Friday Open Thread

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

On vacations I read a Shakepeare play. This time it was Two Gentlemen of Verona. Not a good play.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Hopefully you stop taking vacations before you’re reduced to The Merry Wives of Windsor’s.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I haven't done that one yet. Though I intend to avoid "Taming of the Shrew".

When I go away I bring whatever volume of my 1909 "Aldus Shakespeare" collection (bought for only $36 on Amazon), and the New Cambridge Shakespeare. I read through the 1909 text, just the text, to get an unleavened impression. Then I read what's been written about the play. So far I've done "The Tempest" "Macbeth", "King Lear" and "Timon of Athens".

[Noscitur a sociis]

In the 40s, W.H. Auden gave a (very good) series of lectures on each Shakespeare play at the New School. Here is the lecture on the Merry Wives of Windsor:

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a very dull play indeed. We can be grateful for its having been written, because it provided the occasion of Verdi’s Falstaff, a very great operatic masterpiece. Mr. Page, Shallow, Slender, and the Host disappear. I have nothing to say about Shakespeare’s play, so let’s hear Verdi.

And then he played the record for the rest of his time.

[Sarcastr0]

Shekdrake on Shakespeare is a bit more charitable, albeit by focusing down.
https://sheldrakeonshakespeare.com/2014/03/29/the-merry-wives-of-windsor-words-words-words/

[SRG2]

Auden is wrong. Merry Wives of Windsor is a highly entertaining play while Falstaff is garbage.

[Dan Schiavetta]

These comments have drawn me to "Merry Wives" with a have-to-look-at-this-car-crash fascination.

[Commenter_XY]

May I suggest All's Well That Ends Well, and As You Like It?

[Dan Schiavetta]

I forgot to mention that I did "As You Like It". What sticks with me is Jaques's "all the world's a stage" speech, on the seven ages of a person's life. Right now I'm at about stage six --
"the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound."

Also, "Julius Caesar". Anything that one can catch a Paul Cantor lecture on, I'll read.

Also "The Winter's Tale".

My view of Shakespeare is that he has a way with words but is overrated as a dramatist. Too often, characters disappear without explanation, plot holes appear, things are fixed up in the last scene unconvincingly, characters act in unforeseen and irrational ways. It's interesting to listen to lecturers explain these things away -- reminding me of evangelicals trying to harmonize the logic gaps and casual cruelty in the Bible.

For example -- why does Leontes so explode with jealousy against someone he's supposedly been friends with since childhood?

[grb]

My favorite oddball choice of a Shakespeare play is A Winter's Tale. Ya really can't take it seriously, but it has a little something of everything. Plus, you can't go wrong with a theater production that has the stage prompt, "Exit pursued by a bear".

With the Big Guys, Lear is my pick. It is a howling black comedy of unrelenting bleakness. Of actual comedies, I have a weakness for Twelfth Night. That said, the local theater is putting on A Comedy of Errors, a play I know zilch about. Is it any good?

[Mr. Bumble]

Get the Cliff Notes.

[Dan Schiavetta]

There is an excellent 1968 BBC production of "Twelfth Night" on youtube, starring the great Joan Plowright. Alec Guinness is hilarious as Malvolio.

As for Lear, I'd love to see a production where the lead actor is not determined to chew up the scenery. The play has two big flaws. The first is Cordelia's speech, which is meant to display her courageous honesty -- but what she does say is cold-hearted, not the words of a loving daughter. The second is her unnecessary death at the end. The play was rewritten by Nahum Tate, eliminating the ridiculous number of corpses onstage at the end with a happy ending with Cordelia and her father reunited. It was popular for a century. Edmund Kean decided to stage the original version, which resulted the audience tittering when he (a short man) had to heft the corpse of Cordelia (played by a larger actress). (That's another flaw -- an 80-year-old man supposedly carrying the corpse of his grown daughter with no sign of strain.)

[SRG2]

You should check out two great Lears - Paul Scofield in the grim Peter Brook film, and Olivier in the BBC TV production.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks -- will look into those.

[SRG2]

If you portray Cordelia as having been abused by Lear, her speech is no longer a flaw.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I've seen that argued, and also argued contrariwise that Lear abused Goneril and Regan, which is why they subsequently are so mean to him. Evidently Lear's wife has been dead for some time and his bed was lonely. But 1) one has to strain to find any hint of it, 2) there's nothing later on in the plot, no reference to it, e.g., nothing from Lear to Cordelia apologizing for it (he certainly gets a chance to do that, and if there was prior abuse then his moving speech about them sharing time in prison, V, iii, 9-20, becomes creepy), and 3) in Shakespeare's time parental abuse was not a "thing".

[grb]

1. We're given Cordelia's inner voice as an aside while Goneril and Regan brownnose. It doesn't support the view of antagonism between her and the old goat. Of course any production can easily finagle that and - as you say - it was an impossibility the theme was purposed in Shakespeare's text.

Which raises the question when/where parental abuse did make an appearance in literature, even hidden as a background theme. Of course go back to Rome and you find every kind of incest imaginable in Ovid's Metamorphosis, not to mention the variety of cross-coupling by the Gods themselves. But in the Christian Era, who knows? Supposedly Thomas Mann's Holy Sinner was based on Medieval myth, and it has a variety of strange sexual combinations. I'm sure there's incest somewhere in the Inferno, but can't bring it to mind. Likewise the Decameron, whose carnal variations sometimes remind me of Penthouse Letters (if you're of an age).

2. Lear's wife is a massive void in the play. Is she even mentioned?

3. Wanna solve a mystery? Where the heck did the *%&@%$ Fool end up?

[Dan Schiavetta]

The unexplained disappearance of the Fool is an example of what I was talking about as to Shakespeare not being a good dramatist. The guess is that the Fool was played by the same actor as Cordelia, and was needed when Cordelia shows up again in Act IV. But this cannot be a justification. Shakespeare could have found a way to explain the Fool's disappearance. Often productions try to cover up such mistakes in extratextual ways. In the BBC production, the Fool (Sylvester McCoy) is hanged by Cornwall as part of the rampage where he also pokes out Gloucester's eyes.

[Noscitur a sociis]

That said, the local theater is putting on A Comedy of Errors, a play I know zilch about. Is it any good?

I have to confess that the comedies don’t do a lot for me (except for Measure for Measure, if you want to count it as such), but if you like them you’ll probably like it. The basic conceit is a reasonably clever variation on Plautus’s original, and I believe it contains Shakespeare’s only use of the word “America”.

[grb]

I think Measure for Measure is official accounted a "problem play", which means it's neither fish nor fowl and people can't work out its purpose. I saw one production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, authentic right down to men playing the female roles. I recall it as a long slog.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Properly, Isabella should have taken a knife out at the end and cut off Vincentio's testicles. Then he could finally be a true friar.

[grb]

Well that would have certainly solved the problem....

[SRG2]

Winter's Tale is crap evidently knocked out in a hurry. We did it at HS for 'A' levels. We'd done Antony and Cleopatra earlier and that was far better. We also did Merchant of Venice - interesting, as it was a Jewish school.

[Dan Schiavetta]

In Winter's Tale, a late work, Shakespeare does not solve his "Act IV problem" -- in Hamlet he does it by diverting our attention to Ophelia, but here he goes countryside comic, and then hits us with one of his worst "deus ex machina" endings.

[grb]

SRG2 : "Winter's Tale is crap..."

Heartily disagree. A Winter's Tale comes from the period when Shakespeare indulged in variety and fantastical writing at a cost of the strictest plotting. This was both an old person's late style and the overall trend of the English stage at that point, but it was definitely a conscious artistic choice. In AWT, that meant an explosion of jealousy in the opening scene that so lacked foundation it was clearly offered with a nudge & wink. Then it morphed into a rustic pastoral, introduced a lovable scoundrel who left light-heated chaos in his wake, came up with a pair of young lovers, ruminated about the nature of Nature & Creativity, produced a matching scene of toxic rage, then ended (spoiler alert) with the old hokum of a statue coming to life.

But if that scene was brazenly implausible, it was also lovely and affecting. If Shakespeare had moved beyond the gut-wrenching tragedy of (say) Lear and now happily indulged in happy endings, you can easily believe he earned that right. And the whole play was done with a light bravado that was like Mozart in his most carefree and masterful operas. I'm not the guy to effectively describe Shakespeare's late style of verse, but it is thick, knotty, and brilliant. The Tempest - from the same period - is better & tighter (while sharing many elements with AWT), but I still love the earlier play for its sweep and joy.

[SRG2]

Heartily disagree

There's no accounting for bad taste. 🙂

It's worse than - to pick up your argument - the entirely unnecessary and dramatically shite postlude of Don Giovanni. (Granted, the music is still pretty good.)

[SRG2]

BTW while I think the best part of Winter's Tale is the famous stage direction "Exit, pursued by a bear", great though that stage direction be, I account it as only the second best stage direction of the time. The best is the one-word stage direction in Marlowe's Faust. When Faust is summoning Mephistophilis, it says (dragon).

[Frank Drackman]

We love Shylock

[grb]

Ah, but that's the rub. We may not "love" Shylock, but we deeply empathize with him. And this is the unintended consequence of artistic brilliance. You see, the character was written with antisemitic tropes for an antisemitic plot to please an antisemitic audience (like you, Frank). However all those constraints couldn't bind Shakespeare's artistry and we see Shylock's suffering after he's been wronged.

The character Caliban is a similar example. I'm sure Shakespeare meant him to be completely scorned, but too much imagination & real life slipped in. Thus we have a play written centuries before people conceived of any toxic consequences from colonialism, yet the play illustrates it in a way its author couldn't begin to imagine. True artistry always escapes the bounds of any single pat meaning.

[bernard11]

I'm not sure the the empathy is unintended. In fact, I doubt it. Remember that it was written a few years after Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," which is quite antisemitic, almost to the level of caricature.

It's possible Shakespeare deliberately tried to avoid such a stereotypical portrait. For a while there was tendency to see the play as philo-semitic, with Shylock a sympathetic character ill-treated by Antonio and his associates, but that's over, I think, and a good thing too. Shakespeare wrote more fully human Jew than Marlowe, but a villainous one nonetheless.

[grb]

I'm not sure our disagreements don't meet in the middle. I'd say Shakespeare planned to serve an antisemitic audience but the artist in him couldn't reduce Shylock to nothing more than a caricature. And Shylock definitely is a nasty piece of work, that much is clear. But his initial Christian opponents, Antonio and Bassanio, don't come off well to my eye either.

All in all, Shakespeare couldn't write a Marlowe-style potboiler, Titus Andronicus excepted. I was assigned that one in school, and it was quite the gorefest.

[Kenneth Almquist]

I attended a performance of The Merchant of Venice about 25 years ago, and while I don’t remember the play very well, I do remember that there was a very distinct moment when the antisemitism switched from being funny to being horrifying, and the audience stopped laughing. Regardless of Shakespeare’s intentions, the play can be interpreted as a powerful indictment of antisemitism.

[SRG2]

Caliban is of course "Cannibal" - a Carib. And Prospero's Island is part of the New World - Shakespeare was apparently friends with Hakluyt and was thus inspired.

[grb]

Which is actually a big deal in the insular world of Shakespearean scholarship. The Tempest was supposedly influenced by one of the early accounts of sailing to the New World. That's important because the account was published after the Earl of Oxford's death. This causes major problems for those twits who want to transfer authorship of the plays to a more safely aristocratic author, with Oxford being the current perennial favorite.

[SRG2]

Now that I did not know! My subscription to Reason has paid for itself.

[bernard11]

I saw a production of The Tempest some years ago at the American Repertory Theatre here. One, I don't remember which, of Penn and Teller was involved in the production and, among other things, it was full of terrific magic.

Caliban was played by two interlocking members of the Pilobolus dance company. One scuttled crablike across the floor while the other linked arms with him, back to back, and more or less rode along.

An amazing performance, over and above the magic and the Caliban portrayal.

[grb]

I don't remember whether Penn or Teller was involved, but I saw a production of the Scottish Play at the Folger, back when I lived in DC. As with your experience, it was full of startling special effects.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The Scottish Play! (actually one scene, the interminable Act IV scene with Macduff and Malcolm, takes place in England)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h--HR7PWfp0

[grb]

Dan Schiavetta : " ..... the interminable Act IV scene ....."

And a strange scene it is! On and on with Malcom's wacky test. It's the exact opposite of putting your best foot forward.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Malcolm probably didn't want to be seen as too eager to take his father's place (which is why, knowing he was a prime suspect to the murder, he fled to England in the first place). So he went on and on with Macduff.

Which brings us to another deus ex machina -- because Macduff was born via Cesarian (or something like that -- "ripped from my mother's womb"), he was not "born of woman" and can defeat Macbeth. Groann!! It would be strange to my son and daughter, both delivered via Cesarian, to be told they were not "born of woman".

[SRG2]

"let the angel whom thou still hast served Tell thee Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped."

I think it's the "untimely" that does it. A premature Caesarean is, arguably, not born in the regular sense of the term.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"We also did Merchant of Venice - interesting, as it was a Jewish school."

That *is* interesting.

I used to think that Shakespeare was too much of a genius for Merchant of Venice to be anti-Semitic. Now I realize Shakespeare could simply have been a genius *and* anti-Semitic, too. Like that composer dude.

(Fortunately, after Shakespeare and Wagner, people in the entertainment industry never had bad ideas again.)

[bernard11]

As You Like It is indeed a wonderful play.

Great script:

"I do desire that we become better strangers."

"JAQUES Rosalind is your love’s name?
ORLANDO Yes, just.
JAQUES I do not like her name.
ORLANDO There was no thought of pleasing you when
she was christened."

And then, Phoebe, an unattractive shepherdess, is courted by Touchstone -a wonderful character, BTW - and is reluctant.

Rosalind advises her:

"But, mistress, know yourself. Down on your knees
And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love,
For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can; you are not for all markets."

And so on.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Indeed, though I think you mean Audrey.

Touchstone's friend warns him that she will make a terrible wife. He replies, "Yes I know. That way, when I leave her, I will have a good reason."

[bernard11]

Could be I got the two mixed up.

I have a friend who played Celia. She said that the director them that if the line "For I must tell you friendly in your ear,
Sell when you can; you are not for all markets," didn't get a laugh (even after centuries) the actor needed to find other work.

[grb]

Phoebe's a saucy piece, albeit a bit mercurial. Of course Rosalind is womanly perfection personified, but her harangue here is just a little bit much. But - hey - all's well that ends well, right?

[Frank Drackman]

“10 things I Hate About You” is a pretty good modern version of the “Shrew” great performances from Heath Ledger (No Homo) and Julia Stiles

Frank

[grb]

I saw one performance of Shrew where Bianca was played by a hand puppet. Her alone, the rest of the actors were very human. Strangely enough, it worked as I recall. Maybe the production ran out of money before fully cast.

