Monday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Records Reveal Fauci Made Over $300 Million From the Covid Pandemic While Americans Suffered

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/08/13/records-reveal-fauci-made-over-300-million-from-the-covid-pandemic-n2626948

I don’t know about you, but this how I like my public servants. When they have the ability to make themselves incredibly wealthy with their public health decrees, I know that they will make decisions in my best interest. It’s not fair that civil servants only make 100k to 200k per year in total compensation with a guaranteed six figure pension for life! How can they serve the public when they are struggling so much!

This is how we yet good, honest amd noble policy. Praise Be The State.

[Drewski]

Hah. Even Fox and the National Review are only reporting $5 million, which includes the $1 million humanitarian prize and book royalties, the latter of which went to charity. That's why his apparent net worth only rose $1.7 million, including the prize - a very modest amount for a medical doctor at his age.

$300 million! And nobody noticed except (checks notes) a conservative Christian news site that was too unreliable for the Heritage Foundation to be associated with.

[Mr. Bumble]

FWIW:
What Was Dr Fauci Net Worth Before and After the COVID Pandemic?

Dr. Fauci and his wife, Christine Grady, enjoyed over a two-fold increase in net worth during the COVID pandemic crisis. From the beginning of the crisis in 2019 to 2021, their net worth doubled and grew from $5 million to over $12.6 million.

Pre-COVID pandemic, Dr Fauci net worth in 2019 was approximately $7.5 million. However, after two years into the COVID pandemic, his net worth in 2021 exploded to slightly more than $12.6 million.
https://moneyinc.com/dr-fauci-net-worth/

[Nelson]

I'm confused. Were he and his doctor wife, combined, worth $5 million in 2019? Or was Fauci alone worth $7.5 million? Your post claims both.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that they made an estimated $7.6 (or is it $5.1?) million in any way that wasn't ethical? Or is this just wingnut derangement about Fauci?

Was he lying in wait (with the exact same professional position), setting up for decades for a big payday when COVID hit? Do you really think that doesn't sound completely insane?

[Mr. Bumble]

I said FWIW.

[Martinned]

Oh, that's alright then. The famous FWIW defence to defamation.

[Mr. Bumble]

Piss off wanker. I made no claims and provided the link to the quote.

[Martinned]

Is Accurately Repeating a Defamatory Allegation Itself Defamatory?
It's complicated.

https://reason.com/volokh/2018/11/07/is-accurately-repeating-a-defamatory-all/

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Exposing a Federal Elite's growth in wealth during a pandemic is Defamation!

That's crossing the line! Federal Bureaucrats should get super wealthy from their policies in secret!

[Nelson]

"Exposing a Federal Elite’s growth in wealth during a pandemic is Defamation!"

No, Wingnut Misleaderson. Pretending that perfectly legal and explainable gains in net worth are sinister or unethical is dishonest, but probably not defamatory. In case you don't understand capitalism, profiting from your labor is a good thing.

One of the lawyers here could help us understand if repeating an obvious falsehood about a public figure is defamatory, but my layman's guess is that it isn't.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

No, Wingnut Misleaderson. Pretending that perfectly legal and explainable gains in net worth are sinister or unethical is dishonest, but probably not defamatory. In case you don’t understand capitalism, profiting from your labor is a good thing.

What’s capitalist about Fauci making millions from his policies that he implements has head of a federal agency? And what labor did he do?

[Nelson]

"What’s capitalist about Fauci making millions from his policies that he implements has head of a federal agency?"

You'll have to explain how, exactly, he profited from any policies he made. Please be soecific as to the policy and how he monitized it.

"And what labor did he do?"

Do you have short-term memory problems? As you, yourself, mentioned he ran an entire federal agency, which takes a lot of work. He was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years and authored several books. Most of those are technical medical books about infectious diseases, with one notable exception in *checks notes* 2021.

Hmmmm. Maybe that had something to do with it? Or we can go with vague and unsubstantiated accusations of malfeasance from a known bomb thrower.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and just what do you think was defamatory in the article?

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

FWIW: AGBBoS.

(A Great Big Bucket of Shit)

[Michael P]

There was a typo in the original quoted article (accurately reproduced in the quote): the Fauci family net worth grew BY, rather than from, about $5 million during the pandemic.

Good work, if you can get it.

[Voize]

First it's Fauci.
Then the Fauci family.
Next we'll be hearing about the Fauci crime family.

[Nige]

The Hunter Fauci laptop is REAL!

[Michael P]

Come on, at least try for alliteration.

Clinton Crime Cartel.
Obama(-shi, Fukuoka) Obama(-chou, Nagasaki) O'Bama (the Irish-descended president).
Brandon Biden's Bribery Bros.
Fauci Fraud Family.

[Michael P]

Read beyond the headline, which does leave out that the $300M also includes payments to other NIH employees. If you did, you would also find this:

Records also show that Fauci, the highest-paid federal worker with a 2022 salary of $480,000, failed to donate his royalties to charity as promised.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Good catch. $5M isn’t enough to corrupt a Noble Elite.

It’s much better now.

[grb]

BravoCharlieDelta : Records Reveal Fauci Made Over $300 Million From the Covid Pandemic

Voltage!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

What's the headline on the article, Ancient One?

[Nelson]

A headline like that doesn't seem like bullshit on it's face?

Well, I guess it doesn't if you're a credulous, useful idiot for the lunatic fringe.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I simply pasted the headline.

I’m sorry for hurting feelings by copying the headline verbatim.

My bad.

[grb]

BravoCharlieDelta : "I simply pasted the headline"

Here's a Life Goal for you, BCD : Try and get thru a single thread without posting something obviously fraudulent, phony or ludicrous. Just one.

Who knows? You might find it refreshing. I'm guessing your life as a troll is a pinched and sour existence.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Why do you want me to pretend that people around here are serious, open-minded, and will change their beliefs if presented with evidence to the contrary?

Debate and argumentation require the parties to be willing to change their beliefs. Without that prerequisite, it’s just flinging mud at walls.

I’ve been on these boards for a very long time and when I first came here I wasn’t cynical at all and I had open-minded arguments without snark or hyperbole.

But then, after a few years of nothing changing, I realized that even among supposedly serious & smart people (lawyers, allegedly), that beliefs don’t change. That ideology and partisanship are baked in. Goalseeking is the norm, ignoring evidence is expected. Reasoned debate is just a fantasy, and most of the commentary is just self-righteous ego masturbation or insufferable condescension.

I remember once, very clearly, having a discussion with NOVA about the racist justice system. He pointed it out very clear biases in outcomes or sentencing guidelines and other aspects. And I asked him, who created those sentencing guidelines? Who created those laws that are biased? He didn’t know.

IIRC is/was a practicing defense lawyer. He operated in a racist institution and couldn’t conclude that it was his racist peers that created those laws that produced all those systemic biases and it was his racist peers that prosecuted and judge in that racist system.

Now how on Earth is that possible? How on Earth is it possible for a practicing lawyer to believe the institution that’s systemically racist just popped into existence and operates on its own?

Even just a few months ago, one of the Leftists was arguing that yes, the system is racist, and yes, public prosecutors, bureaucrats, and civil servants are operating and executing these racist policies. But they’re still good honorable people.

How can that be? How can you be good and honorable and knowingly act in a way that unfairly harms others? They even claimed that these same people who knowingly act racist and unfairly harm others would never act partisanly and unfairly harm others.

And that was another one of you serious types. That’s not reasonable, or rational, or intellectual.

That’s faith, ideology, and religion. Could you imagine being a conservative and having not guilty representing you? Do you think for one minute he’d act in your best interests? I guarantee if he read this he would be offended because I’m not pretending that he’s nobler than he is… that I won’t pretend he isn’t human and can nobly set aside his incredible partisanship.

And so every once in a while I try to reason through an argument on here, because I enjoy thinking and reasoning, but it’s really pointless (see my recent discussion with captcrisis re: behaviorism).

You don’t debate with fanatics and partisans. You ridicule and mock them. You apply their constructs against them. You do it in a way that’s enjoyable for your side. You personalize and polarize it.

So, here is my manifesto. I’m a right-wing dissident and activist. I act with intention and thoughtfulness.

[grb]

I never promote a claim I know is a lie.
You do so constantly.

You can vomit up an entire dictionary, but those facts won't change.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

This is the White House theory of “Stray Voltage.” It is the brainchild of former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe, whose methods loom large long after his departure. The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness. This happens, Plouffe theorizes, even when–and sometimes especially when–the White House appears defensive, besieged, or off-guard.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-pen-phone-and-stray-voltage/

Using the townhall’s headline brought attention to the fact that our public health officials are getting filthy fucking rich off their civil servant jobs and that maybe they aren’t serving our best interests

How many people know how rich you can become being a civil servant?

[Nelson]

"the fact that our public health officials are getting filthy fucking rich off their civil servant jobs"

How, exactly, are they doing that?

[jb]

Wait, so since you are convinced no one is going to change their minds, you might as well post some lies?

I'm sure you think that makes sense somehow, but mostly what you're doing is reinforcing the belief that right wing activists are full of shit.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

How many times have you personally seen a leftwing partisan adopt a rightwing position from an online debate. Or vice versa?

[jb]

I remain confused as to why you think that fact means it's okay to just lie.

I'll also note that there's a non-zero number of people who aren't just caricatures of either Democratic or Republican orthodoxy and have some positions that don't wholly match either party's bundle of positions, so I don't think it's that useful to try to divide the world into two groups of entirely unpersuadable people.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I copy and pasted the headline verbatim.

[jb]

Yes, I get that. But surely you read the article too, in which case it would be obvious that it was a lie. And yet you just copy and pasted it anyway...

[Randal]

I copy and pasted the headline verbatim.

No you didn't!

Records Reveal Fauci, Others Made Over $300 Million From the Covid Pandemic While Americans Suffered

What a sadcase. Get a friend. Try not to electrocute them.

[Nelson]

"How many times have you personally seen a leftwing partisan adopt a rightwing position from an online debate. Or vice versa?"

Wait, most people don't hold radical positions, let alone switch to the opposite extreme when presented with baseless, fringe interpretations of the facts? I can't imagine why.

Maybe you should consider that wingnut beliefs aren't accepted because they are irrational.

[not guilty]

BCD, in the 28 years I practiced law, I cannot recall asking a criminal defendant his or her political or ideological identification. That was simply irrelevant to what I was doing.

In these comment threads I am not representing a client, so I am free to fly my partisan flag.

[Nelson]

"I simply pasted the headline."

I'm just asking questions! I'm not saying an obviously false headline, about someone I (and most of the rest of the radical right) loathes with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns, is true.

Why would you think that just because posted it and wrote things insinuating it was true?

[Voize]

BCD isn't a voltage generator, he's only an enthusiastic conductor.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sheesh, what a misleading headline. Over $300M was made, sure, but it wasn't all made by Fauci.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And they're prosecuting Trump?

Fry Fauci the Draft Dodger!!!

[David Nieporent]

The problem is that BCD is a bald-faced liar. So much so that even when he cites kooky non-news online sources and pretends they're news (and then pretends that everyone else is somehow deficient if they're unaware of the fake scandals they conjure up), he has to lie about what those sources say.

Here's the headline at BCD's link: "Records Reveal Fauci, Others Made Over $300 Million From the Covid Pandemic…"

The headline is a lie, because the records do not reveal these people making this money from the covid pandemic; they at most reveal these people making this money during the covid pandemic. But BCD couldn't let it go at that; he had to delete the word "others" from the headline.

[hobie]

Heh...Townhall

[not guilty]

In the prosecution of Donald Trump and others in Florida, the Government filed a motion seeking to inquire into potential conflicts of interest on the part of Stanley Woodward, defense counsel for Walt Nauta. It appears that Mr. Woodward represents or has formerly represented three potential witnesses the Government may call to testify at the trial. The motion apprized the Court that, subsequent to the June 8, 2023 indictment, grand juries in Florida and the District of Columbia in the District of Columbia continued to investigate further obstructive activity, and a superseding indictment was returned on July 27, 2023.

Judge Aileen Loose Cannon entered an order directing briefing to "address the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate and/or to seek post-indictment hearings on matters pertinent to the instant indicted matter in this district." https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.100.0.pdf

This order is highly puzzling. Traditionally the grand jury has been accorded wide latitude to inquire into violations of criminal law. No judge presides to monitor its proceedings. It deliberates in secret and may determine alone the course of its inquiry. "It is a grand inquest, a body with powers of investigation and inquisition, the scope of whose inquiries is not to be limited narrowly by questions of propriety or forecasts of the probable result of the investigation, or by doubts whether any particular individual will be found properly subject to an accusation of crime." United States v. Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 343 (1974), quoting Blair v. United States, 250 U.S. 273, 282 (1919).

So what if a D.C. grand jury is investigating relevant matters? If that is the case, what could Judge Cannon do about it? Any federal offense 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. 18 U.S.C. § 3237(a). A federal court lacks authority to enjoin a federal prosecutor's investigation or presentment of an indictment. Deaver v. Seymour, 822 F.2d 66, 69 (D.C. Cir. 1987). In the event of an indictment, Rule 12(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure permits any defendant to raise by motion, after indictment but before trial, a defense based on "defects in the institution of the prosecution." Id., at 70.

As in Hamlet, Act III, Scene II, The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's all a lynch mob anyway, a charade,

[not guilty]

Don't trivialize the horror of lynching.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and how is that trivializing lynching? Is it another of the words that can't be spoken?

[Nelson]

Well, since lynching wall is a horrifying, murderous act by cultural conservatives and Dr. ED is comparing that to a valid, evidence-heavy investigation into the intentional and unjustified retention of documents that belong to the people of the United States by a dodgy, dishonest former President, trivializes it a lot.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Bullshite. Look up the origin of the word -- i ain't what you think it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lynch_(Lynch_law)

They are trying to Lynch Trump, and it IS horrific.

[not guilty]

No matter what the etymology, in common parlance lynching refers to an extrajudicial killing. A lynch mob refers to a group that carries out such a killing.

That is not at all comparable to Donald Trump's being afforded the full panoply of rights available to a criminal defendant.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Starting with lawyer confidentiality?
That's gone...

[Sarcastr0]

The crime fraud exception is and remains a high bar. It'll be tricky to argue it wasn't met here.

[Nige]

You just called for Fauci to be 'fried.'

[Mr. Bumble]

After a fair trial, of course.

[Nige]

That seems unlikely. They were going to lock Hilary up (after a fair trial) too. If you want him fried you may have to skip the inconvenient bits where evidence of actual wrongdoing has to be found and presented.

[Noscitur a sociis]

So in your view, what are some of the aspects of the Trump prosecutions that you think are fairly characterized as lynching?

[Michael Ejercito]

Interesting article.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/80percent-of-bosses-say-they-regret-earlier-return-to-office-plans.html

After three years of haphazard plans for getting workers back at their desks, the return-to-office movement has entered a phase of remorse.

A whopping 80% of bosses regret their initial return-to-office decisions and say they would have approached their plans differently if they had a better understanding of what their employees wanted, according to new research from Envoy.

“Many companies are realizing they could have been a lot more measured in their approach, rather than making big, bold, very controversial decisions based on executives’ opinions rather than employee data,” Larry Gadea, Envoy’s CEO and founder, tells CNBC Make It.

Envoy interviewed more than 1,000 U.S. company executives and workplace managers who work in-person at least one day per week.

Some leaders lamented the challenge of measuring the success of in-office policies, while others said it’s been hard to make long-term real estate investments without knowing how employees might feel about being in the office weeks, or even months, from now.

Maybe they should seek outside consultation, like from Levinson Productivity Systems.

[Mr. Bumble]

Since it's an open thread, I thought I'd ask how any of you feel about the growing practice (especially in restaurants) of adding a surcharge to payments made with a credit card vs paying in cash.
Is this strictly a private business decision or is it regulated by government at some level (either state or federal)?

[Commenter_XY]

It's a cash grab (yuck, yuck). Pardon the pun.

Private business decision. Now the consumer pays the CC transaction fee (3%). Non-Profits do that too. It is nothing new, but definitely more prevalent, especially in tourist areas.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes, and thank Brandon for the fee.
Don't forget that he was the "Senator from MBNA."

There is a proposed Federal law requiring two clearing houses for competition, but much of Europe limits this to 1%.

[Martinned]

In many jurisdictions this is in fact regulated. (And it may of course be regulated by the credit card companies' T&Cs.) But whether it should be?

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharges

[Mr. Bumble]

Is this (surcharges) common in the UK and the EU?
In the US it seems like state regulation prohibiting them only apply to Massachusetts, Connecticut and Puerto Rico.

[Martinned]

You almost never encounter credit card surcharges, because they're illegal in most everyday situations.

[Nelson]

The processing charges are paid by the retailer to the processing companies or credit card issuer. Passing on that cost is most prevalent at gas stations (which sometimes have a different cash and credit price) in my area, but I'm starting to see more of it at other retailers.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Irving, a Canadian-owned Gasoline Company, has gone one step further. They now have a 10 cent surcharge if you aren't using their debit card. That one I wonder about....

[Nelson]

I'm in Maine right now and have bought gas from several different Irving stations. Their cash and credit prices are exactly the same.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's a private decision, and I think perfectly defensible. In fact, it's been a standard practice at many gas stations to charge the customer the service fee.

But it would hardly be shocking if government intervened, because the customers outnumber the business owners, and, really, isn't that all the excuse the government needs?

[apedad]

Apparently you haven't flown anywhere in decades.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not true, and what's the relevance anyway? If I'd flown I would have realized that gas stations don't often charge different prices for cash vs card? How's that work?

[apedad]

I was referring to your 'government intervened, because the customers outnumber the business owners' comment.

It's a 1B:1 ratio of flying customers to airline owners.

[Brett Bellmore]

It's not a reliable expectation, to be sure. But it's at least nominally the default in democracies.

[Martinned]

The whole point of representative democracy is that it results in a system of democracy that doesn't just consider *how many* voters support/oppose something, but also how much they care. That's why the NRA is able to hijack American gun control policy. They are (relatively) few, but they care A LOT.

[VinniUSMC]

Yeah, ignoring the 50+ million gun owners. "Hijack". Sure bud.

