : Trump asked Michael Cohen to suppress a sex tape circulating around Moscow. He used Russian businessman Giorgi Rtskhiladze as a go-between, who reported back : ‘Stopped flow of tapes from Russia but not sure if there’s anything else. Just so you know … .’ Both men testified before the grand jury. For the record, everyone thinks the tape was faked by Russian criminals, but still: No R.C.H.

So you have a legitimate investigation conducted by legitimate appointees in a legitimate manner who uncovered scads of legitimate grounds to investigate after underway.

Where is the “Russia collusion hoax” in all this ?!?

[bevis the lumberjack]

"Oooh, we've come this far and I can't let go"

[grb]

Do you want to attempt to contest anything above?

(I thought not)

[bevis the lumberjack]

No Don Quixote. You apparently still believe in the existence of the pre tape. You’ve moved beyond reach.

[Nige]

Run away.

[Moderation4ever]

Agreed

[grb]

bevis the lumberjack : "You apparently still believe in the existence of the pre tape"

I believe in the existence of facts; apparently you don't. The Mueller Report actually has very little to say on the tape, barely more than what's outlined above. But those facts are from sworn testimony to the grand jury by Michael Cohen and Giorgi Rtskhiladze. The quote is from 2016 text messages turned over to Mueller by Cohen and Rtskhiladze. The whole of the topic is found in footnote 112 (part 2, page 27) of the Mueller report.

Here it is. If you're anything more than talk, go at it:

https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://nypost.com/2023/05/16/durham-points-to-clinton-crony-charles-dolan-as-likely-pee-tape-source-from-notorious-steele-dossier-report/

"The likeliest source of the notorious Steele Dossier report that Donald Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel room was a PR executive with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, special counsel John Durham revealed in his bombshell report."

[grb]

What a hilarious self-own!

You manage to make both yourself & Durham look foolish and dishonest with scarcely any effort at all! Just consider the imbecility of Durham’s effort and your cheering. The tape existed. Trump had Cohen looking to bury it in October of 2016. Yes, it was a fake. Mueller even established that criminal elements behind the Crocus Group (a Russian real estate conglomerate & sponsor of the 2013 Miss Universe campaign) was behind the forgery.

But it existed. Hell, we can even sympathize with gawdforsaken Trump over this scam, but it existed.

So what does Durham do? Expend a massive about of energy trying to “prove” who passed on the rumor of a very, very real tape. Why? Because that’s the kind of useless dishonest pointless game he played in his pointless dishonest useless time as special counsel.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Right, Durham is dishonest and not the Meuller team that was filled with Russian Collusion Hoaxers.

Good one grb. They could invent a time travel machine and you could witness the corruption of the Democrat FBI first hand and you still wouldn't believe it.

[grb]

Another point: Try reading your own link. There was absolutely zero evidence Charles Dolan had anything to do with passing on the rumor of the tape. Hell, there wasn’t even anything suggesting he might be involved except his “recollection was inconsistent” about a single conversation 6-7 years ago.

Durham picked Dolan because he fit the narrative, no other reason. He put him in the report because he is reduced to selling a story unconnected to fact. With no relation to fact.

That is the 100% exact opposite of Mueller, who bent over backwards to avoid conclusions altogether, standing on fact alone. Remember his final appearance before the House Judiciary Committee? Guys on my side were convinced that was when he would tie everything together in a sweeping narrative. But Mueller doesn’t do stories. He drably stuck to reciting facts. When Durham gets his day I bet it’ll be like reciting a fable for children’s naptime hour - as he spins bullshit on&on.

Because he’s a hack.

[grb]

Here’s another point that involves you actually reading your own link. Durham has three witnesses:

1. Hotel employee X denied spreading the rumor and is therefore in the clear.
2. Hotel employee Y denied spreading the rumor and is therefore in the clear.
3. Charles Dolan denied spreading the rumor and is therefore a fiendish devil.

And that’s Durham all over. In his last spectacularly ludicrous trial, Durham had to aggressively cross-examine his own goddamn witness because he only like half of his testimony. He was caught cherry-picking the same guy’s past testimony, because the parts he tried to bury completely refuted his charges.

There was another critical wittiness unavailable because he lived abroad, but Durham had transcripts of his previous testimony. Unfortunately they also refuted the basis of the trial, so Durham invented tin-foil-hat reasons why the testimony should be ignored.

That’s just the way he rolls. Facts that fit the storyline are hyped, even if they’re tenuous at best. Facts that refute the storyline are ignored, buried, or dismissed for bizarre reasons. That’s how you “finger” a guy for spreading the sex tape rumor with zero evidence against him, and completely ignoring the evidence it was rumor of a real tape. Durham is a hack.

[Moderation4ever]

While the "pee tapes" are unverified and seem extreme, the fact that a jury has found former President Trump to be a sexual abuser does mean the tapes do seem into fit his narrative.

[David Nieporent]

I don't think the fact that he likes to assault women implies he has weird sexual fetishes.

[grb]

David Nieporent : “..likes to assault women implies he has weird sexual fetishes…”

I dunno. As every authority on sex crimes emphasizes, rape is more about power than sex. Although the Trump sex story is almost certainly fabricated, it still fits the pattern. As I recall, the “Trump” of the story wanted prostitutes to urinate on a bed solely because Obama had once slept in it. “Trump” was seated on the other side of the room.

Hate to say it, but that sounds very Trump-like: Childish, obsessed, fuming over slights as old as the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner, a man lost to his insecurities and utterly without self-control. If it was faked, the scriptwriter knew his man.

(If you want “weird sexual fetishes”, research Trump and his daughter Ivanka)

[Nelson]

“John Durham revealed in his bombshell report”

Bombshell report? Oh, wait. You’re doing parody again, right?

It’s hard to tell with you, Bravo.

[Moderation4ever]

The Russian Hoax is not about facts, it is a matter of faith in the Church of Saint Trump.

[VinniUSMC]

The Russian Hoax is not about facts,

You've got that right, just not in the way that you think.

[Ben_]

You're incapable of learning from events. The Durham report is out, but it's not emotionally satisfying enough for you. So you do the usual Democrat thing: make up a more satisfying story and decide to believe it instead.

[Sarcastr0]

As a wise man said:

"Do you want to attempt to contest anything above?

(I thought not)"
...
"Run away."

[Ben_]

His post was all dishonest evasion and changing the subject.

[Sarcastr0]

"Run away."

[BravoCharlieDelta]

"The likeliest source of the notorious Steele Dossier report that Donald Trump paid prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel room was a PR executive with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, special counsel John Durham revealed in his bombshell report."

https://nypost.com/2023/05/16/durham-points-to-clinton-crony-charles-dolan-as-likely-pee-tape-source-from-notorious-steele-dossier-report/

grb, and you, believe the peepee tape was a real thing that Trump to suppress based upon some alleged text messages.

There you go.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

The pee tape alone made all of this Trump nonsense worth it…that and the fact Covid killed 500,000 white trash Americans because Trump lost and they threw a tantrum. 😉

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Wait until you find out how many woke idiots the COVID vaxxes are killing.

Hashtag DiedSuddenly is my favorite hashtag.

[Nelson]

"Wait until you find out how many woke idiots the COVID vaxxes are killing."

Confirmed deaths? I believe it has gotten up to around 60. Possibly even into triple digits. Reported cases in VAERS? A little under 31,000.

But there is no restriction on who can report to VAERS, nor is any corroboration necessary, so if 100,000 people reported that their friend's cousin's sister's neighbor died from the Civid vaccine, VAERS would show 100,000 reported deaths.

Also, since there have been 676 million jabs if the Covid vaccines administered, even if you counted the every report as confirmed, the death rate would be .0045%.

So by any rational statistical assessment, almost none.

[Ben_]

"There is plenty of information on Russian contacts with the Trump campaign and Trump associates..."

You really like these particular lies, don't you? The overall story was a lie from the beginning. That's now clear to everyone.

Have you ever talked to a Russian? Has anyone associated with you ever talked to a Russian? If yes, you're as guilty of colluding with Russians as Trump and his campaign.

[David Nieporent]

The overall story was a lie from the beginning. That’s now clear to everyone.

The overall story has been long established as true. The nonpartisan Mueller investigation and the bipartisan SSCI investigation both found that it was. Namely: Russia wanted Trump to be elected, made that known to him, and worked to get him elected, and Trump welcomed that aid.

That there was an express agreement between Trump and Putin has never been established, which means there was zero chance of prosecuting Trump for that. (For obstruction, on the other hand, there was lots of evidence.)

[Ben_]

You are consistently dishonest.

And you can't learn from events because you ignore what actually occurs and substitute made-up stories, like the ones about Putin.

[MistahWhiskas]

Lol, someone really wants to comfort Durham that he was great, no, really, it was fantastic!

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

McConnell is to blame for Comey…there was no collusion…the FBI is just full of Bush Republicans that hate Trump.

[David Nieporent]

BCD is functionally illiterate and is just repeating words he heard used by Democrats to criticize Republicans.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Remember when I had to teach you what an abstract was?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

[Nelson]

"What punishment should Adam Schiff receive for his lies regarding the Russian Collusion Hoax?'

None. If politicians were punished for pursuing their political advantage, we would have 538 empty seats in Congress.

Anything that results in convictions in a court of law is demonstrably not a hoax.

If you think that Trump's campaign manager wasn't a bought-an-paid-for Russian stooge it isn't just willful ignorance, it is an unshakable determination to deny proven reality if it disagrees with your preferred beliefs.

If it were a stimulant, normal bias would be strong coffee. BCD prefers meth.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why does President Shits-His-Pants claim White Supremacy is the Homeland’s greatest threat? Why do CRT proponents also say all White people are White Supremacists?

If all White People are White Supremacists and White Supremacy is the Homeland's greatest threat, what should the government do to White people to protect the Homeland?

[Moderation4ever]

Clearly you have no understanding of CRT. Take some time and learn.

[Longtobefree]

I fully understand CRTs.
They were replaced by flat screens.

[Moderation4ever]

You got me there. Bravo!

[Nige]

Because the FBI has the stats.

That is not what anyone says.

[MistahWhiskas]

"Why does President Shits-His-Pants claim White Supremacy is the Homeland’s greatest threat? Why do CRT proponents also say all White people are White Supremacists?

If all White People are White Supremacists and White Supremacy is the Homeland’s greatest threat, what should the government do to White people to protect the Homeland?"

Missing a premise (or more) there aren't you?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Rachel Rollins, MA USA, was fired. Hatch act, lying to Feds, etc.
Yet no proseq for lying.

[Martinned]

People getting fired for misconduct. That must really confuse you.

[Michael P]

The Deep State prosecuted Michael Flynn for vastly less. No surprise that you act dumb, though. Forrest Gump's mama always said that stupid is as stupid does.

[David Nieporent]

The Deep State did not prosecute Michael Flynn. (There is no Deep State.) It was not for vastly less. And why the fuck are you people claiming that Rollins isn't going to be prosecuted? This performative outrage is based on a completely made up claim. The investigation revealing her dishonesty was just published this past week.

[Dr. Ed 2]

She was only confirmed 51-50 and ought not been.

[John F. Carr]

That dispute was surely over her politics. Any ethical objections would have been rightly seen as cover for political objections.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Threatening false arrest of a tv reporter with it on tape was NOT politics. She is UM Amherst social justice circa 1993-- pathological hatred of white males.

[John F. Carr]

I am not saying there were no legitimate objections. I am saying in the polarized Washington atmosphere, her politics matter more to both sides. Republicans would not have supported her if she didn't abuse her power, had not been accused of road rage, and so on.

[Gandydancer]

I have never seen the making of valid ethical objections avoided by partisans because they would be accused of having only political objections. Yet that was your claim as to what happened in this case.

[Gandydancer]

Yeah, I'm sure she never had any ethical lapses anyone could legitimately object to until she became a US Attorney.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/18/opinion/jeff-jacoby-rachael-rollins-was-disgrace/

[John F. Carr]

At first it looked like a routine Hatch Act violation and the administration was being strict to create an appearance of having ethics. Then it came out she lied under oath during an internal investigation. That's worse than just a firing offense for a prosecutor. Why no charges?

A second progressive prosecutor also went down last week. Kim Gardner in St. Louis resigned.

A question for those who follow the progressive prosecutor movement: How many of them would you call successful after several years in office, or better yet after being reelected? Still popular, not watching crime spike, no ethical clouds, etc.?

[Michael P]

On your question about progressive prosecutors: Larry Krasner, who claims to have been the first of that wave when he was elected in 2017, was reelected in Philly in 2021, but the results are not looking good for the city.
https://www.axios.com/local/philadelphia/2022/09/20/philadelphia-homicide-violent-crime
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/philadelphia-mayor-election-crime-wave_n_645e87b8e4b094269bb4144b
("As in other cities, murders have since begun to trend downward in Philadelphia, but they remain far higher than they were in 2019.")

[MistahWhiskas]

he was elected in 2017, was reelected in Philly in 2021
As in other cities

[Martinned]

The charges may still come.

And no, having elected or otherwise political prosecutors is not a good idea, for this very reason.

[Bob from Ohio]

" having elected or otherwise political prosecutors is not a good idea"

The people have a right to select those who wield such huge power over them. Elections are always preferable to crony dominated "non-partisan" appointment procedures.

[shawn_dude]

The people vote for the people who select the prosecutors. Otherwise, your argument leads to the people having a right to vote for FBI director.

[Bob from Ohio]

Only in the federal system. Prosecutors in states are locally elected.

Martinned doesn't like an elected politician selecting prosecutors either. He wants civil servants only.

[Martinned]

I don't want politicians interfering in prosecutions. And all the Trump fans on this blog should understand why that is, given that they never miss an opportunity to claim that the DOJ only ever acts for political reasons when investigating Trump.

[Gandydancer]

You keep evading the observation that political motivations for harassing Trump are rife in the "career" DOJ bureaucracy as well.

[Martinned]

They are not, but there is the appearance of such. Which is why it would be good to sever the chain of command between the career prosecutors in the DOJ and the (elected) politicians.

[Gandydancer]

Occam's Razor: The appearance is there because the reality is there.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

And no, having elected or otherwise political prosecutors is not a good idea, for this very reason.

Because having them be political appointees who are beholden to their political appointers and unaccountable to the electorate would surely solve the problem.

[Martinned]

No, they shouldn't be beholden to anyone except for gross misfeasance in office, just like judges.

[Gandydancer]

Judges stink too.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

You think that somehow solves the problem of political hacks being appointed by...politicians?

[Martinned]

Judges and prosecutors should be appointed by politicians only subject to drastic safeguards. (Supermajorities, minimum qualifications, etc.)

[Noscitur a sociis]

And no, having elected or otherwise political prosecutors is not a good idea, for this very reason.

What very reason?

[Martinned]

That even the appearance of prosecutions - or the lack thereof - for political reasons undermines the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Standing magistrates, like sitting ones, should be conspicuously impartial and non-partisan.

[Gandydancer]

But they're not.

=I= don’t want to create the appearance of legitimacy when the reality of legitimacy does not exist.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Its not routine when photos appear on the front page of a major newspaper. But trying to keep the da from getting elected was unprecedented.

[David Nieporent]

Why no charges?

Because it takes longer than 2 days to secure an indictment?

[Noscitur a sociis]

While I’m not happy to admit it, Dr. Ed may actually have a point: footnote 58 of the report says,

On December 16, 2022, pursuant to the Inspector General Act, 5 U.S.C. § 404(d), the OIG referred the false statements allegation to the Department for a prosecutive decision. On January 6, 2023, the Department informed the OIG that it declined prosecution.

[Mr. Bumble]

She resigned.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Read the reports...

[Ben_]

"Rachel Rollins"

More Democrat lawlessness.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Yet no proseq for lying.

The report finding that she lied was literally released yesterday.

[John F. Carr]

The Boston Globe, relying on unnamed sources, considers prosecution unlikely. The article points out she may still be disbarred.

A liberal Boston Globe columnist complains of a double standard, thinking a Republican wouldn't have to resign under similar circumstances.

[Noscitur a sociis]

See my response to David Nieporent above.

[Commenter_XY]

The Durham Report: Cathartic? Informative? Anticlimactic? Waste of time?

What are the legal issues arising from report? I do wonder about federal government agencies (CIA, DOJ, FBI as examples) and their influence on electoral politics. I think the report made that clear, that Fed agency employees actively intervened to influence the election.

My take: I don't think we want that kind of intervention. Regardless of whether it is Team R, or Team D or Team L doing it.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Informative. Validating. Pretty clear pieces of the US government put their weight on one side of the election, in violation of all sorts of laws.

[grb]

Ultimately, Durham was the anti-Mueller. While Mueller didn’t care what people wanted, Durham always played the tease with his fanbase. While Mueller shunned the press, Durham lived for the artfully constructed stories generated for his followers. While Mueller ran a tight efficient investigation, Durham’s dragged on long after he found there was nothing to find – running over twice the length of Mueller’s.

And where Mueller refused to prioritize conclusion over fact, Durham was all conclusion from almost no fact. Having come up with zilch, his entire focus was producing a pretty narrative. That’s as un-Mueller as you can get. It’s like the two were mirror opposites of each other. One committed to prosecutorial discretion, the other to giving his people exactly want they want.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Commenter_XY — Depends on what part of electoral politics you are talking about. Treason is a political crime. If someone attempted treason by means to forcefully corrupt electoral politics, I would definitely want federal power to investigate that. And not just afterwards, but while it was ongoing.

More generally, I think the Justice Department should not dawdle because they think it unseemly to be seen investigating political crimes, such as treason, or insurrection, or election interference. There is no way properly to investigate such crimes without being called political by folks who support the would-be criminals in their political objectives.

It is important that if crimes of that sort are committed that the charges filed are explicit about the political nature of the offenses. The political aspects of such crimes should be named explicitly, and charged as aggravating factors. If you have an attempted treason, and the Justice Department restricts itself to charge perpetrators merely for violence, that is a dereliction by the Justice Department.

[Michael P]

Go on, show us further that you don't know what "treason" means, and that you don't understand anything else you're talking about.

[SimonP]

Well, we could approach this question by asking whether the Durham investigation resulted in any meaningful prosecutions or whether the report suggested any changes to be imposed by law or executive action.

Did it?

It seems to me that Durham spent a lot of time trying to smear the people he was investigating, bringing spurious charges in only a couple of cases, and then released a report that doesn’t really say anything except that the investigators didn’t work hard enough to convince themselves or the FISA court, from the initial evidence, that there was no “there” there. Which is a curious thing to expect a law enforcement agency investigating potential foreign interference in a national election to do. But what do I know, I actually care about that sort of thing, it might be biasing my view.

Thiessen’s op-ed on the report rather unwittingly exposes the bizarre nature of Durham’s complaint. He expressed incredulity that the FBI would rely on a Russian spy’s information to open an investigation into whether Trump was coordinating with the Russians. How is that trustworthy??? But the more remarkable thing, to me, about that insinuation, is that it seems to be saying that Russia was feeding bad info to the FBI in order to hurt Trump (and, thereby, help Hillary), while implicitly admitting that Russians were trying to interfere in our elections.

Conservatives, as usual, are talking out of both sides of their mouth on this. They want us to discount and overlook the fact that we did find evidence that the Russians sought to coordinate with the Trump campaign, and that the Trump campaign was open to their assistance, by focusing on the fact that the preliminary evidence used to open the investigation just wasn’t good enough, citing for this conclusion the fact that much of this preliminary evidence was… fed to us by foreign actors seeking to influence our election.

[Brett Bellmore]

By scheduling things so that the investigation would not conclude until after Biden was in office, and in command of the DOJ, Durham precluded it from actually resulting in any prosecutions. People noticed this well before the investigation was complete: He essentially slow walked it so that the product would be nothing but a PR document, not a legal proceeding.

We have to be clear about what has been shown: The FBI engaged in many dubious or even outright illegal things to keep the Russia collusion investigation going. Such as lying to a FISA court to get the warrant for their surveillance extended.

Even if you could legally defend initiating the investigation, they swiftly knew that the premise of the investigation was garbage, and concealed that to keep it running and producing bad PR for Trump.

[SimonP]

We have to be clear about what has been shown: [proceeds to describe what's been "shown" vaguely and misleadingly].

Res ipsa loquitur.

[Brett Bellmore]

As an example, they talked to one of Steele's sources. The source said the dossier was a steaming heap.

They told the FISA court that the source seemed credible, but not what the source had credibly related to them about the dossier.

[SimonP]

And what was Durham’s recommendation on that point?

“Don’t bury this in a footnote.”

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "... the dossier was a steaming heap... "

But, of course, it wasn't. As a reminder, Steele’s report can be divided into three categories:

1. Things he got 100% right, such as the Russian campaign to help elect Trump & their hacking of Clinton-associated email. In both predictions he was miles ahead of everyone else.

2. Things he got 100% wrong, of which there were very few. You probably should put his allegations on financial ties between Trump & Russian-interests here, simply for lack of evidence otherwise. However Trump did expend a massive effort to keep his finances hidden, and lied about his Russian business ties repeatedly during the campaign. Steele may also prove prescient here in the end.

3. Then there were things he got 66-80% right, which was a large part of his report. Here we find the famous “piss tape”, which did exist and the Mueller Report documents fixer Cohen’s efforts at damage control to suppress it. However most people think the tape was a fake. As for Cohen, Steele had him sneaking into Prague to meet with Russians about the campaign. Instead he was sneaking into Moscow to meet with government officials about a massive Trump business deal. (This happen throughout the ’16 campaign, and Trump lied & lied & lied about it). Likewise, Steele had Manafort meeting with a Russian spy to coordinate election measures. This happened, though Manafort claimed it was only to hand over internal campaign data to his handler. Who knows? Manafort is a notorious liar, caught-out multiple times while he was supposedly a cooperating government witness. Please remember the man was deeply in debt to people tied to Putin’s inner circle before he took the job of Trump Campaign Head without salary. Betrayal to the Russians was hardwired in right from the start.

All in all, Steele had not a bad track record as far as raw intelligence goes. From my deep knowledge of spycraft (from many a spy novel), I’d say his report was a stellar example of the breed. He probably had a better batting average than most.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The FBI has even admitted they fucked this up and have made changes in response.

But keep tilting at that windmill, Don Quixote, if it helps you avoid the real reasons Clinton lost in 2016.

[grb]

Do you want to attempt to contest anything above?

(I thought not)

[bevis the lumberjack]

Everyone but you. Recognizes the Steele thing for what it was. Made up opposition research. Internal documents have revealed that people at the FBI and DOJ recognized that and wondered how they were sustaining an investigation.

They got bullshit FISA warrants on innocent people based on information they knew was false.

Obviously government abuses in the furtherance of your team’s interest is no problem for you. You may not actually be a fascist, but you slavishly support fascist behavior. I got nothing to say to someone like you.

[SimonP]

Interestingly, nothing in this comment amounts to, "This specific thing that you said, GRB, is wrong."

Maybe you should try again.

[Moderation4ever]

People who are familiar with the Steele dossier understand that it was raw data and that by itself it is unverified. They will also recognize that parts of it are verified in follow-up investigation. Much of it remains unverified and must be viewed in that context. There are far more people than you think that understand this. People can try to pull down the Steele dossie, but they are never going to completely bury it. It is there for the history books.

[SimonP]

Is anything that GRB said actually wrong?

What changes has the FBI made, in response to this controversy?

Whether or not it's the sole reason Hillary lost is somewhat beside the point. The point is that Russia was trying to sway the election, and has in Trump a man with a shocking disregard for classified information, a disinterest in maintaining international alliances that keep forces like Russia and China from invading other countries, and a taste for all manners of corruption, over and to which Russia has ample leverage and access.

And that man is the leader of the Republican party, with a good shot at the presidency in 2024.