[SRG2]

An American psychologist friend of mine hated Taming of the Shrew because in her view it depicted the brainwashing of Katherina through gaslighting, etc.

I saw a production at Stratford-on-Avon many years ago with Alan Bates as a superb Petruchio and the young Susan Fleetwood as Katherina and it was one of the funniest plays I have ever seen.

[grb]

Petruchio's tactics do seem to sometimes parallel a CIA interrogation manual, starting with sleep deprivation.

[Krayt]

My wife bought a giant poster of the entire text of Hamlet. Needless to say the lettering was fairly small.

She got it framed and put it over the fireplace. Where, of course, nobody could read it. People sitting on the sofa saw "Hamlet, by Wm. Shakespeare", and a giant eggshell rectangle.

I suggested we put it in the wall opposed to the toilet. This was not well-received.

[Bwaaah]

In the old days, I thought the Guinness Book of World Records to be the best bathroom read. These days, it's hard to compete with a phone (in the bathroom, or anywhere).

Keep Hamlet over the fireplace. Think of it not as something to be read, but as an aspirational hearkening to the classical texts.

And then kiss the aspiration good-bye. The world changed.

(I liked the bathroom idea.)

[grb]

Krayt : "I suggested we put it in the wall opposed to the toilet. This was not well-received"

Whereas I think your idea brilliant. Stockpiling ready literature for the downtime defecating requires long thought, careful consideration, and something like artistry.

[Drewski]

If you're ever looking for a slightly different take on Shakespeare, I do recommend Christopher Moore's series: Fool, the Serpent of Venice, and Shakespeare for Squirrels. Fool is King Lear retold from Pocket's perspective, for example. Highly entertaining.

[Dan Schiavetta]

All of you -- and I mean all -- must, before typing another word, go to "Good Tickle Brain", where a young cartoonist does hilarious stick figure reductions of Shakespeare's plays.

Here, for example, is Romeo and Juliet:

https://goodticklebrain.com/romeo-juliet

[bernard11]

That's great, Dan. Thanks.

I love Richard III's New Year's resolution:

"To always have a spare horse."

[Drewski]

Okay, yeah, that looks pretty good. I'll give it a shot at least.

[Kazinski]

Earlier in the week SantaMonica asked for predictions about Trumps presidency and among other things how the stock market will do.

I said I was cautious about stocks just because it they're somewat overvalued, not because I thought the economy would do poorly, but just because it seems a little overvalued right now, because its done so well.

Jaime Dimon has a similar view:

Asset prices are kind of inflated, by any measure," Dimon told CNBC in Davos. He added that "they are in the top 10% or 15%" of historical valuations.

The S&P 500 is less than 1% away from hitting a record high, and elevated valuations have been a hallmark of the current bull market rally that began in October 2022.

The S&P 500 is trading at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 21.6x, which is above its five-year and 10-year average of 19.7x and 18.2x, respectively.

Dimon said many things have to go right for the stock market to continue its record run.

"They're elevated, and you need fairly good outcomes to justify those prices. Having pro-growth strategies helps make that happen, but there are negatives out there, and they can tend to surprise you," Dimon said."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jamie-dimon-sounds-alarm-stocks-233356983.html

For context here is the last 8 years of SP 500 performance:
2024 23.31%
2023 24.23%
2022 -19.44%
2021 26.89%
2020 16.26%
2019 28.88%
2018 -6.24%
2017 19.42%

I do think they could continue their streak, but only if DOGE delivers some significant spending cuts to allow the FED more toom to cut rates, and Trump delivers on significant regulatory reform, to spur investment.

[Commenter_XY]

Kaz, nobody today knows if the 'market' is overvalued, fairly valued, or undervalued, that is the truth. The valuation metric has changed over time because the law has changed over time (accounting standards have changed also). At any given moment in time, the public investable US market (<5K companies) has companies in all three valuation buckets. All I will say is that right now, the US is poised for explosive economic growth. Why?

POTUS Trump, in less than one week, has obtained 1 trillion (with a T) of foreign investment into the US, equivalent to ~3% of US GDP over the next 4 years (Stargate, KSA). No other POTUS has done anything like that before. That is an incredible shot in the arm to the economy and a blessing to America. Do you think that is the only foreign investment POTUS Trump will obtain for America? I wonder what next week will bring. Particularly in light of his speech to Davos (I personally lmao at his speech, and the Q&A session). 🙂

We do need spending cuts. Since there is a federal hiring freeze, I expect federal workforce expenditure to decrease. It is enough to set that trend steeply downward. There is a lot of bloat. Elon is gonna need to carry a much bigger kitchen sink (lol). In the meantime...

We need a debt level increase, can't mess with this.
The POTUS needs his team; we all can see why he doesn't have it.
Help settle RUS/UKR war, that is good for business.
Continue to fight inflation, keep rates steady, lower energy cost

POTUS Trump is positioning America well to get 'Trumpian' returns. He has made a compelling financial case for America (lower tax, lower regulation, more transparency and honest markets) to the entire world.

And this was just week 1. What will week 2 bring? 🙂

[grb]

Commenter_XY : "No other POTUS has done anything like that before"

I wouldn't question that for a second. But still, if they do allow questions in the Cult, maybe you should look at this historic "feat" with a little skepticism. Normally I don't stick my nose in other people's masturbatory fantasies, but yours are just a little too wacko bizarre....

(and it's just Week One. God alone knows what fantasy planet you'll be living on by Two's end)

[Martinned2]

We need a debt level increase, can't mess with this.

Particularly if Trump is going to stick with his unfunded tax cuts for the rich. (Markts pin their hopes on Trump's Treasury Secretary for some sound fiscal policy, but that doesn't strike me as a sensible approach to Trump 2.0.)

More generally, crony capitalism is good for the stock market in the short term. It's nice goodies for big business at the expense of taxpayers and consumers. But in the long run this is what kills the US economy.

[Commenter_XY]

M2, anyone with a 401K plan, or a pension plan, or an IRA wins when foreign investment comes to the US to develop our manufacturing base and infrastructure. What do you think pension managers invest in, CDs? Most 401K plans offer a US stock fund of some kind. You're myopic = unfunded tax cuts for the rich.

With that in mind, why screw with the debt limit? You want certainty to attract investment, not uncertainty. That is why you can't mess with it.

[Martinned2]

The only sensible policy is to abolish the debt limit. It's unnecessary from a democratic accountability POV, and drives up the yields on Treasury bonds & bills. But that's a whole different discussion.

[Brett Bellmore]

The debt limit is the only remaining factor that occasionally induces even the slightest bit of spending discipline. Getting rid of it would tell the world that we'd totally given up on even pretending to restrain spending.

[Sarcastr0]

When has the ceiling caused anything other than drama?

[Commenter_XY]

It is important for the Fitch's ,AM Best's, etc of the world to have confidence that America pay's more than just lip service to debt levels, and the ability of the America to pay them. That matters to world capital markets.

[Sarcastr0]

1. Past experience seems to indicate otherwise.
2. Unresponsive to my comment, which is about the debt ceiling being unrelated to actual spending reduction, much less debt abatement.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, if you understood how bond markets work, you would not be blase about sovereign credit ratings. The US competes globally with other countries on attracting bond investment (financing our debt at a better rate)

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not blase, you're just wrong.

As Martinned pointed out, playing games with the debt ceiling is what makes rating agencies nervous - don't you recall that was the big headline maker the last time?

[Commenter_XY]

I sort of feel like we are seeing the same thing, Sarcastr0. We don't want drama over the debt ceiling.

[Martinned2]

If you ask Fitch and the other ratings agencies, they will tell you that the debt ceiling is the sort of thing that makes them consider rating the US lower.

https://www.fitchratings.com/research/fund-asset-managers/us-debt-ceiling-uncertainty-risk-for-treasury-money-market-funds-22-02-2023

[Krayt]

The only sensible policy is to abolish the debt limit. It's unnecessary from a democratic accountability POV

That it gets in the way, its intended purpose, shows it's highly necessary from a democratic POV.

And we love democracy, until we don't, like refusing to send out a banced budget amendment to the states.

[Martinned2]

It doesn't actually get in the way of anything other than borrowing at the cheapest possible rates. The US has a democratic process for setting government budgets, and the borrowing that flows from that.

(Although, for the record, Congress can set tax rates, not tax revenues.)

[bernard11]

Just a question, XY. You are aware, I think, that foreign investment in the US increases the US current account deficit.

Not long ago Trump was railing against that deficit, claiming it made us losers, that other countries were "winning" the trade deals.

What changed?

[Kazinski]

I've heard many time before things like PE doesnt matter anymore, and I have never found it convincing. A PE of 21 (the current price per share divided by ecpected profits per share over the next 12 months), means investors are expecting a return of 4.6%.

If the PE goes to 30 then that means investors are willing to expect 3.3% return on their stock. currently the 10 year Treasury yield is 4.63% .

Now of course future growth and profit affect that in individual stocks the number 1 market cap in the SP is NVIDIA, and its PE rof 55 reflects expectations of continued outsized growth, but everything netter go right to justify
that price. Walmart is in the top 20 too, its PE is 37.5, do its growth prospects justify that PE? Or Exxon Mobile at 13, which also pays a dividend of 3.68%, which seems like a better bargin to me than Walmart, at least.

This chart of historical PE shows that when PE gets too high, its usually in a recession due to falling profits and the market adjusts accordingly.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-earnings-chart

As for foriegn investors, when they invest they are expecting their own return on investment, and I don't have any claim on that revenue stream, although it certainly helps the economy.

[Martinned2]

Another thing to remember is that nobody has done anything yet. So far it's all talk. Just like Trump makes promises left and right with no intention of keeping them, and often forgetting about them as soon as they leave his mouth, the sensible approach that business leaders might take to dealing with Trump is to flatter him and talk big numbers, while counting on the Trump administration to have zero follow-up. It's not like anyone in the Trump White House will keep track of all of these promises, and check in a year's time whether companies have indeed made the investments.

[Commenter_XY]

Kaz, the market as we think of it, stocks and bonds, is a random walk. There is no special relationship between the two (stocks, bonds) other than in a crisis, the correlation of investment performances very quickly becomes close to 1.

Against that backdrop, layer on valuation metrics whose definitions has changed over time in response to changes in practice, regulations and the law. Yes, overall market valuation matters somewhat; it is not the be all, end all.

There is no magic metric to predict future performance. There is no secret sauce. About the best you can do, long term, is place a bet on the collective effort of millions of American employees in thousands of companies. Buffet is not wrong about that.

[Martinned2]

For the record, the stock market is a random walk with a trend. And that trend depends on (changes in) forecast future cash flows.

[bernard11]

There is no special relationship between the two (stocks, bonds) other than in a crisis, the correlation of investment performances very quickly becomes close to 1.

Are you referring to the correlation between equity prices and bond yields, or equity prices and bond prices? Don't bond prices go up (yields down) when equities decline, as investors make the famous "flight to safety?"

[Commenter_XY]

Stocks and bonds are not correlated; people found that out the hard way in 2022. They move independently of each other.

In a crisis, like the GFC, everything moves together in a panic.

[Sarcastr0]

They're not 100% strongly coupled, but they sure are correlated.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, they are not correlated, the r2 is close to zero, historically.

https://www.vanguard.co.uk/professional/vanguard-365/investment-knowledge/portfolio-construction/understanding-stock-bond-correlations

see chart, 1/3rd the way down. They just aren't. That is what threw people in 2022.

[Sarcastr0]

1. UK?

2: "Perhaps the most important observation for long-term investors is the performance of global bonds in the years that equity market returns were negative.
In the period covered in the chart, global bonds delivered a positive return in five of the six years that global equity markets posted losses."

That's a correlation!

[Commenter_XY]

dude, that is a 5 year slice.

[Sarcastr0]

It's your link.

[Stella Link the dog]

"Don't bond prices go up (yields down) when equities decline"

Not necessarily. Look at the markets from the end of Dec 2021 to Oct 2022. S&P fell about 24% and ten year treasury yield went from about 1.5% to about 4%. Corporate bond yields went up more than a bunch as well. Those long in bonds got hit at least as hard as equity investors. Equity prices have recovered and increased compared to late Dec 2021, bond yields (because interest rates are still way high compared to 2021) are still in the 4.5% range for the 10 year.

Depending on why equity prices fall, bond yields may go up or down, I suppose, and the spread between government bonds and corporates may vary as well. Also, the comparative yields on "investment" quality corporates compared to "high yield" ("junk").

[bernard11]

High yield bonds tend to move with equities, because they resemble equities in that their performance is very much based on the factors that influence equity.

High quality bonds react more to interest rates and the like, and look to things like the company's cash, value of its assets, etc., which influence credit quality.

[Armchair]

Kaz,

It's a tough question, but I think you need to take a few more factors into account.
1) For foreign investors, the strong US dollar (and likely to get stronger) versus their native currency, and the risk of instability. Both of those make US markets more attractive.
2) Beyond just P/E ratios, cash held on hand (and debt) for major corporations. It...makes a difference. For example, Apple is holding onto over $162 Billion in cash and cash equivalents. You need to factor that into their stock price, even if it isn't direct earnings or profit.

[DixieTune]

The USD is strong because bills are yielding 4.5%. Drop that to 0, and that advantage goes away.

Also, the USD is only strong against other currencies which were similarly debased. None of them are strong against hard assets, like land or gold

[SRG2]

P/E does matter - but it's a relative value metric.

If you're invested for the long haul and so you don't liquidate just because the market has a high P/E, you don't say of a company, its shares are overpriced because of its P/E, you say, of these two similar companies. I prefer to own the shares of the company with the lower P/E.

There's an old line of mine, there's no difference between a P/E of 200 and a P/E of 2,000,000...

More useful but still a relative value metric is the PEG ration - P/E over growth rate.

[DixieTune]

I don't find it convincing either. Ultimately, stocks are still priced for 0% interest rates, while treasury yields are around 4.5%. That means that the market believes that at the first sign of trouble, the Fed will drop back down to 0.

It remains to be seen if they're right.

But the Buffett indicator is at 209%, far above the 100% average. I've heard the arguments that globalization and 401K autodraws justify the higher valuations. I don't buy that. I think it's more just pure tulip mania.

[David Nieporent]

Do you think that is the only foreign investment POTUS Trump will obtain for America?

Do you think that Trump has obtained one cent for America? What does that even mean? Do you think someone is writing a check to America?

[bernard11]

The Saudis have promised $600B in investment, and Trump has asked them to raise their commitment to $1T. We'll see.

In Nashville the standard line about record deals used to be, "It ain't final 'til it's vinyl." Always a useful reminder.

[Stella Link the dog]

"The Saudis have promised $600B in investment"

I'm not sure what has been promised.

“The crown prince affirmed the kingdom’s intention to broaden its investments and trade with the United States over the next four years, in the amount of $600 billion, and potentially beyond that,”

So, it's not just investment, it's investment and trade. I'm not sure what that actually means.