[Martinned]

That number is exactly my point. It's significantly lower than 50% plus one of the people/electorate.

[hoppy025]

The percentage that supports a full ban, which is what the political left desires and moves toward, is a small minority.

[hoppy025]

To a degree, but I also think it's silly from a business perspective. For one, you're taking much more risk in taking cash payments than you are credit. With credit, you're basically paying a 2% fee to eliminate the risk of employee skimming, robbery, loss, etc, unless of course, you're not reporting all your income, which for some small restaurants, probably is the case.

It's basically a way of raising prices without doing so explicitly, but the problem is you can only do that once.

[Life of Brian]

With credit, you’re basically paying a 2% fee to eliminate the risk of employee skimming, robbery, loss, etc

LOL. Read up on chargebacks and get back with us.

[hoppy025]

As someone who has actually run a small business, chargebacks are a very small problem. Maybe not for you because you're probably a scammer and fraudster.

[Life of Brian]

OK, duckie -- glad you had that experience (and glad we've progressed from "eliminate" to "um, some but vewy small").

Back in the real world they're a material problem, with retail averaging about 0.5% (which is pretty damn material when your average margin is only ~2%). Cash skimming can be controlled much more tightly than that.

(I'd say I look forward to your statistics to the contrary, but I know you won't provide any since you're just a drive-by troll.)

[hoppy025]

We didn't progress from anything. I'm referring to robbery, loss of cash, and employee skimming. Chargebacks, even if illegitimate, don't fall into that category.

What business is running on a 2% margin? Show me.

[Life of Brian]

I’m referring to robbery, loss of cash, and employee skimming. Chargebacks, even if illegitimate, don’t fall into that category.

Your thesis was that taking credit cards is less risky than taking cash. Too late now to try to pivot to some self-fulfilling subcategory of risk.

And not that I think you really care but just for completeness, here is one article that pegs average net profit margins for general retail at 2.65%. You can feel free to search for others yourself.

[hoppy025]

No, it’s not. My very examples made clear what I was referring to.

And, assuming that is true, using "net margin" demonstrates your intellectual dishonesty, as chargeback losses would not be taxable income.

Also, the average chargeback rate is only 0.12% for restuarants.

Don't you liberals ever stop lying?

https://www.clearlypayments.com/blog/chargeback-statistics-in-credit-card-processing/

[Life of Brian]

Good lord you're a knucklehead. Taxes are the last thing that come off before distributions, assuming they're coming off at all and not being passed through to the shareholders. (I mean, you did say you ran a small business, right? If you set it up as a C corp, bless your heart.)

So gross up that 2.65% average by 20% or whatever makes you feel better -- half a percent is still a significant chunk of that. Try again, trollio.

Oh, and P.S.: Anyone who has spent any length of time at all around here and yet says I'm a liberal has just conclusively proved themselves to be off in their own particular flavor of la la land.

[David Nieporent]

Oh, and P.S.: Anyone who has spent any length of time at all around here and yet says I’m a liberal has just conclusively proved themselves to be off in their own particular flavor of la la land.

When one is a Nazi like hoppy, everyone to the left of Mussolini is a "liberal."

[Martinned]

Of course, outside the US it is also quite common for that multilateral interchange fee to be capped by law.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/de/MEMO_13_719#:~:text=2.1%20Why%20does%20the%20proposed%20Regulation%20cap%20interchange%20fees%20at%200.2%25%20and%200.3%25%20for%20debit%20and%20credit%20card%20transactions%20respectively%3F

[Dr. Ed 2]

Don't forget the risk of counterfeit money -- depending on who you talk to, there is either some of it or a LOT of it around.

And cash payments also slows things down, requires more cashiers and cash handling protocols. How much does Brinks charge?

[Mr. Bumble]

...and you forgot about all those germs on cash.

[hoppy025]

Exactly. Brian's argument that the risk of chargebacks (assuming you're running a legitimate business and not trying to scam people) outweighs that is lunacy.

No, the real benefit comes from the 35% or more income tax "savings" if you're not reporting all of your income. That's why small restaurants like delis and pizzerias want cash, because they're evading taxes.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's not just the 35% income tax but the 15% FICA on what you pay yourself under the table, and then as to employees, it's only the employer half of FICA but then there is also the U/A and Workers Comp taxes, probably a few more.

[hoppy025]

Right, it's quite a lot. I don't blame them for doing it. But they're not desiring cash to save on the chargeback risk. LOL.

[Moderation4ever]

My experience with this practice has been when shopping at small businesses. These businesses are usually working at a thin profit margin, and I really don’t begrudge the business for the extra charge. I would likely feel different if a larger company with better assets started this practice. I do agree it is a private decision not something for government concern. If a large well financed company started the practice, I would likely find another place to shop.

[Martinned]

Before Covid most British corner shops tended to refuse card payments for payments below £5 or £10. That was inconvenient, but as you say I understand the logic.

[Brett Bellmore]

You'll see that quite often here in small shops, they'll have a purchase size below which it's cash only, or a surcharge for use of a card.

[Moderation4ever]

It is worth noting that people today frequently use their phone or tap cards for payment. This is encouraged by commercials showing the convenience. Most of us groan when we are behind the old person writing a check at the counter. My sons rarely if ever carry cash. But what if you are the shop keeper and the customer just bought a $1.50 can of soda and used his phone. Your profit on that sale might just be eaten by the bank charge.

[Mr. Bumble]

I can't recalled the last time I saw a line held up by someone writing a check but I see it regularly when someone's card is declined or they've entered the wrong pin.

[hoppy025]

The CARD act limited the interchange fees, and the industry changed in response. It used to be a flat $.30 or $.25 plus a percentage. I believe that it's mostly all just the percentage now, so it really doesn't affect them any more to take cards on the $1.50 can of soda.

[hoppy025]

The part that pisses me off is that governments are the worst offenders. Government utilities, DMVs, and other offices always charge "convenience fees."

[Brett Bellmore]

That's for sure. And often seriously large ones.

[hoppy025]

Right, same with the power companies. As a matter of principle, I won't go to gas stations that have different cash and credit prices, but I think it's their right to do so.

[SimonP]

(Getting hosed on per-transaction fees is probably a consequence of underfunding government administration through taxes, so it's your own damn fault, really, but sure - make it into another grievance to whine to your fellow retirees about.)

[hoppy025]

We could save $20 billion a year on HIV drugs if we simply told people like the Rev. Kirkland he couldn't do his thing with all the men in the bath house.

[Mr. Bumble]

Speaking of the Rev., he has been notably absent.

[Nelson]

Shhhh. Speak of the Devil and he will appear.

[SimonP]

We are saving millions of dollars on HIV drugs, every year, by rolling out programs that make getting PrEP and PEP easier.

Here in NYC, after an unprotected sexual encounter with an HIV+ person, I was able to easily get low-cost access to PEP at a 24 hour pharmacy in Manhattan. You can't do that in a small town!

[Mr. Bumble]

So you're happy to have access to low cost drugs so you're free to ride bareback?

[SimonP]

I'm happy to live in a city that is (sometimes) able to make prudent decisions about how to spend money on public healthcare, in order to save money in the long run.

PrEP isn't a license to have bareback sex, but typically that would be obtained through a GP and health insurance, not via the city's PEP access program.

[hoppy025]

Yeah, and where do you think health insurance comes from? The fact is, homosexual men's deviant and promiscuous lifestyle imposes enormous costs onto society. The fact that 75% of new HIV cases occur in 1-2% of the population is a testament to that point.

[SimonP]

Do you want to complain about men having buttsex and contracting HIV, or do you want to complain about successful efforts to limit the costs that activity imposes on society?

It seems to me that you are deeply confused about everything except men fucking men, a matter which seems to have captured your interest.

[hoppy025]

No, what I'd rather do is make it illegal to have gay buttsex, and make clear that society will not pay for any health issues that result from it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Simon, I wish to dismiss you from the conversation because of your admitted inability to act responsibly. In Sweden, you'd be facing criminal charges (remember the Wikileak guy?).

[SimonP]

Hoppy: It's too bad you don't live in Russia, Saudi Arabia, or Uganda.

Ed: Go choke on a rancid queef.

[Noscitur a sociis]

In Sweden, you’d be facing criminal charges (remember the Wikileak guy?).

What, may I ask, the fuck are you talking about?

[SimonP]

Noscitur: I believe Ed may be referring to certain allegations directed at Julian Assange, who was accused of "stealthing" a woman in Stockholm shortly after the Wikileaks docs were dropped.

What that has to do with my having unprotected sex with an HIV+ man, I can only guess. Ed seems to be a deeply confused person.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Assange was accused of having "unprotected" sex with the two women, apparently a criminal charge over there. I presume a law that also applies to men.

[hoppy025]

Gay men don't know what protection is.

[M L]

"(Getting hosed on per-transaction fees is probably a consequence of underfunding government administration through taxes, so it’s your own damn fault, really, but sure – make it into another grievance to whine to your fellow retirees about.)"

No it's not, it's just a pass-through of the fees that Visa/Mastercard are collecting. But way to be the one really making something into another grievance to whine about here.

[M L]

Those "seriously large" fees are just what the credit cards are charging.

[Moderation4ever]

Agree here. Government uses fees just like everyone else.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What upsets me is that it is a deceptive practice -- put the 3% in your prices and be done with it.

[Kazinski]

Ed, do you use a rewards card?

And if you do, how much cash back do you get for restaurant purchases?

I do and I get 3%, I hope you don't think I'm being deceptive if I don't disclose that when I go in a restaurant.

Should the cash payer have to reimburse them for that 3% to as you suggest? That 3% is a direct result of you using the card, its actually making costs more transparent, not hiding them.

[hoppy025]

That's the stupidest thing I've heard all week.

[Mr. Bumble]

You're describing a wash so other than not having to carry cash and taking advantage of the float (assuming you don't carry a balance) using your card has no advantage.

[Kazinski]

Sure it has an advantage, I don’t carry cash and I don’t accumulate change in my pocket.

[M L]

It isn't a deceptive practice. It's a fair practice.

If you pay with a cc, the vendor has to give 3% to woke Visa/Mastercard.

If you pay cash, the vendor doesn't have to give them 3%.

Don't want to pay the 3%? Then don't pay with a credit card.

[Sarcastr0]

woke Visa/Mastercard

How unserious you are.

[Voize]

VIsa and Mastercard used to prohibit surcharges in their merchant agreements but since a 2013 settlement agreement they allow them with restrictions.

CT, MA and Puerto Rico still appear to enforce laws against surcharges but in many other states (CA, TX, NY) similar laws have been successfully challenged and are not enforced though they remain on the books.

Note that these bans don't apply to other forms of differential pricing, such as advertising both cash and credit prices or offering a cash discount below the advertised price.

[Kazinski]

Its a necessary evil.

Credit card companies chart transaction fees for three reasons, profits, to cover fraud, and to give cash back rewards to attract desirable customers with good credit ratings.

I get back 3% rewards from my Costco card when I go to a restaurant, and Citibank, Costco's credit card provider is charging about the same amount to the restaurant.

The restaurant has 3 choices, put prices 3% higher and make everyone pay, charge only the credit card users, or eat the increase.

But I don't think its being unfair to me the credit card user that is getting 3% back, to charge me 3% for using my card.

I will also note while processing cash has its own transaction costs, it also has benefits in making it easier to avoid paying taxes, for small businesses at least, chains probably find it the more cash is used the easier it is for employees to steal.

[jb]

First, I think this a private business decision and it's reasonable for business to have the option to do this.

In theory lower interchange fees and passing through credit card fees should result in a lower cost base for the business and therefore lower prices for people who aren't using cards. I think where this has been studied, though, the businesses mostly just keep the extra money. I find the fees particularly obnoxious in places where the business clearly doesn't actually want you to pay in cash, like hotels or airlines.

[M L]

I applaud the practice. It just passes on the hefty fees that monopolistic payment processors (Visa, Mastercard) are trying to charge everyone for every transaction that ever occurs on the planet.

It promotes competition among payment modalities in an anticompetitive industry that is frequently facing antitrust issues.

This is affected by government regulation in the following way: Visa and Mastercard require every vendor to agree to certain terms and conditions. This has historically included a prohibition on charging a surcharge for credit card payments to recoup that expense, forcing vendors to make cash payors subsidize credit card payors and incentivizing everyone to use credit cards. If you violate that they will start seizing your funds and potentially suspend your account/ability to take payments. The problem with things like that was that the payment processors had market power/monopoly power. I believe some time around 2010 or so the processors reached an antitrust settlement with the DOJ that addressed this practice among other things. I think the result was that they could continue prohibiting surcharges but could not prohibit a "discount" for cash, largely a difference in semantics. This all might have changed by now. In addition, I think there have been some misguided state/local efforts to stop credit card surcharges.

[Mr. Bumble]

Now let's move on to "included" tips.

[Kazinski]

Sure let’s. As long as there is adequate disclosure it’s fine.

I think the more transparency the better.

[Mr. Bumble]

“Sure let’s. As long as there is adequate disclosure it’s fine. ” …and at what % would you draw the line and what is "adequate disclosure"? At the front door? On the menu? On the website"

[Martinned]

On the menu, next to the prices of the individual items.

[Mr. Bumble]

Once you're in the restaurant and at the table hardly seems adequate.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

The best thing would be to do away with tipping altogether and pay wait staff a livable wage.

[Don Nico]

AMEN!!!

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

"...Do away with tipping altogether..."

All other commenters, in unison: "Do away with tipping."

[Martinned]

I have no idea whether a service charge in the UK goes to the staff or to the restaurant. Restaurants are certainly not exempt from minimum wage/living wage laws. But that's between the staff, their unions, and the restaurants. Basically the result of a service charge is that the restaurant is making me do math in order to make their prices seem lower.

[bernard11]

Why? That's when they disclose all their other prices.

[Martinned]

Most restaurants I'm familiar with post their menus online, and typically also outside where people can inspect them before entering.

[M L]

The entire "tipping" thing is getting out of hand.

[jb]

Yes. I was just in Australia and New Zealand where tipping is basically not a thing and it was such a relief.

The service wasn't quite as good on average, but was still excellent in many cases and I find the tipping culture way more annoying than slightly worse service in restaurants.

[Bored Lawyer]

I actually prefer it. Saves me time from calculating, and I don't have to worry that the waiter/waitress will feel insulted that I undertipped them. That's the house rule, and that's it. Unless it's exceptionally good (in which case I will add to the tip) or exceptionally bad, in which case I will complain loudly. Those two situations are rare, though.
But I agree, should be disclosed up front.

[Mr. Bumble]

"That’s the house rule, and that’s it."
When did tipping become the house rule?
ho decides what the percentage should be?

[bernard11]

"Who decides what the percentage should be?"

The owner of the restaurant, who also decides what the other prices on the menu should be. If it's too high he will lose business, just like if he charges too much for a steak.

[Martinned]

Orin Kerr asked Twitter a question about the possible need for Judge Chutckan to resign based on past statements showing bias. Feel free to add your own suggestions.

https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1690983865035431936

[not guilty]

The judge is commenting -- I surmise from the bench -- about matters that have come to her attention while she presided over matters arising out of the events of January 6, 2021.

The governing statute is 28 455, which states in relevant part:

(a)Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

(b)He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

(1)Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding

Recusal under this provision is subject to the limitation that has come to be known as the "extrajudicial source" doctrine. Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540 (1994). Justice Scalia there elaborated:

First, judicial rulings alone almost never constitute a valid basis for a bias or partiality motion. See United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. [563,] 583 [(1966).] In and of themselves (i.e., apart from surrounding comments or accompanying opinion), they cannot possibly show reliance upon an extrajudicial source; and can only in the rarest circumstances evidence the degree of favoritism or antagonism required (as discussed below) when no extrajudicial source is involved. Almost invariably, they are proper grounds for appeal, not for recusal. Second, opinions formed by the judge on the basis of facts introduced or events occurring in the course of the current proceedings, or of prior proceedings, do not constitute a basis for a bias or partiality motion unless they display a deep-seated favoritism or antagonism that would make fair judgment impossible. Thus, judicial remarks during the course of a trial that are critical or disapproving of, or even hostile to, counsel, the parties, or their cases, ordinarily do not support a bias or partiality challenge. They may do so if they reveal an opinion that derives from an extrajudicial source; and they will do so if they reveal such a high degree of favoritism or antagonism as to make fair judgment impossible.

510 U.S., at 555. The language cited by Professor Kerr, without more, does not evince grounds for recusal.

[Michael P]

You ignore the "almost" part of Scalia's comment, of course, as well as his elaboration of when and why those exceptions exist.

[not guilty]

How is the language that Professor Kerr cites so exceptional as to constitute grounds for recusal?

[Michael P]

The comments about rioters having “fealty” and “blind loyalty” to “one person who, by the way, remains free to this day” show exactly what Scalia described: the kind of a “deep-seated [] antagonism” that makes fair judgment impossible when it comes to a prosecution of that “one person”.

[not guilty]

That reference seems pretty oblique. Can you cite any judicial decision with comparable facts where recusal was held to be required?

[Michael P]

Which part do you pretend is oblique, the reference to Trump or the judge's opinion that he should be in prison?

As far as comparable precedent, the statement from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/us/judge-sentence-overturned-black-criminal-detroit.html was less prejudicial of the specific case before the judge.

[not guilty]

I’m not pretending anything. The judge was stating in essence that the Capitol rioters acted out of misplaced loyalty to Donald Trump. The observation that Trump — who was not before the court and then had not yet been charged regarding January 6 — then remained free is unremarkable.

The case you refer to as “comparable precedent” including the following remarks by the judge toward a criminal defendant who complained about his (second) appointed defense attorney:

I’m tired of this case. I’m tired of this defendant. I’m tired of getting the runaround. This has been going on since February 6, 2018. We’ve got a case out of Kentucky that came here under Rule 20. Rule 20 says the reason for the transfer was the defendant has agreed to plead guilty. I feel as if the Court has been misled. I’ve been told in an official pleading and informally the defendant was going to plead guilty. We cancelled jurors. We got a trial date. Now we got this.
* * *
[To defense counsel:]This guy has got my attention, Mr. Arnone. What do you want me to do? This guy looks like a criminal to me. This is what criminals do. This isn’t what innocent people, who want a fair trial do. He’s indicted in Kentucky. He’s indicted here. He’s alleged to be dealing heroin, which addicts, hurts and kills people, and he’s playing games with the Court. Do you agree?

https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca6/22-1236/22-1236-2023-08-03.pdf?ts=1691087467

To claim that the two situations are in any way comparable is ludicrous.