[grb]

SimonP : “…Russia was trying to sway the election…:

Mueller uncovered an interesting fact on Russia’s efforts for Trump:

Of course Russian Intelligence hacked Clinton friend John Podesta stealing hundreds of emails, then sat on them over six months. So when did they start leaking to the media? Mueller established the first leak occurred less than one hour after the Planet Hollywood story broke, rocking the Trump campaign back on its heels. Their boy was in trouble, so Russia rushed to help.

[Gandydancer]

Trump is Russia's "boy" only in your slurs.

[Kazinski]

Steele claimed that the Russian consulate in Miami was coordinating and financing the election interference efforts to help Trump.

There is no Russian consulate in Miami.

I think that disqualifies everything in the Steele Dossier right there.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

There is a Russian Visa Center in Miami, as well as something called Russian Documents LLC, whatever that is. Presumably Russian Federation employees at those two places could have performed the coordinating and financing etc.

[Kazinski]

Both of those are private travel agencies.

Nice try.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Ostensibly.

[bernard11]

So you think Durham was actually trying to undermine his own investigation?

Is this because you absolutely know that there should have been successful prosecutions?

[Moderation4ever]

Thank you. I was trying to figure the comment out and it does seem Brett thinks Durham in league with the anti-Trumper.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Did you read Ben Smith’s piece about how he got his hands on the Dossier?? The McCain Institute had it at one point. Durham is pretty obviously a Bush Republican operative tasked with obfuscating for the GOPe. Durham famously dragged an investigation into torture at Gitmo for so long that everyone forgot there was even an investigation.

[Gandydancer]

Yes. And Yes.

[Noscitur a sociis]

whether the report suggested any changes to be imposed by law or executive action.

The FBI certain seemed to think some change were in order!

The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented.

[Kazinski]

Here's the FBI's statement on the Durham report, hardly a claim they didn't do anything wrong:

"The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented. This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect."

And let's remember that McCabe, Baker, Strzok, and Page lost their jobs over their conduct, and Kevin Clinesmith was convicted for falsifying a FISA application.

[Sarcastr0]

Internal tweaks to avoid missteps is quite a pullback from what the right is claiming the report has laid bare.

[Kazinski]

A deputy director's firing, and the firing of the assistant deputy director for counterintelligence seem like a little more than tweaks.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't know the FBI's org chart, but lets say those are big civil servants.

It's still a really small shakeup, Kaz. And miles below, say, "pieces of the US government put their weight on one side of the election, in violation of all sorts of laws."

[Kazinski]

Well if you don't even know the relative level of the Deputy Director of the FBI why do you even join in on these discussions?

[David Nieporent]

He expressed incredulity that the FBI would rely on a Russian spy’s information to open an investigation into whether Trump was coordinating with the Russians. How is that trustworthy???

My favorite part is that Durham kept whining that the FBI was investigating uncorroborated evidence. No shit! That it was uncorroborated was why they were investigating! If it were corroborated they could have gone right to arresting and prosecuting!

[Ben_]

"The Durham Report: Cathartic? Informative? Anticlimactic? Waste of time?"

Democrats will ignore it and continue telling the same lies.

[grb]

The thing we’ll always remember about Durham was his love of talk. Remember when the DOJ Inspector General found the Trump investigation warranted by evidence? Durham rushed out a response strongly disagreeing. All his fanboys thought this cryptic statement hinted of deep secret knowledge. It was only years later we learned it was all talk. Durham accepted an investigation was required, but only “preliminary”, not “full”.

He was always doing that : Teasing his supporters with much more than he could deliver. There were his carefully crafted statements in filings that had the faithful convinced a Big Reveal was finally at hand. When that hope was quickly dashed, Durham would shrug his shoulders and say it wasn’t his fault for being misunderstood. During his last bungled trial, he droned on about vast conspiracies that had no relation to fact, much less the trial at hand. Several times the judge had to herd him back on point. Man, how he loved empty talk!

[Ben_]

You like fighting straw men.

Why won't you just stop promoting and defending lies and corruption?

[Sarcastr0]

grb posted a substantive critique above. You refuse to engage other than stamping your feet and asking insulting questions.

You are very lazy.

[Ben_]

Who cares what liars say about anything?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Ask yourself—-why did Louie Gohmert give up a safe seat in Congress to run a half-ass campaign to unseat AG Paxton?? If you know the answer to that you can figure out a lot of American politics of the last 7 years.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

McConnell had to approve of Comey for him to be Director. And Wray is Mueller’s and Comey’s love child and McConnell convinced Trump to appoint him. McConnell is a savvy political operator and so from a partisan perspective there is nothing to see here. I think Trump was mistreated but the mistreatment came from GOPe…Democrats behaved like partisan actors have behaved since the 1990s.

[Martinned]

The Treasury Select Committee has proposed that cryptocurrency should be regulated like gambling (which, of course, isn't illegal in the UK). How did it take people this long to reach that obvious conclusion?

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/158/treasury-committee/news/195246/consumer-cryptocurrency-trading-should-be-regulated-as-gambling-treasury-committee-says-in-new-report/

[Commenter_XY]

If that works for the UK, fine. This is the United States. 🙂

Crypto: I thought the whole idea was storing value outside the traditional finance system, not under the control of governments. So I am not surprised to see government pushback...they want tax money, power and control.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, yeah, the point was all along to circumvent government control over currency, so, yes, it was obvious from the start that if crypto-currencies ever started to gain traction, they'd be outlawed.

The original people behind the crypto movement knew this quite well.

Of course, to date none of them have proven to have much utility as a currency, all the action has been in the form of a tulip mania type bubble, clearly recognized as such, and people trying to get in while they're rising and then get the heck out before the bubble pops.

So, gambling? It's a fair cop.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, I am not so sure about tulip mania. I used to think that way. Now, I am looking at crypto with a different perspective (deliberately). There is some intrinsic value to BTC stemming from the cost of electricity to create BTC. Tenuous, I know.

It is a medium of exchange. I am not quite seeing the gambling analogy.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Just because it costs something to make something, doesn't mean there is intrinsic value to it.

[Martinned]

Unless you're a Marxist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

[Gandydancer]

To be a Marxist is to be a loon.

AL is right.

[Brett Bellmore]

That is, as Martinned pointed out, the same as the Marxist "labor theory of value" fallacy. Just because it costs something to dig holes and refill them doesn't mean refilled holes are actually valuable.

Bitcoin in particular is never really a medium for transactions, except for the transactions that involved getting into it or cashing out; The transaction cost is too high.

[Nige]

It’s mostly good for money laundering, those cyber extortion attacks, assorted scams, getting stolen by North Korean agents, and producing loads of CO2.

(Also, not sure what the fallacy is there, the labour has value, whether the hole has value, as opposed to utility, is irrelevant.)

[Brett Bellmore]

"It’s mostly good for money laundering, those cyber extortion attacks, assorted scams, getting stolen by North Korean agents, and producing loads of CO2."

Pretty much, all uses that don't require low transaction costs, unlike facilitating ordinary transactions.

"Also, not sure what the fallacy is there, the labour has value, whether the hole has value, as opposed to utility, is irrelevant."

The labor had value, if it had been devoted to something useful. The fallacy of the labor theory of value is that the value of a product IS the labor that went into it.

It's trivially easy to demonstrate that huge amounts of labor can be put into producing something that's perfectly worthless, (Digging a hole and refilling it is the classic example.) and sometimes very valuable things can be produced with little labor at all.

The point of the labor theory of value was to define away the contribution of everybody BUT the laborers to the value of everything, so that you could pretend that the laborers are being cheated by anybody else being paid.

[Nige]

Digging and refilling holes - as in graves? Do graves have no value?

[Sarcastr0]

I took an audio course on political philosophy post-Locke specifically to understand where Marx fits.

Marx's labor theory of value was absolutely progress from what had come before, but he thought he had it all figured and he sure did not.

Useless labor is one example. His take on science and tech is another. And, of course, there is the whole socialism/communism as achievable things (his definition of both).

[Nige]

What's useless labour? Building a yacht for the super-rich? Or digging a hole that will provide drainage and prevent a house flooding?

[Sarcastr0]

His main innovation was taking into account economics as an individual not just a collective practice, which utilitarianism and the rights theories did not. Thus, exploitation becomes a thing that people can grapple with.

Issues with wealth disparities are not actually captured in his theory - there is only labor people and those who pay them. And neither does he tune the value-add of labor from case-to-case, just a collective concern about the incentives to exploit workers while adding no value yourself (Marx didn't think management added value)

Thus, under his theory, building a yacht is productive labor, and so is digging a hole and later filling it up with or without a body or drainage.

And he didn't think women counted at all.

There have been some refinements of the bones of his theory, but it is really just a step in a process and anyone who ends with Marxism is missing a lot. So, too, is anyone who is so reactionary they refuse to acknowledge that laborers are important, are in a market for labor, and it is a market that is easy to squeeze and cause to fail.

[Brett Bellmore]

Of course laborers are important.

Look, I design industrial tooling for a living. Without it the guys laboring on the plant floor would maybe be able to produce one or two parts by hand a day, with it they can produce tens of thousands per day.

That tooling isn't cheap, sometimes it amounts to several years' wages for the employee running it. Often just the upkeep on it costs more than the hourly on the employee running it.

I have no problem admitting that those guys are contributing to the value of the parts produced. So am I.

But so is the guy who paid for that tooling which was responsible for the difference of 10,000 times in production rates.

It would be stupid denying the value contributed by the laborers, but is it any less stupid denying the value contributed by that tooling, the capital?

[Nige]

Are you trying to tell me we don't live in a society where capital isn't just valued, it's venerated? And where labour is viewed as either disposable, or soon to be made disposable with the next tech innovation, which won't actually replace or properly replicate the labour, but will still be used to devalue it drastically?

[bernard11]

Nige,

The implication of what you are saying is that if I'm a bad digger, and you're a good one my hole is worth more than your identical one, because more labor went into it.

Further, if you used a shovel and I dug with my hands, my hole is worth even more, because of the extra labor.

But both holes do the same thing. They are equally valuable. And suppose we charge for our work. Then part of your take goes to pay for the shovel - capital. I get to keep all mine, but you still come out ahead, because the shovel lets you dig a lot more than I can in the same amount of time.

[Sarcastr0]

I think it's pretty clear I'm not defending Marx, Brett.

Though your point that management adds resources is rather missing the point. The value of finding the resources is just more labor, which management does not do.

Rationalization of the resource use is the value add Marx neglected.

However, it is also very hard to look at CEO pay and not see the management-labor market distortions Marx talked about, even realizing there is a value-add there.

[Kazinski]

Well of course capital is venerated, it's what's progressed us from a subsistence economy to an economy where even the poorest working people can afford cars.

[Sarcastr0]

Kaz, labor helped in that as well. So did government regulation. And government spending.

Nothing is simple.

[Nige]

‘because more labor went into it.’

Quantity is not quality. Labour isn’t just brute strength, it’s also skill and experience.

‘if you used a shovel and I dug with my hands’

I would suggest a general strike until you’re provided with the necessary tools for the job.

Kaz - it's progressed us to a planet that is heating up from all the fossil fuel burned by cars, because capital is venerated so much it demands global human sacrifices.

[Kazinski]

Sarcasto, Capital isn't money it's "accumulated goods devoted to the production of other goods".

So if course labor uses capital to produce vastly more efficiently than labor alone, and their are government regulations on how many workers can be mangled and mashed in the process.

But capital is the force multiplier that allows such a small amount of labor to allow us to live in relative luxury compared to the immense expenditure of labor it used to take merely to allow us to eat and crudely shelter ourselves.

[bernard11]

I am not quite seeing the gambling analogy.

Well, there is a lot of zero-sum speculation, with no underlying asset, on its value. Looks like gambling to me.

Anything can be a medium of exchange if the parties agree, but things that fluctuate wildly in value don't work well for that.

The value in crypto seems to be to enable criminal activity.

[bevis the lumberjack]

There’s no way to reasonably estimate a value. You’ve got no more reason to expect the value to go up or down than there is to expect a flipped coin to come up heads or tails.

That’s not investing, that’s gambling.

[Martinned]

Crypto: I thought the whole idea was storing value

If that was the idea, cryptocurrency does an utterly terrible job of it.

https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin/

[Commenter_XY]

Yeah I know - a real rollercoaster.

[John F. Carr]

Some crypto is gambling. Some is not.

[Martinned]

True. Sometimes crypto is fraud or money laundering instead.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Crypto is absolutely pure gambling. Please tell me how you can actually estimate a reasonable value for it, as opposed to a stock or a bond?

[shawn_dude]

Percentage of global warming related costs relative to the amount of electricity required to "mine" very large prime numbers?

Just joking. I agree. There's no real value there; it's a gimmick at best.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Any suggestions about legal means to persuade credit reporting agencies to correct promptly a mistakenly-reported credit card delinquency?

[apedad]

Amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act and/or the Consumer Credit Protection Act (not sure if they're the same), to include timelines to correct errors.

‘‘You may, on your own, notify a credit bureau in writing that you dispute the accuracy of information in your credit file. The credit bureau must then reinvestigate and modify or remove inaccurate or incomplete information. The credit bureau may not charge any fee for this service. Any pertinent information and copies of all documents you have concerning an error should be given to the credit bureau.

If the credit bureau’s reinvestigation does not resolve the dispute to your satisfaction, you may send a brief statement to the credit bureau, to be kept in your file, explaining why you think the record is inaccurate. The credit bureau must include a summary of your statement about disputed information with any report it issues about you."

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-260/pdf/COMPS-260.pdf

[Stephen Lathrop]

apedad, first, thank you for your reply. There seem to be practical problems with what you suggest. From what I could find, the reinvestigation provision has been interpreted to mean the credit reporting agency completes its duty to investigate if it merely queries the original filer of the erroneous report. Then the original filer fulfills its legal duty if it merely repeats to the credit reporting agency the original report. Nobody is under any meaningful requirement to get the facts right, except for a statutory damages provision so small ($1,000 max) that it cannot support access to legal counsel.

Moreover, specific provisions written into the federal acts you cite—which on their face protect continuation of equitable remedies under state law for damages by credit reporting agencies—have apparently been read out of the federal laws by the federal judiciary. They have cited federal supremacy, and alleged delegation of all such questions to the FTC—which furnishes no remedies at all for particular cases.

This looks to me like a pretty big mess, and a notable threat to people victimized by credit reporting errors. Younger people tell me those can be brutally damaging, obstructing job changes and career advancement, and all but barring access to rental housing for years-long long intervals. Apparently the role of credit reporting as an all-purpose mediator of social reputation has been growing apace, while enforcement of laws to ensure fair practices has been falling apart. I have read reports that without meaningful oversight, the credit reporting agencies have become a prolific source of damaging errors. Queries directed to Elizabeth Warren's CFPB encounter comically useless deflections, instead of eliciting answers.

I posed the question here to see if perhaps as a non-lawyer I have overlooked something I ought to understand better. Any other takers?

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

There seem to be practical problems with what you suggest. From what I could find, the reinvestigation provision has been interpreted to mean the credit reporting agency completes its duty to investigate if it merely queries the original filer of the erroneous report.

What else do you think they can do? All they know is what's been reported to them. Passing along to the reporting entities any claims of errors, and removing the allegedly erroneous information from your file if the reporting entity does not respond in the allotted time, is the extent of their ability to facilitate corrections of those alleged errors.

[Gandydancer]

Keeping the derogatory claim in the credit file if the “reporting agency” merely “responds” is obviously NOT all that can be done.

Lifting the statutory damages limit is an obvious first step towards motivating greater care in relaying potentially derogatory information.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Keeping the derogatory claim in the credit file if the “reporting agency” merely “responds” is obviously NOT all that can be done.

Lifting the statutory damages limit is an obvious first step towards motivating greater care in relaying potentially derogatory information.

Read my post and what I was responding to (that I explicitly quoted) again. I didn't say that was "all that can be done". I said it was all that the credit reporting agencies (like Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) can realistically do, because it is. A business reports something to them, which is then disputed by a consumer. The agency informs the business of the dispute and gives them the prescribed amount of time to investigate and respond. If they don't respond in that time then the derogatory item is removed from the customer's report. If the business responds by saying that it made an error and the customer was correct, or that neither of them was correct, then the item is removed/corrected. If the business responds by saying, "We looked into it and the originally reported data was in fact accurate"...what are you expecting the reporting agency in the middle to do? Say, "Sorry, but the consumer...who is the only party with any real incentive to make a false claim here...says differently and we're just going to take their word for it"?

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

I worked for a credit reporting agency back in the mid-80's - TRW, which subsequently sold their credit reporting division. One of the biggest problems with this system under the Fair Credit Reporting Act was that we would dispute the derogatory item as per the consumer, and the business wouldn't reply within 30 days, and we would remove it and issue a new report. But the business wouldn't change the data in their own system, so in the next month's data dump the derogatory item is right back in the reporting agency's system for the next time the consumer applied for credit.

But the main lesson I learned from my 9 months working there is to never never name a child with the same name as the parent. The eventual credit reports on the two would inevitably be a tangled mess.

The TRW office was in Columbia MD, and I also dealt personally with a then employee of the US Justice Dept who would eventually take a seat on the US Supreme Court! This person acted like a real asshole as well, bad enough that I remembered the name, but to be fair so did most people who made a trip there to dispute a credit report. Worst job I ever had.

[Gandydancer]

Yours is a false alternative. The CRA should no more take the consumer's word for anything than the business', obviously. Maybe the consumer is the only party with any real incentive to make a false claim, but businesses do it anyway, out of indolence or whatever. Because the cost of indolence is low? But incentives can be changed.

[David Nieporent]

Nobody is under any meaningful requirement to get the facts right, except for a statutory damages provision so small ($1,000 max) that it cannot support access to legal counsel.

The FCRA is a fee shifting statute.

[dwb68]

Just report the mistake to them. They address it (I have reported errors on my report, it gets fixed within weeks).

[Gandydancer]

Anecdote doesn't apply where it doesn't apply.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

dwb just remember to request another credit report a few months down the road to make sure the mistake hasn't magically reappeared, as I describe above.

[shawn_dude]

Aren't they required to let you post a rebuttal to negative information? I didn't that once when I was double-billed by a health clinic and didn't pay the second copy of the bill. I had no idea it was doubled billed until I got a ding on my report and it went to collections. That seemed to work and I was able to buy a house and maintain a good credit rating. Otherwise, the best you can do is reach out to the original reporter that provided the false information in the first place.

[Gandydancer]

And if you "reach out" and nothing happens, then what?

From apedad, above: " The credit bureau must include a summary of your statement about disputed information with any report it issues about you.” And what is your recourse to see or contest the accuracy or adequacy of the "summary?

[ducksalad]

You don't strike me as the type of person to live ahead of his earnings. Debit cards and cash.

If some purchase is such a stretch that a few points on your credit rating is going to make it or break it, then you probably shouldn't be buying it anyway.

[Stephen Lathrop]

ducksalad, I don’t use a credit card. I did have someone in mind who described an experience that had nothing to do with inappropriate spending.

The entire card limit was less than 1 percent of the money available in the account that backed the payment account used to make the credit payments. There was never any shortage of funds. Anyway, on the day before a 30-day delinquency was mistakenly reported, the actual balance left on the card was . . . zero. The amount mistakenly alleged to remain unpaid was a two-digit figure. The hit to a years-long, notably-above-average credit rating was more than 200 points. Customer service people at the bank which made the mistake stiff-armed two requests to review what the bank had done, or to intervene with the credit reporting agencies.

After a third appeal for review, I hear the bank is now in the midst of a high level compliance review, which ought to at least reverse the ongoing harm, even if it does not redress damage which has already occurred. What is maddening is that it is the work of a minute or two to prove the mistake from the bank’s own records, but perhaps a matter of months before any bank cooperation to deliver a correction can be expected. No legal process for redress, or prompt correction of a repeatedly published error seems available until then.

The problem in the meantime is not about purchasing activity. It is about use of the credit rating to qualify for rental housing, or as a screen to reassure a security conscious employer prior to a promotion.

[apedad]

Supreme Court to take up Trump DC hotel dispute

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on whether Democratic lawmakers should be able to sue to obtain documents related to former President Trump’s former Washington, D.C., hotel.

Democrats, in seeking the documents, leveraged a federal law known as the “Seven Member Rule.” It allows any seven members of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability or any five members of the Senate Homeland Security Committee to ask for information within their purview from executive agencies.

After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the lawmakers’ suit could move forward, the Biden administration appealed to the justices and urged them to reverse the decision over concerns about the precedent the decision would set.

The Justice Department raised concerns that the decision could open administrations up to more scrutiny by Congress, even by a political party that is not in power.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4004574-supreme-court-to-take-up-trump-dc-hotel-dispute/

So the question is, can the Senate or House create a rule that allows a minority group to demand information “within their purview from executive agencies.”

BTW, BOTH presidents are against this.

Since Congress as a whole can demand information, and Congress can make its own rules, I’d say, yes, they can also create a rule that allows a minority group to demand information “within their purview from executive agencies.”

[Jerry B.]

Makes you wonder what Biden may be hiding. Info that shows he’s “The Big Guy”?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Can anyone explain consol bonds, and why some folks insist they provide a way out of the default crisis? Also, if the government decided to issue enough of them to make a difference, what would that do to other bond prices?

[Commenter_XY]

Start here. Read. Learn.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/perpetualbond.asp

[Michael P]

Consol bonds pay interest periodically (e.g. annually) but have no fixed maturity date, whereas traditional bonds pay interest plus principal after a fixed term. The UK and US governments have previously issued them, and redeemed them all except for a set of 2.5% (originally 3%) consols issued by the UK in 1751 that apparently cannot be redeemed.

Some claim consols are helpful because the principal of a consol bond does not count towards the debt limit, which is a grievous error of language. Consols would avoid some problems related to paying at maturity, but they also require higher interest rates than other bonds because redemption is so constrained.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The link asserts the bonds are perpetual. That seems at odds with the historical fact that at least some issues—maybe most issues—have been redeemed. I assume that has relevance to the notion of using such bonds to circumvent the debt ceiling, but have no idea about the specifics.

[Absaroka]

They are perpetual in the sense there is no fixed maturity, but the seller can terminate them at any time by paying back the principal.

They are sort of an infinite term callable bond.

As far as debt ceiling shenanigans, I’d think the right way to think about bonds of any type is in terms of their net present value. If a corporation tries to tell the IRS/SEC/investors/creditors that a bond it sold for $1 that pays $1B a year in interest is worth $1, that would be dishonest and the CEO should rightly go to jail. I hold the quaint belief that our government ought to be equally honest with the public.

[Michael P]

The seller typically makes some guarantees about redemption; the first issue (the 2.5% UK consols) apparently really are perpetual in practice, but all later issues had minimum terms of maturity (for example, see https://www.theherbstmancollection.com/1877-consol-bonds), and have since been redeemed by the seller. The UK only redeemed their 4% consols in 2015, though, so they were quite long-lived. (The last issue of those was apparently in 1932.)

[Brett Bellmore]

Many of the early ones were nominally perpetual when issued, but ended up falling to sovereign decisions to end them anyway; "I am altering the deal; Pray I don't alter it any further."

[Voize]

You can estimate a market value of a bond using an investment discount rate (typically the prevailing interest rate for similar investments) to calculate the present value of its future income stream. That is the "right way" for an investor to think about the price, but the debt ceiling statute explicitly contemplates face value not market value.

[Absaroka]

"but the debt ceiling statute explicitly contemplates face value not market value."

I'm not arguing about the text of the law, but about the behavior I expect from my government.

Imagine a bond with a face value of $1, a term of one day, and interest of $1B a day. Everyone knows that bond is worth close to a billion.

The debt limit is there for a reason - to put an upper bound on how much debt today's taxpayers pile on future generations. It was lawfully enacted in the way we make collective decisions. If we collectively no longer want to have a debt limit, we have the ability to eliminate it. We have not done that - it is, today, still the collective will of the people.