And, it doesn't seem to be a "promise," it's an "intention."

And, what does "beyond that" mean? Does it mean beyond $600 billion or beyond 4 years?

In any case, it's not $1 trillion.

[bernard11]

Good point. I missed the part about trade being included.

IOW, it's totally phony, like that Foxconn deal in WI.

[DixieTune]

Ultimately, the mainstream media are shills for the stock market, as inflated asset prices are necessary for the American economy to continue.

Valuations are extremely high. Never before have investors paid so much for so little, which is why much of the gains from the past few years have been P/E expansion, and not economic growth. The problem is that if Trump is successful in bullying the Fed to lower rates back down to 0, inflation will take off like nothing before. Plus, a lot of the reason foreigners are investors in our treasury bills and other instruments is that we're still paying 4.5% versus 2-2.5% in much of the rest of the developed world.

Rates go to 0, and that goes away.

[F.D. Wolf]

Trump signs executive order declassifying all files on JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, handing the pen he used to RFK, Jr. Maybe now we'll finally lean why J. Edgar Hoover had them all killed.

The National Archives website is going to crash so hard.

[Mr. Bumble]

If you look at the EO, nothing is going to happen right away and it doesn't address the issue of redactions on anything that might be released.

[apedad]

Correct and maybe nothing will be released.

The EO only states the DNI has to draft a plan for release - not actual release.

Specifically, the Order directs the Director of National Intelligence and other appropriate officials to:
(1) Present a plan within 15 days for the full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records; and
(2) Immediately review the records relating to the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-orders-declassification-of-jfk-rfk-and-mlk-assassination-files/

[Dan Schiavetta]

There’s nothing about those assassinations that strikes me as mysterious or unexplained. I must be a boring person.

[Brett Bellmore]

Honestly, the only thing mysterious about them is the absurdly prolonged refusal to release the files.

[Commenter_XY]

I have asked if there could be legal repercussions arising from the release of the records. I think we are about to find out.

I am sure there will be institutional repercussions, and social repercussions as well.

[Brett Bellmore]

The main thing that's going to happen is that we find out that the files were actually systematically destroyed while LBJ was in office, and not wanting to admit that was the reason they were so stubborn about refusing to release them.

Eh, maybe, but would you bet against it being something like that?

[David Nieporent]

I mean, I admit I have always been curious why some people think that
(a) the CIA (or some other organ of the Deep State) was involved in one or more of these assassinations and/or cover ups;
(b) the CIA et al. have used their influence to keep the incriminating records hidden; and
(c) the CIA et al. have not used their influence to get the incriminating records destroyed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Early on I thought maybe the reason was that Oswald really was doing it on behalf of the Russians, and they were keeping it quiet to avoid the sort of public outcry where they couldn't avoid doing something about it they thought was stupidly dangerous.

But it's gone on way too long for that to be the reason.

[Frank Drackman]

it was actually LBJ for all 3, he had the motive, opportunity, and whatever the other one is

[A Japanese Student]

High schoolers in Japan took the Common Test for University Admissions, a set of multiple-choice tests, last weekend. Subjects include Japanese, English, math, natural science, social science, and since this year, informatics and computer science. Of the social science subjects, examinees pick one of history, geography, or civics and economy.

Perhaps the most interesting is Chapter 3, Question 4.

Read the following material: "As a definition of free speech, some have proposed the "marketplace of ideas" theory, where people can freely express their own opinions, and where the truth is obtained through competition between ideas... As Justice Holmes of SCOTUS notes, "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market".

Question:
Prohibition of censorship under the Constitution is important to [remove dangerous speech so that the marketplace stays appropriate / continue the search for truth through the free exchange of opinions]. When algorithms used by social media cause it to display the same views as the user's, it could [promote / inhibit] the competition that is the prerequisite of the marketplace of ideas.

I do wonder if the test makers had NetChoice in mind. Probably not, I bet only a few high-school teachers regularly research SCOTUS.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The second answer is the correct one on both. Unfortunately it takes an awful long time for truth "to get itself accepted" and sometimes backsliding occurs. It's a good point you're making.

Perhaps because I grew up liberal in a conservative town, I don't like burrowing into sites that tell me what I want to hear. Hanging around the VC is an example of that.

[A Japanese Student]

Exactly. People do forget that there are legitimate policy choices on both sides.

As to the exam question, I do believe "marketplace of ideas" is a very badly named policy. Modern marketplace would have mechanisms to prevent dangerous goods from entering the market, to ensure people don't lie, to counteract unfair practices and combinations that try to monopolize the market, to establish standards so that people are guaranteed certain quality of goods, and (in some cases) to subsidize those who are disadvantaged.

In this sense, perhaps the European countries are closer to the literal meaning of "marketplace of ideas". Heavily regulated, but still considered free.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think when people say "marketplace of ideas" they implicitly mean a "free market", not a centrally planned market.

[Sarcastr0]

Your definition of free market is not everyone's though. For instance, commercial speech.
Or your stance on private platform's removal of stuff they don't like.
Or your stance on academic freedom.

[Bwaaah]

BDS.

[Commenter_XY]

Sounds bad, cross-afflicted with BDS and TDS. What's your treatment prescription for Sarcastr0? 😉

[Bwaaah]

I don't think even cow bell can fix that.

I considered your question seriously for a moment. It's usually not hard to come up with a suggestion for how somebody could improve. But this is Sarcastr0 we're talking about, and oh my, that'd be a solid waste of thought. He's goin' to his grave like that. I think they call it a "righteous death." I call it a waste of however much time he's got left.

No prescription.

[TwelveInchPianist]

“ Your definition of free market is not everyone's though.”

The economic definition of a free market is one without barriers to entry.

[bernard11]

Exclude middles very much, Brett?

A market with no rules and regulations, presumably your ideal, doesn't actually work that well. And installing some of those things doesn't make it centrally planned.

What AJS seems to be saying is that the implied analogy doesn't hold, because markets in goods and services do generally have restrictions and whatnot.

[Krayt]

What is the question? Should algorithms that feed you what you want to hear (so you keep clicking so they keep getting ad revenue) be illegal?

Wellllll, this algorithm preceded computers, and is used by politicians to maintain supporters via echo chambers, only the latest name for it.

"But that's not for ad revenue! That's for power, and so is cool!"

[Bwaaah]

But that's not for ad revenue. That's for power.

Echoes for power. That's not a crazy fact. But it sure isn't inspiring.

For as long as I can remember, I've had enough of me. So there's a real benefit to opposition: less of me, more not.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Talk about toxic feminism run amuck:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mississippi-lawmaker-introduces-contraception-begins-erection-act-rcna188938

My first (of many) thoughts was mens rea and nocturnal emissions.

[not guilty]

Here is the full text of the bill: https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2025/html/SB/2300-2399/SB2319IN.htm

I seriously doubt that "toxic feminism" is the driving force.

If one accepts the premise that who reproduces or doesn't reproduce is any of the state government's damn business, measures like this are the predictable upshot.

For the first ten years of my married life, my then-wife and I committed a felony punishable by five to ten years imprisonment each time we engaged in oral sex. I am still trying to figure out what business the State of Tennessee had in that regard.

[grb]

not guilty : "I seriously doubt that "toxic feminism" is the driving force"

Ya think! Look, we all know Ed's not entirely right. But that's really hammered home by him claiming this goofy bill is "feminism". How in the world did he reach that conclusion?

My guess? He see's it as inconveniencing men, and anything that does that must be "feminism". Does anyone have a better theory?

[Michael P]

Did you ignore everything the bill's sponsor said about his reasons for pushing the bill? It sure seems like you did.

[grb]

Sigh. In fact, guilty as charged. I did open the link and scan the article, but missed the faux-justification for this two-bit stunt. I imagined an entirely different one in its stead.

(Given the rare infrequency I'm wrong, it behooves me to 'fess up the one or two times yearly when it happens)

[Michael P]

Thank you for acknowledging the error. Here, as on most of the Internet, it's not easy to do that because so many people will hold it against you -- but it reflects well on your integrity.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Inconveniencing" men?!?

Did you miss my point about mens rea and nocturnal emissions?

[Frank Drackman]

Bill is sponsored by an Afro-Amurican DemoKKKrat, good luck getting his Brutha's to go along

[John F. Carr]

Every sperm is sacred.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

That makes no sense. are you talking after the fact or before.
You have police at children's events because you are protatecting all children but you don't say 'every child is protected" ---- for the same reason.

[John F. Carr]

You have the right to ejaculate into a fertile woman. If you can not afford a fertile woman one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?

[SRG2]

The intent is clearly ridicule not toxic feminism, you idiot.

[Gasman]

It speaks of 'genetic material' and not specifically spermatazoa.
Read with the genetic material being blood (voluntary donation at the RedCross), or sputum/saliva(expectorating on the sidewalk, wet kisses, sneezes), this bill seems to include these also as forbidden. They contain genetic material, are discharged 'without the intent to fertilize', and are not subject to the exclusions of subsection (4).
So watch where that skin dander falls.

Full text of the bill:
SECTION 1. (1) This section shall be known and may be cited as the "Contraception Begins at Erection Act."
(2) It shall be unlawful for a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.
(3) Upon conviction of a violation of this section, a person shall be fined:
(a) One Thousand Dollars ($1000.00) for a first offense;
(b) Five Thousand Dollars ($5000.00) for a second offense; an
(c) Ten Thousand Dollars (10,000.00) for a third or subsequent offense.
(4) This section shall not apply to the discharge of genetic material:
(a) Donated or sold to a facility for the purpose of future procedures to fertilize an embryo; and
(b) Discharged with the use of a contraceptive or contraceptive method intended to prevent fertilization of an embryo.
SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 2025.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And we STILL haven't heard what was behind Monday's fatal shooting of a border guard in Vermont.

https://vtdigger.org/2025/01/23/law-enforcement-honors-fallen-border-patrol-agent-as-investigators-provide-few-new-details-of-coventry-shooting/

Awful lot of investigating if there is nothing there.
And how long can you hold someone, albeit in a hospital recovering from GSW, before filing charges?

[Martinned2]

Time to build a border wall in Vermont...

[tylertusta]

A border wall would get in the way of our invasion force.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And MTG deals with a reporterette.
https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1882249270847500414

[grb]

That snit would be much more impressive if MTG wasn't a buffoonish joke. Last I heard, she was whining because England won't take Trump's "Gulf of America" tantrum seriously. But who does? Everyone is laughing their ass off at that childishness.

[Mr. Bumble]

Funny how you and David Notimportant among others knows what everyone is doing except when it came to voting for Kamala and The Knucklehead.

[Ed Grinberg]

Talk about a pair of "buffoonish jokes"!

[Dr. Ed 2]

The "Gulf of America" has to do with China claiming the South China Sea. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/24/why-does-china-claim-almost-the-entire-south-china-sea

[grb]

No it doesn't, Ed. No part of the Gulf of Mexico is disputed and changing its name wouldn't alter a thing if it was. It's just more infantile pandering to the absolutely dumbest members of his MAGA base. If only Trump's supporters would grow up, that would incentify Trump to act more adult too. And there, Ed, you can help.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And then for the incompetent MBTA;
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/former-keolis-assistant-chief-engineer-pleads-guilty-defrauding-keolis-commuter-services

It took them SEVEN YEARS to notice this?!?

[F.D. Wolf]

If you're not following the current shenanigans in Minnesota, after the 2024 elections, it appeared that the 134-member state house would have 68 Republicans and 68 Democrats. However, a judge ruled that one of the Democrat members-elect did not meet residency requirements and was constitutionally ineligible to take his seat. If you're following the math, that leaves 68 Republicans and 67 Democrats.

Now the Democrats are fairly confident they will win the upcoming special election, but the Republicans, unsurprisingly don't want to sit around waiting for that. So, they decided to go forward with organizing the house and conducting legislative business, electing one of their own as Speaker and moving forward with legislation. This did not please the Democrats, and all 67 walked out with the express purpose of denying a quorum. The Democratic Secretary of State has, unsurprisingly, declared there is no quorum, and has sued in the state supreme court to essentially block the house from doing anything.

The issues before the court are, 1) Is there even a justiciable issue for them to rule on, or does separation of powers leave the determination to the house itself; and, 2) should the court reach the merits, is the majority required for a quorum based on the total seats (134, or 69 for a quorum), or the number of seats, excluding the current vacancy (133, or 68 for a quorum)?

[Mr. Bumble]

Check your math. 134/2=67.
67 Republicans and 66 Dems is the current state.
The Powerline site (anathema to those on the left who comment here) has been following this with several stories.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/

[F.D. Wolf]

Thank you. I apologize for my embarrassing error, not my first, nor my last, I fear.

[Mr. Bumble]

It's early. Understandable to still be foggy.

[Frank Drackman]

It was J Edgar Hoover from the grave

[Longtobefree]

Blame AI.
It's the coming thing.

[Commenter_XY]

Re1...it is not a justiciable issue.

This looks and sounds like normal rough and tumble politics, to me. The House can work it out, and the enforcement mechanism is the special election. At some point, the people of MN will tell the individual House members to get their act together and make compromises. It will self correct as the 'pain' increases.

[Mr. Bumble]

"Re1...it is not a justiciable issue."
Of course it is as regards issues of the MN constitution and the law.

[Commenter_XY]

It is Blue State Blues. They (MN) are doing it to themselves. Let them.

[Mr. Bumble]

I don't think you're following this. The MN Republicans are trying to take advantage of the situation to break the stranglehold of Dems in MN by naming a Rep speaker and establishing the rule for the house.

[Ed Grinberg]

You are not paying attention. As the original commenter said: "after the 2024 elections, it appeared that the 134-member state house would have 68 Republicans and 68 Democrats." So, obviously, about half of Minnesotans don't want to live in a "blue state."
(What Democrats are doing is despicable.)

[Commenter_XY]

I am paying attention.

Really, what do you want? Send in the National Guard? The Marines to storm the state capitol?

My point: Let MN politicians fight it out. It won't affect much outside of MN. They are shooting themselves in the ass. Ok.

Besides, Walz has got this. 😉

[Mr. Bumble]

"It won't affect much outside of MN. "
When the national election is decided by only a few "swing states" it affects the whole country.
MN Republicans are swimming against the stream in trying to uphold the rule of law in what is and has been a one party state.

[Krayt]

Seems a little weak for a quorum. However, logically, if the remainders 100% vote one way, that wins even if full attendance. Ergo sufficient. A legislature cannot be denied power because one seat is empty.

In any case, it's not one side trying to use a quick sketchy vote while the other happens to be out of town. It's that other side dodging votes.

As for the nunerically irrelevant missing walkouts, isn't there a clause in their state constitution to send the Sergeant at Arms after them? Or are they hiding in another state?

[Brett Bellmore]

Apparently they're not even hiding, they're still in the capitol, just refusing to show up in chamber.