[Bored Lawyer]

I’m not pretending anything. The judge was stating in essence that the Capitol rioters acted out of misplaced loyalty to Donald Trump. The observation that Trump — who was not before the court and then had not yet been charged regarding January 6 — then remained free is unremarkable.

Horse puckey. Had she stopped before "Who by the way . . ." then her statement would have been fair comment on the criminal actions of the defendants before her. The last sentence is gratuitous for the sentencing of those defendants. Worse, in context strongly implies he is the ringleader who should be jailed as much as (if not more than) the lackeys she was sentencing.

I did not realize the statement was that bad. If you had the same thing in a mob case, that would be clear grounds for recusal.

[Nige]

Yes, it really is amazing how a mob invading the Capitol in an effort to overturn the election for someone while he at best sits around twiddling his thumbs waiting to see if it'll work out tarnishes that person in a way that won't ever wash off.

[Bored Lawyer]

What's amazing is the obtuseness of people who are willing to burn the Constitution just to get Trump.

What's the matter, the other DC District judges are not competent to try Trump?

[Nige]

I'm slightly in awe of the people willing to burn the Constitution to protect Trump.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The observation that Trump — who was not before the court and then had not yet been charged regarding January 6 — then remained free is unremarkable."

Say what? You've got to be joking about that "unremarkable."

The only reason you'd bother mentioning that somebody "remains free to this day” is to imply that there's something wrong about it. If you do a google search for "remains free to this day", almost all of the hits are to a murderer who "remains free to this day"!

[Bored Lawyer]

My great Aunt Tillie remains free to this day. She's jealous that the judge did not mention that fact in her sentencing.

[David Nieporent]

the judge’s opinion that he should be in prison?

Wow. I overlooked the part where she said, "Who by the way, should be in prison."

[Bored Lawyer]

Come on, stop being purposefully obtuse. Click on the link and read the full statement in context. The clear implication is that Trump should be sent to prison, just like the poor slobs she is sentencing.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Is it as clear as the implication that their loyalty was misplaced, since they are now going to prison for a free man?

I'm just curious how many legitimate meanings we're supposed to discard before declaring one specific one to be clearly the only right choice.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Can you name one judge as bad as her who wasn't impeached?

[loki13]

While I am quite sure that when Dr. Ed was doing something in Maine in the 1960s, federal judges were just getting impeached all the time (as Dr. Ed would put it, "No big deal. Guys in my high school in Bangor used to impeach federal judges after giving them swirlies ..."), that's not really the case, is it?

Here-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impeachment_investigations_of_United_States_federal_judges

That's all of them. In history. Now, I will leave it as an exercise for everyone to see how stupid this comment is. Or, in the alternative, you can just see that Dr. Ed commented, smile knowingly, and move on.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well that gives me LOTS of faith in the integrity of the Federal judiciary...

If people on the left had honor, they'd be screaming about her...

[loki13]

Perhaps you should worry less about the integrity of the federal judiciary, and spend a little more time questioning why you make so many easily disproven claims?

Or, you know, don't. And keep on, keepin' on. 🙂

[David Nieporent]

Perhaps you should worry less about the integrity of the federal judiciary, and spend a little more time questioning why you make so many easily disproven claims?

That's not fair. The vast majority of his lies are not easily disproven; they're just completely unverifiable vague, implausible anecdotes.

[hoppy025]

When a judge uses the word "fealty," you know it's a bullshit decision.

https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/courts/2022/12/14/rhode-island-gun-magazine-high-capacity-ban-ruling-outcome-second-amendment-rights/69727765007/

In any case, a black woman should not be allowed to sit in judgment of a white man. Period.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Well, if a White man were judging Black women like this, he would be quickly impeached. Once the courts are no longer worthy of respect, they truly have lost their authority.

Civil society is like a pier, I'm seeing the pilings blasted away in pursuit of Trump, and while the pier may not collapse, it won't withstand the next storm.

[hoppy025]

I hope so!

[SimonP]

The specific comment is picked out of context, where the judge is explaining, for purposes of sentencing, the weight she's giving the fact that the defendant in question had (other than their actions on J6) lived a law-abiding life. The point of the passage is to emphasize the significance of the events of that day, and to deny that the defendant was acting as a "patriot." She's not blaming Trump, here; she's denying that J6 was just a "peaceful protest."

It's probably fair to say that Chutkan has strong feelings about J6. But I would think it's hard for any non-insurrectionist civil servant not too.

[Mr. Bumble]

There was no insurrection.

[Martinned]

Young Monk: “Do not try and bend the spoon—that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.”
Neo: “What truth?”
Young Monk: “There is no spoon.”

[Life of Brian]

Of course there was, silly goose -- your problem is simply not keeping up with the infinitely flexible definition. Modern-day "insurrections" are fought with selfie sticks and American flags rather than guns, don'tcha know?

[SimonP]

Call it what you like, Bumble. I'm calling J6 and the efforts that led up to it an "insurrection" because that's the commonplace nomenclature (you know, how language works), and because it's easier to say than "attempted quasi-legal coup," which would be more apt.

[Martinned]

That sounds about right. The problem with the section 3 argument isn't that it's somehow complicated from a constitutional point of view, but that there was no insurrection in the sense of that provision.

But, as you say, it's a convenient shorthand.

[Mr. Bumble]

It may be convenient but is still inaccurate.

[SimonP]

(But you still do not deny that what Trump attempted was a quasi-legal coup. Interesting.)

[Mr. Bumble]

My only claim was that it was not an insurrection. I am under no obligation to confirm or deny your claim.

[SimonP]

Nor am I under any obligation to infer from your careful avoidance of the question the most charitable interpretation.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I call it a rowdy frat party -- overthrowing a government with nukes with a spear???

[Dr. Ed 2]

So much for blind justice....

SHE should be in jail.

[Sarcastr0]

For what? You seem especially authoritarian this morning.

[jb]

For having different opinions to Dr. Ed 2, clearly!

[Kazinski]

His closing sentence explains why he posted on Twitter and not here:

"No need for people who don't know to try to answer anyway."

Well since we are here, and not Twitter here is my answer any way: reasonable person in Donald Trump's shoes would wonder if he would get a fair trial. Now Donald Trump isn't a reasonable person and I know some would answer any reasonable person wouldn't care if Trump gets a fair trial before he's locked up for the rest of his life, but that's not how its supposed to work.

[Sarcastr0]

some would answer any reasonable person wouldn’t care if Trump gets a fair trial before he’s locked up for the rest of his life, but that’s not how its supposed to work.

Trump's persecution by the liberals in your head is truly awful.

[Kazinski]

Believe it or not there are actually some law professors that would deny Due Process to Trump, although maybe not in a criminal trial.

But I hope you aren’t denying many people especially on the left are quite happy that Trump is being tried by a liberal judge in a very liberal jurisdiction, and they are perfectly fine with the idea that those circumstances make a conviction more likely.

[Sarcastr0]

What are you talking about?

being tried by a liberal judge in a very liberal jurisdiction, Attacking the refs. That’s not how due process works and you know it.

Come back with your paeon for justice when you have some actually unfair process to cry about, not strawmen and attacking judges.

[Kazinski]

Now I didn’t say trying him in DC would violate due process did I?

But that’s how you roll.

[Sarcastr0]

Crabwalking away from 'being tried by a liberal judge in a very liberal jurisdiction' which is itself a retreat from 'some would answer any reasonable person wouldn’t care if Trump gets a fair trial before he’s locked up for the rest of his life.'

You've really been putting on a very poor show this past month.

[Bob from Ohio]

Some things that don't violate "due process" are bad or best avoided.

[Kazinski]

I’m not crabwalking away from anything.

I hope you aren’t denying that Washington DC is an extremely liberal jurisdiction, and the judge is a pretty liberal judge.

Facts are facts.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Could you give us an example of a law professor who supports denying due process to Trump?

[Sarcastr0]

Immaterial facts presented as relevant is bad faith argumentation.

[jb]

I agree that a reasonable person might wonder that, and I actually think it would be better overall if she did recuse herself if only just to make sure that the optics for the trial were as clean as possible. I also think that after Judge Cannon's pre-indictment rulings, it would be better if she recused herself as well.

Having said that, I don't think that either of them have engaged in conduct that requires that they recuse themselves, and judges seem to hear cases with more significant-looking conflicts than either of these.

[Sarcastr0]

I actually think it would be better overall if she did recuse herself if only just to make sure that the optics for the trial were as clean as possible.

I disagree - there is no judge that will be held out as pure unless they pull a Cannon.

[Bob from Ohio]

"attacking judges" is bad 46 minutes ago

"unless they pull a Cannon." 3 minutes ago

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, I am using Cannon as an example of a bad judge based on bad judge stuff she did.

Unlike attacking the other judges in the Trump trials, who are being attacked not based on actions, but before they act as a way to work the refs.

[Bob from Ohio]

Sure, sure. The human mind can rationalize anything.

People are discussing a biased statement made by the DC federal judge aka bad judge based on bad judge stuff she did.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes we all know you are playing the refs before they’ve done anything. You could at least put in some effort, though.

[jb]

I agree that the MAGA crowd will be unhappy with basically any judge that isn't clearly biased in Trump's favor, but there's lots of persuadable Americans. Ideally you wouldn't have a judge that some reasonable people might think could be biased, and I think that's the case here. Once again, I don't think that she's required to recuse and judges hear cases with much clearer conflicts than this one, but this particular case also deserves an exceptionally high degree of integrity even if it's only in the form of optics.

[John F. Carr]

I find the last part troubling. In a case where Trump was not a party she implied Trump should be locked up. Whether precedent calls for recusal I can't say. The facts that made her so cross with Trump are not seriously in dispute, and he can't demand recusal simply because he drew a hanging judge instead of a friendly judge.

Have other judges in the district made similar statements?

[Bored Lawyer]

Years ago, I worked for a firm where the head partner did some white collar criminal work. We had a client who was a notorious swindler, and was both criminally prosecuted for securities fraud, as well as pursued by investors for compensation.

At the sentencing, the judge said:

My object in this case from day one has always been to get back to the public that which was taken from it as a result of the fraudulent activities of this defendant and others. We will work the best possible formula we can to be as fair as possible to the public. If we can get the 120 million back, we would have accomplished a great deal in this case.

United States v. Antar, 53 F.3d 568 (3d Cir. 1995)https://casetext.com/case/us-v-antar

The Third Circuit found this created an appearance of impartiality, and reversed and remanded for proceedings before a different judge. That was so even though the judge had formed his opinion based on facts learned during litigation, albeit in parallel civil litigation.

That strikes me as similar to this case.

[John F. Carr]

Crazy Eddie! The ads were part of my childhood, and then they were gone.

[Bored Lawyer]

Gone to Otisville Federal Penitentiary, is where they went. 😉

[Commenter_XY]

I remember his ads as a child: These prices are insaaaaaaaaaane! 🙂

[Ridgeway]

It's Christmas in August!!!

[not guilty]

"Have other judges in the district made similar statements?"

Yes. According to Politico:

“People … were told lies, told falsehoods, told our election was stolen when it clearly was not,” U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said during the Nov. 2021 sentencing of defendant John Lolos. “We’re here today deciding whether Mr. Lolos should spend 30 days in jail when those who created the conditions that led to Mr. Lolos’ conduct, led to the events of Jan. 6 [haven’t been] held to account for their actions and their word.”
* * *

“It is not patriotism, it is not standing up for America to stand up for one man — who knows full well that he lost — instead of the Constitution he was trying to subvert,” ]Judge Amy Berman Jackson] said, directing her comments at other Republican leaders.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/14/trump-inflammatory-comments-judge-chutkan-00111041

[OtisAH]

Chutkan will preside over Turnip’s trial. Based on the mountains of evidence and testimony, the jury will convict Big Baby and any charged co-conspirators on most to all counts. Turnip will be sentenced to prison and he will likely spend the last few years of his miserable life getting his balls figuratively slobbered on by prison Nazis.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Did any of the right-wing law professors who operate this blog offer any similar observations or questions concerning defendant Trump's public statement that a witness "shouldn't" testify before a grand jury today?

I didn't think so.

Carry on, clingers. Your betters will continue to let you know just how far and precisely how long, though.

[Bored Lawyer]

Ah yes, tu quoque. The last refuge of the incompetent.

And are you saying that federal judges should be judged by the same standards as accused criminals that appear before them?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

No. I am saying that the right-wing law professors at this white, male, conservative blog are exhibiting vividly strange patterns with respect to what they find worthy of comment (and what they are conspicuously refusing to address) these days.

[Martinned]

A last minute phone call on Friday informed teachers that the Arkansas Department of Education will not recognize AP African American Studies for course credit by the state.

School starts in 2 days. AP European History continues to be offered for full credit.

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2023/08/12/arkansas-education-department-nixes-ap-african-american-studies-course-at-last-minute

[Brett Bellmore]

I will note that "African Americans" are a racial group in America, and Europe is a pseudo-continent, so they're hardly comparable topics. Now, if they'd retained a course in Irish-American history, you'd have something like an issue.

Anyway, had to read down a bit to find it wasn't so much a matter of the course being canceled, as never having been approved in the first place, the bureaucracy had just gone ahead as though approval were a sure thing. So, not a last minute decision to cancel it, but instead their being reminded that it hadn't been approved.

And nowhere is the content of the course described, strangely enough. A quick search did turn this up, though:

State looking into content of AP course on African American studies

It appears that back in January they already had some concerns about the content of the courses, so it's not like the educrats weren't on notice that it might not be approved.

AP African American Studies, CRT, and Redressing Institutional Racism

This essay by a supporter of the course seems to take a, "CRT? There isn't any CRT in this course, and it's right and just that there should be!" position, which I do not find reassuring.

[Nige]

'so they’re hardly comparable topics.'

This comment contains multitudes.

[Brett Bellmore]

Multitude of facts, sure.

[Nige]

Is one of the facts that the treatment of the one racial group in America subjected to slavery and Jim Crow is not worthy of study?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Are you referring to the Irish?

[Nige]

'Whacking Day' was a Simpsons episode, not real history.

[loki13]

You do realize, don't you, that "Black Irish" is ...

Oh, never mind. 🙂

[Nige]

Bit confusing nowadays because of how many Irish people in Ireland - as opposed to descendants of slaves and slave-owners and such living around the world - are black.

[SimonP]

I will note that “African Americans” are a racial group in America, and Europe is a pseudo-continent, so they’re hardly comparable topics. Now, if they’d retained a course in Irish-American history, you’d have something like an issue.

It's kind of predictably amusing, the way ignorant conservatives dismiss topics they're ignorant of as insignificant.

The history of "African Americans" in the United States would not be merely the history of a "racial group" in America. It would be the history of the nation's relationship with a large chunk of its population, from before its founding to the present day, a relationship that not only brought the nation to the edge of destruction but has also consistently shaped our economy, law, and culture in profound ways that "mainstream," white-focused histories generally overlook. Indeed, your very denial of its significance demonstrates the importance of the topic; you are simply too blinkered by your own deep-seated racial animus and ignorance to see the historical trends at work here.

It's too bad, really. Black history, CRT, etc., are not niche interests relevant only to the Black community. They are fascinating and intellectually challenging disciplines in their own right, which many white people would benefit from engaging with. That's true regardless of whether they might ultimately be "convinced" by particular claims or accounts offered within those disciplines.

[hoppy025]

The AP class could have one month covering illegitimate child births, another covering carjackings, another covering drug dealing, and so forth. Whites have already had plenty of unfortunate "engagements" with this.

[SimonP]

Your low-effort trolls are offensive only insofar as they lack wit and subtlety.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, I could see an AP course in "African American history" being worth while. I could also see it being propagandistic dreck. It all depends on what is being taught.

Which is why I noted that they didn't relate the content of the course, conspicuously so.

In any event, they had months and months of notice that approval of this AP course wasn't a done deal, and they just proceeded as though it were automatic. Still are proceeding on that basis, apparently.

[Nige]

Yeah, what if they don't teach about how great slavery was for black people?

[hoppy025]

That's a gross misrepresentation of what the course was actually teaching.

[SimonP]

I didn't engage with the part of your comment relating to the timing of the "non-approval" because I recognized it as the irrelevant red herring that it is. The central complaint here is not that the "non-approval" was conveyed in a non-timely way. The central complaint is that the AP African American history course was not approved for credit.

Which complaint you minimized by comparing "African American History" to "Irish-American History." Which was ridiculously ignorant, as I pointed out.

Which is why I noted that they didn’t relate the content of the course, conspicuously so.

Don't play dumb. You know the content of the course just as well as you know the detailed history of the "non-approval." And you know, too, why that content was "not approved."

[Brett Bellmore]

The central complaint here is not that the “non-approval” was conveyed in a non-timely way."

It was one of the complaints, and so I pointed out they'd been on notice for half a year or more.

" The central complaint is that the AP African American history course was not approved for credit."

Yeah, and my point is that lack of approval is either good or bad, depending on the merits of the course contents. It can't be evaluated apart from that! There's no point in even HAVING an approval process, if that doesn't matter.

"Which complaint you minimized by comparing “African American History” to “Irish-American History.”"

Martinned quoted an article that bothered to contrast the class' non-approval with "AP European History continues to be offered for full credit." So I pointed out that it was apples and oranges.

[Nige]

No, you drew an arbitrary distinction based on geography.

[Brett Bellmore]

What, you mean dismissing Europe as a "pseudo-continent"? I stand by that, like hell it's its own continent.

[Martinned]

100%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundaries_between_the_continents#/media/File:Eurasian_borders.jpg

[Nige]

Yes, exactly that stupid

[VinniUSMC]

Martin proves that Europe is a continent by historical context, not by any modern definition of continent, thus validating Brett's "pseudo-continent" teminology. Nige agrees... that Martin is stupid? Y'all really need to spend some time thinking about what you write.