When the government looks me in the eye and says the $1/$1B bond is only a $1 bond, my reaction is they are not being honest with me. It may be technically legal - if the context was a business engaging in sharp practices with another business, maybe a court should carefully follow the text.

But I don't think that's the right context here - I think of it as an employee (the government) engaging in sharp practice with their employer (you and me and the rest or us). And if I was a CEO and my CFO tried to pull that on me, I'd get a new CFO.

[bernard11]

Do you think the government should restate the debt every time interest rates change?

Because that's what you are asking for.

[Absaroka]

Just to be specific, what I'm asking for is the government to be honest with me.

"When the government looks me in the eye and says the $1/$1B bond is only a $1 bond, my reaction is they are not being honest with me."

When people start talking about platinum coins and consol bonds as a way of evading the debt limit, while looking me in the eye and saying 'of course we are honoring the debt limit', I am reminded of the immortal words of Judge Judy: "Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining".

Do you let your employees get away with telling you things that are technically right, but practically wrong? Your CFO sold a $1/$1B bond, and when you ask him 'what's our balance sheet look like' and he replies 'we're good, we only owe $1', you're OK with that?

[bernard11]

Well, if were CEO I would ask about more than the face value of the debt. And I'm still wondering why the CFO would do that.

Here is what I would say in your example. The face value is a nominal figure. So long as everyone knows what it means and doesn't mean, I see no problem.

The issue with premium bonds or perpetuities is not really misrepresentation so much as exploiting a loophole.

Would I prefer it if the government didn't have to do that? Yes. But given the circumstances I think it's the least bad course of action.

[Gandydancer]

That’s because you want to evade the debt limit. The collective “we” that put it in place and want laws to mean what they were meant to mean don’t want you to get away with it, even if YOU are perfectly happy with dishonestly screwing around in that way.

[Nelson]

"The collective “we” that put it in place"

Not raising the debt ceiling is breaking a financial promise we made in the past.

The best analogy for this is buying a car with 60 payments, then deciding after 12 payments that you aren't going to pay any more.

The collective "we" agreed to pay for certain things in the past (sometimes decades in the past). This has nothing to do with new spending.

If we never passed another spending bill ever again, we would still need to raise the debt ceiling. Because this debt is what we already promised to pay.

America isn't a deadbeat. We can't allow politicized gamesmanship make us a deadbeat.

This is grossly irresponsible behavior from people who, when they had the White House, House, and Senate, chose to increase the deficit.

If Republicans really wanted to reduce spending, 2017-2019 was when they could have done it. They chose not to. Worse, they chose to pass a tax cut that didn't help the middle class at all and ballooned the deficit.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The debt limit is there for a reason – to put an upper bound on how much debt today’s taxpayers pile on future generations.

How do you rate that remark with regard to forthright assessment of what is actually happening?

Regardless of how you answer that question, let’s take your remark that I quoted as a fair statement of where you think the policy priority should lie, as the nation struggles with the present political standoff. Consider this 3-way alternative:

1. Default on the national debt.

2. Issue of consol bonds, which avoids the default, while technically fulfilling every legal requirement.

3. Cave to Republicans, after they escalate to whatever anti-Democratic Party priorities they will end up picking from a banquet of possibilities: more tax cuts; cuts to social security; cuts to medicare; work requirements for medicaid; elimination of food aid to the poor; no more asylum for refugees at the southern border—basically whatever it takes to make it absolutely certain no Democratic Party candidate can win the presidency in 2024—a prospect which many on the left would read as a certain fascist takeover of the nation by the Trumpists.

Which of those do you think is the most practical long-term method, “to put an upper bound on how much debt today’s taxpayers pile on future generations?” Be sure to factor in political retaliations by Democrats before you answer.

Assume, for instance, a comparable no-holds-barred political scorched earth campaign by Biden and the Senate, to somehow discredit similarly the Republicans. Consider their banquet of choices:

1. Immediate end to all agricultural subsidy payments to red states. Blue states are rich enough to buy all the food they need abroad, and they have the harbors to do it.

2. An end to hospital reimbursements for emergency room care in red states.

3. Long-delayed social security checks in red states.

4. Intensive IRS audits for Republican donors.

5. Endless delays of IRS refunds in red states.

6. Defiance of the Supreme Court on every decision Democrats disapprove.

7. A dead serious secession movement, to take the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and the West Coast out of the union, and position them permanently to keep and use for their own purposes the money they now send to underwrite red state economies. And to finally position them permanently to resist forced capitulation to political minorities on gun issues and abortion meddling.

Remember the new Republican rules: scorched earth, and anything goes. Use whatever political leverage you can lay hands on to discredit your political opponents short-term, by maximally harming their supporters.

That is the game Republicans demand. Have you really considered what happens to future generations if Republicans get the game they demand? Do you really suppose Democrats—at long last—still view this as a contest for small stakes and repairable losses?

If so, you may even prove to be right. But the Democrats will be proven wrong. You really will get an existential crisis for the nation. There are too many on the political left whose patience with minority misrule is at an end. If the crisis does not happen immediately, it will follow shortly. This is a battle right wingers cannot afford to win.

[shawn_dude]

Defaulting will have significant tax repercussions on future generations as well.

[Gandydancer]

Your menu of bogus alternatives is risible. We already know where the GOP started the bidding, and the (D)s can get away with a lower price for increasing the debt ceiling than THAT.

[bernard11]

As far as debt ceiling shenanigans, I’d think the right way to think about bonds of any type is in terms of their net present value.

Well, from a financial point of view that is true, but what the accounting rules for perpetual bonds are I don't know.

For bonds with a fixed maturity, it's tricky. Normally, the price is the present value - by definition. But bonds are often sold for something other than their face value, but the practice is to record the face value as the amount of the debt incurred, since that's what will be paid at maturity.

The high premium bonds that are being discussed make an odd case, but while you can argue that the excess interest is really repayment of principal, you're going to have to constantly adjust the amount of debt recorded, and deviate from standard practice.

Anyway, what's the big deal? Everyone knows what's going on, and there are not any false representations being made, since disclosures generally show both the coupon rate and the face value.

[Ridgeway]

The shenanigan would be in pretending that an obligation to pay $X/year in exchange for an up front payment of $Y does not constitute “debt”.

I would wager a lot of innerweb bux that buried in the bond/note or the indenture is some sort of acceleration clause and calculation mechanism for what the govt owes to the bondholder if the govt defaults. THAT, I’d say, is the real amount of the “debt”.

[bernard11]

Could be. But it doesn't matter for these purposes because the debt ceiling statute explicitly limits just the face value of the bonds issued.

[Gandydancer]

That the face value is bogus DOES matter.

[Voize]

Some consols, like the ones the US issued, can be (and were) redeemed at the option of the issuer but not the holder. They continue indefinitely as long as the issuer doesn't exercise that option.

[SRG]

The term "consol" is short for "consolidated" - UK consols were a consolidation of previous perpetual issues.

Perpetual bonds are not limited to governments - in the 1980s many banks issued floating rate perpetuals, but the market collapsed when new capital regulations made them expensive to hold for the banks who were the main investors. I was trading them at Goldman Sachs in London the day they collapsed.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Poll for the forum.:
Who would be a better President, Trump or DeSantis.
One word answers only please.

[Martinned]

That's a bit of a paradox: If you're going to have a president who is actively evil, it may well be better to have the incompetent one. So the better president is the one who is worse.

[Michael P]

Another leftist commenter here who cannot successfully count to one. What a sad commentary on the state of today's left.

[bevis the lumberjack]

C’mon, man. How the fuck is DeSantis evil? He’s probably not as bad on civil rights as Biden is.

And don’t say he’s BANNIG BOOKS!!!! because he’s not.

You’re engaging in hysteria here.

[Brett Bellmore]

He's going to try to defeat the Democratic nominee; That's enough to make him evil in the opinion of Democrats.

[Nige]

Yeah, let's pretend there isn't a whole host of very specific things that he's said and done to earn him that rating.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Rob DeSantos killed more Americans than Osama Bin Laden and he tortured innocent Muslims at Gitmo.

[Sarcastr0]

He's authoritarian as fuck. Books, Disney, transgender people. He is using the state to target right-wing villains and go after them.

It's a common recipe, he's followed it a lot, and it's absolutely bad news.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Books. What books has he banned? Name a book that you aren't allowed to read in Florida.

I'm not sure what he's done to transgender people. I agree with you as to him and Disney, even though I despise Disney.

But, hey, you slavishly support a president who was going to openly create a new government department to suppress the speech of people that disagreed with him. And a party that is devoting itself to stamping out terrible stuff like gas cooktops. So, you know, glass houses and throwing stones and all.

[Nige]

They're removing books from libraries, haven't you heard or are you just pretending not to know what that referred to.

'I’m not sure what he’s done to transgender people'

Go find out, then.

'openly create a new government department to suppress the speech of people that disagreed with him.'

Lol you do love that right wing bullshit.

[MeanGene]

Hey, Nige,
Are you going protest your local school/public libraries not have a copy of the "Turner Diaries"? Or are you one of those who only object when it's literature you agree with that gets censored?

[Nige]

Why would I do that? Did someone demand its removal?

[shawn_dude]

"The Turner Diaries was described as being "explicitly racist and anti-Semitic" by The New York Times and has been labeled the "bible of the racist right" by the FBI.[5][6] The book was greatly influential in shaping white nationalism and the later development of the white genocide conspiracy theory. It has also inspired numerous hate crimes and acts of terrorism, including the 1984 assassination of Alan Berg, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1999 London nail bombings."

If Kindergarteners cannot find "And Tango Makes Three" about three penguins, it's justified because they cannot find "The Turner Diaries?" If high school kids cannot read "Stormfront" they shouldn't get access to "The Bluest Eye?"

The main difference between "The Turner Diaries" and the works that are being banned from Red-state schools is that those books were evaluated by experts as being appropriate for their school library and "The Turner Diaries" is considered responsible for inciting terroristic attacks including the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh. You equate that with "And Tango Makes Three?"

[Gandydancer]

In other words, yes, you have no objection to viewpoint discrimination as long as the viewpoints discriminated against are those you and your pet "experts" disagree with.

And don't give me that "age appropriate" distraction. I'm sure Nazi's could deliver their political messages with penguins if called upon to do so.

[Nige]

Hey, if you want to go to the mat for genocidal racism, have at it.

[Gandydancer]

Fuck you, shitface.

[Sarcastr0]

you slavishly support a president

Quit telling me what I think. There is plenty Biden and the admin does I don't care for. Look below re: targeting a whistleblower. Not that you'll remember when you next slot me into some dumbass partisan slot you have.

This is about DeSantis. Of course you deflect to bothsidesing.
Focus on the topic for once in your life.

[bevis the lumberjack]

The topic was who would make the best president in 2024 among our expected choices. There’s no way I would vote for Trump or Biden. It’s still remotely possible that I could be persuaded on DeSantis, although I really don’t like some of his stances on speech. Particularly the attacks on Disney and the Rays. So I’ll probably be writing in again.

You just don’t like criticism of the Big Man.

So tell us, did you support the formation of the Ministry of Truth or not.

[Sarcastr0]

I didn't engage with that overdetermined nonsense question. I took issue with your defense of DeSantis.

I didn't bring up Biden at all - you did (inevitably) to attack me for things I don't actually think.

[Gandydancer]

So tell us, did you support the formation of the Ministry of Truth or not?

[Gandydancer]

Gaslightr0 is the clown who accused me of attempting to distance myself from my "slavish" support of Trump (who I voted for twice, as the lesser evil, and would unhesitating do it again if given the same choices) when I mentioned that my support of Trump had been greatly limited since "They all must go!" tuned into support of Pence's idiotic Touchback Amnesty scheme a week or so after he came down the escalator. But here he denies that HIS support for Biden is slavish on far weaker grounds. Self awareness (or maybe it's honesty) is clearly not his thing.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, come on. To be as authoritarian as fuck he'd have to be at least ordering around people in the private sector, not just government employees.

It's not authoritarian for the government to control government speech by government employees during work hours. It's normal.

You've got the current President issuing personal dictates creating costs in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars, with no statutory basis, and you think DeSantis is notably authoritarian?

Yeah, he's not a libertarian, and I've already expressed my preference for Rand Paul. But he's hardly pegging the Presidential authoritarian scale.

[Sarcastr0]

To be as authoritarian as fuck he’d have to be at least ordering around people in the private sector, not just government employees.
Really, you're not this dumb.

DeSantis is making headlines because the shit he's doing is not normal.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, that wasn't my standard. Sometimes what's normal IS the problem.

And let's not pretend that books promoting sexual deviancy being in K-12 libraries was ever "normal" prior to just a few years ago. In fact, it's radical deviation from normal that people are trying to beat back.

[Nige]

Let's not pretend that those books actually promote any sort of sexual deviancy. That's just insulting everyone's intelligence.

[Gandydancer]

Nobody's "pretending" that. It's simply true. And let's not pretend that you have any intelligence to insult.

[Nige]

Yes, you're pretending it's true. if you ever managed to muster a comment that could rise to the level of an insult to intelligence, we'd all cheer you on.

[Gandydancer]

No, I’m OBSERVING that it’s true. It’s clearly intended that those two “daddy” penguins fucking each other while adopting kid penguins be normalized. Which viewpoint is the one YOU want normalized. If they were promoting recognition of the the blood guilt of useful idiots like you your concern for viewpoint discrimination would vanish immediately without a trace. As was shown when my observation that a Nazi author could express his viewpoint using penguins with the assertion that I was defending Nazis. Are you really unaware how stupid that claim is?

[MistahWhiskas]

Doesn't DeSantis support restrictions on private employers DEI, private employers ability to control their employees treatment of LGBT folks, etc?

[Bob from Ohio]

"authoritarian as fuck"

Just a meaningless insult.

The Florida legislature has passed laws regarding "Books, Disney, transgender people" as well as everything else you hate about him.. Very authoritarian behavior!

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You are clearly more ignorant of this topic than anything else you’ve ever tried to comment about.

[Gandydancer]

Another meaningless, pointless, content-free, insult. Do you imagine that it stings?

[Gandydancer]

...

[shawn_dude]

Ron snaps his fingers
Another scapegoat bleeds red
Russia has its Duma

[not guilty]

Ron DeSantis is this century's answer to George Wallace. Think about it:

A Southern governor, who gins up hatred toward a despised minority group in order to pander to bigots for electoral advantage. Overweening presidential aspirations. Astute enough to know better -- before becoming governor Wallace was a respected trial court judge; DeSantis is a Yale graduate and a Harvard-trained lawyer. Doomed to failure.

Governor Wallace, to his credit, eventually repented of his racial hatemongering. Time will tell whether Governor DeSantis will do likewise regarding LGBT folks.

[bevis the lumberjack]

This is absurd. DeSantis and Wallace have absolutely nothing in common. Nothing.

Are you even old enough to remember Wallace? I am. Comparing him to anyone today is absurd.

All the bitching about fabricated New Jim Crow? Wallace was the embodiment of Actual No Shit Jim Crow.

[not guilty]

Yes, I am old enough to remember Governor Wallace. He was probably a bit smarter than DeSantis. Their demagogy was/is comparable.

Wallace was probably more of an opportunist than a true racist. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1958, with the support of the NAACP. His opponent was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. After this defeat, Wallace determined that in order to be elected governor he would have to change his position on racial issues, and told one of his campaign officials "I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace%27s_1963_Inaugural_Address#:~:text=After%20this%20defeat%2C%20Wallace%20determined,be%20out%2Dniggered%20again.%22

[Nige]

You've already said you're ignorant of how trans people are being treated by DeSantis.

[Gandydancer]

Typical Nige the Liar lie. Bevis has said no such thing, but Nige is shameless.

[Nige]

bevis, above: 'I’m not sure what he’s done to transgender people'

[Gandydancer]

Nige being typically dumb. Bevis' meaning -- that Desantis has done nothing untoward to trannys -- is obvious to all but the most brain damaged.

[Martinned]

Here is just one day's worth: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/desantis-signs-dont-say-gay-expansion-gender-affirming-care-ban-rcna84698

[Gandydancer]

That isn't even one day's worth of NBC editorializing in lieu of of writing straight news.

Headline: "DeSantis signs 'Don't Say Gay' expansion and gender-affirming care ban"

Lede: "The new Florida measures will expand WHAT CRITICS CALL the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law through eighth grade and restrict transition-related care FOR MINORS."

Oh, the horror!

[Kazinski]

Well it's pretty hard for independents to make the ballot, but if he makes the ballot I'm voting for Cthulhu in '24.

"Why vote for the lesser evil?" Is a compelling argument to me.

https://static.fjcdn.com/large/pictures/ac/3b/ac3b2a_1540762.jpg

[Moderation4ever]

Neither

(Does that work? That does not mean that there are not good Republican options to Biden, just not the two suggested)

[Martinned]

Name one that would get more than 1% of the Republican primary vote.

[Moderation4ever]

I think you have correctly identified the problem for Republicans.

[Mr. Bumble]

So then who are the "good Republicans"?

[grb]

Well, as a leftie I’d say Liz Cheney, of course! I’d also bring up the example of Larry Hogan, who ran a very blue state with practical reasonable politics.

But I recognize neither example is responsive, so will wander further out of my comfort zone with Glenn Youngkin. It isn’t though I have the slightest regard for his politics and he’s played some petty own-the-lib political games himself, albeit at a lower key.

But at least he’s still a functioning human being. That’s in contrast to DeSantis, who thinks Mussolini Jr is just the happening look for his campaign. I honestly think DeSantis isn’t human at all, just a gob of stunts & gimmicks glued together with spite and pressed into a person-shape mold. I’ll grant much of his huckster bullying bullshit is posturing, but (a) what kind of rancid mind postures no better than this, and (b) does he care in the slightest if his ugly games hurt real people? I don’t think he does.

And Trump. I can’t find the author, but this quote sums it up :

No books, No reading, No friends, No music, No curiosity, No patience, No integrity, No compassion, No empathy, No loyalty, No conscience, No courage, No manners, No respect, No character, No morality, No honor, Not even a dog.

But what am I saying? Republicans scorn other candidates as “RINOs” precisely because they’re not broken human beings and/or huckster scam artists. Above all else, today’s right-wing voter wants entertainment in his pols, and Trump/DeSantis delivers the cheap scuzzy theatrics they demand.

[Mr. Bumble]

Unless you're willing to vote for a Republican, why should we care what you think. You should be looking for a new ticket to replace Biden/Harris, neither of whom is mentally fit to be President.

[grb]

Bumble, two points:

(1) You asked the question on GOP options. I offered a reply.

(2) As for “mental fitness”, that brought a smile of nostalgia. As I recall the ’20 campaign, we were told the same thing by Righties in this very forum. Biden was an empty shell. He couldn’t be seen in public. Oh how you guys piled it on!

In fact, I was told there’d be no debate. The Biden campaign would invent some excuse to cancel. He couldn't be allowed on stage with Trump. But (I asked) didn’t Joe just debate Sanders for three full hours just a few months earlier? That was then, the Righties insisted. He gotten worst since. No debate. Count on’t.

Of course Biden cleaned Trump’s clock. And then the strangest thing happened. Righties in this forum admitted all their talk had been hopelessly wrong. For two days that is (three tops). Then they were right back with the same rhetoric. They just can’t help themselves….

[EscherEnigma]

Unless you’re willing to vote for a Republican, why should we care what you think.

Why did you ask a question if you didn't care about the answer?

[Gandydancer]

It is not necessary to care about the answers in order to want to demonstrate just how bizarre and out of touch Moderation(!)'s answers will be.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm pretty sure Rand Paul would get more than 1%. Maybe as high as 2 or 3 percent, actually...

I can't say I'm terribly happy with the candidates the GOP typically pukes up. Though DeSantis at least has executive branch experience, and has shown some competency in it, I'm pretty confident the eventual nominee will not be somebody I'm actually enthusiastic about.

OTOH, since the likely Democratic nominee is either going to be a doddering ancient with severe corruption problems, a total and widely acknowledged airhead, or maybe a former President's wife totally lacking in experience in government, I kind of feel the Democrats are not in a position to complain.

At least for DeSantis it wouldn't be an entry level position, and he wouldn't be a figurehead.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Rob DeSantos would be like George W Bush and be a figurehead for the right wing echo chamber…DeSantos already peed his panties when Tucker asked him about Ukraine.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I don’t like him much, but DeSantis would be a much better president than either Trump or Biden.

[Frank Drackman]

Donald Duck would be a much better president than Senescent Joe.
I thought "45" was great, only bad thing about January 6 is they didn't bring enough rope (figurative rope! figurative!)

[John F. Carr]

DeSantis.

He's smarter. He appears to have a better sense of ethics. He's more normal. He is less likely to be pulled out of office to go to prison. I don't yet see a compelling policy-based reason to choose one over the other. If you're a single-issue voter, say on abortion or education, you might.

[Martinned]

He appears to have a better sense of ethics.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/

[Brett Bellmore]

DeSantis.

Further detail:

1) Not older than dirt, so much less likely to mentally deteriorate over the course of his term.
2) Greater executive branch experience, and that experience doesn't show him repeatedly being rolled by his own party.
3) Either actually supports parts of the conservative agenda that Trump was weak on, or at least better motivated to feign that support.

[Mr. Bumble]

As that wise sage, Yogi Berra said:
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

[Frank Drackman]

Everybody talks about Global Warming, but nobody does anything about it, which is fine, because it isn't happening anyway.

[Josh R]

DeSantis. Until proven otherwise, he wouldn't try to steal an election and prevent the peaceful transition of power.

[Krayt]

Americans tend to have three kinds of presidents:

Former senators
Former governors
Former Generals

Two of the three have experience managing large scale operations. One are self-serving hacks with the gift of gab.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Reality show hosts—that means RuPaul is now eligible!! Sashay, shante!

[shawn_dude]

Would you consider gerrymandering and voter purges as "election stealing?"

[Gandydancer]

Biden (or, better, his keepers) did try to steal an election, but he wasn't much involved in trying to prevent the transition to power of Trump. That was attempted, with some success, by a whole range of TDS types.

[David Nieporent]

DeSantis. Until proven otherwise, he wouldn’t try to steal an election and prevent the peaceful transition of power.

He seems less likely, yes (though that's true of roughly 99.9% of the GOP) — but he has not denounced J6 or Trump's actions leading up to it, and has refused to admit that Biden won in 2020, so he's an automatic no for me.

[Jerry B.]

Neither.

[Jjh_Esq]

DeSantis, but he can’t win in 2024.

DeSantis can’t win without Trump’s base. Period. The base won’t show up, and the Democrats will win.

Trump and DeSantis need to cut a deal and team up. DeSantis agrees to be the VP on the GOP’s promise he is the nominee in 2028.

[Voize]

I wonder if that would be enough enticement for DeSantis to be willing to be "Penced", given Trump's record of turning on anyone and everyone around him.

[Jjh_Esq]

True. Maybe they need a better offer.

[Gandydancer]

Desantis can win if Trump drops dead.

Otherwise he is more useful as FL Governor than as the proverbial bucket full of spit.

If I could just pick the President I'd probably take Desantis, though I'm not convinced that he'd be better than a Bush, but if I could do THAT I'd pick someone more based.

[David Nieporent]

Trump and DeSantis need to cut a deal and team up. DeSantis agrees to be the VP on the GOP’s promise he is the nominee in 2028.

Setting aside that the GOP has no power to make such a promise, since they're both from Florida, that would never happen.

[ducksalad]

Trump.

More likely to die in office and give us someone better. Less likely to get us into a large scale war. Less likely to follow through on his bluster. Mean FYTW tweets preferable to mean FYTW laws. Less likely to get his ideas passed by Congress. More likely to finally provoke Congress and/or the states to structurally reduce the powers of the presidency. Evil you know better than the evil you don’t.