I guess, given the likelihood that the Democrats will retake the chamber, the Republicans don't (yet?) want to piss them off by having a few of them physically dragged in, even though the rules permit it.

[John F. Carr]

In my state courts would bow out due to separation of powers. Also in my state legislature and many other bodies, quorum can be waived by unanimous consent of those present.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, that's just dandy for any three members who decide to show up without notice.

[Bubba Jones]

IOW, the dems can't object to the quorum without showing up to provide a quorum?

When Dems did this in Texas, the governor threatened to have them arrested, but never did that.

[Bubba Jones]

Does the SecState have a role in determining quorum? Do they have standing to sue?

[Mr. Bumble]

No. Only the legislature.

[Stephen Lathrop]

If Secretary of Defense Hegseth is passed out drunk beyond awakening at 3 a.m., and a call comes in warning of preparations for a massive Chinese missile launch towards unknown targets, is it better, or worse, if POTUS Trump makes the call on how to respond unadvised? Does Hegseth's death-like alcoholic coma impair Trump's capacity to communicate up and down the chain of command? In a disrupted chain of command, might rival lower-ranking officers compete for opportunity to influence with contrary advice President Trump's response?

Is it an advantage, or a disadvantage, if a warlike foreign adversary becomes aware that a U.S. Secretary of defense is drunk and passed out at certain predictable times? Is it an advantage or a disadvantage for the U.S. if a warlike foreign adversary gains opportunity to blackmail the U.S. Secretary of Defense?

[Mr. Bumble]

Your feigned concern is admirable but misplaced. Lloyd Austin went AWOL and no one in the Biden administration knew or cared.

[Martinned2]

If we agree that that is a very bad thing, what does that mean for Hegseth?

[grb]

It's a real puzzle how to see Hegseth.

Do you look at his utter lack of qualifications? After all, we're talking about one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world, and he's never run anything larger than a platoon. There was a brief time heading a think tank but he was a total failure at that, elbowed out with accusations he "treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account for partying & drinking - using the group's events as little more than opportunities to hook-up with women on the road.”

Or maybe you look at the motivation behind the nomination, which was mostly brat-child trolling. Trump famously described soldiers KIA as "losers", so obviously the Pentagon post could be set aside for Owning the Libs. Likewise, DJT has his own doctors so was free to stock public health agencies with freaks, wack-jobs, fraudsters and loons. No skin off his back, eh? Strangely enough, the only cabinet officials who look normative were the financial ones. Our country's defense, intelligence agencies, justice department, and public health posts may all be filled with jokey trolling picks, but it appears money is still important to Trump.

Or maybe you look into Hegseth's character. But you'll need a long scalding shower afterward to clean off the stench.

Or maybe you look into his "vision". This seems to consist entirely of one issue alone : Our military is too .... wait for it .... "woke". Now I guess it's possible for a Fox News talking head to be that gawdforsaken stupid. Probably there are true believers in the Right's hive mind as well. Maybe those same people who are paralyzed with fear over the nonexistent presence of CRT in the public schools or the national threat poised by transexuals. Right-types actually seem to prefer issues with little or no reality. But any normal person who thinks "woke" falls within the top two-hundred problems of our military is really too lackbrain to live.

So what's the best approach to see this clusterfuck nomination?

[Brett Bellmore]

Probably the best approach is for you to realize that the other party is in power and neither needs your approval nor cares about your opinions.

You're basically in the same position Republicans were in while Biden was going out of his way to nominate cross dressers and kleptomaniacs to important positions.

[Martinned2]

In the US there are no political parties in any meaningful sense. Even under Trump, senators don't vote as a block, and each individual one of them needs to be convinced through means fair or foul.

[Brett Bellmore]

See Congress polarize over the past 60 years, in one beautiful chart

In fact, they do vote as a block, more than ever. 95% of the vote can be predicted by the party of the Senator and the President, even if it's the remaining 5% that decides the matter.

Presidential job approval ratings by party affiliation

And at this point, don't expect any President's approval to get very far from 50%, because the opposing party will hate him to a man automatically.

[Martinned2]

And yet, the Senate can and does vote down the President's nominees, which isn't what you'd expect in a system where political parties are a key conduit between voters and politicians. Even when the Tories had a pretty small majority, like under Theresa May, the odds of the House of Commons preventing the Prime Minister from appointing whoever she liked were vanishingly small, for example.

The fact that groups in Congress vote together more than they used to in the past doesn't change that.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm having a hard time squaring "There are no political parties in any meaningful sense" with "95% of the votes can be predicted based on party affiliation".

Perhaps you mean that in the US there are no parliamentary system style parties? Which would be a true observation, but who cares? We're not a parliamentary system.

[Martinned2]

Famously (to me anyway) being black predicted voting for a Democratic candidate in North Carolina better than being a registered Democrat did.

And percentages of votes are tricky anyway, because there's different ways of counting that, depending on whether you count the ceremonial votes too.

[Bubba Jones]

All that says is, blacks didn't bother to register as democrats.

[tylertusta]

I find myself in agreement with martinned2 for a change.

The US political parties are more akin to coalitions as our political parties are weak and getting weaker over time.

As an aside, this is happening because of various "reform" laws that seek to alter and control spending in elections. The weakening of American political parties is directly resulting in populists willing to buck convention to try to achieve previously unheard of political goals.

[apedad]

Sounds like a healthy Democracy to me.

Healthy but not pretty - as it should be.

[tylertusta]

Our party system also gave us Trump.

Do you feel that is that a sign of a healthy democracy?

[apedad]

Yup!

Our system allows our politics to sway and be flexible without breaking - that's healthy democracy.

It's the total authoritarian nations (left and right), that eventually blow up - precisely because they don't allow flexibility.

Trump is a mere blemish in the progressive trend that's been going on for 260+ years and will continue after Trump.

[tylertusta]

That's certainly a glass-half-full take. Good on you for being so optimistic.

[Brett Bellmore]

There is a bit of truth to that: The 'reformers' thought that reducing the power of big donors would make things more democratic. Then they found out to their horror that the big donors were actually a moderating influence, and that a genuinely democratic legislature was not to their liking.

It's similar to the effect of campaign finance 'reform' at the Presidential level. By getting rid of the monied interests backing candidates for President, they made the real qualification for President being good at fund raising, where the monied interests had actually cared about competence at governing.

But another factor is that the major parties had gotten taken over by entrenched factions who manipulated the primary process to maintain their grip on power, so the parties have been getting less representative of their own bases as time went by, leaving a larger and larger fraction of the population simply unrepresented.

[tylertusta]

... gotten taken over by entrenched factions who manipulated the primary process to maintain their grip on power ...

Yes. The only reason why they are able to entrench themselves is because they were allowed that kind of power to begin with. The gatekeepers were intentionally weakened.

[Sarcastr0]

I don't think the parties are weakening. The leadership still holds the purse strings, and still tells House member how to vote 9 times out of 10.

That's the change brought about by Gingritch.

Before that, the big consolidation to party leadership came from LBJ turning it from ministerial to both effective and prestigious.

Senators have never voted as a block.

Campaign finance matters only in as much as elections in the US have gotten very expensive thanks to dark money etc, so members need to lean on party resources to stay in their seat more than they used to.
Not beholden to donors as much as beholden to the party who wrangles the donors.

[tylertusta]

On the outside, our parties appear to healthy. Voting discipline is higher historically speaking, and party leaders have more prestige as you put it.

On the inside, however, they're hollow organizations. They lack the ability to control their own nominations, they lack the ability to set their agenda, and they are increasingly incapable of resolving intra-party disputes. They're increasingly unable to moderate our politics, allowing populist and extremists to come into our system. Senator Sanders, a socialist(!), nearly walked away with 1/3 of the Democratic Party(!!) in 2016. Donald Trump, a pro-abortion Democrat-recently-turned-Republican, waltzed into the GOP nomination twice despite the disapproval of the party leadership.

The start of the decline in the scan be traced back to the "reforms" of the 60's and 70's. Campaign finance is a significant contributor to this decline. Our parties continue to control less and less of the funding going to candidates, allowing ideological interests to assert greater influence over our elected officials.

[David Nieporent]

The other reform that severely weakened parties was ending earmarks. It sounded like good government reform: stop letting individual members of Congress direct appropriated money to their pet projects. (E.g., if Congress has appropriated $20B for highway spending, the DOT should rank the projects and allocate the money as most needed and most economical, instead of having a congressman from, say, Wisconsin direct $500,000 to re-pave the roads around his kid's school.) But if you allow earmarks, then the party leadership can discipline an individual member of congress by canceling his particular earmarks. If they're not allowed, then that leverage is removed. That was one thing the GOP was smarter about than the Dems.

[Sarcastr0]

Earmarks are back as of 2021.

But don't seem to be as effective a dealmaking lubricant.

[Sarcastr0]

What is it you think political parties do?

Populists appealing to the voters is not a party problem.
Parties are about internal control; the period where parties controlled their voters went away when Tammany Hall did.

The GOP has a power struggle when they try and vote for leadership but that's not about their power as a party, but a lack of any cognizable principles to debate over. So it's all will to power.
The Dems don't have that kind of power struggle. But they've got a very old leadership team.

Our parties continue to control less and less of the funding going to candidates
They control a lot more now than they did in 1960! And the committee seats as well.

Where are you getting your assertions from?

I'm somewhat skeptical of political science, but here's a book summary that aligns with what I understand.
https://academic.oup.com/book/3816/chapter-abstract/145282792?redirectedFrom=fulltext

"I show how the Senate has entered a new period following the Textbook Senate from the mid-twentieth century and the individualized era from the 1960s and 1970s. In the Partisan Senate, the senators are no longer individuals, but members of a team that strive for majority party status—sometimes at all costs. I explicate the differences between ideologically based party polarization and competition-based partisan warfare. I show how the Senate is better able to absorb those senators with extreme ideological positions. Members with extreme partisan warfare tendencies make legislating in the Senate much more difficult."

[tylertusta]

I'm not talking about corralling voters' votes directly. Parties have the effect of channeling voters' preferences due to the party leadership's ability to filter out undesirable or unelectable candidates. They also had significant influence on the elected representatives actions after elected.

A current example is committee memberships. The parties' leadership in Congress have significant say in which member sits in which committee, and from that the member gains or loses the ability to influence a bill before it hits the floor.

Where are you getting your assertions from?

Various polysci researchers have come to the same conclusions as I. You can start with The Hollow Parties by Schlozman and Rosenfeld.

[Brett Bellmore]

" Parties have the effect of channeling voters' preferences due to the party leadership's ability to filter out undesirable or unelectable candidates. "

Or candidates the party leadership just doesn't like because they might actually try to deliver on campaign promises the leadership is treating as a bait and switch game.

[tylertusta]

Or candidates the party leadership just doesn't like because they might actually try to deliver on campaign promises the leadership is treating as a bait and switch game.

Good or bad depends on whether you agree or disagree with the leadership.

[Brett Bellmore]

You might prefer an ineffectual opposition party, but democracy kind of requires that the opposing parties both be healthy.

[Sarcastr0]

Agreeing with your personal take on what's smart politics is not the same as being a healthy party.

Especially since what you think is smart is agreeing with you. And you admit you're a radical.

Doesn't track.

[Bob from Ohio]

"meaningful sense."

Do you ever get tired of commenting on US politics without seemingly knowing much about it?

Parliamentary parties are not the only type of "political parties" you dope. We have a presidential system so our parties reflect that, they are therefore meaningful.

When the King of England had actual power, the nascent parties did not have party discipline either and were loose coalitions like ours.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, that hasn't sunk in yet. It has only been 5 days. 😉

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "Probably the best approach....."

So Hegseth is unqualified (you don't bother to contest that because you can't), nominated as a trolling joke (ditto), a moral/ethical cretin (ditto), and without any vision for the towering position he would hold beyond the crudest cartoon (ditto).

But none of that matters (per Brett) because I've been successfully owned as a Lib. You know, for years Bellmore has blathered-on about Trump vs the "deep state". In turn, I've repeatedly observed he (Brett) is 100% full of shit. For him, it's always been about Trump's entertainment value alone. There has never any substance to this deep state malarkey; it's all about MAGA-types slapping their thigh and chortling with glee every time Trump wipes his lard ass on another civic, political, or ethical standard, constraint, or obligation.

Look at Brett's reply above and that's more obvious than ever.

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, my advice to you, after suffering through 4 years of Biden nominating lunatics like Levine or Brinton, is to just get used to the idea that the opposing party is now in charge, and doesn't CARE about your complaining. Treat it like a soap opera. You'll sleep better.

I didn't vote for Trump because I thought Trump was my idea of an ideal President. That would have been Rand Paul. I didn't vote for him because I thought he represented competence combined with tolerable policies. That would have been DeSantis.

I voted for him because the GOP nominated him and I thought he'd be less awful than Harris. Not "not awful", less awful. That he's often entertaining is a bonus, but "less awful" is the payoff.

So I don't feel any particular need to defend all his nominations and actions as good, because I don't think they're all good.

But, equally, I don't feel any particular obligation to uphold the Democratic party's talking points about any given nominee or action, or to refrain from gaming out what legal arguments Trump could advance for his policies, even policies like his birthright citizenship one that I think are unconstitutional.

So, you say Hegseth is a drunk. Prove it, don't expect me to just assume the accusations are true. Democrats have accusations down to a science, you snap your fingers and accusers come out of the woodwork. So accusations do not impress me at all at this point.

[grb]

OK, I'll play :

"Rachel Leland Levine is an American pediatrician who served as the United States assistant secretary for health from 2021 until 2025. She is also an admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine is a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Penn State College of Medicine, and previously served as the Pennsylvania physician general from 2015 to 2017 and as secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health from 2017 to 2021"

Excepting your tawdry obsession with transgender folk, where do you find her unqualified for the position of Assistant Secretary for Health? Care to try the same with Hegseth? Obviously you don't, because you'll lose that fight badly.

Find some principles, Brett. Firm-up your backbone. Trump treated the most important offices in the United States government as a trolling joke. No conduct by any other president is remotely similar, Biden included. I don't give the slightest damn you find transgender people yucky; that's your problem alone. Levine was qualified for her position; Hegseth isn't. Your attempt at a reply was a pathetic Fail.

[Brett Bellmore]

Rachel Levine is a guy. A formerly married guy with two kids. Being a guy, of course, is no more of a disqualification than being a gal. Being a nutcase, on the other hand... Yeah, I think that's a disqualification. Mental illnesses seem to travel in packs, you notice. Hence Brinton. I don't see the point in taking the risk that somebody like Levine will be crazy in a more consequential way, too.

I notice you don't care to defend Brinton. He got nominated and confirmed by Biden, too, you know. I guess you'd still be defending him if he hadn't been so careless as to publicly wear a dress one of his victims would recognize... But really, given his other insanities, was it a surprise to you?