[SimonP]

Martinned quoted an article that bothered to contrast the class’ non-approval with “AP European History continues to be offered for full credit.” So I pointed out that it was apples and oranges.

You were using an analogy predicated on an ignorant misconception, which I corrected.

If you wanted to draw a more accurate comparison, you would compare AP European History with a sub-specialty within European history that is as significant to modern Europe as Black history is, for the US. It's just difficult to find a precise correlate, there. "German History" or "French History" might approximate it, but neither permeates the history of the continent in the way that the history of Black Americans permeates ours. Certainly, "Irish History" would not be an accurate analogy.

[VinniUSMC]

That's precisely Brett's point, isn't it? AA History is to US History as German History is to Europe History. Whatever analogy you use, the distinction is apparent. AA History is not equivalent to Euro History. Way to prove his point.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Just to make the point, I'd love to establish WASP AP History and see what happened next. No, it wouldn't get approved...

[Sarcastr0]

That's just AP History.

[Nige]

Or entymology.

[grb]

Dr. Ed 2 : “No, it wouldn’t get approved…”

As a white male of sixty-plus years, why can’t I understand White Victimhood? Lord knows I’ve tried, casting my memory back year after year looking for one instance when I suffered horrendous brutal oppression because of my race – just like all those snowflake whiny Right-types experience daily.

But none. And to add insult to injury, I can’t remember any Male Victimhood instances either. Maybe I’m just lucky. Or maybe I’m not predisposed to find victimhood a comfort – like slipping into a nice warm bath at the end of a hard day. One thing’s for sure : If I ever switch to being a right-winger, I’ll have to learn how to embrace victimization.

Because it’s their entire fucking life.

[NOVA Lawyer]

This. So much this.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Did the state ever say it would?

No -- and be glad they are saying this now and not next May.

[Martinned]

Meanwhile, in Polish democracy news:

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki proposed holding a referendum asking citizens whether they support the arrival of “thousands of illegal migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa” under the European Union’s relocation policy.
(…)
The full question Morawiecki said Poles should answer in the proposed referendum is: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”

Isn’t direct democracy great?

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-mateusz-morawiecki-float-migration-referendum-video-election/

[Kazinski]

Well, isn't that what is actually happening?

You seem to want rule by bureaucracratic dictators rather than any kind of democracy.

I will also point out that Poland has a long history of not being allowed any democracy, Poland was partitioned in the late 1700's by Austria, Prussia and Russia, then partitioned again in 1939 by Germany and USSR, and after the Nazi's were removed the USSR took a large swath of Poland and ruled it as a fief for 45 years.

Now not even 35 years after regaining independence the EU better stamp out this notion of self determination before they get used to it.

[Martinned]

"Referendums are a tool of demagogues and dictators."

That's probably the only thing that Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher ever agreed on.

[Kazinski]

Fine, now do bureaucratic diktats from foreign bureaucrats with very little accountability, and none in Poland.

[Martinned]

Why would I do that? The whole issue here is the PM Morawiecki is lying through is teeth about EU laws that he himself voted for. That's what populism is: fact-free demagoguery.

[Bob from Ohio]

No non-populist has ever lied!

[Martinned]

Populists do it for a living...

[John F. Carr]

Do you know if Attlee and Thatcher ever met? A brief trip to the internet says he left parliament before she won her first election.

[Martinned]

Attlee passed away in 1967 and Thatcher was first elected as an MP in 1959, so I'd say the odds are pretty good that they met. (Attlee was a Peer in the House of Lords from 1955 onwards.)

Any particular reason why you asked? The line I quoted was Thatcher quoting Attlee with approval. I didn't say they agreed in person.

Here is a more extensive excerpt from Hansard of Thatcher discussing her and other people's views of referendums: https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102649

[John F. Carr]

I was merely curious. You got me imagining the two coming to agreement on something in person before I remembered that they were generations apart.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Referendums are a tool of demagogues and dictators.”"

Most US states have referendums.

[Martinned]

Yes...

[John F. Carr]

In my state the summary of a voter-initated referendum is subject to judicial review for fairness. The result of such a referendum is binding, although subject to later modification by ordinary legislation. The legislature can request an advisory vote on its own initiative, stacking the deck if it chooses. The last such advisory vote was in 2002 and the people voted the way the legislature wanted them to.

[grb]

Martinned : “Meanwhile, in Polish democracy news”

Below is a link to an equally depressing story from Israel. As part of Netanyahu’s sell-out for far-Right support, women in Israel increasingly face “separate-but-equal” segregation in all aspects of their lives. There are separate college course, sperate hours to use public libraries, separate training classes for responders in the National Emergency/Disaster Services agencies and – yes – separate cars or seating on trains and buses. Some public shows and concerts have seating segregated by sex and (as you’d expect) the women are always put in the rear.

Even more troubling is the proposed expansion of the rabbinical courts, which handle many civil disputes like divorce. Already women need their husband’s permission to end a marriage and can’t remarry without it. But these courts may soon handle economic aspects of divorce as well (including child support) and be empowered to settle other contract and labor issues. Needless to say, these courts are exclusively male.

Israel’s Supreme Court was something of a check against this movement towards women as second-class citizens, but that court is also targeted now. It's all part of Netanyahu’s payoff to the Right-wing cancer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/12/world/middleeast/israel-women-rights.html

[Martinned]

Not legal, but this one gave me a chuckle over the weekend. Apparently this dude on Fox believes that Karl Marx wrote Mein Kampf. (Or rather: believed. I assume someone straightened him out since then.)

https://twitter.com/Nantanreikan/status/1689998361758507008

[Michael P]

There is less difference than you apparently think between Das Kapital and Mein Kampf.

Remind us, did you find it chuckle-worthy that a Democratic presidential nominee thought there were 57-some states? Did anyone ever set him straight on the topic?

[Martinned]

Really, you're going to defend and bothsides this f*ck up?

[Sarcastr0]

It's just a funny slip of the tongue mixing up German book titles. I don't think the dude actually believed what he said. But it is funny to see the outrage bait bobbled so badly.

[Martinned]

That's generous of you.

[Michael P]

I was simply pointing out that it was a pretty obvious slip of the tongue in an unscripted comment. It's not like it was a peer-reviewed journal.

[Martinned]

Fair enough.

[Kazinski]

No need to defend it or condemn it, but its worth your chuckle.

We defended our freedom after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor to ensure a free press, that includes idiots on every news outlet bar none.

[Sarcastr0]

There is less difference than you apparently think between Das Kapital and Mein Kampf.

Don't be ignorant. I've read enough of both to know they're not at all the same. Das Kapital goes into the costs of Capitalism via the same classical economic tradition as Mill, Ricardo, and Smith. Mein Kampf is a rambling autobiography full of paranoia and accusations.

You're allowed to dislike 2 different things without insisting they're the same.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

One book was the inspiration for mass murder, and the other...was the inspiration for mass murder.

[Martinned]

What is: The Bible?

[Nelson]

Don't forget moral justification for slavery and genocide. It's a pretty brutal book.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Martin goes and makes a funny point about a Fox guest expert being a complete idiot, but it still ends up in the same place - with Martin being a prick.

Or maybe he actually doesn’t understand the difference between books written by Hitler and Marx and the Bible. Perhaps he should try to become a Fox guest expert.

[Martinned]

16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord hath given you the city.

17 And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent.

18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.

19 But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord.

20 So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.

21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Ooh. Joshua fit de battle of Jericho. A history lesson. Did my history book inspire mass murder by teaching about, say, Sherman’s March to the Sea?

Now quote some stuff from the New Testament, excluding Armageddon.

Your hostility to religion is noted. Makes you ignore the fact that Marx and Hitler write books that encouraged violence and revolution. The Bible was not written for that purpose.

[Martinned]

I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't the one who brought up books that inspired mass murder.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Yes, clearly you don’t.

[Sarcastr0]

Like it nor not, bevis, the Bible has been used to justify a crapload of wars and murders.

As someone who thinks the Bible pretty good, actually, it goes to show that mere consequentialist attacks on a book.
This applies whether the book is inspired by God or penned by an embittered failed artist. Attack the substance.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Love thy neighbor"?

[Nige]

Feed the masses, free healthcare for the sick, give up all your worldy goods, easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man get into heaven, etc. Radical stuff.

[Martinned]

Former top church official warns Christianity is in 'crisis' if people think quotes from Jesus are 'liberal talking points'

https://news.yahoo.com/former-top-church-official-warns-054920018.html

[Bob from Ohio]

"He said "multiple pastors" have told him the "same story" about being approached and questioned after their preachings on the Sermon on the Mount,"

Unverifiable anonymous anecdotes that support the speaker's point are the best!

[Nige]

Let's test it out.

Hey, people trying to cross the southern border should be treated humanely!

[grb]

It's an unavoidable fact : Jesus was Woke.

[Sarcastr0]

Reductive and uncurious, eh? It looks a bit like you are confusing The Communist Manifesto with Das Kaptial.

And, as Martinned points out, it's good to maybe dig a bit further than your blithe condemnation lest other stuff get caught up in that same broad brush.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

OK, you've convinced me, Marx was just misunderstood. He's not as bad as the Bible.

[Sarcastr0]

That wasn’t my argument and you know it. Don’t add being an ass to choosing ignorance like it’s a virtue.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Sorry to be so irreverent toward your scriptures.

[Martinned]

MASON CITY — Books are now being pulled from the shelves of Mason City schools' libraries in order to comply with newly enacted state legislation that Gov. Kim Reynolds says will protect children from damaging and obscene material.

At their July 17 meeting, the Mason City school board conducted the first consideration of a series of policy changes that would bring the district into compliance with new law, most notably regarding the review of instructional materials and the district's policy toward students' gender identity.
(...)
Mason City’s banned books
"Killing Mr. Griffin" by Lois Duncan
"Sold" by Patricia McCormick
"A Court of Mist and Fury" (series) by Sarah J. Maas
"Monday's Not Coming" by Tiffany D. Jackson
"Tricks" by Ellen Hopkins
"Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Picoult
"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison
"Looking for Alaska" by John Green
"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
"Crank" by Ellen Hopkins
"Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher
"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie
"An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser
"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker
"Feed" by M.T. Anderson
"Friday Night Lights" by Buzz Bissinger
"Gossip Girl" by Cecily von Ziegesar
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

Really? Gossip Girl?

[Martinned]

Sorry, forgot the source: https://www.thegazette.com/k/19-books-pulled-from-mason-city-school-libraries/

[Nige]

Get ready for some affected neutrality on the subject of decisions by democratically elected representatives.

[bevis the lumberjack]

And The Kite Runner. Or The Color Purple. And what the hell could possibly be wrong with Friday Night Lights? Joining lots of classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and Slaughterhouse Five and the double banned Catcher in the Rye.

I’ve posted sympathy for parents exposed to overtly sexual stuff at too early an age, but as is frequently the case with politically influenced stuff people take their little bit of power and go way to far with it.

I was lucky. My mother was a free thinker who wanted me to be one too, so a lot of the stuff that was banned back then she’d go to library and check out for me to read once I hit 13 or so. Catcher, Catch-22, everything by Vonnegut. Mockingbird. 1984. Books I’ve forgotten. I hope that there are lots of parents out there doing the same thing these days…..

[Michael P]

This Iowa law is written very strictly -- any description of a sex act makes the book not "age-appropriate". It's an overbroad policy, similar to banning Huckleberry Finn for period-accurate language.

I am deeply skeptical that using "AI" is a good way to do this, though, especially if they use a LLM. It's error-prone to either ask "does such-and-such book describe a sex act" or to ask a similar question just before feeding the book's text through. (The former because the LLM usually shouldn't be trained on any books still covered by copyright, the latter because the LLM's "context" is unlikely to be big enough to remember the question.)

[Nige]

'I'm only in favour of banning the books I want banned.'

[Dr. Ed 2]

Good. Get that filth OUT of the school library.

[Sarcastr0]

Did you even read the list?

[bevis the lumberjack]

The Color Purple and The Kite Runner and Saturday Night Lights are filth? Crap like this makes your side look like reactionary loonies, but based on your posts you seem to like that look.

[Nige]

'Crap like this makes your side look like reactionary loonies,'

Yeah, careful, Ed, your lot might get mistaken for reactionary loonies!

[Dr. Ed 2]

I want my country back.

[Nige]

It's often in the last pace you had it.

[Martinned]

Also a potentially controversial topic for the lawyers on this blog:

Lincoln’s Inn has been accused of “abandoning” the Christian faith after it outlawed saying grace before meals in order to be more “inclusive”.

The decision came after the law society pledged to boost its “purpose, relevance and diversity”.

The Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls and treasurer of the Inn for 2023, said: “It is a priority to continue to enhance the relevance of the Inn to all our members, and build an increasingly inclusive environment. “This will involve taking the time to correct outdated stereotypes.”

The institution, one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers belong, deemed “saying grace” to be an anachronism and decided it would instead “give thanks”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/09/lincoln-inn-accused-christianity-outlaw-grace-inclusive/

[Martinned]

Unsurprisingly, The Spectator is outraged: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/lincolns-inn-has-fallen-for-the-latest-fad/

[Brett Bellmore]

Was it mandatory before? If so, what's wrong with just giving people a choice, rather than forbidding it?

[Martinned]

Presumably the idea is that the Inns of Court shouldn't be endorsing one religion over another, or indeed over non-belief.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I get that, but they didn't go from mandatory to optional, they appear to have forbidden even voluntarily saying grace, if I read it right. (Not that you can count on such accounts being accurate...)

[Martinned]

This is about the way the prayer is said or not said for the collective meals. Every individual participant is free to pray as they please.

Quoting the Telegraph:

The society will no longer use the traditional Christian blessing: “Lord God, Heavenly Father, bless us and these Thy gifts which we receive from Thy bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

In its place will be: “In this moment of silence, let us give thanks for all that we are about to receive and for the company of this Honourable Society.”

[Bob from Ohio]

"give thanks "

To whom?

[Martinned]

That's an excellent question, that I wish someone had asked the Master of the Rolls.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Not an illusory being.

Which seems to rankle gullible pre-adolescents of all ages.

Do you believe all fairy tales to be true, Bob from Ohio, or just a privileged, elite few?

[Nelson]

Whomever you choose, Bob.

[Michael P]

In defense of legacy admissions to universities: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4144869-legacy-admissions-are-crucial-to-americas-higher-education-dominance/

[Martinned]

Right. American universities need to admit legacies because otherwise they wouldn't have enough funding. Even if that was right, wouldn't that suggest that they should be auctioning off a certain number of spots each year instead? Legacy admissions also favour the children of alumni who didn't donate, or didn't donate millions. Just put admissions up for sale to the highest bidder, and watch the money flow in!

[Dr. Ed 2]

We've already sold it to everyone else....

[hoppy025]

They really don't. Legacy really doesn't give any preferences without donations.

[jb]

The central thesis of this piece seems to be that the primary reason alumni donate to schools is to help their kids get in. But it doesn't offer any evidence to support this proposition. The only example they cite of a donor is Ken Griffin's donations to Harvard, but he donated much of that money before he even had kids and there's certainly nothing to indicate that this was his primary motivation.

Also there's people who donate lots of money to schools that they're not even alumni of; see the Koch brothers or Bill Gates as examples.

[Nige]

Jeffrey Epstein donated loads of money to science faculties like at MIT, apparently he wanted to 'seed humanity with his DNA.' Women who worked there had serious concerns, but naturally they were ignored and sidelined.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/19/20870858/jeffrey-epstein-science-philanthropy-donation-prestige-mit

[Martinned]

Meanwhile, the Illumina/Grail fiasco is the gift that keeps on giving. After getting their deal blocked by the FTC 5-0 and by the European Commission as well, after getting a half billion dollar fine for gun jumping, after getting their CEO fired over mismanaging the deal, Illumina is now being investigated by the SEC for "the "conduct and compensation" of certain members of the companies' management". This has to be some kind of record in terms of the most mismanaged acquisition ever.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-securities-regulator-probes-illumina-over-grail-deal-2023-08-11/

[Krayt]

I can't remember the names, but decades ago two companies bought each other, and there were lovely legal fights over screaming to each other, "You're not the boss of me!"

[Martinned]

Well, hostile takeovers can be good for a bit of fun. But that's not what this was.

[bevis the lumberjack]

I worked for the target of a hostile takeover once. One of the raider’s officers was their public spokesman for the deal.

In our hq office someone had made life sized color cardboard cutouts of the guys face and every urinal in the men’s restroom had one of them leaned up at the bottom. It was fun while it lasted.

[Sarcastr0]

I went to Gencon a couple of weeks ago, and RPG convention. I mostly play Pathfinder (based on the D&D open license chassis from the early 2000s), but here are some other games I got a chance to try:

-Dread: Rules light, and everytime you want to do something you play jenga. It was a wild west theme, and I played an incompetent deputy from the wrong genre. It was fun, but felt more like a party game than an RPG to my rules-cruncy self.

-Artemis Starship Simulator: Not an RPG, a video game. 7 players each take a station on a starship - pilot, weapons, science, communications, engineering, and a fighter pilot. I got there late so I played the Captain. Wrangling strangers to have a good time was a pretty great use of 2 hours.

-Star Trek Adventures: Making an RPG out of competence porn is tricky, but I think the system did it well. Had a good time playing an engineering Benzite who was good with guns. I'd play that again.

-The Littles Mi-Go: An individually crafted game where we all played 10-year-olds in a camp where everyone was a cultist of Hastur, or maybe just a psycho killer. Sort of like ET if ET was a tiny adorable baby Mi-Go. It was a sandbox with a simple overlay. We ended up being pretty directionless but got there in the end. Badly paced, though - I was disappointed in this one.

-Jason Statham's Big Vacation: there's this dude who does one page games. This was one of those. And it was as great as I'd hoped. You need to keep Jason Statham's boredom, death, and jail meters all low, all well contending with the deraigned Wesley Sniper. Not a lot of replayablility, but that just means try the guy's next game next time!

-Legend of the Five Rings: Built on the 5e chassis. I do enjoy the world, which manages to dodge Orientalism pretty well despite being written in the 1990s. 5e runs well on the table, but character creation felt like I was straighjacketed. Gonna stick with Pathfinder for now.