However, I won't be voting for either one of them.

[Noscitur a sociis]

More likely to die in office and give us someone better.

Given his plausible running mates, I wouldn’t count on it.

[David Nieporent]

Who would be a better President, Trump or DeSantis.
One word answers only please.

Meteor.

[Nelson]

Neither would be good.

[Armchair Lawyer]

What's going on with all the retaliation against whistleblowers by the Biden administration?

[Longtobefree]

I believe it is called "business as usual".

[Sarcastr0]

Provide a link to what has set you off, or else you're just doing partisan wanking with overdetermined questions.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Per your request:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-whistleblower-hunter-biden-investigation-removed-from-probe-his-attorneys-say/

Now you can do some partisan wanking.

[Sarcastr0]

Sorry to disappoint you, but this does seem bad. I checked other sources, and they all cite the guy's attorneys, but it does look quite retaliatory.

Not that it says jack about the not yet materialized proof the whistleblower claims.

And I'm not sure why you feel the need to jump it up beyond it's facts in your OP.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I didn't say his complaint was legit. Or wasn't. As of now I don't know.

You asked for a link about retaliation and I provided it. That's it. Not sure what I jumped up beyond what.

[bernard11]

No. A.L. suggested it was legit.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, should have been more clear when i'm not addressing the person I'm replying to but the OP.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

A.L. didn't suggest any such thing, you lying sack of shit.

[Sarcastr0]

"What’s going on with all the retaliation against whistleblowers by the Biden administration?"

Don't be a lying sack of shit and claim he didn't have a response in mind.

[Armchair Lawyer]

They like to read into things and put their own thoughts into your words.

It makes the strawmen so much easier.

[Sarcastr0]

AL, don't lie about why you posted that question, everyone here knows you; it's not convincing and makes you look petty.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Point out the lie. Exactly what am I lying about?

[Sarcastr0]

You lied about not having an answer in mind when you posted you vague bit about whistleblowers.

Anyone who knows your extremely partisan deal around here knows what your plan was there.

[Gandydancer]

Gaslightr0 is the clown who claimed I was surreptitiously attempting to distance myself from Trump by pretending to have a position to his right. His mind reading skills are again on display here.

[Armchair Lawyer]

I lied about "not having an answer in mind"?

Can you point to exactly where I said this?

I mean, we're getting pretty meta here

[Sarcastr0]

Me: Don’t be a lying sack of shit and claim he didn’t have a response in mind.

You: They [liberals like me] like to read into things and put their own thoughts into your words.

So hows about you fuck off with your innocent act.

[Armchair Lawyer]

You understand how threading works, right?
My response wasn't to you.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Uh huh...

Odd how quickly you seem to drop it and turn around to other stuff nearly instantly. Since it's so bad.

Since it's so bad, it deserves an immediate investigation, no? Perhaps revealing the names of those who retaliated against the whistleblower? Maybe some disciplinary action, perhaps firing those who did the retaliation? Maybe even criminal charges.

Or perhaps you would just prefer it goes away, no one mention it again, and nothing happen to those who retaliated against the whistleblower.

Perhaps on the next Open Thread, I'll mention it again, and see where you put your time.

[Sarcastr0]

What the fuck do you want? For me to declare this is the last straw and switch parties?

I have never, ever seen you do anything but defend every Republican.

Since it’s so bad, it deserves an immediate investigation, no? Yes, as all claims of whistleblower retaliation should.

Maybe some disciplinary action, perhaps firing those who did the retaliation? Maybe even criminal charges
I like to hold the firings until after the investigation. And what law are you alleging was broken?

Or perhaps you would just prefer it goes away, no one mention it again, and nothing happen to those who retaliated against the whistleblower. Yes, put more thoughts in my head because you can’t understand someone who isn’t as utterly partisan as you.

You seem to believe that the DoJ fired the entire IRS team, and told the team that it was the DoJ firing them, and did it for retaliatory reasons.

A question – do you really think the DoJ is that fucking stupid?

[Armchair Lawyer]

We'll be back in 6 days, to see if you mention it at all.

[Sarcastr0]

So I agree with a criticism of Biden, and you're trying really hard to say it doesn't count. It really seems to chap your ass that not everyone is as blindly partisan as you are.

[Gandydancer]

Gaslightr0: “…what law are you alleging was broken?”

For a start, from the link bevis provided: “‘That’s considered a significant change in duties and working conditions to remove you from a case, and if it’s because of your whistleblowing, that would make it a violation of the law,’ said Devine, who is the legal director for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.”

I assume the Whistleblower Protection Act is the law referred to. But if a corrupt motive (protecting Biden from political embarrassment, perhaps) can be shown I expect there are other laws that were violated.

[Nelson]

You misspelled Trump. And it's because Trump is a born-on-third-base trust fund baby who has never had to accept criticism in his entire life and he has an entire party full of enablers.

[not guilty]

The Supreme Court has denied gun rights plaintiffs' application for a writ of injunction pending appeal in a case currently pending before the Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/051723zr_3314.pdf The District Court denied a preliminary injunction against enforcement of a municipal ordinance prohibiting the sale of assault weapons and an Illinois state measure which bans the sale of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Oral argument before the Seventh Circuit panel is scheduled for June 29.

I am pleased to see that firearms fetishists' mere recitation of New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. ___, 142 S.Ct. 2111 (2022), as a magical incantation does not turn the members of SCOTUS into quivering masses of Jell-o, but I doubt that the District Court opinion will survive review in the Court of Appeals.

[Commenter_XY]

Justice Barrett has publicly stated a number of times that issues need to percolate at lower court levels to bring out all the legal arguments, before SCOTUS takes a look. To me, her denial of writ is related to this expressed sentiment.

Does this interpretation also fit the facts, not guilty?

[not guilty]

The application was made initially to Justice Bear It, the Circuit Justice for the Seventh Circuit. She referred it to the full court, who denied the motion without comment.

[hoppy025]

Yeah the problem with this is that the 2nd Amendment is unique in legislative and judicial bad faith. Letting it “percolate” is fine in normal cases, but letting states pass unconstitutional laws, only to have them sit in the courts for years while the district court judges make bad faith rulings (like the one from the Obama judge who said basically “historical regulation allows governments to regulate dangerous weapons, and these are dangerous”). Then, while the circuit courts sit on it for years (like the 2nd Circuit is doing in New York with CCIA), all for an injunction to MAYBE be issued at some point, after which the states pass similar laws and start the multi-year process again, is no way to treat a Constitutional right.

After Obergefell, homosexuals got their "marriage" licenses within a few days.

[not guilty]

The courts are moving expeditiously here. The Illinois Act was passed on January 10, 2023. The District Court denied a preliminary injunction on February 17, 2023. On February 28 the plaintiffs moved the District Court for a stay pending appeal, which was denied on March 2. On April 18, the Seventh Circuit denied the plaintiffs’ motion for injunction pending appeal.

Oral argument on the merits is scheduled before a panel of the Seventh Circuit on June 29.

[hoppy025]

Yeah, 6 months to hear a panel, after which they'll take 3 months to rule. Real expeditious.

Any law that implicates a Constitutional right should be defaulted to be stayed until the courts hear it. The way it works now, the state gets what it wants, delays.

[santamonica811]

Trump's earlier argument (re his taking of classified documents when he left the presidency) was that he could magically "think" them into declassified status. A dumb argument, but at least not as stupid as some things he says. Today, I saw on the news a very recent interview, where his defense has evolved. Well . . . devolved, really. Now, he is suggested that it was merely removing the documents from the White House that automatically declassified them.

This, of course, is completely bonkers and batshit-crazy. Imagine you and I are the two officials responsible for gathering up President Trumps documents when he visits Camp David (or Mar-o-Lago, or some official/unofficial meeting or golf trip abroad). Under Trump's insane theory, you could now--once these documents are on Air Force One--leak them to the Wall Street Journal. Or post them on the internet. They're now declassified, after all, Trump would insist.

Also, a week later, when Trump is finished golfing, and comes back to the White House, what happens to the documents? They are, of course, still declassified. There is not equally-magical "back in the White House automatically re-classifies" rule or law in place.

Can one of the usual whores at the VC please come up with a creative defense for Trump here? I've been racking my brain, trying to play Devil's Advocate. But I simply can't come up with a defense that passes the giggle test. I'm hoping that some of you with a more creative and more amoral bent can chime in, and can help out.

Josh Blackman? Perhaps; a nation turns its lonely eyes to you???

[Brett Bellmore]

"Trump’s earlier argument (re his taking of classified documents when he left the presidency) was that he could magically “think” them into declassified status."

I don't recall Trump actually saying this. Do you have a quote?

[Michael P]

Did you miss the unashamedly explicit trolling at the end? The OP is not a good-faith comment.

[Armchair Lawyer]

This is the quote.

"There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump said. “You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it"

The president does have broad power to declassify documents and information, and Trump would regularly do this. If he thought a piece of classified information was important to share to an ally or subordinate (who didn't have proper authority to view it), he would do so.

He didn't need to to put in formal paperwork to declassify it. He didn't even need to say out loud "this is now declassified". He could simply do so, and when he did, it would be declassified.

Since he is the President, and ultimate authority rested with him, it's actually a valid argument.

[Nige]

It's a child's argument.

[Mr. Bumble]

When it comes to child's arguments you would know.

[Nige]

Anyone who's listened to a child argue would know.

[Gandydancer]

Anyone who listens to YOU argue knows you have no clue as to what constitutes an adult argument.

No, Trump as President didn't have to file any paperwork to scratch out the "SECRET" stamped on any document. Buy a clue from anyone better informed than you, which is to say practically anyone.

[Nige]

He didn’t HAVE to. But trying to prove it later is a problem. Even if he actually scratched SECRET off the front would go towards proving it. Otherwise it's a stupid, childish claim you should be embarassed for defending.

[David Nieporent]

I can't believe MAGA loons are trying to re-litigate this frivolous argument.

True: a president doesn't need to justify his declassification decisions to others. A president doesn't need to fill out a specific form to declassify things.

False: a president can declassify information in secret in his head without telling anyone he has done so.

As someone alluded to above, it's like claiming that the president can pardon someone by thinking it, without telling anyone. The president's pardon power is plenary; he need not justify it or go through any specific process to issue a pardon. But he can't wait until years after his presidency when someone is being prosecuted and then say, "Actually, I pardoned this guy before I left office. I have no records of doing so; I did it in my head."

[Gandydancer]

What a bullshit analogy.

If Trump intentionally took a "SECRET" paper homr while President then the fact that he took it away is all the proof he needs that he declassified it. This is not remotely akin to his saying that he pardoned someone with no evidence that he did so.

[David Nieporent]

The president is on duty 24/7/365¼. Him taking a document "home" — he works in his home — is evidence of nothing other than that he was reading it outside of his office.

(To be sure, given the well-documented fact that Trump does not — and likely cannot — read, he has a stronger claim than most in support of the position you advance, but it does not work that way nonetheless.)

[Krayt]

"It's a child's argument"

As opposed to a political hit squad's argument trying to get him a conviction or disqualified or some damned political reason.

If there's evidence he was being deliberately traitorous with them, speak up.

[Nige]

There is no ‘as opposed to.’ It’s a child’s argument. He’s not charged with being a traitor. Your first paragraph is gibberish. Your second is a non sequiter. You're arguing like a child, too.

[bevis the lumberjack]

"Since he is the President, and ultimate authority rested with him, it’s actually a valid argument."

Well, no it isn't. He wasn't president when he declassified them. I guess if you're doing magic thinking then you can magic think retroactively?

You're advocating for a process that will further damage our already appallingly poor system of tracking classified documents.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure he was President: His claim (One of them, anyway.) is that he implicitly declassified them by having them packed up and shipped home, and he did THAT while he was still President.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Sure, that's legit.

Hey, maybe he pardoned himself when he was president, too. Just forgot to mention it to anybody.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

As usual, you are wrong.

That is not the process for de-classification according to the law - which he swore to faithfully execute.

He has not offered as a defense to his conduct that the materials in question were declassified. If that was a legitimate argument, it would have been included in his briefings to the courts.

Could you maybe, just once, have a fucking clue before commenting on subjects you clearly don't understand?

[David Nieporent]

He has not offered as a defense to his conduct that the materials in question were declassified. If that was a legitimate argument, it would have been included in his briefings to the courts.

Correct. In fact, he explicitly refused to make that argument to the courts during the litigation in front of Judge Cannon on the issue. (More accurately, his lawyers refused to make such an argument, perhaps because they care about their law licenses.) The most he did was argue hypothetically that if he had declassified it, it would have been okay to take the documents. (Which isn't true, but set that aside.) When the special master handling the matter asked Trump which documents he had declassified, he said something along the lines of, "I don't have to tell you."

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

That’s what was so dumb about the Hillary email controversy…at any point Obama could have declassified the documents because he was still president.

[Gandydancer]

No one claims that Obama did that, so Clinton was guilty.

[Jjh_Esq]

He took them from the White House at the time he was President. At that moment he had the power to declassify anything he wanted—the same power Biden has today.

[Armchair Lawyer]

"He wasn’t president when he declassified them."

I don't know how you can say that. How would you know when he declassified them? Again, he doesn't need to go through some formal process. He can declassify at will.

If Trump as President decided that the Prime Minister of the UK urgently needed some information that was classified (say to prevent a terrorist attack), Trump could just literally hand it over. (And he should). He doesn't need to request declassification.

If it comes back later that Trump handed over "classified" information to a rival power (as President)...it gets a bit ridiculous.

[Nige]

'How would you know when he declassified them?'

If he had some sort of record, that's how.

[Jjh_Esq]

Likely right. The entire Executive Branch is “vested” in the President. Surely the President does not need permission from a subordinate Executive Branch employee to declassify a document created by a different subordinate Executive Branch employee and classified by yet another subordinate Executive Branch employee.

Moreover, Presidents declassifying things at will has been common practice for decades. For instance, JFK put classified photos of the Russian missiles in Cuba on display at the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He didn’t need to get permission from his subordinates. He just told Adlai Stevenson to put them on display.

In the end, though, I suspect the legal issue will boil down to who has the burden of proof on whether Trump declassified the documents.

[Nige]

Not really, because the charges have nothing to do with the classified nature of the documents.

[Jjh_Esq]

No charges have been brought, and I highly doubt they ever do bring them.
Unless, of course, they also charge Biden.

People don’t care about the nuance of “Trump didn’t give them back when asked but Biden did.” The Country would explode if Trump is charged for having documents and Biden isn’t. Even Biden isn’t that dumb.

Nonetheless, the subject of this thread is classification of documents. My comments were on that subject.

[Nige]

The relevant charges that would be brought if he were to be indicted. The country will not explode. He’s tried to rally his base two or three times now, threatened civil war. The classification debate is stupid because it’s based on him ‘thinking’ things declassified with no record or order or instruction. Biden found and returned documents, and that is being investigated, as is Pence for similar.

[Jjh_Esq]

The President of the United States does not need to ask anyone for permission to declassify a document. That’s the point. He is the President. The procedures Executive Branch subordinates have to follow do not apply to the President.

Seriously, just go read 50 USC 3163 which flat says classification procedures do not apply to the President.

[Nige]

Who said he needed to ask permission? Only a child would believe a declassification he claims was done in his head with no verbal or written instruction is valid or meaningful.

[Gandydancer]

Damn, you're a lazy shit. Dumb, too.

50 USC 3163: "Except as otherwise specifically provided, the provisions of this subchapter shall not apply to the President and Vice President, Members of the Congress, Justices of the Supreme Court, and Federal judges appointed by the President."

Got that? If Trump wanted to declassify something the procedures required of others to do it "shall not apply".

[Jjh_Esq]

Turns out, that’s the law. As noted by 50 USC 3163 and the vesting clause of Article II. The President does not have to follow any procedure or put anything in writing. He (or she) can do whatever he or she wants with classified documents.

[Nige]

You two seem to be under the impression I'm disputing the law. I'm not. I'm disputing the practicality of declassifyng things in your head and not issuing any form of instruction or record and wondering why any grown adult person would thing it's acceptable or, provable, or that it forms the basis for any sort of serious argument.

[Jjh_Esq]

We are pointing out that the law is clear: the President does not have to do anything to declassify a document. Period. You may not like that legal truism, but it is true nonetheless.

Because of that truth, charging the former President with improperly retaining classified information will fail.

[not guilty]

Here you go, Brett. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQagTKYUDcM Trump's blather begins at 2:15.

[apedad]

The Fox interview is in this story.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-declassification-mind-power_n_632bc629e4b05db5206aad2c

[Brett Bellmore]

Why not link to the actual Fox interview, (Starts getting relevant at about 13 minutes.) then, rather than a hostile 2nd hand account of it? You think that's rhetorically clever, going to persuade anyone who isn't already on your side?

It's a bad practice, linking indirectly via hostile sources, and expecting people who aren't your ideological allies to just trust a hostile source to give an honest account.

He's actually claiming that, because he had the declassification authority, with no formal process required, that simply by sending the documents home, he had de facto declassified them.

[not guilty]

The YouTube clip I linked above showed Trump saying what you didn't recall Trump saying, Brett. I even cited where Trump began speaking.

Groucho Marks had panache enough to ask, "Are you going to believe me, or your lying eyes?" I don't know of anyone else who does.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, and I wanted a clip that had the remark in context, and having seen it in context, I saw that I was right to want that.

[Sarcastr0]

He’s actually claiming that, because he had the declassification authority, with no formal process required, that simply by sending the documents home, he had de facto declassified them.

This is a distinction without a difference. Unless you think it is a legit argument?

[Brett Bellmore]

If he'd taken classified documents and shared them with an ally during a conference, or just held a press conference and read from them, it would be a valid legal argument. Why not here?

Is it an ideal legal argument? No, I'd say it would have been well worth his time to have dotted all the "i"s and crossed all the "ts"s.

Is it "a" legal argument? Sure.

[Sarcastr0]

Because it wasn't public, and he lied about it later.

[Brett Bellmore]

Identify the lie. And I don't mean "I assume every word Trump utters that can't be proven to be true was a lie."

[Sarcastr0]

He lied about taking them.

Pretty weird fit for the scenario you laid out.

[Sarcastr0]

It’s a bad practice, linking indirectly via hostile sources.

Sure, but you refusing to engage based on that is the ad-hominem fallacy.

[apedad]

Sheesh...no hostile intent.

I googled for the interview and that was the first link I found.

Why did you ask about the quote if you're so smart and found it yourself?!?

[Brett Bellmore]

Because I'm used to people making batshit crazy claims about what Trump has said, that turn out to be just somebody's interpretation or paraphrase of something different that he'd said.

[David Nieporent]

Remember, Brett routinely reads-between-the-lines for every person on the planet except Donald Trump, finding "threats" and such despite them not having ever communicated any threats. But Donald Trump, only word-for-word counts.

[not guilty]

Donald Trump's admission that he took the documents found at Mar-a-Lago from the White House can come back to bite him. That will establish that venue for a criminal prosecution lies in the District of Columbia.

Per 18 U.S.C. § 3237(a), any offense against the United States begun in one district and completed in another, or committed in more than one district, may be inquired of and prosecuted in any district in which such offense was begun, continued, or completed. The taking of the documents began the chain of events for which Trump is subject to prosecution. He can't credibly blame underlings for the removal of materials that he has admitted taking himself.

[Armchair Lawyer]

So...another political stunt, designed to get the prosecution in the most liberal, democrat friendly city in the country? Having a fair trial where the jury pool isn't 90% Democrat just isn't in the cards, eh?

[Martinned]

You're almost making it sound as if the 6th amendment maybe isn't such a good idea. But that can't be right, because the Founding Fathers were prophets who handed down infallible justice for all the ages...

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law

[Michael P]

DC juries are very partial. That's the whole point. Stupid is as stupid does....

[Armchair Lawyer]

The US Constitution has been amended many times. No one said the Founding Fathers were infallible...they understood they were.

And the amendment at hand was done for good reason. One can easily imagine prosecutors consistenly removing a case to a district with a more favorable jury pool than the normal one. This amendment was designed to prevent that.

Of course, Democrats have found a loophole in that amendment. By having what are really "national" cases....cases with national political implications, but by virtue of having an overwhelming majority in the nation's capitol (and certain other areas), they can effectively skew the jury pool.

Typically, these types of national issues would be looked at by Congress, or representatives from across the country. But due to the 6th Amendment, they are instead just handled by citizens in one of the most liberal areas in the country. You can have gross abuses of power and violations of laws designed to skew the entire government, but if the jury likes you, there's no penalty.

[Martinned]

Or you could just not have court cases decided by a bunch of random idiots who just walked in off the street.

[Michael P]

That's not how juries work here, guy. Maybe educate yourself a little bit.

[hoppy025]

Correct. 85 IQ blacks should not be on juries.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

A day without racism at the Volokh Conspiracy is a day that has not occurred yet.

Do any of the law professors who operate this white, male, right-wing blog wish to address the rampant bigotry that animates this blog? Does a single Conspirator have the courage or character to acknowledge that bigotry, let alone to criticize it or consider how and why this blog cultivates such a bigoted following?

#ConservativeCourage

[hoppy025]

Would you want 12 85 IQ blacks on your jury if you're ever prosecuted for your grooming?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

How much longer are Chicago, Georgetown, UCLA, Berkeley, Northwestern, Duke, Notre Dame, and a few others* going to put up with this? How long should they?

(George Mason and South Texas College of Law Houston are excepted, for unattractive reasons)

[MoreCurious]

Here's a scary thought, Arthur: maybe they don't recognize bigotry even when it's staring them in the face. I don't think they care about or read the commenters; they look at the VC as a chance to get at least a few people to read their brilliant writing.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

They read the comments enough to censor comments that were mean to conservatives.

[Gandydancer]

They do? When?

[David Nieporent]

Kirkland has this persecution complex where he fantasizes that once, like a decade ago, Prof. Volokh rebuked him for his trollingness. It never happened — when challenged, he never provides proof but instead just repeats the claim and insists he could provide proof — but of course even if it did, it would prove only that once, like a decade ago, Prof. Volokh moderated a post.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Prof. Volokh bragged about censoring me. Said he was enforcing civility standards, said he'd do it again.

Why doesn't Prof. Volokh declare that I am lying?

Because he knows I have the emails. Or perhaps he doesn't want to lie about it, to his credit.

Why don't you ask him whether he banned Artie Ray? Wouldn't you and your fellow right-wing dumbasses love to demonstrate, with Prof. Volokh's help, that the censorship never happened.

But that help will never come from Prof. Volokh. Because I have the emails.

This blog's sycophantic, bigoted right-wing fans can continue to call me Jerry Sandusky, or claim I am lying about the censorship, or whatever else they want to try, but Prof. Volokh, the other Conspirators, and decent followers of this blog know what happened.

Carry on, clingers. So far as your betters permit.

[Absaroka]

"It never happened"

It absolutely did - EV once posted the objectionable posts and his (EV's) polite request that RAK act a little more like an adult. It wasn't an exchange that made RAK look good.

"it would prove only that once, like a decade ago, Prof. Volokh moderated a post"

It showed more than that; it demonstrated that EV is a class act, and RAK isn't 🙂

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Some people think people who habitually publish racial slurs are class acts.

Better people call them deplorable and the modern American culture war brands them as losers.

Which one of you bigoted, delusional clingers wants to try to identify the comments that justified the censorship of Artie Ray Lee Wayne Jim-Bob Kirkland?

[Theendoftheleft]

AIDS, you mindless bigot, what did hoppy say there that was untrue? How is that ‘bigotry’?

When will YOU have the courage to admit that you’re inferior and unequal, and that your ‘progressive’ values are emotionally-driven garbage, despite your pretenses of them being rational and co-terminous with science?

How much longer will the American people tolerate your lot’s totalitarian efforts at comprehensive social engineering (especially as you’ve no empirically-proven-or-credible knowledge or skills to undertake the task)? What’s your exit strategy from the United States, AIDS?