[Sarcastr0]

Being a nutcase, on the other hand
You can think this personally, but insisting transgender people get excluded from high office, based on no actual performance criteria or even evidence of risk - just vibes?

That's bigotry.

[Brett Bellmore]

Being a nutcase is not "vibes". Yes, I think when you have a choice to hire somebody sane, or somebody insane, go with the sane person every time.

This is one of the current problems with the Democratic party, an example of that fringe takeover you refuse to acknowledge: You are committed to treating being mentally ill as an irrelevancy, no, worse, as normal. And that really IS a fringe viewpoint, even if it has now become anyway a Democratic party article of faith. It has become a Democratic party article of faith even as the public moves away from it.

[Sarcastr0]

You went too far for Noscitur.

You are committed to treating being mentally ill as an irrelevancy, no, worse, as normal
Your ranting sure sounds mainstream!

And citing a 2017 study really shows you've learned nothing from your experience with gay marriage.

[Noscitur a sociis]

A think you’re being a little loose with the term qualified. A doctor with experience managing large medical policy agencies seems qualified to be an assistant secretary for health. That doesn’t mean that any qualified doctor like that would do a good job, and in fact Levine advocated for some incredibly bad policies.

To the extent Hegseth has discernible policy ideas for DOD, they seem more or less fine to me. The larger issue (in my view) is that he has no record of managing a large organization at all, nothing in his background that would suggest he’d be particularly good at it, and a lot of character flaws that might suggest otherwise. That is what people mean when they say he’s not qualified.

[Sarcastr0]

I dunno if management is the big skill in the DoD - they have managers aplenty.

What he does need to do is lead. As in be in meetings and present the US/DoD position well. Take briefings so he can understand the whats and whys of the position he decides to take. Have the patience to at least pretend to listen to people. And represent the United States well.

And then be smart enough to hire a very very skilled chief of staff.

We'll see. I'm not optimistic, but neither am I slam-dunk he's gonna fail;
I don't know his information processing skills. But presumably he has poise, which ain't nothing. Hope he has the will to stay off the sauce. There's lots of it in the Pentagon if you know where to look.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Hope he has the will to stay off the sauce. There's lots of it in the Pentagon if you know where to look."

Maybe he'll find it and remove it.

[SRG2]

Probably the best approach for you is to realise that putting an unqualified person like Hegseth in power just because your team won an election is immature, immoral and dangerous,

The Hefgeth nomination is an incredibly good demonstration of just how servile and authoritarian Trump supporters are. Not a single one AFAIC, has criticised this obviously bad nomination.

Go ahead, rationalise away.

[Stella Link the dog]

"The Hegseth nomination is an incredibly good demonstration of just how servile and authoritarian Trump supporters are. Not a single one AFAIC, has criticised this obviously bad nomination."
It's not good, in my opinion, to have a chronically drunk whore monger in a position of power, but what is worse is Hegseth's probable policy proclivities, particularly his well established lax attitude towards punishing war criminals and being soft on torture. Of course, he shares those attitudes with El Puerco.

[Brett Bellmore]

There, you see: Your real objection to Hegseth is that he will do the job Trump is hiring him to do, rather than the job you want him to do. That wasn't so hard to admit, now, was it?

[Stella Link the dog]

Yes, I think it's bad for a president to be pro-torture and pro-war crimes and to install functionaries dedicated to those proclivities. Have I ever been reluctant to so assert?

[Sarcastr0]

Trump may be hiring him, but the Cabinet is generally thought of as serving the country via their agency's mission.

Unitary Executive was authoritarian back in the 2000s, and it still is today.

What, praytell, do you think Trump wants from the DoD that he needs to hire a toady to do it?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, and we pick how the cabinet will serve us by electing a President. Which we did a few months ago, and you lost.

What does Trump want from the DoD? He ran on lots of things, and none of them would be advanced by a nominee who was trying to oppose him.

[Sarcastr0]

we pick how the cabinet will serve us by electing a President.

Cabinet as agency-less organs of Presidential will is not actually how America works. That's more a dictatorship vibe.

Serving at the pleasure of the President does not mean being the servant of the President.

[Brett Bellmore]

Ah, yeah, it actually more or less does mean that. You don't want mindless obedience, but you at least want people who start out on the same page as you.

[Sarcastr0]

That's not how it's been in the past.

See, e.g. Nixon's Cabinet. Or Carter's. Or Clinton's. GWB had Colin Powell.

I mean, you lot were super pissed at Holder making a crack about being a wingman. Now I guess he was just stating how it is!

[David Nieporent]

Not a single one AFAIC, has criticised this obviously bad nomination.

Indeed, online MAGA have attacked the two GOPers who voted against him as needing to be primaried, because apparently every GOP senator is obligated to support everything Trump wants.

[tylertusta]

Trump famously described soldiers KIA as "losers"

From the "famously" anonymous source for the Atlantic who makes that claim.

Yet every person present agrees didn't actually happen. John Bolton has every reason to hate Trump, and even he says that Trump never said that.

And folks wonder why people don't trust the media...

[David Nieporent]

Um, John Kelly says otherwise.

[Brett Bellmore]

As Trump responded, " Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?"

[Dr. Ed 2]

And the reason he didn't go to the cemetery is that even though he would have gone by limo, the distance from AF-1 mandated that a helo be on site and weather conditions made it unsafe to fly a helo that day. And unlike some, Trump was worried about the well being of soldiers and didn't go for this reason.

[David Nieporent]

John Kelly says otherwise.

[Bob from Ohio]

Several years later.

[Stella Link the dog]

" Honestly, do you think General Kelly would have stood by and let ANYONE call fallen Marines losers?"

Absolutely. What do you think Kelly should have done, punch him out? When the CIC insults you, you grit your teeth and take it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Or you resign and make a stink of it.

[Stella Link the dog]

"resign and make a stink of it"

If that's your best option. In Kelly's case, he must have already known that he was serving a petulant asshole who delights in being insulting, vindictive, obnoxious, and confrontational. I'm sure that Kelly knew who he was dealing with. If Kelly perceived that he could better serve his country by swallowing his pride and his indignation, I find no fault with him.

[tylertusta]

I was unaware of Kelly's comments, and I'll have to consider whether he is a source I should trust.

However, the inability to confirm the veracity of the comments for nearly three years in inexcusable.

[Brett Bellmore]

Wake me when that happens.

When there are public and uncontradicted witnesses to it, mind you, not anonymous accounts.

[bernard11]

Brett,
You are happy enough to cite anonymous sources, not to mention wild rumors and the like, when they support your point of view.

So please stop pretending you have these strict objective standards for evidence you will accept and evidence you won't. It does you no credit.

[not guilty]

The guiding principle of Brett's commentary is IOKIYAR.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Stephen, let's be realistic about this -- there were two attempts to assassinate Trump that we know of and likely a few more that we don't. The price of being an open society is the risk of the assassin, and if the ChiComs are going to attack us, to start a shooting war with us, is it unrealistic to presume that they would be reluctant to start by assassinating key members of out government?

So the Secretary of Defense is not dead drunk but dead dead with a bullet in his head. Or like Bill Cohen had gone home to Bangor and slid off an icy I-95. Or Lloyd Austin having a heart attack instead of prostate cancer. Or, or, or...

There are "continuity of government" plans, there is Lord knows what up at Mt. Weather, and I have no doubt there are protocols for a non-responsive Secretary of Defense. It was then-VP Biden who told the media about the secret bomb shelter under the VeeP's residence, etc.

While I'm not arguing the competence of the Federal Government, they have thought about this.

[grb]

As a swooning Commenter_XY said above, it's just Week One (XY's voice ardent, husky, and breathless). So far we've dealt with unconstitutional exec orders, tantrum orders, childish orders and performance cruelty orders. This has almost certainty been the high point of Trump's second term, since the greater part of them have been PR stunts, easily done by a lazy addled conman (who's never been more than deeply stupid).

Still, I've seen no discussion of the most important one of all : DJT's executive order on architecture (my own corner of the woods). In it, Trump demands public buildings be "beautiful" - which sounds nice enough, though odd coming from the King of Schlock.

But he also dictates these buildings be Neoclassical. Now this isn't entirely unexpected. Thugs, tinhorn-types, and tyrants (petty or not) universally pine for buildings with a stolid heavy mass and grand columns of the Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian orders. Hitler and Stalin wouldn't allow any other kind of building. And Trump made similar noise in his first term, but people rightly assumed it was just that day's clown show & ignored him. Still, I now have to worry he might declare some fake-emergency and send in federal troops to combat my insufficient Classism.

Week One and our country is already the laughingstock of the world.

[Mr. Bumble]

What is this world you speak of and who cares if fools are laughing?
Why the comparison to Hitler and Stalin rather than Greece and Rome the source of that style of architecture?

[Commenter_XY]

grb, there is a tremendous benefit to America to securing the equivalent of 3% annual GDP (1 trillion to be spent over next 4 years). His speech at Davos was a pitch to much more intl money sitting on the sidelines. This can only help America. More is coming, grb. POTUS Trump, through his personal connections obtained through decades of doing business internationally, is making this happen. He knows the players who direct private international investment personally and he speaks in their language. Intl investors will make a choice between the US and CHN for investment. We can see where the money is coming, it is coming here to America. Thank God! No other POTUS has done anything like this before. If you disagree, name one.

Ok, some of the EOs are...well...The Donald is going to be The Donald. grb, they sound dumb to me too. The architecture one...meh. It doesn't cost anything (hopefully). Besides, I don't want the federal government building buildings, I want them selling off buildings we don't need anymore.

Other EOs expressly disrupt the existing status quo. POTUS Trump was elected, in part, for his known propensity to disrupt things and change them. He is certainly delivering the disruption. 😉

Nobody at Davos was laughing, grb. And especially not after POTUS Trump was done speaking. In the aftermath of Davos, the USA is about to receive a Trumpian (heh) level of foreign investment dollars into our manufacturing base and infrastructure. Nobody at Davos was talking about investing their money into China for building AI data centers, grb. This is a great time to buy a total us stock market index fund and relax. The country will prosper and so will your passive investment.

[Sarcastr0]

Interesting choice to lean into grb's mockery with empty-headed praise.

[Commenter_XY]

Do yourself a favor, buy that total US stock market fund (VTSAX or FSKAX) and chill. Placement (401K-403b, roth, taxable) won't matter too much to most people. You'll make good money, Sarcastr0. There is nothing political in that.

[Sarcastr0]

Of course I have an index fund. Though I'm young enough I have a riskier mix than that.

The point is that you're deeply into cult of personality "only Trump can do it."

[Commenter_XY]

Perhaps you'd like to name another POTUS in American history who managed to secure foreign funding equivalent to 3% of US GDP in one week. Go ahead, please name one. I could be wrong.

I'll wait.

[David Nieporent]

What exactly do you think happened here? You've built some elaborate fan fic in your head.

[Commenter_XY]

David, Candidate Trump spoke extensively on the campaign trail about the 'capital competition' between the US and ROW, and especially CHN. That isn't 'new' news. Intl investors are now coming off the sidelines and investing in America (not CHN), because they know their investments will a) make money here, and b) be safe here. POTUS Trump made an effective case at Davos for even more foreign investment in America, just on a tax and regulatory basis. The EU will get aced out along with CHN.

Maybe you'd like to take a swing at the question I posed to Sarcastr0. I'll wait. But I don't think you can either.

I want you and Sarcastr0 to financially benefit; I mean that. Buy a low cost, Total US Stock Market index fund, and keep dumping money into it. You will not regret it. Warren Buffet isn't wrong, and neither am I.

[grb]

Commenter_XY : (all his comments above)

At this point in the movie, someone (I don't want the job) grabs you by the shoulders, gives you a vigorous slap, and yells, "Snap out of it man!" All this fantasy Trump porn may be intoxicating & thrilling to you, but my advice is keep it private. You do yourself no favors making it a public spectacle. By this point you sound like some tweeny girl gushing over her boy band idol. Not a good look.

Trump did not create zillions of new dollars for the economy with the slightest kingly nod. We repeatedly saw him promise Spectacular! Awesome! Developments! in his first term that ultimately amounted to squat. And we've seen him walk out of meetings with other world leaders hyping their Yuge Deal only to have that amount to nothing too. Foreign leaders know Trump is desperate for hype and PR, so can be easily manipulated. The same Saudis you gush about today promised Trump 310 billion dollars in arms purchases back in 2017. Only the tiniest fraction of that ever occurred. The Chinese treated their summit "promises" to Trump like toilet paper five minutes after he walked out the door.

If you can't see that, you'll have a loonngggg four years......

[Commenter_XY]

I'll wait for you to name a POTUS who did anything like this too.

You're all 0-3.

[David Nieporent]

I'll wait for you to name a POTUS who did anything like this too.

"Trump does things other POTUS wouldn't do" is the indictment, not the defense.

[Sarcastr0]

Trump did not create zillions of new dollars for the economy with the slightest kingly nod

Commenter: 'did too!'

Multiple people have pointed out you're just writing fan fiction about what a singularly amazing power Trump is and then gushing over the fiction you wrote.

It's childlike.

[bernard11]

XY,

Please get your facts straight. You are looking increasingly foolish.

The US has not received $1T from the Saudis, nor even $6B. They suggested they might do that in investment and trade.

Per the AP, citing the Saudi Press Agency:

The comments from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reported early Thursday by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, came in a phone call with Trump. It was Trump’s first call with a foreign leader since his inauguration Monday.
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“The crown prince affirmed the kingdom’s intention to broaden its investments and trade with the United States over the next four years, in the amount of $600 billion, and potentially beyond that,” the report said.

Then Trump asked them to go to $1T, and got a polite, "We'll think about it" from KSA.

No check has been written, no contract signed. At this point it is all talk, and not very dependable talk.

[Brett Bellmore]

Wasn't the whole point of describing Trump as an existential threat, the idea that there were things only Trump could do? That the people so characterizing him didn't want done, anyway.

[Sarcastr0]

Could != would.

We're seeing lots of 'I'ma try it until someone tells me no' which is not good for any form of governments with checks and balances.

Any previous President could have flooded the field with this shit; none did.

But we're seeing lots of people here suddenly excited about further concentration of authority into the executive, when the executive is Trump.

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "... the whole point of describing Trump as an existential threat ...."

The whole point of describing Trump as an existential threat is he's a lifelong criminal without principles or ethics, a grotesque liar, and mentally ill with pathological narcissism. That's what we said four years before he tried to steal a presidential election from the American voters.

We were proved right in his first term. Just a week in, and we're proved right now as well. With his ugly 06Jan pardons and bizarre/unconstitutional "orders", Trump is already on his way to exceeding his previous shit-show. Sure, you find it entertaining, but normal people have more demanding standards.

You'll be repeatedly defending the indefensible over the next four years, Brett. I'm sure you can pull that off skillfully (being a zen master at weaseling) but I hope deeper principles somehow take root and you grow a spine. No one can predict the ways Trump will damage the country & its democracy this term. I wouldn't have predicted his brazen attempt at election theft in a million years, but it happened.