Wraith: The Oblivion: Another great system and setting that was suboptimally executed. I've wanted to play this game for a while, where players play themselves, and the evil shadow self of another player character. But the GM chose to start us newly dead, and so most of the game was taken up with answering questions about the setting. Sloooow. But the potential of the game was evident. Though not with my local crew; a different type of game than I currently play/run.

Pathfinder Second Edition: Finished off with this. Fine game; the rules still seem complicated to me. They're probably a strict upgrade from what I play, but at this point me and my friends can do Pathfinder in our sleep and I don't see us changing away from it.
--------------
I had a good time, learned a lot, but also won't be back for a while I don't think. I like more protracted games with the same group over and over I think. Lets you explore deeper more fun stuff. Plus it was exhausting! Also: no Unknown Armies, another game I've been wanting to try.

[Magister]

Did you hear anything about the coming 6th edition of Dungeons and Dragons?

[Sarcastr0]

Nope. But I didn’t spend a lot of time over at the WotC location.

Starfinder 2e is coming soon.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“Minor Parties and Independents File Notice of Appeal in Texas Ballot Access Case”

https://ballot-access.org/2023/08/07/minor-parties-and-independents-file-notice-of-appeal-in-texas-ballot-access-case/

I suppose that seeking fairer ballot access in Texas is part of a covert Republican plot – as established by conspiracy theorist magister in his magisterial posts.

(Notice that the Ballot Access News comment thread seems to be full of trolls, unlike the Volokh comment threads)

[Martinned]

It can be. There's a reason why many countries have laws that aim to prevent this exact thing happening. E.g. the UK Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, s. 28A(2):

(2)Where a request is made by a party under this section in relation to a description, the Commission shall register the description as a description of the party unless it is of more than six words in length or in their opinion it—
(a)would be the same as the name of a party or the registered description of a party which (in either case) is already registered in the register in which that party is applying to be registered,
(b)would be likely to result in electors confusing that party with another party which is already registered in respect of the relevant part of the United Kingdom,
(...)
(e)would be likely, were it to appear on a ballot paper issued at an election—
(i)to result in an elector being misled as to the effect of his vote, or
(ii)to contradict, or hinder an elector's understanding of, any directions for his guidance in voting given on the ballot paper or elsewhere

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/41/section/28A

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Yes, Texas is concerned about the possible confusion from including America’s Party of Texas, the Constitution Party of Texas, the Green Party of Texas and the Libertarian Party of Texas on the ballot.

Yeah, that's the ticket.

/sarc

https://fc7356f8-cf4d-4dbe-93f4-df616a9eda61.usrfiles.com/ugd/fc7356_28cdec01dcac44a782e96982e584c493.pdf

[Nige]

If the same billionaires who fund the Republicans create new parties or provide disproportionate support for existing parties that claim to be 'centrist' or 'extra iberal' in an effort to split the progressive vote, it's more a question of money in politics than ballot access.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

The Constitution Party of Texas will split the progressive vote?

I suppose it depends on how how much weed Texas progressives smoke before getting to the ballot box.

[Nige]

Might split the libertarian vote?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Let me see if I get this straight — voters who otherwise would have voted Libertarian will vote Constitution Party instead, and this would split the progressive vote...how, again?

[Nige]

You may have detected the flaw in their cunning plan.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

OK, then, what on earth does this have to do with "an effort to split the progressive vote"? Why did you even bring it up?

[Nige]

I'm gonna come clean: my mind went off on a tangent, thinking about the No Labels Party, which has nothing to do with what you posted per se. Sorry.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Thanks, I'm less confused now.

[Magister]

Margrave preferred filing fees to signatures to qualify for ballot access. And he will assure you he hates both parties in the evil duopoly, except that he hates the right wing one less and frequently leaps to defend the right. Oddly, that's the same party that is the leader in all the dirty tricks to gain and hold power, including voter suppression, election denial, ghost candidates and fake candidates.

Without signature requirements, the latter two tricks could be deployed at the last minute using anonymous dark money; with signature requirements, it takes a larger operation and more time to qualify and so here's at least a chance the trick will be discovered and responded to.

Margrave has consistently declined to explain how his proposals would actually help third parties at all; the ones that get on the ballot don't actually get significant numbers of votes, for obvious reasons. (He has expressed sympathy with ranked choice voting but actually wants to put runoffs or jungle primary contests into the general election.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You stumble right out of the gate:

“Margrave preferred filing fees to signatures”

No, you duopolist hack, the laws you support already require filing fees, often a proportion of the salary of the office sought. Naturally, that makes it fairly expensive to run for some offices.

I’d replace these ridiculous filing fees with nondiscriminatory fees. You ought to agree: if you really don’t think third parties will win, why should they make a down payment on a salary they won’t collect?

I’ve said that the Republican wing of the duopoly is *almost* as bad as your wing, and both wings are going in the same bad direction, the Dems just go faster. That’s not a major difference of principle.

Just acknowledge that the signature requirements you support have nothing to do with deterring Republican dirty tricks – they’re all about securing a monopoly for your retarded party and its almost-as-bad counterpart. Not to mention denying the principle of the secret ballot and subjecting third-party supporters to harassment.

“Margrave has consistently declined to explain how his proposals would actually help third parties at all”

They’ll help the voters *if* the voters want actual alternatives; if they cling to the Dems and Reps at least that will be through their free choice, not because the ballot was rigged as your allies want.

“actually wants to put runoffs or jungle primary contests into the general election”

Why are you and yours threatened by a top-two runoff? Aren’t you confident the top two will be a D and an R, the same outcome you want to obtain by ballot-rigging?

[Magister]

A "duopolist hack" would not need to do anything to preserve the current system; cluttering the ballot with vanity candidates will only lead to voter confusion, but the two parties have the resources to direct their partisans to find them on the Margrave ballot.

Unlike Margrave, I'm happy to have filing fees waived by demonstration of actual support. The Rent Is Too Damn High party would probably have a lot of support (every renter thinks the rent is too damn high) but none of its supporters would be able to contribute much money (because the rent is too damn high). Perhaps you could name an actual office with the very high cost you claim; how much money, and how many votes would be cast in the election for that office? But eliminating signature requirements (or support, demonstrated through previous election results or party registrations) would open the door to large numbers of vanity candidates and, yes, dirty tricks.

Some states have runoffs. In Georgia, Warnock won his past two elections only by prevailing in a runoff. Georgia's runoffs were created by a segregationist who wanted to dilute Black voting power. And yet it's one of Margrave's preferences.

Third parties get on the ballot in a lot of places; voters generally don't give them much support. So there your objective is already achieved, and the outcome is the voters' free choice. Adding more parties to those ballots won't change that. Ranked choice voting might, by making a first round vote for a third party candidate relatively inexpensive, and that might help third parties.

Finally, you claim that the Democrats have gone in a bad direction faster than Republicans, but I listed the dirty tricks that Republicans use: voter suppression, election denial (to the point of an attempted coup), ghost candidates (e.g., ones helping Republicans out in Florida), and fake candidates (it was people affiliated with the Republican party who worked to get Kanye West on the ballot in 2020, and not because they were trying to harm Donald Trump). What do Democrats do that is worse? (Besides defeating the candidates you prefer or hate less, that is.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“Georgia’s runoffs were created by a segregationist who wanted to dilute Black voting power. And yet it’s one of Margrave’s preferences.”

Piss off, raceturbator. And take your bait-and-switch tactics with you. If your true concern is “stolen votes” or fake parties, then runoffs and RCV would alleviate your concern. Now that you call these alternatives racist, you show that your protestations of wanting to reform the system are insincere.

“I’m happy to have filing fees waived by demonstration of actual support”

You jackboot-licking fascist, it’s more expensive to gather all those signatures than to pay a filing fee, so stop shedding your crocodile tears about easing the financial burden on third parties.

The laws impose both signature requirements *and* filing fees, like this easily discoverable guide in Washington state, which admits that "The salary of the office determines the filing fee."

https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/candidates/statecandidatesguide2021.pdf

So, when piss off, then be sure to take your gaslighting with you.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

(Oh, look, Washington has a jungle primary. Their pamphlet says if you pay the filing fee you won’t need signatures. Does that make them vulnerable to Republicans? If so, the runoff (and it's just as much a runoff as Georgia's, for all the babbling about primaries) would stop their dirty tricks, but runoffs are racist.)

[Magister]

Lots of name calling but no evidence that Democrats have gone in the same bad direction as Republicans but faster.

I've posted already about the racist roots of the Georgia run-off; no claim is made that every run-off was for racist purposes or even actually had racist effect. The intent of the Georgia change was, whether it worked as intended or not, to reduce the power of a non-majority block of voters. That could be a block of voters who support a minority position -- precisely the kind of block that third parties are supported by. So the tool that you favor to empower third parties is a tool that was used to disempower minority voters. Not much of a surprise that Margrave aligns with a segregationist.

Your example is laughably bad. A candidate for Washington state legislator would pay less than $600 and would still need to get tens of thousands of votes to win -- a pittance against campaign expenses for any real candidate. $1,740 for US House where you'd need well over 100K votes; same for US Senate where you'd need well over a million votes; $4000 for President (unclear if each elector pays that, or if it's doubled for the Vice President), also well over a million votes. The offices you could win without a large campaign expense are probably at the minimum $10 rate.

But your very own link explains that if a candidate doesn't have the money they can submit a petition instead, with at least one vote per dollar the fee would be.

Petitions in lieu of filing fee
Candidates without sufficient assets or income may submit a filing fee petition to pay the filing fee

No filing fee, no signatures? You could end up with a phone book sized ballot.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I updated the Washington example - I hadn't noticed they were a jungle primary. That is cool so long as the "primary" pretense is dropped and it's a general election subject to a runoff, with party endorsements marked on the ballot. It suited your purposes to ignore my corrections.

Your concern-trolling about third parties and minority votes is risible. If you were so concerned about minority voters, you wouldn't want to disenfranchise them by denying them the option of third-party voting.

You simply change your tune to suit the circumstances. You've both defended top-two runoffs (instant or otherwise) *and* called them racist.

[David Nieporent]

No filing fee, no signatures? You could end up with a phone book sized ballot.

No good; I've tried to explain that to him multiple times, and his response is to either shrug or make an illogical argument about paying for ballot access.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

To be clear, I’ve supported filing fees and he criticized me for that. Now he’s suddenly going on about what would happen if we dropped filing fees.

If you don’t want candidates to pay for the advertising space provided by a ballot position, then say so.

All I said was that filing fees should be nondiscriminatory, and certainly not based on the salary of the office.

Are you going to denounce your own party for allowing jungle primaries? They don't drop filing fees, but they're remarkably close to what I advocated - so long as they drop the "primary" pretense and put it in the general election, and so long as party endorsements are listed on the ballot.

What is the wide gulf between jungle primaries (good) and my version (racist phone book)?

[Magister]

I will heed your advice on this.

[Martinned]

Some states have runoffs. In Georgia, Warnock won his past two elections only by prevailing in a runoff. Georgia’s runoffs were created by a segregationist who wanted to dilute Black voting power.

Huh? What are you talking about? Someone winning because they persuaded more than 50% of the electorate to vote for them is exactly what you want in a democracy.

[Magister]

It was put there after a previous even more racist system was ended, presumably because multiple white candidates might split the vote and Black voters could give their preferred candidate a plurality.

Groover also authored the 1964 law which moved Georgia elections from plurality to the two-round system, in response to the end of the county unit system and the feared rise of African-American voting power in the state. Later he admitted to federal investigators that this means to dilute Black voting power has been racially motivated and that he has been a segregationist.

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

[Martinned]

Even assuming that is true, why would you think that a scenario where a black candidate wins because all the white voters split their vote between a handful of white candidates while the black voters all vote for a single black candidate to be particularly democratic? Racists get to vote just like other people.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

If you want to suppress black voters, limit their choices like magister wants to do.

[Martinned]

No, I want elections decided by majorities.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

How is there a conflict with ballot access?

[Magister]

Have you not observed Republicans trying to get abortion bans or block abortion rights with misleading ballot initiatives in low turnout elections? Kansas and Kentucky, but both failed. Certainly the correct solution to most dirty tricks is for the opponents to expose it and educate their supporters about it. For some time, Republicans used gay marriage votes to get their voters out, until they started losing those votes.

The Georgia run-offs may have more discouraged poorer Black voters who couldn't take time off in an extra day to vote again. (And they might not have actually helped the segregationist who pushed for them.) It seems to be shifting but fairly recently Democrats did better in years with presidential elections than in low turnout off-year elections. Warnock won his run-offs because Democrats worked hard and spent money to get enough turnout.

Turnout matters.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"The Georgia run-offs may have more discouraged poorer Black voters who couldn’t take time off in an extra day to vote again."

OK, let's suppose early-voting turns out to be a failed experiment and we're back to holding elections on a specific day.

Maybe you duopolist hacks can have a word with the people whose money you take, asking them if they'll kindly allow you to pass a law making election day a mandatory civic holiday. Make it so that punishing a worker for voting would be as much forbidden as punishing a worker for performing jury duty.

Of course, you'll need the approval of the business and financial interests to whom you're beholden, but maybe they'll be civic-minded enough to let you do it.

[Magister]

I've been frustrated twice trying to post a specific example, which fails each time while other posts succeed.

With three or more candidates, ranked choice or run-off voting can result in a loss for the one candidate who can beat all the others one on one. Specifically, with three candidates, a small minority favor Dave as first choice, and the rest of the voters are equally split between the other two candidates. In either system, Dave is eliminated, and whichever of the other two can pick up more of Dave's voters wins. But suppose everyone who didn't have Dave as first choice had Dave as second choice; Dave would beat either of the other candidates alone with his own first choice votes and the second choice votes of the candidate not participating.

The real solution to the dirty tricks is to expose them and educate voters to not be fooled by them, and to get out the vote for every election. But it doesn't always happen, and it would be irresponsible to make it easier to do these dirty tricks when there is no appreciable gain (third parties would remain marginal, as they are in elections now where they make it onto the ballot).

(What's with "Even assuming this is true"? Wikipedia has links to references, and you can find similar information all over the internet from reputable sources.)

[The Margrave of Azilia]

That law didn’t just apply to general elections; it applied to your party’s (Dem) primaries – where much of the real political action was.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tellingallamericansstories/upload/CivilRights_VotingRights.pdf

Democrats should nominate whom they please without the state offering its subsidies or superintendence.

It’s doubtful that the segregationsits were worried about third-party votes in statewide elections, since Ga was (and is) very restrictive toward third parties – which by your standards would be another legacy of segregation, though you somehow forgot to mention it.

But of course any system of “jungle primaries” or even instant runoffs would have the same plurality-discouraging effect, making all ballot reforms racist by your retarded definition..

You started off complaining that third parties would drain voters away from your duopolist (specifically Democratic) plantation. Now you denounce alternative systems as racist. Obviously your real motive is to keep genuine alternatives off the ballot.

At a time when many voters (including black voters) tell pollsters that they’d consider third parties in the context of a Biden/Trump rematch, you’re desperately trying to disenfranchise those voters by denying them the chance to vote for alternative candidates. You’re just a standard-issue duopolist wanting to keep voters – which definitely includes black voters – on your plantation.

[Magister]

Margrave again misrepresents what I've said in this thread. He howls into the void at the unfairness of rich Republican donors having to pay a few thousand extra to put their multi-million dollar presidential spoiler candidates on ballots. Somehow the party he insists is moving in a bad direction faster isn't doing the same thing.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Above, you took it as a sort of law of nature that employers can punish their workers for the act of voting.

Such behavior should be a crime, but if you tried to make it a crime your corporate graft might dry up.

These are *your* donors, and their investments pay off. Often they invest in both duopoly parties, showing how much *real* difference there is between them.

[Magister]

What are you talking about? Where did I ever bring up employers?

It is unfortunate that every successful party has to spend a lot of time raising money from rich donors. Campaign finance reform like McCain-Feingold? Scuttled by the Republican Supreme Court. Which party has more candidates rejecting corporate PAC money? Democrats.

The two party system often requires voting for the lesser of two evils, and someone might not like the Democrats over policies, but they are better than the Republicans in terms of democracy.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You mentioned poor black voters not being able to get off work to vote in a runoff.

As if that weren't a choice by employers to create that situation. Make it like jury service, no discrimination for doing a civic duty.

You just take it for granted employers can get away with that, so spare me the anti-corporate spiel.

[Magister]

Unlike Margrave, I was already aware that Georgia has a law requiring employers to give their employees two hours off to vote. But it can be unpaid time, and it's revealing that Margrave believes that no discrimination could occur if there were such a law.

I'll go back now to heeding David Nieporent's good advice, since Margrave won't answer my questions.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/08/14/coffee-shop-employee-diversity-promises/70547157007/

From major chains to local shops, the coffee business is disproportionately white. Data shows little progress made, despite cafes’ recent pledges.

All you racist white liberals aren’t buying your racist coffee from enough indigenous BIPOC transgender queers in wheelchairs.

The Pentagon needs to do something about this threat to National War Fighting. Maybe it can redirect the Demigender Task Force to focus on the on-base Starbucks instead of reworking fitness and health policy to increase diversity (and thus our Nation’s War Fighting Capabilities).

[SimonP]

Eugene: I am one of the few commenters here who have been a bit alarmed by the strange sense of omerta that has descended on the VC, when it comes to the alleged actions of John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, and other lawyers and law professors with a central role in Trump’s efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.

I would think that you, as with other law professors, would want to say a word or two for law students, clerks, and other lawyers-in-training about our responsibility to uphold the law and our constitutional system, and about drawing the line between making aggressive but colorable legal arguments serving the interests of our clients, on the one hand, and making arguments (however plausible) that ultimately threaten our democracy and the rule of law itself, on the other.

I cannot fathom why you and other pedagogues would not be saying more on this topic. Whatever one might think about Trump, his policies, his rhetoric, etc., there is line that lawyers must not cross, and it seems clear that Eastman, Chesebro, Giuliani, et al., crossed it.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Simon wants to live in Nazi Germany.

[Nige]

You want to execute scientists, jail judges, ban books and suppress academic discourse all in this comment thread alone. Is it nostalgia you’re feeling?

[David Nieporent]

Don't forget his masturbatory desire to mass murder families at the southern border of the U.S.