[hoppy025]

The 6th Amendment was fine when you started from the founder's assumption, that the jury pool would be white men.

It isn't now.

[Brett Bellmore]

Article III. Section 2, Paragraph 3:

"The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed."

If a crime happens in DC, Congress can statutorily set a different location for the trial.

[Martinned]

Yes, but it still has to be a jury trial, which is the ultimate source of the problem here.

[Mr. Bumble]

I thought the defendant had the right to choose a bench trial.

[not guilty]

The defendant does not have the right to unilaterally choose a bench trial. Fed.R.Crim.P. 23 states in relevant part:

(a) Jury Trial. If the defendant is entitled to a jury trial, the trial must be by jury unless:

(1) the defendant waives a jury trial in writing;
(2) the government consents; and
(3) the court approves.

[Brett Bellmore]

Seriously, if you take the above clause of the Constitution seriously, ALL criminal trials at the federal level have to be jury trials, bench trials aren't constitutionally an option.

But, still, the source of the problem is that federal trials normally end up in a district which one party dominates so heavily that juries routinely will only have members of that party, and that can be guaranteed to be all of that party during jury selection. That genuinely is a structural problem.

That's starting to result in cases that are politically charged having a predetermined outcome.

[hoppy025]

Yes. I would love to see every J6 conviction vacated on the grounds of impartial juries. Would be entertaining.

[Martinned]

a district which one party dominates so heavily that juries routinely will only have members of that party

Just to make sure you're up to speed on the maths here:

If a district is 80/20 Blue, the odds of having a jury with 12 Blues is less than 7%.

(Whether 7% qualifies as "routinely" is a question I'll leave to the native speakers of English. But then the 80/20 split that I started with is pretty drastic.)

[hoppy025]

Yes, but the odds are that you'll have a jury with 9 or 10 blues who will bully the others into voting with them. And in places like D.C., the Republicans are not that conservative. They probably still support legal abortion and gay marriage because after all, "It's a woman's right to choose and I wouldn't want to tell my gay friends that they can't get a marriage license to affirm their sodomy."

[Absaroka]

“But then the 80/20 split that I started with is pretty drastic”

80/20 is a ratio of 4:1. The Dem:Repub ratio in D.C. is more than 10 to 1.

Ignoring the independents et al. and just using the 12:1 ratio, the odds of an all D jury are fortyish per cent. The odds of an all R jury involve the term 'e-14' :-).

[Sarcastr0]

Democrats are capable of being objective.

If you don't believe that, then just throw out the jury system.

[Absaroka]

"Democrats are capable of being objective."

1)Sure. As are repubs, men, women, whites, blacks, and pretty much everybody. Yet some people worry that having, for example, an all white jury for a black defendant or an all woman jury for a rape defendant might be viewed - incorrectly, in your view - as not impartial. n.b. I have no particular position on this, as long as people's views are consistent.

2)But that's not why I replied to Martinned. He was making a math based argument, and used a 4:1 ratio - which he termed 'drastic' - in that argument. The actual ratio is far from his assumption of a likely worst case scenario, and that changes the results quite a bit. Wouldn't you agree that when making a math based argument, having fairly accurate inputs increases the accuracy of the outputs, and thus the effectiveness of the argument?

[hoppy025]

Black Democrats really aren't capable. If they were, they wouldn't have acquitted OJ.

[Brett Bellmore]

The split in DC is actually closer to 94%-6%, which means that the jury will randomly be all Democrats approximately half the time, and that even a small number of carefully targeted peremptory challenges will almost always be enough to eliminate everybody but Democrats from the jury.

[Gandydancer]

It's illuminating that Martinned thought 4:1 was "drastic" when the actual ratio in DC is almost 16:1.

As a reason for eliminating juries generally that is of course an idiotic argument. It's not like change of venue is ENTIRELY dead as a remedy.

[Jjh_Esq]

There is a valid argument Florida has jurisdiction. He lives there. The subpoena at issue was effected there. The case is in the Florida Courts. The documents were there. The witnesses are there. If a case is filed in DC, a change of venue motion may well be proper. Particularly given the hostility of any DC jury.

If the case goes to Florida, the Democrats will dismiss it in 5 minutes. Which may prove the point here. . .

[not guilty]

If Trump were prosecuted in the Southern District of Florida, the case could wind up before Judge Aileen Loose Cannon. That could in no way yield a fair trial.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Then request a different judge.

If your entire case depends on a partisan jury, then you don't have a good case.

[not guilty]

Venue lies in more than one federal district here. The Special Counsel can proceed in D.C. or in the Southern District of Florida (or possibly elsewhere). The case against Trump is strong as horseradish; it does not depend on a partisan jury.

And if you think that Judge Loose Cannon would recuse under any circumstances, you are at best naive.

[Michael P]

Your argument against venue in Florida is only that it might be assigned to Judge Cannon. So why not venue it there, and ask for a different judge if she gets assigned? That would show that the case doesn't depend on a partisan jury.

[not guilty]

Given that venue lies in multiple districts pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3237(a), what reason does Jack Smith have to prosecute in Florida? That wouldn't make a lick of sense.

There is no reason to think that D.C. jurors would be less fair and conscientious, or less true to their oaths, than South Florida jurors.

[Michael P]

There are lots of reasons that DC juries would be less fair and more partial than Florida jurors. Which locale is constitutionally forbidden from having Senate or House representation because it is beholden to the same government that prosecutes this case? Which locale has voted 90+% for one party's presidential candidates since 2094, and whose low-water marks (the only times ever less than 80%) for that party were McGovern and Carter-vs-Reagan?

[not guilty]

Since 2094?? That, sir, is quite a trick.

[Michael P]

Since 2004. Simple typo. I infer you have no other rebuttal.

[not guilty]

Infer what you choose to infer, Michael P.

You seem to surmise, without disclosing any basis therefor, that a criminal juror will inevitably act based on his political proclivities, without regard to the rule of law. I infer that you are merely projecting what you would do if you were selected as a juror, speculating that your own partisan hackery and lack of character applies to other, unknown persons.

[Brett Bellmore]

"You seem to surmise, without disclosing any basis therefor, that a criminal juror will inevitably act based on his political proclivities, without regard to the rule of law."

If this is a legally valid presumption in the case of race, leading to a prohibition of discriminatory jury selection, why not in the case of party?

[not guilty]

Race is an immutable characteristic; political affiliation is not.

More importantly, though, there is no "legally valid presumption in the case of race" that jurors, as you seem to posit, will inevitably act based on racial status, without regard to the rule of law.

[Brett Bellmore]

Race doesn't imply that you actually care about race. Politics does imply that you care about politics.

So a jury that happens to be all white doesn't HAVE to be biased against blacks, but a jury that's all Democrats? Yeah, that's a reasonable presumption, that it will be biased against Republicans.

[Absaroka]

"Yeah, that’s a reasonable presumption, that it will be biased against Republicans."

It's certainly reasonable to expect that Democrats will be biased towards Democratic policies, and Republicans biased towards Republican policies. But we are talking about juries here.

Is it your view that a Democratic defendant can't get a fair shake from a mostly Republican jury?

[Michael P]

Hilarious. The side that happily throws around epithets like “the Black face of white supremacy” claims that jurors will inevitably be biased by their racial identity but not by their political identity.

Absaroka- Trump would almost certainly not face a "mostly" jury in DC, but a unanimously or overwhelmingly anti-Trump jury. He got 5% of the DC vote in 2020, and if the jury pool is drawn randomly from the voting public (spoiler: the jury pool is probably more anti-Trump), he has a 54% chance of having no Trump voters in a 12-person jury.

[Sarcastr0]

I do think there is something to the parallel between race and political party with respect to objectivity, at least in the modern day. (Less so in 1982 - we have made progress).

The history of the Batson case is interesting - especially Marshall's concurrance.
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolabmoreperfect/episodes/object-anyway

[John F. Carr]

In the federal system you don't get to request a new judge without good cause. A judge's bad decision in a previous case is not good cause.

I recall from 1990s TV coverage that California did allow a party to object to the initial assignment of a judge, and no reason was needed to get one new judge.

[Gandydancer]

We're discussing modifications to what you get to do. No one is saying Trump can currently avoid a biased DC jury pool under present conditions.

[Nige]

This is how you say you know he's guilty.

[Gandydancer]

^^^^ This is how you prove once again that you are a moron.

[Sarcastr0]

Democrats can be fair jurors, so can Republicans.

The rising assumption that Democrats cannot be fair is another way the GOP is becoming an opposition to the republican form of government.

[Armchair Lawyer]

Pretending there aren't biases in a jury pool is playing the fool.

[Sarcastr0]

All jury pools are biased; we have procedures for that. Appealing to incredulity that the system doesn't work is just the latest in the GOP fuck our republic parade.

Attacking our jury system to defend you guy. Pathetic.

[Gandydancer]

^^^^ Gaslioghtr0 pretending that DC juries aren't politically biased in order to grasp an advantage. Ridiculous and evil.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

When was that statute passed? Was it done in response to Trump specifically, or did it exist beforehand?

One of those answers is the truth, and it's the one that makes you look like a fucking idiot for thinking it's some kind of political stunt that made Trump decide to break the law where he might have to face an unfriendly jury.

[not guilty]

Are you asking about 18 U.S.C. § 3237? It was initially passed in 1948 and was most recently amended in 1986.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

My point to Armchair Lawyer is that the criminal statute was in existence long before Trump decided to break it.

His idiotic assertion was: "So…another political stunt, designed to get the prosecution in the most liberal, democrat friendly city in the country? Having a fair trial where the jury pool isn’t 90% Democrat just isn’t in the cards, eh?"

[John F. Carr]

At the time he took the documents there was nothing wrong with taking them. If he were charged with taking them to his house and keeping them at his house after his term ended he would have a credible claim of selective prosecution. Everybody does it. What sets Trump apart is his refusal, or his staff's refusal, to return documents on demand. All of the acts Trump may have done were in Florida. You have suggested that correspondence with government officials in D.C. may allow the case to be tried there. I find that more persuasive than the legal loading of boxes taking place in D.C.

[not guilty]

The chain of events giving rise to criminal liability was begun in one district and completed in another. Venue accordingly lies in both. The taking of the documents is part and parcel of the retention of the documents.

And FWIW, a defense of selective prosecution (almost) never succeeds, at least not since Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).

[John F. Carr]

If Trump had criminal intent in the documents case, it is clear he had such intent while in Florida but it is not clear he did while in D.C. Trump will object to venue in D.C. The jurors will be instructed that they must acquit if venue is not proved. There is a high risk of acquittal if the jury must find criminal intent at the time the documents were removed from D.C. There is negligible risk of venue-related acquittal in Florida.

[not guilty]

If venue is not proven by a preponderance of evidence, the jury should indeed acquit. Trump's conduct giving rise to liability, though, began with the removal of the subject documents, which occurred in D.C. The concealment in Florida of documents, actionable under 18 U.S.C. § 1519, was intended to and did obstruct and impede a grand jury investigation which was occurring in D.C.

The National Archives and Records Administration, from whom Trump concealed the documents contrary to 18 U.S.C. § 2071, is located in D.C. The retention and failure to return documents on demand to the federal officer or employee entitled to receive them, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793, (which never could have occurred but for the removal of documents from the White House) involved correspondence and communication with the National Archivist in D.C.

[Commenter_XY]

William Barr said more or less the same thing = What sets Trump apart is his refusal, or his staff’s refusal, to return documents on demand.

[Brett Bellmore]

Right, instead of instantly knuckling under, he was negotiating with them about whether he had a right to them. The horror.

[Nige]

In other words he played for time with delaying tactics and they didn't bite.

[bernard11]

Oh fuck off.

He wasn't negotiating. He was refusing to turn them over, even after being subpoenaed. And it wasn't just the classified documents.

Quit the cult, Brett.

[bevis the lumberjack]

He wasn’t negotiating. He didn’t know they were even there. Once they were discovered he could - should - have simply said “oops. Sorry. We’ll send them back”. End of story.

But that would be admitting a mistake, and part of his psychosis results in him never, ever admitting a mistake. So he leaned into another part of his psychosis, which is always attack. Everything is a battle.

This is a classic example of someone making a mountain out of a molehill, and the someone who did it is Trump.

[not guilty]

"Right, instead of instantly knuckling under, he was negotiating with them about whether he had a right to them. The horror."

A grand jury subpoena is not an invitation to negotiate. If he believed the subpoena was invalid or defective, Trump could have moved the U.S. District Court in D.C. to quash the subpoena; he did not do so.

Prior to issuance of the subpoena, Trump retained the documents and failed to deliver them on demand to the National Archives. See, 18 U.S.C. § 793(d).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Right, instead of instantly knuckling under, he was negotiating with them

That's just the partisanship, autism, and lack of legal education talking.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Go fuck yourself, Brett.

He didn't "negotiate." He stole, he lied, he obstructed, and he deliberately attempted to conceal documents he was lawfully required to hand over in response to a subpoena.

[Super Scary]

You can tell when you get the ire of the resident lefties when they file en masse to shout you down.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Re: Super Scary,

Oddly enough, people en masse do not tolerate bullshit and lies.

You may go now.

[Gandydancer]

Lefty en masse routinely generates bullshit and lies.

See way upthread on this page where Lefty en masse gathers to mob BCD, declaring that he needed to provide a link to prove the existence of a tranny SEAL team, and other such idiocies.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I wasn't shouting anyone down.

I was describing one of the regulars as a bigoted, antisocial, grievance-consumed, delusional, autistic jerk and culture war casualty -- as a public service for casual readers who might not expect to find a guy with that kind of baggage at a blog operated by law professors from mostly reputable institutions. How are those newbies to know the Conspirators are the misfits on their faculties, aiming to attract an audience of racists, gay-haters, gun nuts, misogynists, antisemites, immigrant-bashers, and Islamophobes?

[Michael P]

In the wake of a vehicle explosion caused by a lithium battery, some Fire Marshall's Office warned people not to charge batteries under their pillows.

*blink* I guess the buzzing and vibration would also make it hard to sleep?

[Gandydancer]

Not sure why I would want to charge them under my pillow, but neither my phone nor watch seem to buzz or vibrate while charging.

[Martinned]

More shocking FTC overreach:

Ovulation Tracking App Premom Will be Barred from Sharing Health Data for Advertising Under Proposed FTC Order

FTC says company disclosed user health data to third parties, deceived users about its data sharing practices and violated Health Breach Notification Rule

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ovulation-tracking-app-premom-will-be-barred-sharing-health-data-advertising-under-proposed-ftc

But seriously, this is the kind of thing that falls squarely under "how can anyone even imagine that that could possibly be legal?"

[Michael P]

The FTC thinks that since they have a fancy office in DC, they can order people around. Most of the Deep State has a similar mindset to justify their actions -- they think "when the FTC does it, that means it's legal".

[apedad]

Hawley says Washington, media to blame for erosion of masculinity among American men

Ugh, here, read it yourself: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hawley-washington-media-blame-erosion-masculinity-american-men

Personally, I think he’s just prepping everyone so that when photos of him wearing dresses appear he can say, “I told you! I’m a victim of the insipid evil!!!”

[Martinned]

Nonsense. The problem is that American men don't spend enough time suntanning their taints.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

What Josh Hawley knows about masculinity wouldn't fit in a closet -- at least, not very believably.

[Michael P]

Another Soros prosecutor released a dangerously mentally ill person to assault others, this time attacking two staffers in search of a Congressman. Why do leftists act like only straight cisgender white men can be responsible for their actions?

https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/16/soros-backed-prosecutor-dropped-previous-assault-charges-against-man-arrested-attacking-dem-staffers-bat/

[Martinned]

This comment is too good for me to be able to claim it as mine in good conscience:

Everybody knows that screaming "Soros!" and "Woke!" are mostly a Web3 way of screaming the k-word and the n-word. And no one knows that better than the guys screaming "Soros!" and "Woke!"

https://twitter.com/LOLGOP/status/1658462629029900290

[Michael P]

Yawn. Everybody knows that insane leftists on the Internet make shit up. Quoting them trying to play the race card just shows how stupid you are.

[Martinned]

There is literally no other reason why people mention Soros in a context that has nothing to do with the man himself, other than to blame the Jews without using the word "Jews".

[Michael P]

George Soros individually backed these far-left, pro-chaos prosecutors and got them elected. It wasn't some Jewish conspiracy, and pretending that people posit some conspiracy when they point out an individual who very openly supported the outcome in question shows how bad your argument is. The only question is whether you're making that argument because you're a liar or just a moron who believes your nutty friends.

[hoppy025]

"The only question is whether you’re making that argument because you’re a liar or just a moron who believes your nutty friends."

Could be both.

[Nige]

Aside from the many ways in which this is stupid – I thought Republicans LOVED all that private billionaire dosh flowing into elections? You even love it flowing into a Supreme Court Judge. Money, I was told, is speech, so it's only fair billionaires have so much more speech than the rest of us.

[Bored Lawyer]

"I thought"

Could have fooled me. Not much thought there.

[Nige]

I know, right? I said so at the time.

[Gandydancer]

No, you didn't.

You can't put fingers to a keyboard without lying, can you?

[Nige]

What is it you think I didn’t do?

[Noscitur a sociis]

I don’t think anyone is criticizing Soros for spending money to elect politicians who would implement policies he liked, or suggesting that he shouldn’t have been allowed to do so. They’re criticizing him because those policies are bad.

[Nige]

They're *claiming* his policies are bad, but mostly it's to avoid confronting the fact that some sort of violent extremist assaulted some Democrats. Reform of the justice system never makes it past whining about the poor Jan 6th crowd, and blaming mental health for mass shootings never brings about support for impreoving the mental health system.

[Gandydancer]

"Xuan Kha Tran Pham, the 49-year-old man being investigated for the Monday assault of two congressional staffers with a metal bat, was previously charged with assaulting a police officer, but the local Soros-backed prosecutor declined to pursue the charges, court records show."

Yeah, they're only "*claiming*" that this was a bad idea. Not like it's obvious or anything.

[Bored Lawyer]

There is literally no other reason why people mention Soros in a context that has nothing to do with the man himself, other than to blame the Jews without using the word “Jews”.

That and the fact that he gives a lot of money to support radical causes that are doing great damage to American cities.

As a Jew, I find the invocation of the "Jew card" in the context of Soros to be quite offensive. He has staked out a radical and damaging position, and backed it up with a lot of cash. The notion that his Jewish ethnicity (of which he is none too proud) somehow immunizes him from criticism, is obnoxious.

[Martinned]

Except that's not at all what I said. What I said is that people say "Soros!" in situations where the man himself is in no way involved, simply because they want to avoid saying "the Jews". The comment above is a case in point.

[Bored Lawyer]

The comment above is citing to an article about a prosecutor -- one actually backed by Soros money -- who acted in accordance with that radical ideology, and let a dangerous person out. Who then later committed violence.
So, yes, it is entirely appropriate in that context.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

There is literally no other reason why people mention Soros in a context that has nothing to do with the man himself, other than to blame the Jews without using the word “Jews”.

There's no reason to continue this effort to convince people that you're not to be taken seriously. That ship sailed long ago.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Here is an op ed by George Soros from last year explaining why he supports electing prosecutors like this guy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-support-reform-prosecutors-law-enforces-jail-prison-crime-rate-justice-police-funding-11659277441

[VinniUSMC]

This comment is too good for me to be able to claim it as mine in good conscience

It's no more ridiculous than anything else you post. The only "n-word" Soros is code for is Nazi.

[Martinned]

You know what you are.

[VinniUSMC]

Someone who doesn't like Nazis? Sick burn, moron.

[SRG]

Because they lost?

[VinniUSMC]

Yes, you lost. Hopefully Soros will too.

[SRG]

Ah, another anti-Semite emerges from his shell.

[VinniUSMC]

Fuck off Nazi scum.

[SRG]

Yes, precisely. This is why I now hold the rebuttable assumption that every mention of Soros is anti-Semitic.

[Bored Lawyer]

There are plenty of Jews who have spoken harshly of Soros. Are they all anti-semites?

[SRG]

No, but first, I said it was a rebuttable presumption, and second, it matters who said it.

FWIW I have not seen too many right-wing Jews using phrases like "Soros-backed". They will criticise him, but they tend not to juxtapose his name with, e.g., state AGs.

[Bored Lawyer]

And what is anti-semitic about "Soros-backed," assuming it's true?

The point is, there is a national problem, backed by an ideologue and an ideology. It's not just some lone prosecutor in some district who is too stupid or lazy to do his/her job. Soros' heavy monetary support has made him the poster child of this ideology. Sorry, I don't see the anti-semitism there.

[Martinned]

And what is anti-semitic about “Soros-backed,” assuming it’s true?

That assumption swallows the whole problem. People who talk about the "Soros-backed media" neither know nor care whether Soros is in fact backing anything.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, that's a convenient way to assume away whether it's factually true: Just claim the other side doesn't care!

[Bored Lawyer]

So if it's true, you concede it's not anti-semitic.

Now change it slightly. Call the person a "Soros prosecutor." Even if he has not taken Soros money, if he follows the Soros ideology, it's a fair characterization.
Same as calling someone a "Marxist" even though Karl Marx has been dead for some time.

[SRG]

I think that's a somewhat disingenuous response. The point of my claim that the use of "Soros-backed" is rebuttably anti-Semitic is not that Soros may or may nor have backed this or that media group or AG, but that it's being used as a dog whistle for "Jooz", particularly "foreign Jewish bankers".

I note that the accusation that someone or some group is backed by Soros is often made without the speaker caring whether it's true.

[Gandydancer]

You "notice" all sorts of shit that is nonsense.

There is zero reason to think that the authors of the article linked to above don't care whether their use of "Soros-backed" is true.

[Michael P]

I don't know who has complained about "Soros-backed media", because you seem to have pulled that out of your ass, but there is such a thing. And the prosecutor here got (at least at one point) 70% of his campaign funding from a George Soros super PAC.

[MistahWhiskas]

"I don’t know who has complained about “Soros-backed media”, because you seem to have pulled that out of your ass, but there is such a thing."

Can't make this up...

[Michael P]

You also can't make an argument.

[Super Scary]

*Ctrl+F "Soros-Back Media"

Huh, only you and people quoting you said anything about about Soros's involvement with the media. So, literally pulled from your ass.

[SRG]

I am aware that Soros is a major backer of some moderate and liberal groups, causes, and people. But I am also aware that his backing is singled-out in a way that no-one else’s is, and, as I noted above, often asserted without any care as to whether the assertion is true.

“Soros” is used as a scare term – of a particularly specific and unpleasant kind. There are no shortage of Jewish donors to both parties, and plenty of goyish donors as well. But the other Jewish donors don’t fit the “foreign Jewish banker” anti-Semitic trope.

And see https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/04/us/politics/george-soros-bragg-trump.html

[Absaroka]

"But I am also aware that his backing is singled-out in a way that no-one else’s is"

Oh, I dunno. He gives out quite a bit: number 3 on a Forbes list, behind only Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. I think most of their charity giving is fairly apolitical, and it's not surprising that fighting malaria in Africa doesn't generate as much controversy as political activism in America.

You may recall another donor to US political causes who took a lot of heat, Charles Koch. And his donations are a tenth of Soros'.

[Bored Lawyer]

"There are no shortage of Jewish donors to both parties, and plenty of goyish donors as well."

That's a complete non-sequitur. Soros is not a run-of-the-mill donor to Democratic candidates. He specifically targets certain races (DA's) to install people that agree with his philosophy of criminal prosecution, one that many believe is very harmful to urban (and non-urban) areas. So there is good reason to single him out.