[David Nieporent]

With his ugly 06Jan pardons

They were ugly, but expected. He has gone far beyond that, issuing a bunch of pardons that basically tell right wingers: don't worry, nothing you do is illegal. People blocking abortion clinics, cops who kill people… and the latter right after he issued an order stopping the DOJ from civilly going after any police departments.

[Brett Bellmore]

The opposition's actions are always "ugly" in the view of your own party, David. Trump's J-6 pardons weren't just "expected", they were a campaign promise.

I don't think pardoning the J-6 crew was any worse than not going after Antifa in the first place for them to NEED pardons.

[David Nieporent]

Trump's J-6 pardons weren't just "expected", they were a campaign promise.

He never promised to pardon all of them. He implied that it would only be non-violent ones.

[hobie]

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. You give a bunch of ignorant warlords, barbarians and rubes their first taste of money and they go honey boo-boo with either greco-roman or 17th century Paris and lots of gold and fringe. Scarface is their template. Think Dubai's airport, a lot of Trump properties including his hotel in Vegas, the antebellum south etc. But I've never heard of a ruler forcing a nation to adopt it

[Brett Bellmore]

That's because they're impressed by the good stuff, and not yet jaded.

[Bob from Ohio]

Right, they select the best style. Shows how smart they are, at least they don't pick Frank Gehry designs.

[hobie]

Style is subjective, including Trump's interpretation of it. Art Deco represents the height of American glamour and power. Be that as it may, you sure you are comfortable with one man dictating how our art is supposed to look?

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm comfortable with an elected President having a lot of say over what federal agencies do.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Franklin Roosevelt built much of DC and what do we see?

[Noscitur a sociis]

I continue to be amazed at how Democrats want to just leave so many popular issues for the Republicans to own in the popular consciousness. The ship has almost sailed on “free speech” and “meritocracy”: don’t you at least want to stay competitive on “it’s better when buildings look nice than when they look ugly”?

Also note that this order does not require a neoclassical style: that was the one that he issued in his first administration. This one just requires the submission of “recommendations to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”

[hobie]

I'm fine with that as a goal, but I'm uncomfortable with it being forced by the power of the state. Because that sounds more Soviet than anything else

[Brett Bellmore]

Hello, we're talking about federal buildings here. The federal government is forcing the federal government to do things, using the power of the state?

[santamonica811]

"State" here is referring to the federal government. To give just one of hundreds of possible examples; the State Department belongs to the federal government, and not to an individual state, or to some collection of states (other than the collection of all 50 states, natch).

[Noscitur a sociis]

What you’re saying isn’t wrong, but what does it have to do with what Brett Bellmore said?

[santamonica811]

I read Brett's comment as, "I'm confused. We are talking about federal buildings, so how can the state power of California, or Idaho, or Tenn (et al) come into play?"

(If I read it wrong, then sorry 'bout that, Brett.)

[Noscitur a sociis]

No, he’s saying that it’s not an abuse of government power for the federal government to tell itself what its buildings should look.

[F.D. Wolf]

Haitian gang member with 17 convictions taken into ICE custody offers his valediction:

F*ck Trump! You feel me? Yo, Biden forever, bro! Thank Obama for everything he did for me, bro!

Truly a statement as erudite and thoughtful as most any from the liberal commentariat on social media.

Bon voyage, bro.

https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1882448036607164794

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe they can drop him off at Barbecue's place.

[F.D. Wolf]

Maybe there's a spot for a Haitian Yakov Smirnoff.

"In Haiti, Barbecue eats you."

[Martinned2]

Certainly no Proud Boys, that's right.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-defends-pardons-rioters-suggests-proud-boys-place-117943642

[F.D. Wolf]

I'm sorry for your loss.

[Martinned2]

If the election means that the Proud Boys get to help run the United States, it's very much your loss, not mine.

[F.D. Wolf]

I don't really know anything about the "Proud Boys", other than they seem to drive leftists into hysteria, but, then again, what doesn't? When someone outside the kook left starts expressing some concern about them, then I'll endeavor to learn more on the topic. But thank you for bringing it to my attention.

[Martinned2]

So ABC News is also outside the kook left?

(Leaving to one side the fact that I'm neither a kook nor of the left, thank you very much.)

[Bob from Ohio]

"I'm neither a kook

Could have fooled us.

"nor of the left,"

Everyone in Europe is to the left of 99.9% of Americans, immigration perhaps excluded.

[CountmontyC]

Where in the article does it say that? The closest I see barely amounts to a paraphrase claiming President Trump saying that the Proud Boys might have a place in US politics ( which probably means that they have the same rights as any other group to be involved in politics).

[Brett Bellmore]

You have to read between the lines with Trump, I understand, and often that requires ignoring the lines themselves, they just get in the way.

[Sarcastr0]

This one angry guy appears to be getting the full-court press on the right, and the tools on here are here for it!

Get new material, dude.
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/22/midweek-midday-open-thread-3/?comments=true#comment-10883402

[Michael P]

When Republicans screw up, that's the news. When Democrats screw up, the Republican reaction is the news.

[Sarcastr0]

A criminal shouting as they're deported has jack shit to do with any policy.

Unless you're going to argue Biden never deported any criminals.

[mulched]

The criminal being departed IS the policy.

[Michael P]

Biden sure didn't deport that criminal, in spite of his long record.

It is sad how Gaslight0 argues that a single deportation would justify keeping tens of thousands of illegal immigrant felons in the US. What an awful, Bidenesque, policy that would be!

[Sarcastr0]

What did I say that makes you think I argued...whatever you wrote there?

[Michael P]

"Unless you're going to argue Biden never deported any criminals."

You explicitly set the bar at "deported any criminals".

[Sarcastr0]

You took an anecdote and tried to blow it up into a policy failure.

I pointed out that there are certainly similar anecdotes under Biden, so the anecdote as causal proof of bad policy didn't wash.

I have no idea where you took it from there.

[Michael P]

There were two examples of Biden's immigration policy failures in the story that the Xitter post excerpted from. https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/extremely-violent-offenders-undocumented-migrants-with-criminal-records-nabbed-boston-ice-raid/KXKS25PYLBB2VMQ7BRTZX2SPRA/ lists some of the other low-hanging fruit that Biden left to fester.

You did not, at least in any remotely obvious way, assert the thing that you now claim you pointed out -- you suggested that Biden should be held to a standard of "deported any criminals".

[Sarcastr0]

So when I said 'ou took an anecdote and tried to blow it up into a policy failure' you thought a relevant response was to post some additional anecodtes?

I'll come back with the same point - what policy is at issue? Do you think Biden had a policy not to deport criminals?

you suggested that Biden should be held to a standard of "deported any criminals"
Again, not what I said. The construction: 'Unless you're going to argue' is not one setting a standard, it's one pointing out a flaw in your argument.

[Michael P]

It's amazing. You don't bat an eye between complaining about supposed sealioning in another thread and insisting on a stupidly high burden of proof for a goalpost that you pulled out of thin air.

[Sarcastr0]

Am I asking you any questions? No. I am correcting your strawmanning.

[mulched]

The short timeline means that the Biden Administration already knew where this guy was and decided NOT to pick him up.

Fuck that! And thank goodness the Trump Administration is willing to arrest and deport criminal aliens

[Martinned2]

That's always fascinating in a world of populist politicians, that the voters who fall for that garbage don't distinguish between talk and action. So suddenly surveys show that various people's estimates of the number of illegal immigrants in the country, the number of deportations, etc. have jumped wildly because there's a new politician in office, before he's actually done anything yet.

[Commenter_XY]

Earlier this week, Tuesday, there was an interesting ruling out of ED-NY regarding section 702 of FISA.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25502479-ruling-in-fisa-case/

Net net: Incidental data collection and subsequent querying the data of US citizens is a violation of 4A.

Legal question: Does this get appealed by the government, under POTUS Trump? (I think yes, and hope they lose that case)

Could this be just a bad case with bad facts making a bad ruling?

What do the lawyers here think?

[Michael P]

I expect the government will appeal it, and I also hope they lose. I don't think the "border exception" to the Fourth Amendment covers this kind of post-seizure search. Orin Kerr might disagree (based on how his view of how far a warrant can constrain police use of materials seized pursuant to that warrant), but so be it.

[apedad]

I agree because the issue turns on getting a warrant - which simply is not that difficult.

In these cases, a US Person (US citizen or permanent resident [some more statuses not applicable here]), comes to the attention of the FBI, e.g., a tip from a reliable source says that Jack Jones is importing illegal stuff into the country.

Great! Get a warrant to check the FISA Section 702 to see if Jack Jones pops up and then proceed appropriately.

[Michael P]

In this case, the defendant only came to the US government's attention because he was communicating with a foreign entity being surveilled under Section 702. There was no other tip or source, and so no basis to get a warrant.

Having a valid basis for a warrant would indeed make this easy for the government. The current decision means the government would need to build a parallel construction before getting a warrant.

[apedad]

"This particular case concerned Agron Hasbajrami, an Albanian citizen and US resident who was arrested at JFK airport on September 6, 2011, just before he tried boarding a flight to Pakistan via Turkey. He was accused of seeking to join a terror organization to fight against American forces and others in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and later pleaded guilty to charges of attempting and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Once Hasbajrami was in the clink, it emerged the g-men had made the collar using emails between the Albanian and an unnamed foreigner associated with terrorists as evidence, all obtained without a warrant under Section 702. This led to an appeal and the case has been fought ever since, eventually ending up back in a district court.

That led to Judge DeArcy Hall deciding the use of Section 702 in Hasbajrami's case, at least, was unconstitutional."

I think having this info would be enough to authorize a warrant.

They know the info is there, just get the warrant to grab it and use it.

Afterall, it was legally collected (by another agency for intelligence collections purposes - not criminal investigation purposes).

[Michael P]

If I understand your argument correctly, you believe the government can use information it seized and searched without a warrant in the foreign intelligence context to justify a warrant allowing use of the very same information in a criminal prosecution. What would be the court's function in reviewing such a warrant application, as opposed to just determining directly whether the evidence is admissible at trial? (When would a court tell the government "no" to the warrant?)

[apedad]

Normal warrant review to ensure the info is fresh and relevant, e.g., not from 1995, applies to some (major) criminal, etc.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I think having this info would be enough to authorize a warrant.

I’m not following. The facts in the opinion are heavily redacted, but as I understand it the government’s initial evidence consisted entirely of the FISA-derived material, and all the subsequent evidence was the fruit of it. What is it that the government could have included in the warrant application?

[Martinned2]

In news that is presumably also bad somehow, the ICC Prosecutor has applied for arrest warrants against the Supreme Leader and the Chief Justice of Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-afghanistan

[John F. Carr]

The application refers to this prohibited act:

Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court

Gender means male or female, nothing more. Crimes listed in "this paragraph" include enslavement, severe deprivation of physical liberty, and "other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health."

[Bob from Ohio]

"presumably also bad somehow"

Not bad, just useless. Are they sending the ICC police to arrest them?

Also, transparently an effort to deflect from their antisemitic warrants. "See, we go after Muslims too!"

[Martinned2]

And this statement from the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute is conspicuous in how carefully it doesn't name names:

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-bureau-assembly-states-parties-support-independence-and-impartiality-international

The Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute expresses its deep concern over sanctions measures against the International Criminal Court (“the Court”) and its personnel, as well as individuals and entities who assist it in investigating, arresting, detaining, or prosecuting certain individuals.
(...)
The Bureau emphasizes that the Assembly of States Parties stands firmly by the International Criminal Court, its elected officials, its personnel, and those cooperating with the Court. We stress the importance of the International Criminal Court in defending international justice and call on all States, international organizations and civil society to respect its independence and impartiality.

[Commenter_XY]

The sooner the US personally sanctions everyone employed (and their families) by the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC, the better. Since the Senate will be in non-stop sessions for a while, maybe they can pass the bill previously passed by the House earlier this month.

That cannot happen soon enough. The sanctions must have 'bite'.

[Bob from Ohio]

"The sanctions must have 'bite'."

Agreed, the statute is needed so the next Democrat president can't lift them.

[Bob from Ohio]

Oh noes a statement from the dangerous Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute! I'm sure that is an impressive group!

[Brett Bellmore]

Perhaps we can all agree on at least one of Trump's executive orders: That all federal buildings built on his watch must be classical in design, brutalism is banned.

[Sarcastr0]

Those are the only 2 choices?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, those are the substance of the EO.

[hobie]

I doubt anyone in their right mind would create a brutalist building anymore. Assuming this edict is merely a suggestion and not a prohibition on the freedom of creativity, I would prefer to draw from the following styles:

Art Deco
Egyptian
Frank Lloyd Wright

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm fond of Art Deco myself. Sadly, there are apparently a lot of people making government architectural decisions who aren't in their right mind, if I'm to judge by what's been going on locally with government buildings.

Now, you want good architecture, look at the Grand Bohemian Lodge in Greenville. It has swiftly become a local landmark. We were worried when a huge hotel started going up right next to Falls Park, but it actually added to the ambiance, rather than detracting from it.

[hobie]

That building looks fine. Like a chalet and a Drury Inn mated. Not extraordinary. Perhaps for the region it looks extraordinary

[Brett Bellmore]

It fits into the location wonderfully, (Falls park wraps around it.) and the interior details are superb. It's a bit too expensive for us to stay at, except maybe a rare luxury, (Why else would we stay at a hotel we could literally walk to in a few hours?) but whenever we visit downtown Greenville to enjoy a restaurant meal and a walk, it's always one of our stops, to check out the art exhibits in the public areas of the first floor.

[Brett Bellmore]

Oh, here's my son's favorite bookstore, not far from there: Classy, isn't it?

[grb]

Very nice!

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "Perhaps we can all agree on at least one of Trump's executive orders: That all federal buildings built on his watch must be classical in design, brutalism is banned"

Five Points :

1. Brutalism has been effectively "banned" almost fifty years. The last time it was remotely in vouge was in the mid-Seventies.

2. (Nonetheless, I'm hyped to see the movie)

3. Brutalism was briefly superseded by Postmodernism, which was precisely the kind of paper-thin faux classicism Trump claims to champion now. But here's the problem : The result was sterile, crudely fake and deeply ugly.

4. Which is what happens when tinhorn despots and their governments legislate artistic style. Ask me, it's pretty strange to see fake-Libertarians and fake-Conservatives applaud that.

5. Which leads me to one last point : We'll all be deeply relieved when Trump exits the office four years hence. But I'll have a bonus pleasure, albeit guilty/sordid. Trump post-president will inevitably turn to his memoirs and presidential library, with both promising high comedy. On the whole, presidential libraries have been a poor genre of architectural design, but recent Democratic presidents have upped the game. Obama's and Clinton's are both quite good and (hopefully) Biden can hit their level. W Bush's looked promising given his shortlist of architects was extremely good with one exception, but he chose that exception and mediocrity resulted. But Trump's ?!? Lord a'mercy, but that's guaranteed to be an absolute shit-show.