[Nelson]

And his desire for civil war. That one's the creepiest.

[SimonP]

The lawyers advising Trump expected to use the military to put down liberal protests after their scheme succeeded. It was only the military's refusal to go along with the scheme that stopped them from exploring that option more. That plan probably explains some of the strange last-minute shuffling of military leadership that we saw Trump engage in, during the same period.

Tell me more about Nazi Germany.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If the Commander in Chief makes an order and the Military refuses and acts on it's own what do you call that?

[SimonP]

The military is sworn to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, not to serve Trump. They are permitted to disregard an illegal order.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Who says it was an illegal order?

[SimonP]

Are we talking about a specific order? Like I said, the idea of using the military to put down liberal protests in blue cities was floated, but abandoned, when it seemed unlikely that the top military brass would go along with the scheme.

If Trump were actually to have ordered the military to violently suppress protests over his seizure of power, that would certainly have been illegal.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Simon, look up Lord Jeffery Amherst and not the part about the blankets.

The British ordered him to fight the Americans and he instead resigned his commission and went home to England.

Simon, look at MacArthur -- Truman fired him.
And Trump could have fired Generals until he found an ambitious LtC willing to follow orders.

[SimonP]

And Trump could have fired Generals until he found an ambitious LtC willing to follow illegal orders.

FTFY.

Also, don't forget - he tried.

[David Nieporent]

The British ordered him to fight the Americans and he instead resigned his commission and went home to England.

This is a bit reminiscent of the old Rocky & Bullwinkle segment "Fractured Fairy Tales," except for history. Everything Dr. Ed says is either completely made up or based on things he heard thirty years ago and half-remembers, badly. This, for instance, did not happen. Amherst did not resign because he didn't want to fight the Americans.

Also, Truman did not relieve MacArthur for refusing to execute Truman's orders; Truman relieved MacArthur for being insubordinate by trying to go beyond what Truman wanted him to do, both diplomatically and militarily.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

They went along with the scheme in DC after J6, right?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Trump should have used the Insurrection Act back in June of 2020.

Back then it wouldn't have been political, it would have been against the BLM thugs and the majority of the military (rank & file) would have supported doing that. Don't forget all the high level officers that Obama purged -- that was part of this.

And what you are talking about is more what would have happened had Trump "officially" won and the BLM started rioting over it -- and THEN Trump tried to use the Insurrection Act.

[Sarcastr0]

Why not machine guns, Ed? Or A-10s?

[Dr. Ed 2]

I would not be surprised that somewhere in the Pentagon there are classified contingency plans to use both in implementing the Insurrection Act should the situation so justify that level of force.

[Sarcastr0]

Sure, the Pentagon has tons of plans.

But you in the past have talked about actual bloody execution, not just planning. Seems the low bar you set re: illegals would be well met by BLM in the summer of '20.

[Nige]

Trump didn't give a shit about the BLM protests except inasmuch as they kept his supporters mad because they hate it when black people get uppity and act like they have rights in this country that aren't dependant on the begrudging sufferance of white people.

[not guilty]

Donald Trump will likely claim that he relied on legal advice from his co-conspirators in order to negate or rebut proof that he acted with the culpable mental state required for conviction. The Government will no doubt elicit testimony from the more responsible lawyers who advised Trump that the schemes proposed by Eastman. Chesebro, Giuliani, Powell, et al were bogus and illegal.

Such a defense focusing on Trump's state of mind will be much more difficult to present if Trump elects not to testify. The co-conspirators are likely to exercise their Fifth Amendment privilege to decline to testify (unless one or more reaches a plea/cooperation agreement with the Special Counsel).

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Two lawyers give a person different advice, and the person takes one lawyer's advice and not the other.

You want to make that a crime.

[Dr. Ed 2]

They want to make being named Trump a crime.

[SimonP]

Here, the "advice" in question was: "Here's a way that you can scramble the electoral votes and force a crisis on J6 that will result in the House selecting you as President. All you have to do is get some fake electors to sign documents attesting to be the 'legitimately-elected' electors for their respective states, and send those to Congress."

It was legal "advice," in other words, in furtherance of a fraud on the US. Which is exactly what Trump has been indicted for.

[Dr. Ed 2]

How is that different from the way that Nobama Nocare was passed? The US Constitution says that all spending bills must originate in the House but what the Senate did -- taking an unrelated House bill, stripping it bare and replacing the text with the full text of Nobama Nocare...

Are we going to indict US Senators for that?!?

[SimonP]

Ed, I am not going to pretend to have an adult conversation with someone who insists on acting like a child.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

He doesn't know what you're talking about.

He's a Democrat.

[SimonP]

I know what he's talking about. I just don't see any reason to bother responding to Ed's off-base argument in defense of perpetrating a fraud on the U.S., when he can't even formulate it without using some right-wing online jargon that no one in the real world uses.

But you must know that, don't you, genius?

[not guilty]

"Two lawyers give a person different advice, and the person takes one lawyer’s advice and not the other.

You want to make that a crime."

Consider a hypothetical. A lawyer advises his client that, although he has no supporting authority, that although statutes criminalize bank robbery, he believes that such statutes are unconstitutional. Other lawyers advise that the first lawyer's advice is seriously inaccurate.

The client thereafter robs a bank. Can he rely on advice of counsel as a defense?

[OtisAH]

We’ll know if Turnip decides to testify the day his entire legal team asks to be dismissed.

[loki13]

There is the old line about, "Physician, heal thyself."

So long as individuals such as Clark and Eastman are still treated as respectable conservative attorneys by others within the conservative legal community, there will never be a real deterrent effect.

IIRC, the VC announced with great pride when Clark was named as the head of a litigation group- one that EV served on the BOD for.

From a rational standpoint, I kind of get it. There is little to gain by writing anything- after all, say something critical and the True Believers will just call you a Woke Socialist (or whatever), while if you say nothing, you can maintain a plausible veneer of ethics. But integrity does not condone silence.

[grb]

Aside from his ethical failures as a lawyer, Clark is an amoral weasel as human being. Remember, his fifteen minutes of fame came from a back-stabbing power-grab at DOJ. He would give Trump an excuse to ask states to delay certification based on a Justice “investigation” into voting fraud that didn’t exist. As an exchange, he wanted acting-AG Rosen out and himself appointed head of the Justice Department.

And it almost worked. Call logs released by the Jan 6 committee Thursday show Clark called the White House four times on 03Jan, the day his scheme to seize the head job seemed within reach.

At 7:07 a.m. and again at 7:38 a.m, the logs show calls from “Mr. Jeffrey Clark.” Again at 1:13 p.m., the log lists a call from “Mr. Jeffrey Clark.”

But when Clark called again at 4:19 p.m., the logs showed different. This time, Clark was recorded as “acting Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.” The log suggests Trump had agreed to the deal. Only the threat of mass resignations at DOJ prevented it.

[Ridgeway]

When you read the DC indictment of Trump, Clark's behavior is so odious as to make the other [alleged] co-conspirators look virtuous in comparison.

[Michael Ejercito]

After what Kevin Clinesmith did, why should I care about Clark.

[Nige]

Kevin Clinesmith is history's greatest monster, for the purposes of excusing Trump's lawyers.

[OtisAH]

After a couple years of you not giving a shit about January 6th or any other criminal activity by Big Baby’s administration, why would you think anyone would think you’d care about Clark?

[SimonP]

I appreciate that state bars need to pursue their own disciplinary efforts, to the extent that they can.

My comment was specifically directed to the fact that Eugene (and certain other VCers) view the VC as a platform for communicating with law students, clerks, and other academics.

I remember one particular lecture from my legal ethics professor, in my law school days, where he advised all of us to think of ourselves more broadly than as just zealous advocates applying the law to maximum advantage. He advised us to cultivate ourselves as whole human beings, with interests and values outside the law per se. Similarly, lawyers in the US must always remember that they are officers of the court and have a deeper loyalty to our legal institutions than the narrow interests of corrupt goons. We are not just legal calculators seeking savvy ways to achieve the most outrageous ends (like Josh views himself).

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Eugene: I am one of the few commenters here who have been a bit alarmed by the strange sense of omerta that has descended on the VC, when it comes to the alleged actions of John Eastman, Ken Chesebro, and other lawyers and law professors with a central role in Trump’s efforts to stay in office after losing the 2020 election.

This is not a legal or academic blog so much as a disaffected, polemically right-wing, faux libertarian, bigot-friendly blog.

#Cowards
#Hacks
#Hypocrites
#Losers
#TheBestConservativeLegalAcademiaCanOffer

[Michael Ejercito]

Kevin Clinesmith lied to a FISA court to obtain a warrant to spy on a political campaign, and was not disbarred.

[SimonP]

He was charged with a crime, pleaded guilty, and sentenced. He was also temporarily suspended by the bar, for one year.

All for making a false representation to the FISA court, a representation he thought to be true, as part of getting a search warrant.

So let's see... what would be the proportionate penalty for a lawyer who sought to aid Trump's effort to seize power?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I enjoy your whining, Michael Ejercito.

Whimpering, defeated, disaffected clingers might just be my favorite culture war casualties.

Why not tell us about how the culture war's winner might be pushing guys like you too far, and what you think you're going to do about it? That's always good for a chuckle, too. Maybe get Prof. Blackman to join you.

[DaveM]

"Eugene: I am one of the few commenters here who have been a bit alarmed by the strange sense of omerta that has descended on the VC ..."

But can one truly be merely a "bit alarmed" about a code of silence? Either the VC is guilty of being run like the Mafia, or it isn't.

Of course, I understand not wanting to come off as one of the Usual Suspects who snipe regularly here on the VC. But still.

[Moderation4ever]

I saw this article in one of my local papers about the treatment of opiate addiction and overdose at ERs. We have treatment medication to reduce opiate cravings, buprenorphine and yet it is under prescribed to patients leaving the ER. The article also suggests that we are not doing enough to train medical students on treating addiction. Too much of the news is on the supply side of the drug problem. About the failure to stop smuggling. Fighting drug addiction on the supply side is expensive and unproductive. We need to focus on the demand side and do more to help users. This is where the money can be most effectively used.

https://captimes.com/news/business/addiction-treating-drug-still-seldom-prescribed-in-ers-study-finds/article_40e51dcf-dbd7-5aec-8ceb-d3f91e8fcbbf.html

[Dr. Ed 2]

I find this infuriating for a very different reason:
"542,000 visits in which the patient was diagnosed with opioid addiction, also called opioid use disorder. The latter group includes patients who came to the emergency room seeking help with an addiction, as well as those who came seeking opioids that ER doctors determined should not be prescribed. [emphasis added]

I have intentionally chosen not to have three surgeries because I knew that I would not be given a sufficient quantity of pain medication. Why should *I* be punished for what other schmucks do???

That said, SAMHSA says (Jul 18, 2023) that "Buprenorphine is an opioid partial agonist. It produces effects such as euphoria or respiratory depression at low to moderate doses."

Now why might it not be a good idea to prescribe this to someone who has already just overdosed on an opiate?!?!?!? Sure it is only a partial opioid agonist but that's like saying that Beer is only a weak alcohol.

How about DeTox wards -- in prisons if need be....

[Dr. Ed 2]

Question for the trial lawyers:

Massive Hawaiian conflagration with much property damage and hundreds likely killed.

Assume for the sake of argument that (a) it was a downed power line that actually started it, and (b) Hawaiian authorities thought they had it under control/extinguished at 9AM but really didn't, who is going to be liable for all the damages?

I can see the power company saying "yes, we are responsible for the little fire that didn't destroy anything, but not for the bigger one that was caused by the fire department f*cking up as badly as they did.

[loki13]

"Question for the trial lawyers:"

Answer: Who has the deep pockets?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Apparently a lawsuit has already been filed against the utility, which stated that it does not comment on pending litigation.

The deep pockets is Maui County and their gross GROSS negligence appears to be the cause here -- municipal entities are usually protected by the 11th Amendment (and whatever state tort procedures there are) but I could see an intrepid lawyer convincing the 9th Circuit that the 14th Amendment essentially repealed part of the 11th for situations like this.

It's the old adage that "the king can do no wrong" and "you can't sue the king in his own courts" -- which if we *still* believed would instantly eliminate all the stuff against Trump. We don't still believe this.

But as you mentioned, it's deep pockets and the utility can (and likely will) declare bankruptcy -- the stockholders will get screwed but I doubt that there will be enough money and you neither can liquidate an electric utility nor would its assets bring much. Miles of used powerline would only be scrap metal, and that's less the cost of removing it and shipping it 3000 miles to a recycler, etc.

So then the true deep pocket is the County with its ability to tax.

Unless Brandon decides a Federal bailout, similar to the post-911 one, which he may do because of the 11th Amendment issues.

[hoppy025]

Even the 11th Amendment has been twisted into a pretzel. It was intended to prevent a resident of one state from suing another in federal court. NOT to prevent a resident of a state from suing his own state in federal court.

[David Nieporent]

The deep pockets is Maui County and their gross GROSS negligence appears to be the cause here — municipal entities are usually protected by the 11th Amendment (and whatever state tort procedures there are) but I could see an intrepid lawyer convincing the 9th Circuit that the 14th Amendment essentially repealed part of the 11th for situations like this.

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Municipal entities are not protected by the 11th amendment, but I have no idea what "14th amendment" claims Dr. Ed bizarrely thinks apply anyway.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The schools were closed and there were hundreds of children left at home alone.

No alarms, no sirens, no warnings.

No fire response. It was an unmitigated Democrat Government failure and they will cover it up and a bunch of rich Democrate elites will find themselves with some really sweet beachfront property. (Climate Change protected of course!)

[Dr. Ed 2]

It is far worse than even that.

First, these fires are fueled by non-native grasses, invasive plants that have been appearing on the island for the past decade -- well, REMOVE THEM! Herbicides come to mind. Controlled burns come to mind. Permitting livestock to graze the land apparently was proposed and rejected in the past -- goats will eat anything and herds of goats (and portable fencing) are being used elsewhere (in US) to clear brush under powerlines.

Second, they apparently lost water along with electricity. My guess is no Diesel backup pumps, there is no excuse for that. But fire trucks can draft (pump) out of the ocean -- I've seen it done. It's not good for the trucks and you definitely want to rinse them out afterwards, but salt water works even better on a fire because it has a higher boiling temperature, taking more heat per gallon out of the fire.

Third, they "lost communication" and the team fighting the initial fire couldn't tell base how bad things were getting. Well, not having heard from them and not getting answers to status calls (if anyone thought to make any), no one thought of driving out there to see what was going on?

Fourth, they had time for mutual aid to arrive.

Fifth, even if your pole sirens are down, your police cars still have sirens. And PAs -- they could have been used.

Even by clusterf*ck Democrat standards, this was bad...

[John F. Carr]

Removing invasive ground cover is hard. How would you exterminate tumbleweed from the West?

Hawaii's ecology has been mostly destroyed by humanity.

[Dr. Ed 2]

First, if these non-native grasses are as flammable as claimed, controlled burns come to mind, particularly in the immediate vicinity of power lines and other ignition sources (eg highways). Or just spray herbicides — that’s what MassDOT does along the sides of state highways (where they don’t mow).

And mowing the side of interstates started in the 1950s as a means of preventing forest fires -- people throwing cigarettes out the window. The safety aspects of level & mowed sides came later.

It’s a *controlled* burn which means you have twice the number of guys and twice the equipment you think you will need — and you don’t do it when hurricane force winds are blowing. And you only do one at a time, which is how MassDCR wound up spending most of last summer fighting a fire at Breakheart Reservation — they had two controlled burns that combined into one big one...

Or you bring in farm animals. I’m serious about people renting out goat herds to clear municipal parks and golf courses — goats are pretty and their feces is small enough not to be an issue, and they’ll eat *anything*… Sheep will too, remember the range wars sparked by the fact that sheep ate the roots of the grass so cattle couldn’t graze? Cattle eat a lot so if they like these grasses, they will keep them under control. And pigs essentially rototill the land — between their relatively small feet and their habit of rooting in the ground for grubs or roots or something, quickly killing every living plant on the land — and then just plant native grasses in the tilled/fertilized soil.

It may not be possible to do this to the entire island (although there is a market for these animals, and Hawaii does have a beef industry) but doing it 100 yards either side of powerlines is inherently feasible, particularly those within a couple of miles of town….

But these are Democrats…

[Nige]

Ah yes, after everything else, inflict overgrazing on the island. Brilliant.

[Ed Grinberg]

Far-Right Libertarian Wins Argentina's Presidential Primary
Good for them! I guess they've had enough of "progressive" governance.

[Martinned]

Let's see how the second round goes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Argentine_general_election

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Don't worry the WEF Globalists and the CIA & State Department will fortify the election and that why the people will end up voting for the correct candidate.

[grb]

Voltage!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I hope your teletype machine has that macro'd, that's gotta be a lot of work for those fingers of yours.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Any Leftists care to provide some insights as to why all the State/Lefty hate for the blue collar anthem Rich Men North of Richmond?

[grb]

Well, ya got me to look it up at least. Apparently it’s a twangy soulful bluegrass tune of right-wing victimhood – squeezing in welfare queens (fat ones at that!), Epstein, and taxes. Seems pretty harmless to me, though it helps that I’m originally from east of Richmond, not north. (Therefore, I don’t have to take it personally)

That said, are you really claiming victimhood about a whiny song of victimization? Jeez, but you people are so addicted to your snowflake petulant whinging!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Hey, go here:
https://www.google.com/

And start typing in the song title. Weird, huh?

[DaveM]

Your compassion oozes from every word. Noted.

[jb]

I know a lot of lefty people, and not a one of them has mentioned this song in any context. You seem to be confusing "hate" with "indifference".

[OtisAH]

Why don’t you supply some of this “hate” from lefty people for a song nobody’s heard? There’s so much of it after all.

[SimonP]

(BCD is apparently engaged in a guerrilla marketing campaign for some low-quality song/artist, whereby MAGA gets all whipped up and spending money on music just to own the libz.)

(No, I don't have any idea what he's talking about, either. But I don't have a 160 IQ, so.)

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

He's no Mojo Nixon.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-rLHYsQHgc

You might want to google the lyrics also.