[Sarcastr0]

There was a Volokh thread on Soros invocations:

https://reason.com/volokh/2020/07/29/of-course-its-legitimate-to-criticize-george-soros-spending-to-influence-american-politics/?comments=true#comments

Hans Bader did a great job laying out the case against Soros without any antisemetic tropes.
It, by contrast, damned this comentariat, and the journalist whose attacks on Soros Prof. Bernstein was defending.

[Gandydancer]

"I am aware that Soros is a major backer of some moderate and liberal groups, causes, and people."

None of those categories fit the ways he spends money that he is criticized for. The word that fits the prosecutor who foolishly decided not to prosecute the (Vietnamese?) nutter is "radical".

[shawn_dude]

Can there be one Thursday Open Thread that doesn't include some sort of antisemitic Soros dog whistle?

WTF is a "Soros Prosecutor" if not some sort of allusion to Jewish control.

[Absaroka]

Well, to me it means 'a prosecutor whose election received large contributions from one of Soros's organizations'. Soros's religion has nothing to do with it.

A quote from your link: "Criticizing Soros or his politics and actions is not antisemitic. Indeed, those who have suggested that any criticism is antisemitic do real disservice to the cause of fighting Jew hatred"

[Noscitur a sociis]

George Soros has very deliberately funded a number of elected prosecutors who pledged to implement radically different criminal justice policies (and who, in many cases , did so). It’s not like this is a conspiracy theory or anything—here’s an op ed (from less than a year ago) where he acknowledges doing it, says he’s proud of it, and pledges to continue doing it:

This is why I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform. I have done it transparently, and I have no intention of stopping.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-support-reform-prosecutors-law-enforces-jail-prison-crime-rate-justice-police-funding-11659277441

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Minnesota will probably make it more difficult for non-duopoly parties to have ballot access:

https://ballot-access.org/2023/05/16/minnesota-legislature-is-likely-to-stiffen-definition-of-a-qualified-party/

If the duopoly is basically doing a good job, and there is no danger of third parties picking up votes, why do the duopolists find it necessary to tighten the screws and make ballot access for potential competitors more difficult?

[Jerry B.]

Because both major parties think they might lose the majority of votes if there’s a third party there to take some away.

[shawn_dude]

see: Greens and Libertarians.

[ducksalad]

Actually, the major parties often aren’t against third parties in general, they’re against particular third parties.

Consider what Texas did recently. They made it easier for a party to retain ballot access, by lowering the percentage vote required to automatically be on the next ballot. However, they made it much more expensive to get a third party nomination. Why?

Because the Green Party was about to lose their ballot line. They mostly contest statewide offices, and “steal” votes from Democrats if you believe the stealing is a thing. So the Republicans lowered the vote requirement so the Greens could stay on.

The Libertarians “steal” from Republicans but had enough votes to stay on anyway. The LP Texas policy is to try to contest every congressional district and quite a few seats in the legislature. They do this using volunteer “paper candidates” who are willing to put up their name but not spend money. So the Republicans slapped on high filing fees ($3125 to run for Congress) to get rid of those volunteers.

It was carefully engineered to take 1% or so off the Democrat top-line candidates while getting back 2-3% on the Republican congressional candidates.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

That is highly interesting.

What if there were liberal ballot access for all third parties (and independent candidates), without regard to viewpoint?

In that case, could we predict in advance who would have more votes "stolen" from them?

[ducksalad]

My scientific wild ass guess – but backed by years of studying Ballot Access News – is that while the absolute number of votes “stolen” might be a wash, Republicans would be harder hit under current conditions. That’s because their large states are closer calls. 5% for the LP could swing TX or FL. 5% for the Greens will not swing CA or NY.

The LP specifically has studied this issue. The internal consensus is that a good fraction of LP voters would just stay home if kicked off the ballot, but those who would show up divide 2/3 R and 1/3 D. The Republicans certainly behave as if they believe this too.

[dwb68]

FBI agents [through a ring doorbell camera] when asked asked if someone could take pictures of their badges, "Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to have anyone take our pictures."

That cant be right, under the First Amendment. People have a right to photo/video etc agents and hold them accountable.

Or am I missing something?

[hoppy025]

He's right based on the statute, but I agree with you that the statute is unconstitutional unless the act is limited to those with an intent to deceive.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/701

[dwb68]

It was a she, and I think that statute is to prevent forgery.

[Gandydancer]

That may be its ostensible purpose as declared in the legislative history, but what it prohibits is (among other things) the possession of any photograph of a badge, etc. How is "I didn't intend to make a forgery" going to operate as an excuse if you are charged with a violation?

[John F. Carr]

The First Amendment does not require government agents to pose for you or display items for your camera.

[Sarcastr0]

It should be an internal policy.

It is amusing watching the right attack law enforcement and stumble into parroting stuff the left has been saying for decades.

It's all eyewash though - there is no plan to reform the policies, just take scalps and complain.

[Gandydancer]

You're a moron. On the rare occasion that Lefty, like a broken clock, is right and agrees with me, my "parroting" Lefty is not what is going on.

[Brett Bellmore]

They're not required to pose, but according to multiple court rulings, neither are they allowed to stop you.

[Gandydancer]

Why do you imagine that that is any answer to the question “if someone could take pictures of their badges”?

The cop who shot Michael Brown dead in Ferguson, MO was videoed demanding a citizen stop taking a phone video of him and the bad taste from that, along with him shooting unnecessarily at the retreating Brown (second bullet fired dangerously to the public going into the wall of a nearby building, etc.) and my conviction that he deliberately began the violence by opening his SUV door into Brown’s shins is among the reasons I viewed him as partly responsible for the unfortunate consequences. Though his shooting Brown in the brain was self defense, in the end.

[apedad]

You're missing something - and actually all (except the FBI agents), are missing something.

There's a difference between a badge and credentials.

The agents were displaying their credentials - not their badges.

The badges are displayed on the outside of the credential case and - like cops - those could be photographed if they were displayed.

[dwb68]

1- except they held them out long enough for the camera to capture it lol and

2 - they didnt say "Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to have anyone take pictures of our credentials."

they said, "Unfortunately, we’re not allowed to have anyone take our pictures."

[Mr. Bumble]

Which explains why they are referred to as "Special Agents".

[shawn_dude]

Which isn't the same as "You're not allowed to take our picture."

[Gandydancer]

Wrong. Follow the link already provided: "18 U.S. Code § 701 - Official badges, identification cards, other insignia". What you call "credentials" I call identification. Possession of photos of which is forbidden by an unconstitutional law.

[Absaroka]

I found this article thought provoking. It's a riff exploring some of the social oddities highlighted by the NY subway choking case. It's one of those 'yeah, we are in a pretty weird place, how did we get here' pieces.

[Gandydancer]

“…when you demand vigilance, you get vigilantes.”

No. It’s that when you let a dangerous loon loose on the public 42 times without disabling his misbehavior you make SELF-defense inevitable.

[Moderation4ever]

My local newspaper, Wisconsin State Journal had an interesting opinion piece by Dr. Cory Franklin a few days ago. He noted that while there has been much discussion about the COVID19 response in various countries, all affluent. What has been missed is that countries with far less resources seem to do much better. Noting the areas like Africa have a much more open environment, a younger population, and less obesity and lower COVID death rates. While people argue over masks, vaccines and closures, the real solution are population with better overall individual health.

[Brett Bellmore]

And spending as much time as possible outdoors, where you won't be breathing in what other people are breathing out quite so intensively. (Which makes closing the parks at the beginning of Covid extra stupid.)

That said, I think it's worth keeping in mind that Covid statistics from countries that poor are not terribly reliable; It's not like they were handing out expensive tests on every street corner. If somebody dropped dead, most of the time they couldn't know if it was Covid, or one of a dozen other diseases that were killing people.

The fact is that the death rate in these countries was so high that Covid was just a blip even if it ran through them like a wildfire. It's only in developed countries with low mortality rates that Covid managed to edge into the top 3 causes of death, and only during peaks, at that. It really was not a major player in terms of mortality.

[Nige]

It's only killed near enough to seven million people, no big deal.

[Brett Bellmore]

Averaging being in the top ten causes of death was enough of a reason to take it seriously, but was scarcely reason enough for hysteria; We don't normally shut down society over substantially more deadly things.

My point, anyway, is that the background level of mortality in Africa is high enough that Covid would scarcely have registered there, it's that bad. And they weren't routinely testing people, so a lot of Covid deaths would have gone unrecorded.

So it's hardly surprising that they look like they did relatively well on the statistics. There are reasons it would have looked that way even if they had done badly.

[Nige]

We've gone from 'it's just a head cold' to 'so what if it's now settled down as the number three cause of death?' Millions dead seems reason enough for an organised public global response, that it triggered screams that this was hysteria from people who were also claiming it wasn't real, or that it was released deliberately to make people eat bugs, or that the vaccine was poison, etc etc is just a modern fact of life.

[Brett Bellmore]

‘so what if it’s now settled down as the number three cause of death?’

If you think Covid is currently the number three cause of death, you're not following the news. Sure, it made the top 3 in 2020 and 2021. It had fallen to #4 in 2022, and was dropping like a rock.

I doubt that this year it will even make the top five. Might make the top ten, though, there's a large drop off between diabetes and kidney disease, so it's unlikely to drop beyond 8th place this year. Maybe drop out of the top ten next year.

[Nige]

From your lips to God's ear, but ‘dropping like a rock’ from 3 to 4? Wow, it’s really plummeting. God bless the vaccine, eh. *Seven million deaths later* see, it’s dropping like a rock! I mean, let’s hope so. But the ‘just a head cold’ side can still fuck off.

[Gandydancer]

YOU can fuck off, you misinforming twat. Not only is it NOT true as you claimed that COVID has "now settled down as the number three cause of death", but that ranking relied on bogus figures for "COVID related deaths".

[shawn_dude]

A large number of medical professionals and politicians still remember smallpox and polio. "We don’t normally shut down society over substantially more deadly things." Can you name a more deadly, communicable disease since smallpox and polio that killed that many Americans just by breathing in the same space as each other? The closest we get is AIDS and that required a lot more than just breathing. Back when it was called GRIDS, there was significant hysteria. I saw EMTs refuse to touch men at gay bars whose injuries were unrelated to HIV/AIDS. People were freaked out.

[Jjh_Esq]

In the US, Covid killed over 1 million people. There are over 332 million Americans.

If you simplify the math, 1 out of every 332 Americans died from Covid. 1/332 is .0030. In other words, 99.7% of Americans survived.

Our response was not proportional to the risk Covid posed.

[Nige]

Yeah, imagine if the reponse HAD been proportional, or at least competently executed, it might have saved a lot of those people.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Your "simplified" math ignores the effect that the actions taken had on the outcome, for better or worse.

Your conclusion is therefore complete horseshit.

[Jjh_Esq]

Other countries that implemented different responses—-and even no response at all—-had nearly identical 98%+ survival rates.

The fact is, nothing we could do would ever stop a contagious airborne virus. Let alone foolish policies like locking children up in their homes.

We needed initial restrictions to slow the spread of the virus to prevent overwhelming hospitals. After that, locking society down for over two years was a foolish response to a virus 99.7% of people survived.

[shawn_dude]

Survival shouldn't be the measure here. Quite a few people survived with permanent lung and heart damage. There's also the "Long COVID" folks.

The lockdowns were helpful given the number of Americans that refused to be responsible about their ability to spread the disease to others. Comparisons between Florida and California, for example, show that stricter requirements had better health outcomes.

And the fact is, several things we did in at least some states limited the spread of that airborne virus. Masking, social distancing, hand-washing, and avoiding others as much as possible were successful. Children in schools caught and passed the virus back to family members so some school closures were inevitable without vaccines. Then, taking the vaccines when they came was the biggest thing we did to limit the spread. We could have gotten to "herd immunity" faster two ways: 1) do what the conservatives, and QAnon morons, were demanding and let everyone get it, or 2) take the vaccines when offered for free. But as long as 1/3rd of the country was adamant that they wouldn't participate, we were bound to take longer and kill more Americans before we could resume normal life.

[Jjh_Esq]

99.7% survived regardless of procedures in different countries. Moreover, as now fully admitted, the vaccines do nothing to stop the spread of the virus.

[shawn_dude]

Cite please. Both for "is now fully admitted" and "vaccines do nothing."

[Jjh_Esq]

Seriously, read my post carefully. I didn’t say the “vaccines do nothing;” I said the they “do nothing to stop the spread of the virus.”

That is an accurate statement. The vaccines do not stop virus transmission. Even Fauci admitted this fact.

A simple google search will educate you. The vaccines do not stop transmission of the virus.

The vaccines do prevent people who get the virus from dying. But a vaccinated person who catches the virus is still a vector for the virus to spread to another person.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

So you can't cite any sources for your statements? I didn't think so.

"the vaccines do nothing to stop the spread of the virus." Pure bullshit.

Common sense - if you had any, would indicate that a vaccine which reduces the contagious and symptomatic period would therefore clearly reduce the spread of the virus.

[Jjh_Esq]

Here is the testimony of CDC Director Walensky testifying under oath that vaccines do not stop the spread … because apparently Google is new to some people.

https://www.themainewire.com/2023/04/cdc-director-walensky-says-vaccines-dont-stop-transmission-why-does-maine-still-mandate-the-shot/

[Martinned]

Why didn't we think of that? We should have just made our populations younger!

[Moderation4ever]

Or less obese.

[Ben_]

They sent police after people trying to get sunshine and exercise. They filled in skate parks with sand.

[Brett Bellmore]

Technically, didn't several Democrat run states do exactly that, by requiring senior homes to take in Covid carriers?

[Sarcastr0]

Telling you think that was only a Democratic policy. Not everything is partisan, Brett.

Check out Florida, among others.

[Michael P]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/five-governors-cuomo-covid-19-positive-patients-nursing-homes

You're wrong, as usual.

[Sarcastr0]

I am indeed wrong - I thought Florida was one of the states and was incorrect.

[ducksalad]

Jeebus man you're not supposed to do that here.

[Ben_]

In other words, young people were never in much danger from Covid.

The Democrats’ censorship machine would have censored you and threatened you for saying that in 2020 and 2021. Also they'd say you murdered grandma.

[Martinned]

You mean the grandma who was in danger from Covid?

Also, you understand that not "much danger" multiplied by millions of people is still a lot of dead bodies, right?

[Brett Bellmore]

You do realize that "more danger" multiplied by millions of people is still a lot more dead bodies, right?

The problem with exaggerating how much of a danger Covid was to people who weren't already sickly, is that you ended up misallocating resources and doing stupid things, like shutting down K-12 schools.

[Nige]

Well, first of all the exact degree of danger was not well understood because it was a brand new virus - and we're still learning about long-term effects so you should keep holding your horses - secondly, people affected mildly by the virus can still spread it, becaus it is highly communicable. I know the right was in favour of the virus that has gone on to kill seven million people spreading as widely and quickly as possible, before we even had vaccines, but the right is off it's fucking head.

[Ben_]

Grandma should have been the focus of Covid efforts instead of diluting the effort by trying (and completely failing) to police everyone.

"Also, you understand that not “much danger” multiplied by millions of people is still a lot of dead bodies, right?"

Like the seasonal flu.

[Nige]

They tried that and ended up killing lots of old people. Apparently even you guys think that was a scandal.

[Moderation4ever]

You are correct that the vulnerable population should have been the focus. This was articulated in the Great Barrington Declaration. Had we had leadership at that time we might have chosen that path. Instead, the Trump administration just kept hoping COVID would go away.

[Nige]

The 'let it spread unchecked' path?

[Moderation4ever]

I don't think that is an accurate statement. Rather I would suggest the idea would be to minimize spread to robust population, but not look for 100% containment. Instead focus effort on maximizing protection of vulnerable populations. I don't think this is as easy as it might look on paper, but I am not sure that it might have yielded similar results to the idea of maximum containment across the population. Again, leadership would be required and that was lacking.

[Nige]

There were stupendous pushback against even moderate efforts to reduce spread, like masks and social distancing and vaccines. So I think this not-even-half-measure completely-abstract-about-how-it's-achieved plan was always bullshit.

[Ben_]

"Instead, the Trump administration just kept hoping COVID would go away."

More made-up stories. Why not just stop making up stories?

[Gandydancer]

An insignificant danger multiplied by the population of the earth may add up to "a lot" in the eyes of a hysterical innumerate but it is still an insignificant danger for each and every person.

[EscherEnigma]

I mean, plenty of people did say that. A lot. Constantly. All over the news, social media, school board meetings, etc. and so-on. So it sounds like the "Democrats' censorship machine" is pretty lackluster.

[Gandydancer]

What it SOUNDS LIKE is that you are trying really hard to minimize the egregious censorship that went on.

Compare your use of "a lot" with Martinn's.

[Gandydancer]

Achieving better overall individual health by killing off the old people who here died of COVID before they get old enough to do so hardly seems like a good solution.

[Mr. Bumble]

Since Congress and the President can't seem to agree on a resolution addressing the "debt crisis" the federal government will be conducting a nationwide garage sale over the Memorial Day weekend. Bargains galore and don't miss Hunter's Lemonade Stand (with 10% for the big guy).

[Moderation4ever]

While we are on the subject of the debt ceiling let me suggest two interesting rumors and these are at this time only rumors. The first that a group of moderate Democrats are preparing to save McCarty's speakership, by supporting him should he face removal by raising the debt limit. The other is that the Republican would like President Biden to raise the debt limit by invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. This solves the debt ceiling problem, avoids Republicans having to take a vote, and provides an attack point on the President.

I believe the debt ceiling will be raised in the usual manner, but it does suggest there is thinking outside the box.

[Brett Bellmore]

" The first that a group of moderate Democrats are preparing to save McCarty’s speakership, by supporting him should he face removal by raising the debt limit. "

That would only nominally save his speakership; He'd become persona non grata among Republicans if he retained it that way.

[Moderation4ever]

The only way to pass a clean debt ceiling limit is to have McCarthy allow some Republicans to vote their conscience. If he did that, he would be persona non grata with the MAGA Republicans, but not with other members of the Party.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

He’d become persona non grata among Republicans if he retained it that way.

When physical restraint was required to prevent a Republican from reaching those Freedom Caucus hayseeds, it was because . . . that guy wanted to hug and kiss the Freedom Caucus assholes?

[Bob from Ohio]

"two interesting rumors"

West Wing fantasies rather.

[DaveM]

Re: the federal government's debt limit, I am confused by the argument that unless the debt limit is raised, the US will be in default. That sounds like the government is borrowing to make payments on the interest from earlier borrowing. If that's the case, the US is essentially bankrupt, is it not? That is by any measure a financial death spiral.

However, perhaps this is just a PR campaign. They're only saying we will default on our debt because that sounds so much scarier and more like a crisis. We know how useful those can be. In reality, we are collecting more than enough in taxes to pay our interest.

Is there anyone who can cite some details on whether this is a valid claim or just politicians blowing more smoke?

[SimonP]

That sounds like the government is borrowing to make payments on the interest from earlier borrowing.

Yes, that's what it's doing.

If that’s the case, the US is essentially bankrupt, is it not?

No, that's not what that means.

That is by any measure a financial death spiral.

As long as markets are buying the debt, it's sustainable.

It may surprise you to learn that many businesses rely on this technique, where they load up on debt and they just continually re-finance it. The risk is, of course, that they are unable to re-finance when the bill comes do, which is essentially the same risk that the U.S. is facing, and it makes sense to try to rely less on this constant debt cycle in our own fiscal policy. Unfortunately we find ourselves in a situation where Republicans are unwilling to increase tax revenue or to cut our biggest expenditures, and where Democrats are unwilling to cut most of our expenditures.

It's like the situation with immigration and asylum claims. We can all see that it's not the way things are supposed to work, and it's not sustainable. But politics block any kind of thoughtful solution.

[hoppy025]

Markets aren't buying the debt, unless you consider the Fed printing money and monetizing the debt to be "buying" it.

[SimonP]

"Argle Bargle"

[hoppy025]

You referring to your own drivel?

[Sarcastr0]

That guys is a pro block.

Or if you're perversely interested, read but don't bother engaging him. He's either doing a bit, or is too shitty for talking to him to have any value.

[SimonP]

I don't block people. I prefer to see what they're saying about or to me.

That doesn't mean I have to engage in all the trolling to the nth degree, though. My policy on Hoppy is to ignore most of what he says, like I do with other Reason Rats.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It doesn’t help that his assertion is incorrect. I addressed it below, let’s see how he responds.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's sustainable as long as the debt load increases no faster than the size of the revenue stream supporting it. Which has not been remotely true of the federal government for a long while.

[SimonP]

I don't disagree. Gosh, if only we could do something about that revenue stream...

[hoppy025]

No, we can't increase taxes on just the "rich."

[SimonP]

No, but we can (i) roll back the Trump tax cuts, (ii) lift the cap on Social Security taxes, and (iii) enforce a global corporate minimum tax and shut down other tax evasion schemes. That would generate a fair amount of revenue without massively disrupting the status quo. Not enough to eliminate the deficit, but would get us closer to the right track.

[hoppy025]

Nonsense. Lifting the cap on Social Security taxes doesn't work because benefits would rise too. It just pushes problems into the future.

[Mr. Bumble]

You could pay your fair share.

[SimonP]

I'll wager I pay a lot more than my fair share, actually, and likely far more than you do.

[hoppy025]

You aren't taxed on your EBT or WIC benefits.

[SimonP]

This year, I cut a check to Uncle Sam that would have been enough to pay for a year's worth of rent, food, and utilities - plus some extra spending money - for myself, at another point in my life. That was on top of my withholding, which of course I'll never see again. It was only partially set-off by my New York State refund (here in NY, they over-withhold as a matter of policy, to give themselves a convenient interest-free loan).

So I know exactly what I'm calling for, when it comes to lifting the income caps for Social Security taxes. I've done the math on Biden's proposals and know what the hit would be. And you know what? I can afford it. I just want it to be spent wisely (which of course is not a given, but I can be damned sure that the Republicans care less about waste than even the Democrats do).

[Nige]

They don't care how much you do or don't pay, they only care that rich people don't have to pay.

[Mr. Bumble]

@ Simon P:
Social security is FDR's Ponzi scheme.
FDR became a saint, Madoff went to jail.

[hoppy025]

Yes, at another point in your life, you were living in NYCHA housing, feeding yourself with EBT cards, and getting electricity for free. You used your "spending money" to buy crack and lube to use in the bath houses you frequent in the Village.

[Gandydancer]

"I just want it to be spent wisely (which of course is not a given...}"

It's a fantasy.

[Brett Bellmore]

That's like me saying that I'm too short for my weight, I really need to do something about gaining height.

It's not like the economy will actually sustain endlessly increasing levels of taxation, you know. We're currently at federal spending levels that have never been sustained for long outside of a world war; Ya think maybe that's because they're unsustainable?

[shawn_dude]

No, it's not like that at all. It's like someone saying "My bills are bigger than my salary!" and then getting a second job to pay of the debt. In the US government, we call that "taxes." But we've been cutting taxes every time the GOP gets in charge--the last time we we gave the wealthiest Americans and business a huge tax cut. Hurray! Rich people can now afford the first class tickets to other countries when ours goes into default and various markets heavily dependent on lending crash. (see: 2008)

[hoppy025]

The reason "wealthiest" Americans got a tax cut is because they pay most of the taxes. The top 1% pays over 40% of taxes. The bottom 50% (95% of whom are Democrats) pay 0, or get money back through the EITC and other "refundable" credits.

[Nige]

That's a terrible reason. No wonder inflation rocketed.

[hoppy025]

No, inflation rocketed because the Fed printed $5 trillion. Inflation is always a monetary phenomenon.

[Nige]

Tax cuts for the rich, massive corporate profits – both drive inflation.

[Gandydancer]

What a stupid and ignorant thing to say.
But look up "stupid and ignorant" in the encyclopedia and you find a picture of Nige.

[Absaroka]

"It’s like someone saying “My bills are bigger than my salary!” and then getting a second job to pay of the debt. In the US government, we call that “taxes.”"