[santamonica811]

Come on; any library with gold-plated toilets is okay with me. Screams classy with a capital C.

[apedad]

Trump wants nuclear reduction talks with China, Russia

President Trump while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday said that he wants to hold talks with Russia and China about reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles.

U.S. and Russian participation in the treaty effectively froze during the Biden administration, as Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to impose costs on Washington for supporting Ukraine militarily.

Putin has also threatened the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine to try to deter U.S. and European military support for Kyiv.

Addressing the global forum, Trump recounted talks with Putin ahead of the 2020 U.S. election about denuclearization talks and how “China would have come along.”

“We want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible,” Trump said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/5102798-trump-urges-nuclear-talks-russia-china/

Trump would get a Nobel Peace Prize if he gets this done - and I would be the first one to stand and applaud.

[Commenter_XY]

If POTUS Trump can facilitate a peaceful resolution to RUS/UKR (possible), and ISR (unlikely), that would be Nobel worthy. I don't think the Nobel Committee will ever award the peace prize to a POTUS Trump, no matter what he does.

I don't see the CCP agreeing to any limit.

[Brett Bellmore]

Neither do I. The CCP is building their nuclear arsenal as fast as they can. They're also mass producing amphibious landing craft. Basically every sign indicates that they do intend to go to war to take Taiwan, and threaten the world with global nuclear warfare if anybody gets in their way.

[Krayt]

A dictator is a kleptocrat. They seize power to live in palaces.

Hot air is de rigueur. But pulling destruction onto themselves is not part of the cushy palace business model.

[Brett Bellmore]

The problem is that as dictators age, unless they're trying to establish a dynasty for their kids, their time horizon keeps getting shorter, and they can take bigger and bigger risks as that horizon approaches, to accomplish things they really want.

[tylertusta]

The PRC may agree to nuclear limitations if only because nuclear weapons are expensive to build and expensive to maintain, and their economy is already starting to feel the pain of their demographic problems.

[Dr. Ed 2]

It's not just demographics, it's also debt. Evergrande is only part of it.

[tylertusta]

Demographics will be the root cause of any debt implosion. A country can service expanding debt so long as its population and/or productivity grows.

[Don Nico]

Getting China to reduce its nuclear stockpiles is highly unlikely.
For the past few years its has increased the strategic stockpile by 200 to 300 weapons per year with an aim of bring its stockpile from 300 strategic weapons to ~2000, a number it considers at rough parity with that if Russia and the US.
Russia and the US are committed to nuclear force modernization as many of the nukes in the stockpiles are more than 40 years old.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The big issue will be testing -- we don't know if the old nukes will work.

[SRG2]

Blaming Zelensky and saying he should have surrendered even before the invasion will not go down well in Ukraine.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/trump-says-ukraine-should-have-surrendered-to-russia-and-blames-zelensky-for-war/ar-AA1xLhyg

[Don Nico]

who are you answering in your post?

[SRG2]

Apedad: note his comments on trump at the WEF

[Martinned2]

Since certain quarters of the American commentariat has suddenly started caring about other countries' constitutional issues, here is a discussion of the recent prorogation litigation in Canada:

https://constitution-unit.com/2025/01/24/the-canadian-prime-ministers-request-for-prorogation-was-neither-illegal-nor-unconstitutional/

[Krayt]

On suspending the legislature because it gets in your way

[Martinned2]

Yes, we should definitely rely on Star Wars to understand the finer points of the Canadian constitution, rather than specialised academics and lawyers.

[Krayt]

My comment is accurate and a fine criticism. I do mock the situation, indeed.

He's suspending the legislature because they're trying to drive him out.

Defend it if you like.

Here in the US we suffer similar silly games, like forcing the Congress into recess or something, so you can abuse the recess appointments clause. Or declaring they are in recess when they are not.

(Or Congress declaring they are in session to prevent such appointments when they functionally are not. And the exec waits for those moments to trickily sneak people in.)

God how depressing. One thing's for certain, they're all weasels abusing a feature meant for timing's sake, that no longer really applies.

[apedad]

FBI spending to top $3 billion at Redstone Arsenal

Funding for ongoing construction at the FBI campus on Redstone Arsenal (Alabama) has now exceeded $3 billion.

As part of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last month, $652 million was allocated for FBI construction at the Army post in Huntsville, according to a press release last month from former Sen. Richard Shelby, who retired this week.

Growth plans for FBI Redstone stretch as far in the future as 20 years.

Watts said the FBI has about 1,500 employees at Redstone with plans to reach about 2,000 by the middle of the year. The FBI will have the capacity for about 5,000 employees by 2028, Watts said, with room for another 3,800 for training purposes.

https://www.al.com/news/2023/01/fbi-spending-to-top-3-billion-at-redstone-arsenal.html

General mouthbreathers: DEFUND THE FBI!

Alabama mouthbreathers: YAAAAY FBI!!!!

[Michael P]

Which mouthbreathers are cheering this construction? Or are they just parts of your fervid imagination?

(I would note it's not a bad thing in itself for the FBI to be planning ahead and setting up its future headquarters, in preparation for DC being largely disbanded and decentralized.)

[Armchair]

Moving the FBI headquarters to Redstone makes a decent amount of sense.

[Frank Drackman]

Huntsville's actually quite the Cosmopolitan City, "Trash Pandas" Minor League Baseball, Von Braun Civic Center, sort of like Nashville without the Hipsters.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What about Quantico?

[Noscitur a sociis]

That is the current locations of the components being relocated to Alabama.

[Noscitur a sociis]

1. They’re not moving the headquarters there.

2. A certain someone has been pretty clear on whether it should move out of DC at all:

THE NEW FBI BUILDING SHOULD BE BUILT IN WASHINGTON, D.C., NOT MARYLAND, AND BE THE CENTERPIECE OF MY PLAN TO TOTALLY RENOVATE AND REBUILD OUR CAPITAL CITY INTO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND SAFEST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. THE FBI MUST BE IN WALKING DISTANCE TO THE DOJ BUILDING IN THAT THE DOJ & FBI HAVE TO WORK CLOSELY TOGETHER. A TWO MINUTE WALK TO A MEETING IS FAR BETTER THAN A TRAFFIC LADEN TWO HOUR DRIVE TO GREENBELT, MARYLAND. LIKEWISE, HAVING THE FBI IN D.C. IS IMPORTANT FOR ENDING VIOLENT CRIME, WHICH I WILL DO, QUICKLY!!!

[hobie]

States Rights! Slash federal spending!

[Michael P]

https://nypost.com/2024/12/27/us-news/feds-finally-release-photos-showing-then-vp-biden-meeting-son-hunters-china-biz-partners-days-before-he-leaves-office/

Will any of the people here apologize for having insisted that Hunter Biden was selling lies without help from Joe?

[hobie]

Most of your citations never back what you assert. Why should I click on this link today and get burned again?

[David Nieporent]

I am unclear why you think photographs of several people standing near each other would show anything other than that several people were in the same room.

[RedheadedPharoh]

Do you think there will be a DSM entry for this level of bootlicking and taint tickling?

[Brett Bellmore]

So, you're claiming that Biden was honest in saying he'd never met them, because he might not have noticed that they were right next to him in one room, and he routinely fails to meet people he shakes hands with

Well, I guess that IS par for the course with you, actually.

[Stella Link the dog]

Do you remember meeting everyone you've ever shaken hands with?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, but if somebody asked if I'd met somebody I *might* have met, and I didn't remember, I'd just say I didn't remember, not adamantly deny it.

Biden denied it because he wanted to falsely deny that he'd helped his son with his business dealings. He might have forgotten individual meetings, but he damned well knew he'd been having those meetings.

[Stella Link the dog]

"Biden denied it because he wanted to falsely deny that he'd helped his son with his business dealings."

We don't know that he falsely denied it.
It has not been established that Biden " helped his son with his business dealings."

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "So, you're claiming...."

By the numbers :

1. I am neither surprised or shocked Hunter may have gotten a biz associate a handshake with daddy. In fact, I thought it almost the only scandalette produced by the laptop.

2. Nor am I surprised or shocked Joe might have lied about it. All politicians lie; Joe Biden just did so many thousands-times less frequently than Trump.

3. But I am surprised & shocked at right-wing-world's fake outrage. Nobody does hypocrisy better than today's Right, but that's still way beyond the pale.

4. Everyday in Washington - and across the country in state capitols and small towns - hundreds of thousands of businessmen and lobbyists get access to pols by contacts and contributions. It is as common as grains of sand on a beach. You probably couldn't design a system where it didn't happen, but if you did the GOP would fight you every step of the way. Whoring to special interests is accounted a holy principal to them.

5. An example : After Trump's first inauguration, Mar-a-Lago doubled its fees. But those who ponied-up bought access to Trump to plead, deal, barter and pitch. As sleazy as that is, you've never caught me shocked (shocked!) that it went on. A question for the cultists here : Who do you think granted more special interests special access, Biden or Trump?

Let's see if the Cult can honestly answer the simplest of questions.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/10/us/trump-properties-swamp.html

[grb]

Bonus Point from the AP, 22Jan :

"WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump took office eight years ago, pledging to “drain the swamp” and end the domination of Washington influence peddlers. Now, he’s opening his second term by rolling back prohibitions on executive branch employees accepting major gifts from lobbyists, and ditching bans on lobbyists seeking executive branch jobs or vice versa, for at least two years. Trump issued a Day 1 executive order that rescinded one on ethics that former President Joe Biden signed when he took office in January 2021.

The new president also has been benefitting personally in the runup to his inauguration by launching a new cryptocurrency token that is soaring in value while his wife, first lady Melania Trump, has inked a deal to make a documentary with Amazon. All of that comes as the Trump Organization has instituted a voluntary agreement that forbids making deals with foreign governments, but not with private companies abroad."

Of course none of this is a surprise. We've seen right-types like Brett drone on about "draining the swamp", but everyone always knew that phrase has nothing to do with any English-usage meaning.

Instead it was MAGA-talk, where the most sleazy and corrupt administration in living memory can "drain the swamp" by providing pro-wrestling-style entertainment by theatrical shows of brat-child contempt against every institution, standard, or ethical constraint.

Only in MAGA-world could "drain the swamp" mean performance scorn against all rules prohibiting conflict of interest or requiring transparency in government.

Only in MAGA-world could "drain the swamp" mean openly thwarting all regulations to limit special access for special interests.

Up is down. Black is white. Welcome to MAGA-world.

[Armchair]

Question for the legal community, part 1.

Let's assume there is a legislator that the FBI suspects may have passed on critical national security secrets to a foreign power. They don't know what was passed on, or how, and the suspicion is vague at best. Nevertheless, the FBI drops by and asks the legislator if they've done anything criminal in regards to foreign powers. The legislator replies "I take the fifth amendment against self incrimination" and refuses to further answer.

This alerts the FBI there may be something real here. After consultations with the DoJ and DoD, they realize that this national security information is critical, and it's far more important they know what was passed on than any criminal charges. The DoJ (and courts) offers the legislator full immunity for anything he tells them, which the legislator accepts, in writing. However, the legislator then still refuses to talk.

Question. Can the DoJ (and courts) then subject the legislator to legal penalties, including imprisonment, for not telling them what he knows?

[Brett Bellmore]

"The legislator replies "I take the fifth amendment against self incrimination" and refuses to further answer."

More likely "Speech and debate clause, chum, bugger off!".

You're basically describing Rep. David Bonior in the 80's. He was on a key intelligence committee, and was caught phoning the Sandanistas immediately after a briefing on the Contras. Absolutely nothing came of it.

[Martinned2]

How is the speech and debate clause relevant to the question posed? The question, as Armchair suggested it, didn't say anything about the deliberations of Congress.

[Michael P]

The Speech or Debate Clause has emanations and penumbras that protect broadly. Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606 (1972) and United States v. Rayburn House Office Building, 497 F.3d 654 (D.C. Cir. 2007). The FBI would need to have very specific evidence to get a warrant to search or seize anything from a sitting member of Congress, so the specified situation ("They don't know what was passed on, or how, and the suspicion is vague at best.") would not support anything beyond a courtesy visit to ask questions.

[Armchair]

Keep in mind, the legislator didn't claim the speech and debate clause. He claimed his right against self incrimination.

In Gravel v United States, "the Court held that the protections of the Speech and Debate Clause did not extend beyond the legislative sphere, ruling that Senator Gravel's arrangements with the Beacon Press were not constitutionally protected."

[Michael P]

Sure, but again, you specified that the FBI really only has speculation to work with.

Maybe you should answer your own hypothetical, because it's clear that you left out important aspects of the situation you imagine.

[Armchair]

The basic question is this. If someone claims the 5th, and then you give them immunity from crimes that they are claiming the 5th for, can you then compel them to say why they claimed the 5th?

It was speculation before it was apparently confirmed by the legislator.

[Commenter_XY]

Arm, we may find out the answer to your questions when members of the previous administration get subpoenas for testimony. Particularly those who received a pardon from Pres Cauliflower.

[Zarniwoop]

Hey, it’s your hypo that specified “ask a legislator”.

And even if the legislator made an off-the-cuff “taking the 5th, bugger off” comment initially, by the time there’s a purported grant of immunity, the legislator has some high-powered counsel involved.

That counsel will also revise the Speech or Debate Clause, and a court is likely to rule on that basis if it can.

Shrug. Ask a better hypo.

[David Nieporent]

The basic question is this. If someone claims the 5th, and then you give them immunity from crimes that they are claiming the 5th for, can you then compel them to say why they claimed the 5th?

Okay, so first let's set aside the speech and debate clause issue — assume for whatever reason that it doesn't apply. Can you compel someone who has been given immunity to talk to you? No. Can you compel someone who has been given immunity to testify? Yes. If they refuse, the penalty is contempt.

[Dr. Ed 2]

But can the FBI compel testimony?

[Zarniwoop]

What's the airspeed of an unladen swallow?

[Armchair]

Speech and debate clause doesn't really apply here. It's not about public actions before Congress, but before actions that may have handed off confidential data to a foreign government.

[Brett Bellmore]

Which is exactly what Bonior and a few other members of Congress were discovered to be doing, and, again, nothing came of it.

[Armchair]

Let's run with the concept however that the conduct in question is not covered by the Speech and Debate clause, and the legislator knows it. That's why he claimed the 5th, not the speech and debate clause.

[Zarniwoop]

Then why is “the FBI is asking a legislator” part of your hypo in the first place?

People are pointing out that your hypo allows for confounding factors. Ones that high-powered legal counsel (the kind a Congress critter is likely to hire), will certainly exploit.

It starts to look like you’re trolling for some weak “gotcha”, instead of being genuinely curious about the general operation of the 5th Amd in offered-immunity situations. Which there’s information on, but I’m not your legal librarian.