[DaveM]

It’s a blue collar protest song, so I doubt anyone on the Left would be interested in it. That used to be their people a generation ago, but certainly not today.

Speaking from a songwriting perspective, the song is very powerful, and it does deserve all the attention it’s getting. Very reminiscent of protest folk songs from the 1960s. Once you hear it, you won’t easily forget it.

https://youtu.be/sqSA-SY5Hro

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The FDA has now said in court filings that doctors could always prescribe Ivermectin for COVID, and their comments to the contrary were just funny quips.

That's weird.

[grb]

1. The FDA doesn’t have the authority to prevent doctors from prescribing Ivermectin for COVID.

2. Based on scientific studies, Ivermectin is worthless as a treatment for COVID. There is no physiological difference in right-wing dupes, gulls, morons, imbeciles and sheeple that make them an exception. Therefore the FDA has repeatedly warned people it’s useless to take a useless treatment. (and that’s pretty reasonable, when you think of it).

I don’t see the contradiction here. Please note many state medicine boards do object to doctors prescribing worthless treatments for a disease (even if they do so to dupes, gulls, morons, imbeciles and sheeple).

[loki13]

Yes. As a general rule, doctors have incredible latitude in prescribing “off label” uses for prescription medications.

Personally, I am very much in favor if this. However, I would not that this has also caused problems in the past. Specifically, some phrama companies started to get into the habit of getting a drug approved for one thing, and then would heavily promote it for other uses through the use of “thought leaders” and by sending doctors to conferences and paying out bonuses for lot of prescriptions … thereby creating new markets for their drugs without the whole bother of getting FDA approval for the use.

Which, you know, is kind of an issue. IIRC, Pfizer got into a lot of trouble over Neurontin on this specific issue.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Regarding your first point:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/doctors-sue-fda-over-unlawful-attempts-to-prohibit-ivermectin-use-301560501.html

Weird, huh?

[grb]

BravoCharlieDelta : Weird, huh?

No. Once again: The lawsuit's complaint is the FDA publicly said Ivermectin is worthless for COVID. But that public statement does not constitute an "unlawful attempt to prohibit Ivermectin's use".

Do we need to explain this to you a third time, BCD?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

DeSantis and his surgeon general promoted ivermectin in Floriduh during the Delta death surge….it was ineffective. Oops. 😉

[grb]

1. DeSantis turned on a dime from promoting vaccines to demonizing them. This switch synched right with his presidential ambitions - because that's the kinda hollow-shell whore he is.

2. DeSantis' Surgeon General made a habit of going on the freakiest far-right news outlets to trash vaccines. He also was caught doctoring a vaccine trial report to falsely claim vaccines were a health risk.

3. Turning back to the principle-free prostitute, DeSantis recently suggested he appoint wack-job RFK Jr. to head the FDA or CDC. I don't know if this was before-or-after he bragged about "slitting throats" on becoming president. As George Will note in a column yesterday, it is always the weak and cowardly who spend all their time play-acting "tough"....

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So I learned an interesting stat listening to an old Stone Choir podcast over the weekend.

There are about 330,000 other people at or around my IQ in the US.

However, if I had been born in Africa, I would only have about 1,300 peers on the entire continent!

Fascinating! I'd go from 4 standard deviations above the mean to 6! Crazy.

[grb]

Voltage!

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The data say what the data say, grb.

[Mr. Bumble]

Fucking Redidy Kilowatt.

[grb]

(for those who don't know, the main person behind the Stone Choir podcast is Corey Mahler, an ardent Nazi who said he believes Hitler is in Heaven. Where BCD gets his news, huh?)

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Attack the Messenger, lol

Smart

[grb]

I find it significant you get your white supremist messaging directly from a Nazi. Kinda clarifies things, doesn't it?

[Krychek_2]

Four standard deviations above the mean is 160. Better than 90% of Mensans don't have IQs four standard deviations above the mean. So while I suppose it is possible that your IQ is four standard deviations above the mean, you've produced little evidence for that here.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I have a terminal degree in an engineering field. hbu?

Meanwhile, you believe human biological sex is on a spectrum.

[OtisAH]

You have two semesters at DeVry. At best.

[Krychek_2]

I served four years on American Mensa's board of directors.

You may have a terminal degree in an engineering field, but on this lowly legal blog you consistently get your head handed to you for logical fallacies (your favorite seems to be undistributed middle). Others, most if not all of whom do not have IQs four standard deviations above the mean, have no trouble picking off the bad arguments you frequently make. Look no further than your claim that believing the human biological sex is on a spectrum is a sign of low intelligence; that conclusion does not follow from that premise.

So, maybe you really do have an IQ of 160; I would just bet against it based on your inability to follow simple arguments.

[SimonP]

It's funny to me how frequently these narcissistic, master-of-the-universe types - who nonetheless can't debate their way out of a paper bag - prove to be engineers of some stripe or another. Brett has an engineering background, too. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more present.

[Krychek_2]

Simon, I have a theory on that. In the STEM fields, there typically is only one right answer to any given question. We do not have competing periodic tables. We do not have competing schools of mathematics that disagree on the value of pi. There is only a single quadratic formula. In math and science, the world really does fit neatly into black-and-white, yes-or-no, binaries with only one right answer.

In politics, law and philosophy, there is almost never only a single right answer. You have to balance competing interests, solving one problem often results in creating another, and you have to make choices between multiple bad options. It's not black or white; it's all about nuance and values and practicalities.

So the fact that someone is a good engineer probably means they'd be a lousy office holder. They would insist that there is only one way of looking at any given problem. So, maybe they should stick to what they're good at.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Krychek,

That is a resoundingly ignorant statement. Engineering is applying math and science to solve real-world problems.

Engineering often requires a significant amount of analysis, creativity, and judgment on top of just knowing procedures, laws, and equations.

Frankly, it’s mindblowing that you have such an ignorant view of what engineering even is.

That’s stunning. If you had any shame you would never even mention the word "engineering" again. You can't even differentiate it from math or science!

What a profound demonstration of your ignorance.

[Krychek_2]

No it’s not. You may be applying math and science to a problem you haven’t seen before, but you don’t get to reject math and science if you don’t like the results. There’s a difference between saying, “I’ve never applied a differential equation to this specific problem” versus saying “Differential equations conflict with my values so I don't think they're useful for problem solving." Those are two very different approaches.

Math and science get to use the first approach; not the second. Or at least not if it still wishes to be considered math and science. Politicians, on the other hand, do it all the time, and sometimes it even produces good results.

[SimonP]

BCD, you have ably demonstrated what I have asserted about engineers.

Krychek may or may not have captured the essence of engineering, but the core of his point was to say that, for engineers, there are "right" and "wrong" answers, whereas in the humanities, "right" and "wrong" are seldom so easily defined or as clearly determinable.

Your response completely fails to address his point, taking issue with how he described engineering as a discipline (even though, curiously, he doesn't seem to have said anything about engineers' lack of analytical ability, creativity, or judgment). Nothing in your comment directly refutes the point he has made.

In so doing, you have failed to argue yourself out of a wet paper bag. Quod erat demonstrandum.

[Krychek_2]

Not only that, I started out by discussing the STEM fields, which, for BCD's benefit since he probably doesn't know this, are science, technology, engineering and mathematics. So to the extent that I lumped engineering and mathematics together, it's because the university considers them part of the same family of disciplines. And, as SimonP points out, none of BCD's table pounding responds to my central point.

[Magister]

Mathematics is not as cut and dried as you suggest. For example, there are a number of statements that are independent of the usual axioms of set theory (which are only usual now because Russell's paradox blew up naive set theory), such as the continuum hypothesis. And mathematicians are happy to study the consequences of different systems of axioms; e.g., non-Euclidean geometry.

It is fair to say that engineers work with the kind of mathematics that calculates results rather than the kind that proves things. Mathematicians are of course above that sort of thing.

[SimonP]

Magister: I thought about making this point, as well, but on reflection I think that Krychek's point about mathematics is still basically correct. That is, even though you are right that mathematics can get pretty funky when you leave a certain narrow realm, it still largely proceeds via proofs, whose validity is usually objectively determinable - or, as objectively as is possible.

It's all logic, in the end, and logic is just what we humans all agree that it is. So there isn't a clear line distinguishing truths of the STEM fields and the truths of us word-mongers. But BCD is not really capable of that level of metatheory, I gather. We have to dumb it down for Mr. 160 IQ.

[Magister]

I'm still going to defend the honor of mathematics, queen of the sciences. The discussion linking mathematics with engineering is at best about applied mathematics, the kind that calculates results, as I previously said.

I would also add that the real power of mathematical logic is in what cannot be proved, rather than what can.

[SimonP]

I would also add that the real power of mathematical logic is in what cannot be proved,...

How can you show that something "cannot be proved," without a proof?

[Magister]

Excellent question!

To show that there is a proof of something, it suffices to find a proof. But to prove that there is no proof for something, we need to somehow capture all the possible proofs and then prove that none of them is a proof for that something. Gödel proved that, in a sufficiently rich and sound logical system, it is possible to construct a statement which is both true and not provable.

The essential step is to encode statements and proofs as Gödel numbers, and demonstrate that there is a predicate that says x is the Gödel number of a proof for a statement with Gödel number y (hence the need for a sufficiently rich logical system, which can do the arithmetic needed to code and decode sequences of symbols via prime factorization or some other encoding).

The statement that is true but not provable has Gödel number y and essentially says "for all x, x is not a proof of y" (it is not obvious that such a statement can reference its own Gödel number, but it's similar to quines in computing, which are computer programs that output their own text).

If the statement coded as y is false, then there is such an x which encodes a proof of y, and then it must in fact be true because it has a proof (which is why soundness is required for the logical system). If it can't be false, it must be true; but then also it does not have a proof in that logical system, or that proof would encode as x that demonstrates the statement is false.

Somewhere in a box I have a textbook about logic that starts with a quotation from a 19th century mathematician, roughly along the lines of "what use is logic? if it takes many steps to prove that 1 is a number, how many steps would be needed to prove a real theorem?" One could say the same about Turing machines; any real computation by Turing machine would be impossibly slow, and so real computers use a different architecture. But if we accept that Turing machines capture all possible computations, we can prove that there are things no Turing machine can compute, without ever building one - e.g., the halting problem.

[SimonP]

Magister: I was attempting a bit of a joke. I am actually familiar with Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, having studied it myself, though I haven't delved into its implications or know much about how, as you say, the "real power of mathematical logic" lies in what cannot be proved.

I had wondered if perhaps you were thinking more along the lines of things that haven't been proved, but also haven't been proved to be unprovable - things like the Riemann hypothesis or other conjectures - or perhaps instead of things that have been proven, but have been extraordinarily difficult to prove for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

[Magister]

Sorry! Too many years studying logic leads me to go on far beyond even my usual prolixity. Briefer explanation by amusing link:
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/applications

[Voize]

We do not have competing periodic tables.

Types of periodic tables.

We do not have competing schools of mathematics that disagree on the value of pi.

I appreciate the care you took in phrasing that, perhaps because you appreciate that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter does in fact vary in curved space.

[Magister]

Also, Pi Day (for those who celebrate) is on March 14th in the US and the 22nd of July in Europe.

[grb]

SimonP : "It’s funny to me how frequently these narcissistic, master-of-the-universe types – who nonetheless can’t debate their way out of a paper bag – prove to be engineers of some stripe or another"

On the other hand, Architects are pretty much 100% correct!

[Dr. Ed 2]

"I served four years on American Mensa’s board of directors."

I considered Mensa an incredibly sophomoric organization that wasn't worth my membership fee...

[Krychek_2]

You're entitled to your opinion.

[YepThatGuy]

Unrelated to BCD and his nonsense, but related to your time on the Mensa Board:

I'm not a member of Mensa, but if I am remembering correctly, I qualify based on a childhood (maybe teenage years) IQ test, as well as a 99th percentile LSAT. Does Mensa ever (and if so, how frequently ) debate amongst itself (or does the board, for that matter) modifying eligibility criteria? I would imagine, for example, that the various revisions of the SAT over the years would at least have caused movement of the score on that test that makes one eligible.

Maybe more of interest to me as I ignore work for a few more minutes: any inside baseball you care to share on those types of discussion during your time there?

[Krychek_2]

The standard for Mensa eligibility is to have an IQ that is in the highest 2 percentile. Mensa has a resident psychologist whose job includes evaluating which testing methods provide an accurate IQ measurement, which may change as any given test is revised.

For example, at one time it was possible to get into Mensa based on your SAT scores, but changes to the SAT make it no longer reliable as a measure of IQ. I believe that may be true of the LSAT as well; I got into Mensa based on my LSAT score but I'm not sure that is still possible. Mensa itself offers IQ testing (which I used to proctor) and if you want to know your IQ, taking the Mensa entrance exam is a cheap way to find out. And if you take the Mensa entrance exam and fail (meaning you score below the 2nd percentile) you will be provided a list of other tests that are acceptable and you are welcome to take some of the alternatives. If you pass one of them, you'll be invited to join.

I don't think you're going to see the basic eligibility requirement -- IQ in the second percentile -- change, but there are changes to how best to measure it. And, there is evidence that the general population's IQ is increasing, which of course means the raw IQ number that constitutes a second percentile IQ will likely change as well.

By the way, at one of our national conventions, the most popular lecture was on the subject of why do smart people do stupid things. Everyone wanted to attend that one.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Speaking of high intelligence…

Quote my words and then show how you came to make this statement about them:

Look no further than your claim that believing the human biological sex is on a spectrum is a sign of low intelligence; that conclusion does not follow from that premise.

And again, recall our exchange. I gave you an irrefutable argument as to why human sex was not on a spectrum but absolutely binary.

And what do you still believe today? Can you share with Gentle Reader your beliefs about biology of human sex? Mr. Mensa Board Director?

Also, would you mind sharing what the qualifications are to be on the board?

[Krychek_2]

Easy question first: The qualifications to be on the board are to be a member of Mensa and to win a membership election. Seats come up for election every two years.

You gave me a nonsense argument for why human sex is binary, but for sake of argument, let's assume you are right and it's binary. There is a long list of reasons why a person of high intelligence might nevertheless believe that it isn't, that have nothing to do with intelligence.

For example, the person may simply have been given bad information and not cared enough to independently verify it.

Or, the person may suffer from confirmation bias that makes it difficult to analyze and accept contrary argument. Mensans are human and suffer the same biases other people do.

Or, it may not be a subject a person cares enough about to actually think through, so may simply have never thought it through.

Or, perhaps the person has friends who consider themselves non-binary and finds their experiences persuasive.

So when you say that the fact that I believe X (in this case that sex is a spectrum) means I'm not intelligent, your conclusion simply does not follow from your premise, and this is a good example of your usual bad arguments. Even if I am wrong, there are multiple reasons why I might believe it that have nothing to do with intelligence. I would argue that the ability to see multiple sides of an issue, rather than you insisting everything is black and white, is the sign of intelligence.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Can you recall what my nonsense argument was about biological sex?

An intelligent person wouldn't say an argument about biological sex centered around gamete production was nonsense.

And the reason you believe sex is on a spectrum is probably because you have an irrational emotional need to believe so as it's crucial to your identity. An intelligent person would probably be able to diagnose when they're being irrational and separate fact from fiction.

Well maybe that's what rational people do, and maybe being rational isn't a prerequisite for being intelligent.

And frankly, I was initially surprised at you being in Mensa, especially considering you don't even know what engineering is.

But after thinking about it, of course it's easier to get into Mensa these days. Especially if you're a protected class.

[Krychek_2]

Not without going back and taking another look; I just remember snickering at it at the time. Feel free to re-post it if you like.

Are you even listening to yourself? I don't identify as non-binary, so whether sex is a spectrum or binary has zero to do with my personal identity. What did I say that makes you think I don't know what engineering is? You got any evidence that Mensa reduces its standards for "protected classes"?

At this point you're just flapping your jaw. This has been another episode in time I wasted talking to you that I'm never getting back.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

If you were to create bins for people based upon the size of gametes they would normally be capable of producing, how many bins would you create?

Re:engineering

Your earlier comment conflating engineering with math and science.

I know I know, here is where Mr. Mensa asserts it’s a nonsense distinction and then will forever pretend he never saw a disambiguation or that he never conflated the two to begin.

And in regards to Mensa standards:

https://www.us.mensa.org/learn/about/demographics/

Is there anything that’s glaringly missing from their demographics?

That’s probably why you got on the board. They can’t get find many black people so they had to settle for queer. I’d expect that you are so queer that it wouldve obvious from your profile picture on their website since that was the value you probably brought. Think about, what’s the point of having a queer on the board if no one knows and they can’t virtue signal on it??

And LGBTQ is your tribal identify and this spectrum nonsense is quickly become a necessary tenet of the ideology.

Given your past record, here is where you vanish for a few days while you process your shame.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

We have more than enough jobs for people with lower IQs…and it only takes one generation to increase IQs and so it’s not that big of an issue. There should be apps that pair lower class women that want to stay home and raise a family with high achieving men and vice versa which would lead to increased IQs. So high achievers shouldn’t marry other high achievers because the IQ genes are wasted.

[SimonP]

If you were to create bins for people based upon the size of gametes they would normally be capable of producing, how many bins would you create?

What your genius intellect fails to grasp, BCD, is that relying so heavily on the simplest, most discrete definition of "biological sex" limits your ability to rely on that definition for purposes of the broader discussion around gender identity, which is a distinct concept not tied to biological facts about gamete production.

Sure, yes - we can say, "Let us define sex according to gamete production; let us call the sex that produces the large gamete 'female,' and the sex that produces the small gamete 'male.' We thus find that there is not really another category of sex, and it would be nonsensical to describe 'sex' as existing on a spectrum - as we have just defined it to include only the two empirically observed, discrete categories."

But that definition takes us only so far as the labels themselves. It does not exclude the possibility that we might comprehensibly describe people who "present as women" but are "biologically male," or vice versa. It does not tell us whether we should describe some people that way, or what moral status to afford them. All that you have successfully done, with your gamete-based definition, is put a label on a bucket.