And for us to pay all those taxes, we can all just get second jobs!

[shawn_dude]

Or vote for people who will reduce the deficit rather than grow it–and will do that when they’re the majority party not the minority, as the GOP routinely does. Unnecessary tax-giveaways to ones wealthy benefactors is growing the deficit without providing direct benefits for the majority of one’s voters.

[DaveM]

Interesting, but I don't think you've answered the specific question, which is about borrowing to pay interest on borrowing. Your point seems (to me) to be about whether organizations borrow to fund further spending.

What makes these different, I think, is that general spending can reasonably be thought of as an investment, but paying back the interest on a loan cannot. It is a sunk cost.

If you have sunken to the point where you are borrowing to pay interest, then you are in a feedback loop. Since these are all sunk costs, will that not eventually accumulate enough to sink the entire organization?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Money is fungible. Easy argument to make that the US is making their interest payments with cash generated by taxes, duties, and fees and that any borrowing being done is to fund ongoing operations. Easy peasy.

As long as you don’t default on your debt you’re not bankrupt. And in the case of the US government the value of its assets (still I think) exceeds its liabilities.

This may change if interest rates stay up here (5ish %) for a while. Right now the bond market doesn’t believe that they will do so.

[Ben_]

"The argument" is confusing because they're using it to try to deceive you.

[SRG]

From the main Reason site:

FREE MINDS
Is the Supreme Court's "entire qualified immunity jurisprudence … based on a mistake"? Judge Don R. Willett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit suggested as much in a recent opinion. The case involved a Texas inmate who was hurt when the ceiling collapsed in a barn he was working in. He sued. The 5th Circuit said the doctrine of qualified immunity—which shields police and other authorities from a lot of civil liability for violating rights and causing harm—barred his claims against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and prison staff.

But in a separate concurring opinion, Willett raised the idea that our whole understanding of qualified immunity law might be mistaken. Willett pointed to "game-changing arguments" in a February 2023 California Law Review article ("Qualified Immunity's Flawed Foundation").

The paper points out, uncontroversially, that in 1871 Congress passed a law allowing lawsuits against state officials who violate constitutional rights. But the Supreme Court has held that this law didn't override existing immunity protections for authorities.

"The doctrine of qualified immunity is based on that premise," explains New York Times reporter Adam Liptak:

But the premise is wrong, Alexander A. Reinert, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, wrote in the article, "Qualified Immunity's Flawed Foundation," published in The California Law Review.

Between 1871, when the law was enacted, and 1874, when a government official produced the first compilation of federal laws, Professor Reinert wrote, 16 words of the original law went missing. Those words, Professor Reinert wrote, showed that Congress had indeed overridden existing immunities.

Judge Willett considered the implications of the finding.

"What if the Reconstruction Congress had explicitly stated — right there in the original statutory text — that it was nullifying all common-law defenses against Section 1983 actions?" Judge Willett asked. "That is, what if Congress's literal language unequivocally negated the original interpretive premise for qualified immunity?"

The original version of the law, the one that was enacted in 1871, said state officials who subject "any person within the jurisdiction of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States, shall, any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage of the state to the contrary notwithstanding, be liable to the party injured in any action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress."

The words in italics, for reasons lost to history, were omitted from the first compilation of federal laws in 1874, which was prepared by a government official called "the reviser of the federal statutes."

"The reviser's error, whether one of omission or commission, has never been corrected," Judge Willett wrote.

Is there any precedent for handling a situation like this? As I sad in the board in response, I would think that writs of error will fly. I cannot imagine that the majority of the SC would hold that a law wrongly implemented for 150 years should continue to be wrongly implemented because it's been 150 years, but I can certainly imagine Alito coming up with some spurious justification either for retaining the incorrect implementation or for excluding all existing cases from consideration.

[Bored Lawyer]

It should at least be scaled back.

Start with limiting it to situations where either the law is truly unclear, or where a government actor has to make a decision in the moment and has no time to consult counsel, like in police situations.

It has been used too often by bureaucrats who have weeks or even months to act, and can certainly consult counsel.

[not guilty]

The doctrine of qualified immunity for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 does not date back 150 years. SCOTUS opined in Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 557 (1967), that the defense of good faith and probable cause, which was available to police officers in a common law action for false arrest and imprisonment, is also available to them in an action under § 1983.

The Court ruled in Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982), that government officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate "clearly established" statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, right-wing blog has operated for

ZERO (0) DAYS

without publishing a vile racial slur and has published vile racial slurs at least

THIRTEEN (13) TIMES

in 2023 (that’s 13 distinct posts, including comments; the number of individually published slurs is a multiple of that figure) and has operated for

THREE (3) YEARS

without imposing viewpoint-driven censorship.

[Mr. Bumble]

Late to the party and empty handed as always.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Thirteen distinct exchanges featuring vile racial slurs -- which disregards the homophobic slurs, misogynistic slurs, Islamophobic slurs, antisemitic slurs, xenophobic slurs, etc. -- in 20 weeks. At an "academic" blog ostensible operated by "scholars."

What's empty is this blog's sense of decency. Not only does this blog habitually publish bigoted content, but not a single one of the relevant law professors can muster the character or courage needed to address this point.

Cowards.

Hypocrites.

Partisan hacks.

Federalist Society members in great standing.

[DaveM]

Well, you yourself wrote a "vile racial slur" by calling this blog "white", which of course is nonsense and racist. So you need to add 1 to your total.

[Frank Drackman]

Coach Jerry Sandusky, pretending he's still Defensive Coordinator at Penn State in Klinger PA, changing the numbers on the "(Blank) Days until Ohio State"
of course now he does the same thing with his release date circa 2042

[M L]

In 2015, Joe Biden praised the idea of “a constant, unrelenting stream of immigration. Not in little trickles, but in large numbers.” He said “an unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop. Nonstop” is the key to America’s success. In the next sentence he explained, “Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we’ll be in an absolute minority in the United States of America, absolute minority. Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock. That’s not a bad thing, that’s a source of our strength.” Curiously, it’s not just strength in sheer numbers or jobs or national economic output, but apparently it’s a high variance of skin pigmentation that Joe Biden believes is the key to success.

In any event, as President, Joe Biden has delivered the promised massive “unrelenting” waves of immigration by allowing illegal immigration to flourish. Already, the amounts of legal immigration to the US are massive and unrelenting by any measure, but Joe Biden added on to that with illegal waves. All of this has been done by extremely aggressive executive actions and policies that have deliberately undermined border security and illegal immigration deterrents in every imaginable way.

Border Encounters:

Trump 2017 415,517 2018 521,090 2019 977,509 2020 458,088 Biden 2021 1,734,686 2022 2,378,944 2023 1,431,964 (YTD)

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters

Including “gotaways,” there have now been over 6.6 MILLION illegal border crossings since Biden took office.

For context, that number is larger than the individual populations of 33 states and the District of Columbia. This is the worst border crisis in U.S. history

https://twitter.com/GOP/status/1658942976557449216

211,401 illegal immigrants were encountered at the southern border in April — a 337% increase from an average April during the prior administration.

More Caught Illegally Crossing Southern Border in 1 Year of Biden Than Entire Trump Presidency – Daily Signal

“From January 2017, when Trump was inaugurated, through January 2021, when Biden succeeded him in office, the Border Patrol, according to its data, encountered a total of 2,112,458 trying to illegally enter our country through the southern border.

That means the Border Patrol encountered more people trying to illegally cross the southern border in fiscal year 2022, under Biden, than it did through the entirety of Trump’s presidency.”

Meanwhile - Immigrants receive court dates up to 10 years (!!) after crossing border illegally - Washington Examiner

[DaveM]

And there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it except Congress, which has the power to try elected officials, and upon conviction, remove them from office.

The real question you should be asking yourself is why the Republicans aren't trying anyone. They certainly could do so, quite legitimately.

[M L]

I don't believe you are this confidently ignorant. I believe you are lying.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

And there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it except Congress

Can you tell us exactly what it is that Congress did after Trump left office to cause illegal border crossing to skyrocket under Biden?

[Brett Bellmore]

I have been authoritatively told, by no less than Sarcastr0, that it is entirely coincidence that illegal immigration shot up the moment Biden took office, and consistently stayed at a higher level than at any point during the Trump administration. It's just madness to think it's the result of policy changes.

[M L]

The brazen dishonesty, or the arrogant ignorance required to say that is just breathtaking, even as jaded as one would be today.

I see my number formatting disappeared so let me rewrite:

Trump
2017 . . 415,517
2018 . . 521,090
2019 . . 977,509
2020 . . 458,088

Biden
2021 . . 1,734,686
2022 . . 2,378,944
2023 . . 1,431,964 (YTD)

This doesn’t count “gotaways” . . .

[Sarcastr0]

Oh hay your causality fell off.

Do you think Biden sent secret messages to the illegals?

You're both fucking nuts.

[Frank Drackman]

"Do you think Biden sent secret messages to the illegals?"
No, as his brain doesn't even send messages to his bladder.

No real need for messages when the Borders as wide open as AOC's legs (don't really know that AOC's legs are wide open, just like the imagery)

Frank

[bevis the lumberjack]

Biden and his admin, along with prominent Democratic cities - that used to be sanctuary cities until actual migrants hit town - signaled very clearly that it was ok to come. Certainly you would agree that there was a serious change in tone at the changeover from Trump to Biden.

I know that the “secret messages” is supposed to make those guys look stupid and you sophisticated, but you’re ignoring the obvious.

If you disagree, then you explain what caused the number of people coming to more or less triple. It ain’t a coincidence.

[Sarcastr0]

How did they signal? Sanctuary cities well predate this administration.

Biden nor the admin is controlling what immigrants think.

You want to accuse the administration of changing their tone, good luck. But folks are intimating a lot more than that.

you explain what caused the number of people coming to more or less triple.
Maybe ask them, rather than weaving Great Replacement conspiracies.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Public statements.

Great Replacement? LOL. There you go with your piss poor mind reading again.

[Sarcastr0]

What public statements?

You're buying into great replacement claptrap, whether you realize it or not.

[bevis the lumberjack]

No I’m not buying into the Great Replacement thing at all. I know it’s a thing but I’m not sure what it is - I avoid right wing media just like I avoid the left. I’d prefer that my brain not be polluted by politically driven bullshit.

There could be a lot of reasons they favor more immigration. It’s probably not uniform across the left - different people with different thinking. But it’s been clear that democrats favor more immigration and in many cases open borders. Others may just believe they’re showing compassion. All of these people coming here (and the overwhelming majority are economic migrants, not legitimate asylum seekers) believe that they’ll have a better life here.

You can’t possibly try to deny that the left has encouraged people to come.

[EscherEnigma]

I avoid right wing media just like I avoid the left. I’d prefer that my brain not be polluted by politically driven bullshit.

... are you unaware you are on a right wing media website?

[bevis the lumberjack]

You mean Reason or this specific blog?

Reason is pretty libertarian, although the comments are infested by Trumpistas. I avoid wandering into the comments over there.

I think it only seems right wing to you because your politics are out there left. I don’t know if I’d call it balanced but there’s plenty of criticism of the right here too. And I’ve got a lot more right wing people muted on here than I do left. FWIW.

[Gandydancer]

"You can’t possibly try to deny that the left has encouraged people to come."

What are you talking about? Gaslightr0 just did just that.

[Ed Grinberg]

I avoid right wing media just like I avoid the left. I’d prefer that my brain not be polluted by politically driven bullshit.

I'd expect a reasonably intelligent person to be able to read any source, distinguish its factual assertions from expressions of opinion, and evaluate the former based on previous knowledge and other sources. If you're unable to do so, well ... I'm sorry.

[Ed Grinberg]

I’ve got a lot [of] people muted on here...

And you're proud of that? Hmmm...
Keep reinforcing that bubble, buddy!

[bevis the lumberjack]

And you still didn’t give a theory as to why the amount of people wanting to come here tripled immediately upon Biden’s inauguration.

[Nige]

Did he do that by reducing the human rights abuses at the border from 'extreme' to merely 'moderate?' Sneaky Biden!

[Gandydancer]

It's really hard to abuse invaders when you're just waving them through.

[Nige]

Lots and lots of service and manual workers died or became long-term ill due to covid, so they're needed to keep the economy afloat. Or to avoid having to improve pay and conditions for legal workers. Thanks, illegal immigrants!

[Gandydancer]

"Lots and lots..."

What ever will we do to keep the economy afloat without all those senescent service workers?

[Michael Ejercito]

Jack Marshall quotes Professor Jacobson.

https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/05/17/assorted-ethics-observations-on-the-durham-report-part-ii-the-substance/

…one of the biggest takeaways is what a destructive, vicious, damaging person Hillary Clinton is to our political process. This Russia collusion thing didn’t only damage Trump. He won the 2016 election anyway, despite this, think how big a victory he might have had without it. But it really froze and paralyzed the country politically for over four years. The damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign did was so tremendous to this nation. I think that to some extent, while it’s being highlighted by a lot of the news coverage, they’re not really doing it personal to Hillary and it to be, she really is possibly the most destructive politician we’ve certainly had in this century, in recent memory. The manipulation that she perpetrated here is so horrible, not for what it did to Donald Trump, that’s bad enough, but what it did to our nation. We’re at each other’s throats because of what Hillary Clinton did. And she needs to be roundly condemned, and she’s not getting a fraction of the criticism that she deserves ….So I think the damage that’s been done is long lasting it tears at the fabric of our society. And it was caused by Hillary Clinton, the federal government and the mainstream corporate media all acting in unison….

Henceforth, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be known as the Cunt. For she is America’s greatest villain, America’s greatest nithing, and America’s greatest cunt!

[Nige]

What are you on about? Putin tried to interfere with the election. Trump was open to help from that source. His campaign and administration turned out to be full of criminals, some with dodgy Russian connections. His lawyer loved to hang around with Russian agents. The Durham Report turned up nothing that wasn't already in the public domain and only two failed prosecutions. Eveything else is grandstanding. The only thing Hilary Clinton did was dare to have her opponent's foreign connections researched. She wasn't even the one that sent the results to the FBI or made it public.

[Michael Ejercito]

No complaints about the Ukraine?

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446

The whole thing was a hoax made by the Cunt, legally known as Hillary Rodham Clinton!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Does the proprietor ask you to use that word to divert attention from the vile racial slurs this blog habitually publishes?

Carry on, clingers. So far and so long as stale, ugly right-wing thinking could carry anyone or anything in modern America, that is.

[Frank Drackman]

Jerry on, Coach

[Nige]

What whole thing? That Russia interfered with the election in support of Trump and Trump knew about it and welcomed it? As shown in the Mueller Report? That hoax?

[Gandydancer]

"...Russia interfered with the election in support of Trump and Trump knew about it and welcomed it..."

"It" is doing a lot of work here. As, to only a slightly lesser degree, is "Russia".

[MistahWhiskas]

Goldstein!

[SRG]

And the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the Russians had meddled in the 2016 election. But the Hoaxsters seem to have forgotten this, if they ever knew.

[Gandydancer]

Russia did no significant meddling in the 2016 election. E.g., several orders of magnitude less meddling than the US did in the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

[M L]

NEW YORK TIMES: E.P.A. Lays Out Rules to Turbocharge Sales of Electric Cars and Trucks
The Biden administration is proposing rules to ensure that two-thirds of new cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States by 2032 are all-electric.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations to date, two plans designed to ensure two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032.

The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry, a moment in some ways as significant as the June morning in 1896 when Henry Ford took his “horseless carriage” for a test run and changed American life and industry.
_______________________________

Nothing short of a revolution! As significant as Henry Ford. But, it doesn't involve creating or building anything like Henry Ford did, no ingenuity or hard work, no physical production. Just the flick of a pen. Not even Congress, just an executive dictate. So much for a "free market." Or even a democracy or a republic.

[Michael P]

Somebody didn't read their Bastiat, so they don't understand why the broken window fallacy is a fallacy.

[M L]

Or -- they read him, and discovered what they figured were some good ideas!

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

― Frédéric Bastiat

https://fee.org/articles/frdric-bastiat-on-legal-plunder/

[Gandydancer]

Building affordable vehicles is "plunder"?

No, that wasn't one of Bastiat's "good ideas".

[ducksalad]

Meanwhile, here in Texas, the legislature placed a special tax on electric vehicles. $400 initially plus $200/year registration. Compare to about $80 total for a regular car.

The justification is the lost gas tax revenue. But if that’s really the reason, shouldn’t they charge more for gas cars that get good mileage, and less for guzzlers? How about a tax break for peeling out at traffic lights or idling with the AC on?

And don't the taxes on bicycles need to be at least as high?

[Ben_]

Do you think EV drivers should pay for the construction and maintenance of the roads they use?

[Michael P]

Maybe they should charge more registration for a Geo Metro. Virginia charges me more for vehicle registration because my gas-powered vehicle is too fuel-efficient, and it's an SUV. (The threshold is 25 mpg in combined fuel efficiency.)

Bicycles should not pay much at all because damage to a road scales with the fourth(!) power of per-axle weight: https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads

[Nige]

That's what fossil fuel dependancy looks like.

[Gandydancer]

Taxing EV’s to pay for the wear and tear they put on roads is “’what fossil fuel dependancy looks like”?.

Your brain is broken.

Never mind that EVs aren’t produced and run on wind power.

[John F. Carr]

Fuel use is correlated with size and weight, which are in turn correlated with road use and pavement wear. There is no unique formula for a correct gas tax. The flat rate tax for gasoline is an approximation that is very cheap to implement and worked well for many decades. Collection costs for gas tax are much lower than collection costs for tolls.

[ReaderY]

GenbioPro v. Sorsaia, a lawsuit by a manufacturer of mifepristone challenging West Virginia’s restrictions on abortifacients, has reached a partial decision on the defendants’ motion to dismiss. District Judge Robert Chambers decided only the standing questions. He found that GenBioPro has standing for all claims.

https://casetext.com/case/genbiopro-inc-v-sorsaia

I completely with the decision that GenBioPro has standing. Standing is pretty obvious here. How could a national drug manufacturer not have standing to challenge restrictions on one of its main revenue-generating products? Evidence the restrictions result in GenBioPro losing revenue was pretty easy to come by, and West Virginia’s challenges to the sufficiency of the standing evidence were frankly pretty lame.

The decision did make one important side comment that will doubtless affect the district court’s future opinion(s) on the merits. In finding the Comstock Act is not a bar to standing, Judge Chambers found the Justice Department’s interpretation of the Act as being extremely narrow, perhaps so narrow as to be effectively a nullity, correct.

Two comments on this.

First, I completely agree the Comstock Act is not a bar to standing. A legal claim has to be essentially frivolous for standing to be barred. And GenBioPro’s claim is definitely not frivolous. The Justice Department’s position, the fact that the law has been dormant for some time, the possible impact of Roe and Dobbs, and other factors all make the Comstock Act not obviously settled law. This means its interpretation is a job for a merits decision, and it is not a bar to standing. I would have just left things at that at this stage.

Second, although not a bar to standing, I think the Comstock Act does favor West Virginia on the merits. GenBioPro’s key claim is that Congress enacted a national policy favoring the free flow of commerce in abortifacients and West Virginia’s law is pre-empted by that policy. Even a narrower interpretation of the Comstock Act is still evidence that Congress’ textually articulated policy on abortifacients, to the extent Congress says anything at all about them, does not obviously or uniformly favor the free flow of commerce in them, and hence is evidence against GenBioPro’s federal pre-emption claims.

[Zarniwoop]

Do you think the Comstock Act bars the mailing of mifepristone for use in the treatment of Cushing's syndrome (a use separately approved as safe by the FDA) or miscarriage management (an off-label use, albeit with a strong safety record)?

Assuming you believe the Comstock Act bars all mailing, in the sense of "US mail" or common carriers, do you think the Comstock Act prevents GenPacBio from buying their own truck and delivering mifepristone directly? If so, what's the statutory basis for that?

[ReaderY]

The merits question in this case, the one before the court, is whether there is a statutory federal policy favoring free commerce in mifepristone for use in abortion, one that completely pre-empts West Virginia’s various restrictions on abortion. The restrictions GenBioPro wants declared preempted include requiring an in-person visit before prescribing and gestational limits for use.

None of the questions you pose are relevant to that question. West Virginia’s laws here only concern mifepristone when it is used specifically for abortion. GenBioPro says that West Virginia can’t impose any restrictions on the use of mifepristone to induce abortion greater than the FDA’s.

Whether federal law does or does not impose restrictions on mifepristone when used for any other purpose besides abortion is completely irrelevant for deciding that question.

The very existence of the Comstock Act tends to suggest that in deciding whether there is a general federal policy favoring abortion by drugs of a sort that would completely preempt state abortion laws, as GenBioPro claims, there are other sources of law to look at besides only the FD&C Act and the FDA’s administrative actions.

[M L]

Criminals as Social Allies of Marxism
https://www.resistance.org/criminals-as-social-allies

Even prior to the Communist Revolution in Russia, the future Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin mobilized criminals as “social allies” against political opponents and for funding through theft and extortion. Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted in his masterwork, The Gulag Archipelago:

“Stalin was always partial to the thieves — after all, who robbed the banks for him? Back in 1901 his comrades in the Party and in prison accused him of using common criminals against his political enemies. From the twenties on, the obliging term "social ally" came to be widely used. . . .Not only did the articles of the Code dealing with thieves and bandits not oppress the thief; he was, in fact, proud of his convictions under them."

The Soviet state turned a blind eye to criminal gangs and even facilitated their activities. Whereas law-abiding citizens were disarmed, criminals possessing weapons were not punished. . ..

What, then, was the concern of the Soviet police state, if actual criminals were let off scot-free or with token punishment? As Solzhenitsyn repeatedly documents, the state’s punitive activities were directed towards liquidating political enemies, ideological dissenters, and religious believers.

[M L]

RELATED:

Sanctuary State California Releases Convicted Illegal Alien Rapist into U.S. - Breitbart | 24 Apr 2023

The sanctuary state of California released an illegal alien previously convicted of rape back into the United States instead of turning him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as requested.

In October 2014, illegal alien Miguel Vargas of Mexico was arrested by the Riverside Police Department and later convicted in February 2017 for felony charges related to rape causing bodily injury as well as attempting to intimidate a witness or victim.

For the felony conviction, Vargas served time in the California Department of Corrections and completed his sentence in December 2022. Rather than turning Vargas over to ICE agents, as they had requested, state officials adhered to the state’s strict sanctuary policy that allowed the convicted rapist to be released into the community.

[Michael Ejercito]

I am old enough to remember when the advertised rationale for sanctuaries was to remove a deterrent against crime victims and witnesses who happened to be illegal aliens from going forward to the police.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Redefining “woman” into utter meaninglessness, releasing rapists so they can prey on women again….

Remind me again who it is that’s allegedly engaged in some sort of “war on women”?

[Nige]

Oh it's most defiitely the ones who want to deny women bodily autonomy. Plus anyone who goes on to support the convicted sex offender's nomination.

[M L]

WATCH: FBI Shows Up at Childhood Home of Pro-Life Activist
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/05/17/watch-fbi-shows-up-at-childhood-home-of-pro-life-activist/

Elise Ketch is a member of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a group of mostly left-leaning activists who believe that abortion is the murder of a human child. PAAU particularly gained prominence after the group exposed the bodies of five premie-sized aborted babies, known as “The Five,” from the clinic of Washington, D.C., abortionist Cesare Santangelo. . .

"I believe the FBI’s true motive behind their visit to my parents’ home was to intimidate me and my team.”..

As of early May 16, there have been at least 87 attacks on pregnancy resource centers and 157 attacks on Catholic churches since the May 2022 Dobbs leak, according to CatholicVote trackers. Many of these buildings have been vandalized with threats such as, “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you,” making the attacks incidents of suspected pro-abortion violence.