In order for your gamete-based definition to do any meaningful work on the "transgender" question, you have to supply some further premise about the relationship of biological sex to gender identity. But - just as the non-reproductive nature of homosexual sex doesn't tell us anything about its morality - this is a point at which the arguments of transphobes shuffles off into obscurity. You don't have an argument, because you barely can conceive of the fact that one is required.

IQ 160 my ass. What kind of BS online test told you that? Or have you been diagnosed with a degenerative neural disease?

[Krychek_2]

BCD, you do know that "STEM" stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, right? The rest of your drivel is just that.

[Nelson]

"An intelligent person wouldn’t say an argument about biological sex centered around gamete production was nonsense."

An intelligent person wouldn't be incapable of understanding that sex as determined by XY/XX chromosomes is different than gender identity.

Much like an intelligent person wouldn't be incapable of understanding that declaring a person's perception of their gender as a mental illness would implicate any other condition in which one person's perception differs from another's, like synesthesia or dyslexia.

An intelljgent person would be capable of understanding the difference between biology and perception. Are you intelligent?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

He is an adherent of an ideology…that makes people seem dumb when discussing things on which the ideology touches. The two best examples are Condi Rice and Robert Gates who sound like complete morons when discussing the Iraq War and Afghanistan…but sound intelligent when discussing other matters.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No because the mean would be lower and that would move the standard deviations. -- unless they already calculated that in.

[Ben_]

Maui residents may notice today that, when it comes to Democrats, bribery money talks and lifelong voting for Dems is a no comment.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's worse than that -- here is the annual report of what is an island-wide fire department: https://www.mauicounty.gov/DocumentCenter/View/100097/FY2022-Maui-Fire-Department-Annual-Report?bidId=

They've even got a HELICOPTER -- 200+ hours flown for operations last year, my guess is they probably have more than just one. They've got LIFEGUARDS who could have helped with evacuation, they've got BOATS. And look at all the fire trucks they have, although a couple likely are on other islands.

As I wrote above, even if they lost their hydrants, they could have pumped out of the ocean. This was a grass fire, not an actual forest fire -- I don't believe that grass fires have the same amount of heat.

[jb]

Other than also being about the Maui fires, it's perplexing that you think that second-guessing the local fire department also has something to do with Biden.

[Dr. Ed 2]

As a general rule, Republicans are efficient but not always caring, and Democrat are caring, but not always efficient. It's why you want both and the inherent problem of one party rule.

My experience is with way-underfunded Republican volunteer departments and even without all the resources the Maui folks had, we wouldn't have f*cked up this badly.

[Nige]

The funny part about this is the guy who reported it admitted he didn’t actually hear the reply and claims to have used, um, lip readers.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-asset-maui-battles-deadly-wildfires/story?id=102170338

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-expands-us-aid-hawaii-wildfires-grip-maui-2023-08-10/

A lot to criticise about the response, apparently, but this is the fucking dumbest shit imaginable.

[Michael P]

Yeah -- what is the best-case spin on why someone would decline to answer a softball question along the lines of "do you have any sympathy after a hundred people died in a fire?" with "no comment"?

The most realistic take is that he has been drilled into shutting his trap lest his mental inaptitude reveal itself again. One might more cynically ask whether he knows that Democrats screwed up there, and refusing to answer was a tacit admission of thatt error, but that implies more cognitive agility than he has shown in 50-ish years of public exposure.

[Ben_]

They should have paid their bribes if they wanted his attention.

[Darth Buckeye]

Professor Dershowitz takes aim at the posts regarding the proposition that various states could keep Trump off of the 2024 ballot.

https://dershow.locals.com/upost/4427879/no-the-14th-amendment-can-t-disqualify-trump

[Jason Cavanaugh]

LOL.

Amusing, but hardly convincing.

"It clearly means this and only this."

Conclusion: "It's too vague."

Which is it, Kiddy-Diddler Dersh? Does it have a clear meaning, or is it vague?

[Ed Grinberg]

...Kiddy-Diddler Dersh...

Way to refute his legal arguments!

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You should try reading all of the words.

What other basic reading processes do you need explained to you?

Back to the idiot-list you go. Adios!

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

His only argument seems to be that the amendment was only meant to apply to Civil War Confederates. That seems dubious to me. Even if it's all that they intended, the language still exists and still applies.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

ON MY MIND:

Eric Ambler is such a great thriller-writer, in so many ways. I never get tired of rereading his books, especially THE LIGHT OF DAY, DIRTY STORY, EPITAPH FOR A SPY, PASSAGE OF ARMS, and, most especially, DR. FRIGO.

Other thriller-writers, including John LeCarré, Graham Greene, Alan Furst, and (this is not a writer) Alfred Hitchcock acknowledged that Ambler was the first and foremost.

[grb]

Intelligent Mr Toad : "Eric Ambler is such a great thriller-writer, in so many ways"

Roger that. I've read Epitaph for a Spy, Cause for Alarm, and Coffin for Dimitrois.

[Nige]

One of the all-time greats, for sure.

[Sarcastr0]

Been enjoying The Dandelion Dynasty, by Ken Liu.

[Nige]

The Mountain In The Sea by Ray Nayler is impressive, as is the Saint Of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. I read them close together and figured they'll be getting a lot of awards this year.

[Sarcastr0]

Mountain in the Sea is my sci fi book club for the month. I will be on vacation, and so will miss it. I planned to ask them if it was recommended in Sept when next we meet, but I may just go ahead and buy it anyway.

Octopus brains are a lot of fun to try and picture.

[Nige]

Oh do. It's quite riveting.

[jb]

It's a worthy read. Another take on the same general concept is Children of Ruin, which I think I prefer, but you probably want to read its predecessor, Children of Time first. Spider brains instead of octopus brains!

[Michael P]

Green Nude Eelers claimed that pollution dumps 8 million tons of plastic in the oceans each year, but it's really one-sixteenth that amount. Panic! The sky is falling! Into the oceans!

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/climate/plastic-pollution-oceans.html

[Nige]

That's good news, it'll be easier to stop one sixteenth of eight million tons going into the sea than it would be to stop eight million tons. Amirite? That makes it that bit more manageable and everyone can get behind schemes to reduce plastic pollution right? Everyone can agree on that, right?

[John F. Carr]

I was reminded today of the antitrust action against major residential landlords. Some tenants described to me going to the office of one company and being told this is the exact price for the apartment because the computer tells me all the recent rentals in the area with the same attributes. As I understood the tale the agent spoke with all the confidence of Donald Trump not understanding his words might be used against him. Me, I don't know if that's illegal. Is it price-matching? Price-fixing? Somewhere within the penumbra of "restraint of trade"?

I said there is a market for recording all the sleazy behavior by landlords so tenants know which ones to avoid. Assuming there is an alternative. If you know Greystar is a hive of scum and villainy can you find a better megacorporation? If the shared rental database works, that suggests landlord identity does not affect rental price.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY

This white, male, conservative
blog has operated for

THREE (3)

days without publishing a vile racial slur; it has published racial slurs on at least

TWENTY-SIX (26)

different occasions (so far)
during 2023 (that’s 26 different
discussions, not 26 racial slurs;
many of those discussions
featured multiple racial slurs).

This assessment does not address
the incessant, disgusting stream of
gay-bashing, misogynist, antisemitic,
Islamophobic, and immigrant-hating
slurs and other bigoted content presented
daily at this conservative blog, which is
presented by members of the Federalist
Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.

Amid this ugly right-wing intolerance and stale thinking, here is something worthwhile.

(This one is good, too.)

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

One more?

Make it two.

[loki13]

Random thought of the day.

I think that one of the issues we're currently seeing with the judiciary could be this-

It wasn't that long ago that an appointment to the federal judiciary was seen as an "apex legal job." Something usually attained after other legal accomplishment, and something that came with a great deal of prestige and a decent (albeit not overwhelming) rate of pay- not to mention a job that was great if you actually, you know, liked the law. Moreover, it was usually reserved for older practitioners (as late as 2017, the average age of appointment was still over 50).

However, the increased partisan value of these positions has caused a large number of younger, less seasoned, and more ambitious people to be appointed. Trouble is that most judicial work is ... boring. Boring cases. And if you're young, you now have a literal lifetime to look forward to the same boring cases, day in and day out. There has to be a temptation to try and turn more cases into "events," and as examples for future partisan presidents to elevate you further up.

Which means two things-
First, it might explain the increase in ... interesting ... decisions.

Second, I wonder if it will end up being counterproductive. You think you are auditioning for the "base." But you're not- you still have to get confirmed. And if you're authoring a bunch of crazy opinions, you're going to be too high profile for confirmation for a higher spot ... at least in comparison to a similarly ideological judge who isn't taking shortcuts.

Just thinking out loud.

[Bored Lawyer]

In general, I have noticed a decline in the overall quality of the judiciary. There are some notable exceptions, but most of the newer judges are unemployed prosecutors looking for a job.
Part of that is the pay gap, I think, and part is what you say -- most of the workload involves uninteresting, routine disputes that have no political ramifications.
I recently won a Second Circuit decision, with some issues about arbitration law and the FAA. I kept checking the docket to see when our decision would come out, and was amazed that maybe 1/3 of the cases seem to be immigration appeals. After a dozen of those, you have no need for sleeping pills.

[loki13]

Congratulations on the win!

Yeah, there used to be a chasm in terms of the difference in quality between the federal courts and the state courts.

Now? There is still a difference. And you can get some wacky state court judges. But the difference is a lot less.

[Commenter_XY]

To what do you attribute the decline?

Also: congrats on the win.

[Bored Lawyer]

Two things: low pay relative to what large firms pay, and boring cases, and lots of them.

[loki13]

I think that you've hit on two of the big issues. As an aside, several years back I recall a very good federal judge leaving the judiciary because he had a large family and the pay he was making was not nearly the same as what he would make in private private practice.

That said, I also think that the desire (born of partisanship, and to "stack" the bench on both sides with judges who will be there for scores of decades) to fill the judiciary with increasingly younger judges is also partly to blame.

Young judges aren't necessarily bad. But there is a wisdom and a temperance that can come with age and experience- and practice within the field. Moreover, there is a difference between a middle-aged practitioner transitioning to the federal judiciary as a choice, as opposed to a younger and ambitious person with little experience going into the judiciary- not only do they start to understand that judging is mostly boring cases ... that they don't want to deal with (which effects the litigants), but they really will want to make a name for themselves.

[Ridgeway]

Here are some hard numbers on the comp issue.

Back when I got out of law school, starting "Big Law" salaries in NYC were $83,000 per year.

According to this:

https://www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/judicial-compensation

US district court judge salaries were $133,600, or a little more than 60% higher than first year associates.

Currently, the salary of that judge is $232,600, which is about on par with a NYC big-law first year associate.

[Daddyhill]

Last night I found an article on Insider.com about an alleged infringement of 1st Amendment religious liberty rights by Southwest Airlines:

https://www.insider.com/southwest-airlines-lawyers-judge-ordered-religious-training-by-conservative-adf

The article contains a link to what appears to be a court order against Southwest written by a federal district judge in Dallas:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.292215/gov.uscourts.txnd.292215.467.0.pdf

I'm not sure why I started reading this order, but I found myself feeling utterly dazed and confused and unable to stop reading. This is what passes for learned Constitutional jurisprudence these days? Imaginary conversations between Adam and God? Between Gandalf and the Balrog? Snarky "Au contraire" dismissals of Southwest's arguments? Really?

Somebody please help me out here. Is this (please, God) some kind of hoax or parody written by some bored law students in an after-hours club somewhere? Is this an actual court order, perhaps written by a federal judge jacked up on Adderall in the middle of the night?

Since the ADF figures prominently in this order (and the ADF currently represents the AHM against the FDA), doesn't it seem that the Fifth Circuit has more than its share of judges with a "1st-Amendment-For-Me-But Not-For-Thee" attitude and prejudice? What's going on here? Should it be any wonder that most Americans have low regard for the judicial system and even lower regard for lawyers in general?

[loki13]

Look at who the judge is.

That will, unfortunately, explain the order. I mean … to the extent that this order can be explained.

Or, you know, just listen to a certain poster who will be like, “Eh, no worries. The Fifth is just doin’ dandy. Because I once read a book by Ed Whelan, or something.”

Breakdowns don’t occur because of results. Bad results can happen. The real trouble starts when there is a breakdown of regular process and procedure. Because practitioners know that bad results happen- but they depend on the regularity of the process and procedure.

[hoppy025]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/14/us/montana-kids-win-climate-trial/index.html

Exactly why women don't belong on the bench or in any other position of power.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

X

[BravoCharlieDelta]

The upcoming GA indictment leaked.

Which is weird because the grand jury is still seated, right?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

The walls are closing in.

As an aside, Republicans hoping Garland appoints a special counsel to investigate Biden have to understand—Trump’s own appointee, Rosenstein, appointing Mueller was the biggest instance of political malpractice I’ve seen in over 20 years of following politics. Only Trump could appoint someone that would appoint a special counsel to investigate a person that just won the presidency and can’t be indicted!?! Wtf? And remember the independent counsel was seen as crazy which is why Republicans didn’t renew it after Starr did an outstanding job for Republicans because they didn’t want a independent counsel appointed during a Republican presidency (and because it’s so clearly unconstitutional).

Anyway, Garland isn’t appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden and a senator should ask AG nominees going forward if they would do what Rosenstein did and if they say “yes” that should immediately disqualify them no more questions necessary.

[Michael P]

Leftist weasels want to strip Fox of a broadcast license because of course the First Amendment is only a fascist tool. https://www.mediaanddemocracyproject.org/_files/ugd/f9547d_d59f128ca09d4106b82930d09c12c94f.pdf

[Martinned]

Here, have some George Carlin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyBH5oNQOS0

[not guilty]

It appears the grand jury in Atlanta has found a 39 count indictment of Donald Trump. https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzwwwqyvw/Details.pdf

[MoreCurious]

Looks like 41 counts and 19 defendants, apparently including Mark Meadows.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

161 acts listed in furtherance of the conspiracy!

[not guilty]

Here is the full text of the indictment: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23909551-23sc188947-criminal-indictment64

[MoreCurious]

My predictions: (1) someone’s going to jail -- perhaps not Trump, but more than one of these 19 defendants will spend time behind bars; (2) a few lawyers will be disbarred; and (3) at least one of the unindicted co-conspirators will be shown to be related to Trump by blood or marriage.

[Randal]

Hillary Clinton on MSNBC got asked whether Trump should go to jail and suggested that there are other, better options for accountability.

The most likely route to jail for Trump might be if one of the four judges revokes his bail for cause.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

She’s referring to the cankle bracelet that the FBI spent $1 million developing for her…apparently it can also fit Trump.

[not guilty]

Fani Willis has said that she will ask for a trial date within six months. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgDHMMiTBGU

This case should take a long time to try. I wonder if the jury will be sequestered.

[Josh R]

In addition to what I already knew (lies upon lies directed at officials in charge of certifying and confirming the results, and the fake electors), I just learned about 1) witness tampering (Ruby Freeman's neighbor and threats against Freeman herself - truly disgusting), 2) outright voter fraud (tampering with electronic ballot markers), and 3) illegal access to computer data (stealing and removing information from Dominion machines and theft of voter data).

[John F. Carr]

I do not read counts 32-37 as allegations of voter fraud in the sense of changing vote counts.

If I open up a box of old-fashioned paper ballots without authorization or supervision, read them all, and put them back unchanged, I wouldn't consider that voter fraud in the ordinary sense of the word. I have created unnecessary doubt about the integrity of the process. Any recount after my interference could not be trusted.

[John F. Carr]

The indictment does not allege threats to Freeman. It does not need to. The witness intimidation law says

[OCGA 16-10-93(b)(1)] It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly to use intimidation, physical force, or threats; to persuade another person by means of corruption or to attempt to do so; or to engage in misleading conduct toward another person with intent to:
(A) Influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;

Recall Cassidy Hutchinson. If she testified the right way Trump's people would do good things for her.

[Kleppe]

“On or about the 3rd day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, ‘Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!’ This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

Wow, tweeting about watching TV. This is really evil stuff. Clearly criminal conduct and also not protected by our Constitution.

"On or about the 21st day of November 2020, MARK RANDALL MEADOWS sent a text message to United States Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania and stated, “Can you send me the number for the speaker and the leader of PA Legislature. POTUS wants to chat with them.” This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy."

Oh my God, he asked for a phone number. He must be convicted of a felony without delay.

"On or about the, 11th day of December 2020, DAVID JAMES SHAFER reserved Room 216 at the Georgia State Capitol in Fulton County, Georgia, for the December 14, 2020, meeting of Trump presidential elector nominees in Fulton County, Georgia. This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy."

Nobody reserves a room on Democrats' watch. NOBODY!

Other tweets allegedly constituting “overt act[s] in furtherance of the conspiracy” include Trump’s criticism of Georgia’s elected officials, a retweet of a call for citizens to encourage a special session of the state legislature, claims about the vice president’s power to reject Electoral College votes under the Constitution, and a demand for signature verification of absentee ballots.

lol, lmao

[loki13]

How do you say that you don't understand the law, without saying that you don't understand the law?

[Martinned]

"On or about the 5th day of February 2022, JOHN SMITH entered the Citibank branch in Smallville, walked around, and observed where the security cameras were. This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy."

He went to a bank??? This is really evil stuff. He must be convicted of a felony with out delay!

[Nelson]

"‘Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!’ This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

Wow, tweeting about watching TV. This is really evil stuff. Clearly criminal conduct and also not protected by our Constitution."

When you leave out part of the text, it shows you are intentionally trying to mislead people for partisan purposes. The actual text is:

"Act 100.
On or about the 30th day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be
tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, "Hearings from Atlanta on the Georgia Election overturn now being broadcast. Check it out. @OANN @newsmax
and many more. @BrianKempGA
should resign from office. He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG! Also won the other Swing States." This was an overt act in furtherance of the
conspiracy."

Claiming it's about watching TV is idiocy. Trying to make a dishonest point about something so easily exposed as false is stupidity. Believing such drivel is insanity.

[Kleppe]

"When you leave out part of the text, it shows you are intentionally trying to mislead people for partisan purposes."

I didn't leave out anything. I quoted the document verbatim. The part I quoted refers to something that occurred on December 3rd, and the part that you are misrepresenting me as having edited is about events on December 30th.