[Michael Ejercito]

That does explain one thing.

Why is it that the same side that accused the police of habitually hunting down and gunning down unarmed Black men, the same side that wanted "decarceration" and "defund the police", the same side that accuses the criminal justice system of being systemically racist...

...is the same side that wants stricter gun control laws that would be enforced by these very same police in this very same system?

I originally postedf the answer here.

https://www.quora.com/Some-gun-control-supporters-seem-to-have-animus-against-all-non-cop-gun-owners-instead-of-just-muggers-and-carjackers-and-gang-members-Why-It-doesnt-make-sense/answer/Michael-Ejercito

This is an important question to answer, and what it boils down to are the motivations of the rank-and-file in contrast with the motivation of the spokesholes.

The rank-and-file fear muggers and carjackers and gang members, just like you wrote. Sadly and tragically, for too many of these people, these fears have a compelling basis in reality.

But for these spokesholes you write about, it is about their political identity.

And their political identity tells them that the White male conservative is the enemy.

What does this have to do with gun control laws?

These people associate private gun ownership with the White male conservative. As such, gun control, to them, is a tool to hurt the White male conservative.

and another part of my answer.

But what do the motivations of the spokesholes matter? Why would their animus against White male conservatives matter regarding whether or not gun control laws will help reduce and punish urban violence, protect us from the mugger and the carjacker and the gang member?

The answer is that the rank-and-file are not the group from whom most of the campaign contributions come from.

It is the spokesholes.

The people who administer and enforce the law will listen more to the spokeshoples, for their money talk much louder than the rank-and-file.

And as such, we can expect these people to target the White male conservative, instead of the mugger and the carjacker and the gang member. That is whom their donors have animus against.

[Ben_]

It's because they have the maturity and thought processes of middle-school mean girls. They're shallow. They're emotional. They're slaves to fashion. They are desperate to be part of the IN crowd.

And everything they do and say is a pose, a posture, an act, a show, for cameras real and imagined.

[Michael Ejercito]

Here was an exchange in the comments section of another blog.

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/05/12/federal-judge-strikes-down-federal-age-limit-on-gun-purchases/comment-page-2/#comment-2287937

Ian – The Constitution, especially the “Bill Rights”, is like the Old Testament: full of verities, but not to be take literally. The Founders would be horrified to see that we find we are unable to deal with mass shootings because people take the language of the Second Amendment literally.

- edwardmahl

So if the Supreme Law of the Land is not to be taken literally, why take inferior laws literally?

If a gangbanger sees someone wearing the wrong color clothes in his gang’s turf, why should he take laws against murder literally?

- me

[Krayt]

Eating lunch in my car. There's an Indian guy in the car next to me having a heated argument with another guy on the phone.

It's mostly in a foreign language, but occasionally he drops into English.

"YOU'RE A LIAR!"

[bevis the lumberjack]

LOL. Here is progressive government in action:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-18/chef-jose-andres-wins-exemption-for-gas-stoves-in-new-restaurant#xj4y7vzkg

You dirty commoners must forsake your gas ccoktops for the sake of our climate panic, but friends of those in government can emit carbon as they please, lest they become angry with us and deny us the opportunity to partake in their five-star cuisine. Or worse yet, their cuisine may taste like four-star cuisine and that won't do.

What a freakin' joke. Those of y'all who are buying this panic crap are being fed bullshit by the truckload. Open your eyes......

[Nige]

You're the one panicking about gas stoves.

[Sarcastr0]

He's an energy guy from Texas. Any kind of government action in that sector sends him into a rage like no other.

Like he seems to be intimating the left loves Jose Andres because they love chefs?

Not sure he read what he linked:
"The city on Tuesday called its decision a “unique situation” since Andres"
Maybe it is rent-seeking, maybe it's not. But certainly there are plenty of more clear examples if you want to go off on a rant about progressive hypocricy.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I’m not an oil guy from Texas. I’m a retired guy from Texas with no connection to the industry for almost a decade. Nice try at diversion Mr Ad Hominem.

It really just kills y’all that I understand this and you don’t.

This is absolute hypocrisy and political double dealing. Guess you’re ok with a wealthy chef cooking food for wealthy people and exacerbating an existential crisis. I thought progressive democrats didn’t approve of special treatment for the wealthy. Guess I thought wrong.

Special people should be allowed to burn up the planet. Those of us out here among the unwashed don’t get the same treatment.

[EscherEnigma]

I’m not an oil guy from Texas. I’m a retired guy from Texas with no connection to the industry for almost a decade.

My father retired from the Navy over twenty years ago, he's still a Navy guy.

So I must beg pardon, but I'm not sure the nuance you're reaching for is that, well, meaningful.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Military background is completely different emotionally than work background. Your dad and his fellow soldiers trained and lived and contemplated risking their lives together. Me and my coworkers spent 9 or 10 hours a day together for part of a week and socialized occasionally outside the office.

I’ve had no connection to the industry for almost a decade. No financial interest. Why do I give a shit about the business?

My opinion that the climate panic is overdone and that the current energy plan is a disaster is based on my knowledge and experience and observation of the mess it’s created in other places when the went too heavy into renewables, not because I’ve got some manlove for Exxon Mobil.

Whether you believe that or not really doesn’t persuade me or anybody that I’m wrong. It demonstrates that y’all don’t have any way to coherently discuss this other that what you’ve been fed by politicians. So instead you try to argue that my opinion should be discounted BECAUSE OF MY EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE. Can’t you see how laughable that is?

[Nige]

Your opinion can be discounted because you're a climate change denier.

[EscherEnigma]

Why do I give a shit about the business?

I don't pretend to understand your motivations. That's between you and, well, you.

Your behavior, on the other hand? It's not unfair to point out that based on that you very much do "give a shit", and you very much do act like an "oil man from Texas".

Y’all are cool with gas stoves, but only for the wealthy.

This is something I'm currently indifferent about, and I'm skeptical that I've ever said otherwise. I merely chimed in because your "it's unfair to think my career has any impact on my thinking!" line is clearly bullshit.

I worked food service for probably a total of two or three years, and that experience is something that will color how I treat service workers and think of their treatment forever. My time doing tech support? Even shorter, one summer. But it has fundamentally changed my expectations of other people's technical knowledge. My seven years working at a library? That's over a decade ago, but my thinking on copyright, fair use, free speech and so-on are irrevocably changed by that time. Hell, even in my current career (computer scientist) I've gone through phases based on what projects I was working on, and each of those has left me changed.

But I'm supposed to believe that the moment you retired you wiped everything you learned, everything that colored and changed your thinking, and became a clean slate? It's ridiculous, and everyone but you apparently knows it.

Gas stoves? I don't give a shit.

[Gandydancer]

Bevis said precisely the opposite of "that the moment [he] retired [he] wiped everything [he] learned... and became a clean slate."

Actual bevis: "...you try to argue that my opinion should be discounted BECAUSE OF MY EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE."

[bevis the lumberjack]

And hey, y’all managed to completely change the subject, including Sarcastro, who always lectures me about staying on topic.

Y’all are cool with gas stoves, but only for the wealthy. The poors can just eat their food cold.

The Texas oil man thinks everyone should be treated the same. Just my bias talking I guess.

[Nige]

It's a real 'oil guy from Texas' thing that food can only be cooked on gas stoves.

[Mr. Bumble]

Wrong! Food can only be cooked on a charcoal fire.

[Nige]

I'm glad to hear you at least cook your food sometimes.

[bevis the lumberjack]

No it’s a famous five-star chef from progressive Palo Alto thing, as the article clearly describes.

You keep avoiding the actual point to just attack me for where I live and what I’m educated in - no bias on your part at all. You’re continuing to attack me instead of addressing the inequity here demonstrates that you can’t defend it. Or that maybe it’s ok to favor this guy because he feeds expensive food to good progressive people.

If this involved a BBQ restaurant in Dallas you’d be screaming EXISTENTIAL CRISIS!!! and demanding the gas stove go away. Fucking hypocrite.

[Sarcastr0]

You have established on inequities.

If you're arguing the date thing is pretext, you need to establish that. And then show that this is not the usual big business rent-seeking but some liberal-specific thing.

Famous 5-star chefs from Palo Alto are not the liberal aristocracy. You are making many assumptions to get as mad as you are.

[bevis the lumberjack]

This particular decision is liberal specific because it was made by a body that is dominated by liberals in a state that is ground zero for the climate panic.

These folks are trying to deny people the use of gas stoves because it has to be done to save humanity, then granting special dispensation to a fucking chef for the rich. It’s a terrible look and just more evidence of the divide in America between how the middle and lower classes are told they MUST sacrifice while the decision makers demanding those sacrifices can’t even be bothered to go without an occasional fancy meal. And yet you just can’t fathom why people are pissed.

And BTW, it was barely a month ago that you were assuring us that the whole gas cooktop thing was just right wing fearmongering and that nobody was coming for our stoves. Care to admit you were wrong?

I doubt it.

[Nige]

Of course it’s terrible. As you can see, any effort at flexibility and accomodation is pounced on as some sort of monstrous crime. Better to be hardline about it and quit fucking about.

[Nige]

You're complaining that nobody's defending the inequity? That might be the one point everyone agrees on, quitcher whining.

Yeah if I was doing a thing I'm not doing I'd be a hypocrite.

[Gandydancer]

Your link isn’t working for me (only part of the page appears), so here’s another: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/05/16/settlement-clears-way-for-jos-andrs-restaurant-to-cook-with-gas-in-palo-alto

Palo Alto’s excuse for backtracking is that plans for gas had already been made when the all-electric ordinance was passed, but whether that is in accord with their usual practice for requiring compliance with revised codes is dubious given that their original position was different.

[ReaderY]

The Supreme court punted on the two Section 230 cases. It found that the plaintiffs had failed to make out a claim for aiding and abetting terrorism even assuming Section 230 did not bar such a claim. So they declined to decide, and put off for another day, what kinds of claims Section 230 does and does not bar.

[Gandydancer]

What was the other case?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

According to a filing, of the 55 Proud Boys at the Capitol, 50 yes FIFTY of them were undercover agents or informants goading on the 5 who weren't.

Why are these Democrats at the FBI allowed to do this to us?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The director of the FBI is a Republican.

Every director of the FBI has been a Republican.

Whining, disaffected, delusional right-wingers are among my favorite culture war casualties . . . and this blog's core and target audiences.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What does that matter? They are Federals.

[Moderation4ever]

Why does it matter, because you said it was Democrats at the FBI. Read you own comments.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Federal Republicans ARE Democrats.

I've stated that countless times. Pay attention.

[Nige]

Thats more pathetic than anything else, to be honest. What a laughing stock those Proud Boys are. Maybe they should stick to what they're good at, bringing guns to scare kids at storytelling sessions.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If 90% of your organization are undercover FBI agents and FBI informants, your organization is an FBI organization.

[Nige]

So the FBI tried to overthrow the election? I thought they were the Deep State?

[Gandydancer]

Any time you use the words "I thought" we all laugh.

No, the FBI's front organization did not " tr[y] to overthrow the election".

[loki13]

Reading the news about Disney, and I was wondering ...

Has someone done a regression analysis and seen how states with governors that run for President perform economically in the years after they announce?

Because you have to imagine that arranging for a bunch of stunts right before you run isn't going to be great for the economy ... but you usually aren't worrying about it, are you?

[hoppy025]

As a multi-generation Floridian, I'm thrilled with this news. The employees who were to relocate from Los Angeles were likely shitlibs. I don't want them here.

[Moderation4ever]

I wonder what Carl Hiaasen's thinks about this fight. I know he has no love for Disney, but not sure he has ever thought well of Florida state government.

[grb]

Whatever his take, it's probably funny.

(And it's not easy finding humor in an il Duce Jr wannabe)

[Bob from Ohio]

Disney's profits are down and its laying off people. Just using DiSantis as a scapegoat.

[hoppy025]

Correct. The new CEO also isn't into the new campus, and a lot of the employees didn't want to relocate. They made the decision for economic reasons that had nothing to do with the feud with DeSantis. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.

[Ben_]

Florida’s children will be safer with Disney employees staying in CA.

[Moderation4ever]

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker ran for President in 2016. The run lasted only two months, but did tie up Wisconsin's government for that time. IT might well have contributed to why he was replaced in 2018.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

He was replaced in because Milwaukee County does what it always does.

Magically finds just enough votes for the Democrat to win, then police escorts them in after they were legally required to be submitted.

[hoppy025]

It's 40% black and mestizo. Easy to find parasites without cheating.

[Moderation4ever]

You are probably wondering why they even let those black people in Milwaukee vote. Well, it is because of the 14th amendment to the Constitution.

[hoppy025]

Actually, it’s because of the 15th Amendment. Which was a mistake, and not properly ratified.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It’s not real votes they’re finding.

They’re making them up.

Hey check this out:

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/03/05/390723644/why-is-milwaukee-so-bad-for-black-people

I'll save you a click.

"Because Democrats"

[OtisAH]

Everybody knows that. It’s why Walker was elected to two terms and, along with the MAGA legislature Milwaukee County elected, wreaked havoc in the state for most of a decade.

[Gandydancer]

"Everybody knows...."

"Everybody knows Trump colluded with Putin." Same "everybody".

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Did you stop to think about why Disney was fleeing California to begin with?

[Ben_]

Disney seems to have a lot of pedophiles working for them. Florida will probably be better off if they stay in California.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Bob Iger has announced Disney no longer intends to add thousands of employees in Florida; Disney also is closing its immersive Star Wars program in Florida in a few months.

California seems likely to be the beneficiary in both contexts.

Is Bob Iger sadistic enough to pull off Ron DeSantis' wings just to watch DeSantis flop around? I hope he imposes severe pain on Florida businesses -- Disney can purchase ice cream, napkins, hats, accounting services and the like in other states, bankrupting some local suppliers -- for the sport of it.

[hoppy025]

And they'll have to pay extra in shipping. Let them go ahead.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Iger also cancelled more than $1 billion in construction in Florida.

Why wouldn't Iger just ask non-Florida vendors to match the Florida vendors' delivered price?

Iger should stop purchasing from Florida vendors just to watch them die, then send photographs of the corpses to DeSantis and every Republican in the Florida legislature.

[Dan Schiavetta]

It happened to Michael Dukakis in Massachusetts in 1988, but it wasn't due to his stunts. It was just bad luck. And he was running against someone who hadn't done anything for 8 years except be an "out of the loop" Vice President so he got a lot of grief for it.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Tyranny retards are now installing gender affirming truck nuts on their vaginas.

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1659259284012638216?t=nrrexe0Btkmw5YUiud944Q&s=19

Don't worry guys the APA says behavior is totally normal and NOT a mental illness.

[Mr. Bumble]

Does anyone ever feel better after venting here?

[EscherEnigma]

I don't come to Reason.com to "feel better".

I come to Reason.com because restricting my media to writers (and commentators) that I agree with is a quick way to get a skewed idea of the world, and I think that's dangerous.

That's not why I first came to Reason.com, mind you. I first came here because I read a snippet of a Shackford article on an LGBT media site about how Libertarians and LGBT folk were natural allies. I followed the link through to the article, and found myself nodding along. Then I read the comment section, and my view of Libertarians and libertarians has never recovered. (For reference, this was back before Trump and the comment section here taking such a strong rihgtward bend. They always leaned conservative before that, but something happened here man.)

So no. I don't feel "better" after "venting" here. But I do feel more grounded.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Ditto.

[Mr. Bumble]

You're a "Ditto Head"?

[Brett Bellmore]

The commenters are a mixed bag, because Reason is one of the few remaining outlets that isn't deliberately censoring comments, which makes its comments a kind of ghetto. Ghettos might be lively, but they're not typically pretty.

But Reason is one of the libertarian institutions that got taken over after the "liberalitarian" alliance. The actual population of libertarians IS a lot more right-wing than a lot of libertarian institutions due to that attempted alliance enabling "the march through the institutions" to overtake them. Your average libertarian is a conservative who doesn't give a damn if you do self-destructive stuff, so long as you only do it to yourself. Doesn't mean they LIKE the self-destructive stuff.

That makes them a natural ally for querty people who just want to be left alone. It makes them a terrible ally for querty people who want to do things like force bakers to sell them rainbow cakes, or demand that you use their preferred pronouns.

[Nige]

Actually white conservatives who want to be left alone are terrible allies for anyone else who wants to be left alone because white conservatives have always had the capacity to be left alone to some degree if they so choose, anyone else, not so much, so their idea of being left alone is not the same as anyone else’s. That’s why they have nothing to offer, eg, trans people who want to be left alone but who are being subjected to opressive laws that are systematically working towards making being trans illegal. It doesn’t help that it’s white conservatives passing the laws, of course.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett doesn't want to be left alone. He's into censorship and against gay marriage and loves policies that immiserate immigrants both legal and illegal and is generally just a bog-standard conservative.

[Nige]

Who 'claim' to want to be left alone. Which is to say 'in charge, fuck off.'

[hoppy025]

If liberals were willing to leave white conservatives alone, they wouldn't be forcing your mentally ill transgenders into our bathrooms or forcing us to bake cakes for you and your butt pirate friends.

[shawn_dude]

“querty people who just want to be left alone.”

Oh, the good sort that know their place and don’t get uppity? Stay in the closet, homo, and we won’t know who you are and won’t be incited by your presence.

Phew! Why haven’t I had more respect for L(l)ibertarians?!

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : “The actual population of libertarians IS a lot more right-wing than a lot of libertarian institutions”

More exposure to libertarian institutions might give me a bit more respect for the breed. As it is, I only know the “actual population” as embodied in the comments on the Reason site over the fence. From that limited sample size, these observations:

(1) Libertarians are grotesquely immature. Think of the most surly, self-centered, selfish, inconsiderate, unthoughtful, snide, and arrogant (male) teenager and multiple by four. Though perhaps that’s still aiming too high. A disheartening percent of the commentators seem the embodiment of of a terrible-two, bloated to adult size.

(2) Libertarians seem to be drawn to the belief (or the label denoting the belief) for its philosophical certainty. Like Marxism, it’s one of those “ism” where you plug any issue into the receiving end and it’s immediately excreted out the opposite side with mechanistic vigor. That seems to be why they exalt in the most contrarian positions their belief entails. It’s their pride saying, “just look what my “ism” generated!” But all too often their machine runs on crude wooden gears hewn with a dull axe.

(3) Which is ironic. Because most complicated issues jam up the gears. There are no clear solutions or contrasting answers that cancel each other out. And these are usually the critical questions. It’s then you see the last irksome trait of these Libertarians. Like people resting their fingers on a Ouija Board’s planchette, they can (consciously or unconsciously) guide the pointer to the conclusion they want. And since Libertarianism is often just tuxedo dressing on (insert Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland term here), that conclusion gets pretty crude.

[Gandydancer]

Libertarians don't give a fuck about what you "think".

[Ben_]

It’s informative to see how Democrats are committed to knowingly repeating lies.

[EscherEnigma]

So the abortion pill case got to the 5th circuit. Anyone want to take a bet on when Blackman is going to give a breathless defense of the judge's impropriety and idiocy?

[Gandydancer]

Who gets to decide whether it's "breathless"? You?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

FBI whistleblower testifies under oath that FBI won’t allow 11,000+ hours of J6 footage to be released b/c it would expose undercover agents committing crimes inside Capitol

Not only was J6 a Fed setup, but now it’s confirmed that FBI is also covering its tracks

https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1659218584780849152

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Was that guy one of the right-wingers who lost security clearances or was fired for un-American, partisan wrongdoing?

[Gandydancer]

Only in your fevered imagination.

[David Nieporent]

Rogan O'Handley, the failed lawyer who goes by "DC Draino," is lying, and BCD is too stupid to know he's being lied to. There's a video clip attached to the tweet. The witness in it does not say what DC Draino claims he said.

[Gandydancer]

The female (not a "he") "witness" with the labial (and many other) piercings says that they can be and are (by some) used to hang "heavy gauge" items that "emulate balls" and make the wierdos walk in a "more masculine" fashion. Were you relying on people not following the link to look at the video and see that YOU are the liar?

[David Nieporent]

What the ever living fuck are you talking about? The linked Tweet — https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1659218584780849152 — shows a male witness testifying, about J6 footage not being released because of what it would show.

[ReaderY]

I don’t think the cases Judge Chambers cited in GrnBioPro v. Sorsaia support the proposition that FDA approval supercedes the Comstock Act.

First, Bours v. US, 229 F 960 (7th Cir. 2015), held only that the Act doesn’t cover an abortifacient used for an abortion to save the woman’s life.

Next, Davis v. US, 62 F 2nd 473 (6th Circuit 1933) stands only for the proposition that a druggist cannot be prosecuted for dual-use items mostly used for other things absent knowledge of use for an abortion. This case can hardly be extended to the idea that a druggest or manufacturer receiving a prescription specifically for an abortion could not be prosecuted for using the mails or a common carrier to obtain the drug.

Next, United States v. One Package, 86 F. 2nd 737 (2nd Cir. 1936), which distinguished between “legitimate medical” and “illegal” uses, concerned the Tarriff Act of 1930, not the Comstock Act, despite citing Bours v. United States. The Tarriff Act of 1930 was differently worded, and the language difference is critical. It specifically prohibited articles causing “unlawful” abortion, requiring a judicial determination of what is and isn’t lawful. The Comstock Act has no such wording. The Justice Department, and GenBioPro seem to have simply seized on the fact that this case is mentioned in annotations of the Comstock Act to mispresent it as an interpretation of the Comstock Act. It did no such thing. Would note that the opinion specifically referred to state law to determine what is and isn’t legal under the Tariff Act. So even as misconstrued, it hardly supports GenBioPro’s claim that there is a federal law favoring abortion that supercedes state law.

The last case is Consumers Union v. Walker, 145 F.2nd 33 (DC Cir 1944). This case involved the mailing of a Consumers Reports article with general information about contraceptives. The Court said that a narrow construction was required to avoid First Amendment concerns regarding the mailing of speech. These concerns simply do not apply to the mailing of the articles themselves, which are not covered by the First Amendment. The narrow construction, by the opinion’s own terms, only applied to the mailing of First Amendment-protected information and advocacy speech about contraception or abortion.

So nothing in any of these cases, or all of them combined, remotely supports the construction of the Comstock Act that the Justice Department, GenBioPro, and apparently Judge Roberts have placed on it.

[ReaderY]

I would note that when Roe was in effect, it was perfectly appropriate to give the Comstock Act a narrow construction with regard to the articles themselves, similar to the one Consumers Union did for speech about the articles. A construing court would be obligated to avoid Roe right-to-abortion concerns directly analogous to the right-to-speech concerns that the Consumers Union court very appropriately found regarding Comstock Act’s prohibitions on speech about contraception and abortion. It could follow Consumers Union’s path to doing this.

And GenBioPro would certainly be entitled to argue that the Constock Act SHOULD have been given a Roe-based narrowed construction when Roe was in effect, and moreover, that this construction survives Dobbs and its repudiation of Roe. They are entitled to argue that while criminal statutes automatically shrink when the conduct they prohibit is foumd constitutionally protected, they don’t automatically expand back when the Court repudiates a constitutional right that had previously rendered a literal construction invalid. They are entitled to argue that if Congress wants to restore the pre-Roe non-narrowed construction, it must act and it must say so. It’s a non-frivolous argument. GenBioPro’s lawyers would probably be foolish not to make this argument.

I just don’t think it’s a correct argument. And it’s definitely not the argument they actually made. They argued the pre-Roe historical construction of the Comstock Act was extremely narrow. That’s just wrong. The pre-Roe, historical construction of the Comstock Act was never this narrow when applied to conduct as distinct from speech, and to the Comstock Act itself as opposed to some other law whose wording was explicitly narrower. GenBioPro’s narrow construction is not supported by any of the pre-Roe cases cited by Judge Chambers in his opinion.