[David Nieporent]

Nobody discovered Bonior or a few other members of Congress to be handing off confidential data to a foreign government.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, go ahead and imagine that, after I went to the trouble of linking to an account of it. I was living in the district next to Bonior's at the time, it was a bit of a local scandal; They were running surveillance on the Sandinistas, and ended up intercepting calls that Bonior was making to them right after intelligence briefings.

Democrats claimed the accidental intercept was the scandal, of course, not a member of Congress passing on classified briefings to a foreign adversary.

[David Nieporent]

Once again, you think that when you find a source you don't have to actually read it. Nothing in that article says that any classified information was conveyed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because they were obsessing over the accidental intercept as the real outrage, not a member of Congress who was phoning adversaries right after intelligence briefings.

You are free to fantasize that he was discussing the weather with them, I can't stop you.

[David Nieporent]

Because they were obsessing over the accidental intercept as the real outrage,

Who is "they" and why didn't some other "they" say that Bonior was conveying classified information if Bonior was conveying classified information?

[hobie]

I suppose it depends on what secrets were passed on. Trump divulged top secret US nuclear submarine architecture and capabilities to guests at Bedminster and nothing came of it. Used to be nuclear secrets were our most prohibited

[Noscitur a sociis]

Legislators don’t have any obligation to talk to the FBI at all, so in your hypothetical there would be no need to invoke a privilege: the legislator could simply say, “I don’t feel like answering that question.”

If the legislator were in a situation where there. was a general obligation to answer—the most likely in this scenario would be testifying before a grand jury after being served with a subpoena—then they would need to assert a privilege not to testify. If they were then granted immunity, that would remove the privilege. If the legislator still refused to answer, they could be treated like any other witness who refused without excuse to answer questions while under a valid subpoena, i.e. held in contempt of court and jailed or fined until they changed their mind.

[not guilty]

"Question. Can the DoJ (and courts) then subject the legislator to legal penalties, including imprisonment, for not telling them what he knows?"

The legislator could be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. Per the Speech or Debate clause, he could not be questioned there about any of his legislative acts, the motives and purposes behind such acts, communications between the legislator and his aides related to the act; and his preparation for the act. Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 628-629 (1972). After the grant of immunity for federal crimes, the privilege against self-incrimination would not apply except to the extent that testifying could expose the legislator to state criminal liability.

If the legislator refused to testify after a determination that no privilege applies, he could be found in civil contempt and jailed until he testifies or that term of the grand jury expires.

[Noscitur a sociis]

After the grant of immunity for federal crimes, the privilege against self-incrimination would not apply except to the extent that testifying could expose the legislator to state criminal liability.

A grant of immunity by one sovereign gives de facto use and derivative use immunity from every other sovereign, and thus permits compulsion of that testimony. See Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52 (1964).

[not guilty]

Yes, that is correct.

[Commenter_XY]

santamonica811...I found a recipe for you, Persian influenced, and have I tested it in Commenter_XY's kitchen (twice). I think you and your partner will find this acceptable.

https://toriavey.com/middle-eastern-roasted-vegetable-rice/

The tahdig really makes this dish, so pay close attention to steps 7,8. Those steps make or break this recipe. I really hope you enjoy it.

[Commenter_XY]

One other tip...I noticed Costco has the roasting vegetables in this recipe in their frozen section. Not certain if it was organic. A definite time saver though.

[Krayt]

To put this in context, the recipe brags of being vegan. Is organic a requirement of vegan? Technically, they seem unrelated. One seeks to avoid artificial chemical use to protect (you, or the environment) and the other is super-vegetarian that makes extra sure, I dunno, you don't use oxen to turn your millstone.

[Commenter_XY]

No, it is not a requirement. Yes, I do make it a point to buy organic, whenever possible (and affordable). Right now, eggs pasture raised + organic cost and arm and a leg at Wegmans. But my wife insists upon them, so she will have them. Any married guy will understand this immediately.

I do think over the long run buying organic makes a difference to long-term health. Just fewer pesticides and chemicals your body has to catalyze and dispose of.

YMMV.

[Zarniwoop]

YMMV indeed.

When considering whether to buy organic or not, some fruits/veggies have much higher residual levels of pesticides than others, due to a combination of application rates, pesticide type, and absorptive characteristics.

I really try to avoid conventional potatoes, for example. Application rates are notoriously high.

From a very quick goog:

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-contaminants/fruits-and-vegetables-loaded-with-pesticides-a2508510840/

[Mr. Bumble]

Do you but organic snake oil?

[santamonica811]

XY,
Thanks, mate. Middle Easter and Korean are my most recent new cuisines. I'll definitely give this a try. Really appreciate the thought.

[Sarcastr0]

Medical science is not my arena, but NIH's basic research is a pretty important engine for worldwide health innovation.

Trump's halting of all travel, workshops, and grant review panels [which means grant awards] is bad for everyone who believes in medical research.

The mental health website got taken down too, of course.

[Dan Schiavetta]

The federal government is being lobotomized.

[Commenter_XY]

Not lobotomized, but right-sized. 😉

[Sarcastr0]

This has nothing to do with federal positions.

Noscitur well established you don't know or care about the facts, you just like the slogans.

[Brett Bellmore]

Again, we hit the debt ceiling Tuesday, even if it's not getting major headlines in all the Trump inspired hysteria, and a normal consequence of that is optional spending being suspended.

[Martinned2]

Sounds like a bad time for tax cuts...

[John F. Carr]

The debt ceiling is a political game far removed from how much tax revenue the United States gets in 2026.

[Sarcastr0]

We know what approaching the debt ceiling looks like, and this isn't it.

Also, if this were about the debt ceiling, it would say so.
And it wouldn't be so targeted at one agency.

How could you think anyone would believe your story here?

[Brett Bellmore]

We all know what hitting the debt ceiling looks like when the press aren't obsessing over Trump having just taken office, anyway.

[Sarcastr0]

We don't know what hitting the debt ceiling looks like. We've never hit it.

[Don Nico]

This is not the first time the government has severely restricted travel and workshops. Moreover, hotel costs have risen dramatically post covid. So the impulse is undertandable
Also much can be done via teleconferencing.
So the direction is correct a long as the restrictions are relaxed to a practical level.

[Sarcastr0]

This is not about any current Covid issue. Nor is it about cost-cutting.

This is hostility to a research funding agency.

And you're defending it.

much can be done via teleconferencing.
Do you do science? Or work with scientists? Talk to them about teleconferencing a workshop.
You should know better.

[Don Nico]

Do you always lie in response.
My "defending it" was just noting that severe restriction were placed for an extended (multi-year) period in the past.

"Do you do science? Or work with scientists? "
Yes I do and yes, a very large amount is done via teleconferences of one to three hours. I had two such meetings today.
You should know better but obviously you don't.

By the way the present very high hotel rates are the result of large losses during the pandemic. But here again you chose disinformation. Sad!

[Sarcastr0]

You provided the following apologia:
-government has restricted travel and workshops before [presumably a reference to Covid]
-costs have risen dramatically
-much can be done via teleconferencing
-So the direction is correct a long as the restrictions are relaxed

So dunno why you put defending it in quotes because you are absolutely defending it.
I don't work with medical scientists, but all the scientists I do work with are furious by proxy.

Teleconferences are fine if you're just keeping the trains running on time. If you want some kind of creativity or innovation, the serendipity of in-person is a must.
Again, talk to a scientist about this!

By the way the present very high hotel rates are the result of large losses during the pandemic
Irrelevant wankery. You're being a Republican first and a champion of science second.

[bernard11]

By the way the present very high hotel rates are the result of large losses during the pandemic.

Don,

Two ways to take this:

1. The hotels raised their rates to make up for pandemic-related losses.

2. Travel has increased dramatically post-pandemic, increasing demand and thus prices.

I'm doubtful about the second, though it could possibly be supported by the relevant data.

The first makes no sense at all unless you think hotels are generally run by fools.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Gaslighto, Faucci has consequences...

[gVOR08]

It's commonplace to observe that autocrats make mistakes because they come to be surrounded by yes men and don't get good information. I've realized of late there's more to it. It's not just bad info, it's that, like pro-wrestlers, they can't break kayfabe. Having spent five years demonizing the NIH, CDC, and WHO, even if Trump knows better, he has to continue attacking them.

[Sarcastr0]

"All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program."

So much for infrastructure week. Though 1) the funds are already obligated at this point, and 2) this runs unto Impoundment Control Act issues so compliance would already be iffy.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm pretty sure that challenging the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act is on Trump's to-do list.

[Sarcastr0]

Cool, cool. More power to the executive.

[Don Nico]

You liked it a year ago, S_0.

[Sarcastr0]

Did I? I've been anti-unitary executive for quite some time.

I not only said Biden was outside his authority to forgive student loans, I thought there should be a standing exception to make such ultra vires executive actions reviewable.

So what exactly do you think I was in favor of?

[Krayt]

You do these things, knowing full well it's full of fail constitutionally in the long run, and use that reversal to your benefit, "See those evil guys thwarting you?"

Brownie points with voters now, and later.

[Armchair]

1) A pause is not impoundment.
2) There are different levels of "obligation."

[Sarcastr0]

1) Do you honestly believe this is meant to be restarted? Especially the EV bit?

Not that it matters, as I noted it's not actually able to do anything.

2) Obligation has a specific meaning; it does not have levels.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57660

Going after improving our infrastructure, even symbolically, seems dumb as hell.

[Commenter_XY]

Up to now, the recipients of aforementioned IRA aid have done a piss poor job getting results. A pause is needed.

The EV mandate is gone. Good riddance, it was stupid, anyway.

[Sarcastr0]

Government spending via grants to stars so they can procure stuff takes a while. The money is out to the states and their spending plans thus far seem on target.

Though Trump has an incentive to mess it up so people like you can burnish your narrative.

I think the EV subsidies were and are premature based on the tech readiness. This is the law, though.

And it’s not limited to EV funds!

It’s hard to be both ineffective and indefensible but this manages it.

[Commenter_XY]

We don't have the power distribution network or delivery capability to support the EV mandate. That was known when idiotic EV mandate was written. That is the reality.

Somehow, Tesla managed to get a network of charging stations around the country. Go figure.

There is nothing remotely unusual about a new administration taking a close look at the the old admin was spending money upon. These pauses happen every time.

[Sarcastr0]

We don't have the power distribution network or delivery capability to support the EV mandate
Any sources or just saying stuff like you do?

I don't like the EV mandate for the opinion I stated above. But I also don't like bullshit.

There is nothing remotely unusual about a new administration taking a close look at the the old admin was spending money upon
Wrong tense. Has spent money on. And no, this isn't normal.

[RedheadedPharoh]

>Government spending via grants to stars so they can procure stuff takes a while. The money is out to the states and their spending plans thus far seem on target.

What data are you using to conclude this?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"The EV mandate is gone. Good riddance, it was stupid, anyway."

Ignorance opens its mouth again! You sure do like to justify why it's ok to violate the law and Constitution.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on infrastructure construction. I'm sure we all recognize how much value we should place in your 'knowledge.'

[hobie]

Adios redneck road and infrastructure projects in red states (most ARE in red states). Mitch really wanted that bridge too. Alas

[Michael P]

What's the steelman argument that releasing basic biographical details about Axel Rudakubana (say, that he is a second-generation Rwandan immigrant, or that he had previously come to the attention of authorities) as a suspect of the Southport murders would have "collapsed" the prosecution? Or for prohibiting the local police from identifying it as a suspected terrorism case?

The Crown Prosecution Service seems to have made a lot of bad decisions for reasons of pure political correctness.

[Martinned2]

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/contempt-court#:~:text=Sections%201%20and%202%20of,the%20strict%20liability%20rule%E2%80%9D).

[Michael P]

I infer that you concede there is no steelman version of that argument.

[Sarcastr0]

Sections 1 and 2 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 contain the rule that a publication which creates a substantial risk that the course of justice in the proceedings in question will be seriously impeded or prejudiced may be treated as a contempt of court (“the strict liability rule”)...It may include publications which concern material the jury will not consider in the trial but which may influence them, including misleading reporting which mis-represent the evidence or the case, reporting which vilifies a person in the proceedings or presumes their guilt or innocence, or reporting which relates to extraneous prejudicial evidence."

Do you think it doesn't apply?

[Michael P]

Thank you, but I am perfectly capable of reading.

I think you cannot get an argument that it applies that is worthy of calling "steelman" unless you presuppose that the British justice system is already fundamentally broken.

Which particular information do you think falls into which of those categories, and why do you think it would seriously prejudice the trial?

[Sarcastr0]

“ Which particular information do you think falls into which of those categories, and why do you think it would seriously prejudice the trial?”

Sealion.

[Michael P]

When have you ever leveled that charge at not guilty, you hypocrite?

(I don't think it is sealioning to ask you to actually make an argument that you imply exists, though.)

[Sarcastr0]

You asked for the reasoning. You got it.

Now you're like 'go fact by fact through a case that includes information not yet opened to the public.'

That's new goalposts, and sealioning:
"Sealioning is a form of trolling that involves the relentless pursuit of someone with questions and requests, usually with the aim of upsetting them and making their position seem weak or unreasonable."

[Bob from Ohio]

Oh, so that is what my stalker is doing. Sealioning.

[Michael P]

Waving your arms in the direction of a general statement is not an argument or an explanation of the reasoning, unless your argument is "the information can be withheld because fuck you proles".

It's not my fault your position, and martinned's position, is too weak for you to put it into words.

[Sarcastr0]

So when you said, "What's the steelman argument" you meant give you a point-by-point breakdown.

Well, no one's gonna take you up on that. Especially given we explicitly don't know all the information.

Congrats, you win your argument since you created an ask no one wants to bother with! I trust you feel validated.

[Michael P]

When I said "steelman", I meant the strongest form of the argument. It was in specific contrast to your usual "So when you said X you meant Y" strawman bullshit.

Congratulations(?) for living down to your usual standard even when there was a direct warning about it.

[Martinned2]

Anything the government might say, because it's the government. Which is why it's been good government policy for literally centuries to not talk about pending criminal trials. American politicians should try it.

[Zarniwoop]

I infer that you concede there is no steelman version of that argument.

Wow, this is turning into a worse-than-usual morning for lame “gotcha!” attempts.

Without even bothering to look at the merits, because I frankly don’t care: if there’s non-public info based on published rules and centuries of procedural precedent in a foreign legal system, the only take-away I get from “I infer you concede…” is that you’re making a really bad inference.

Weak. Two stars. Next?

[Sarcastr0]

This seems to have some thoughts:
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/21/why-did-merrick-garland-want-to-release-volume-ii-of-the-smith-report-to-ranking-members-of-congress/?comments=true#comments

[Michael P]

Don't stop waving those arms, chief.

[Sarcastr0]

I thought the switch was pretty funny myself.

[Michael P]

You would think it is funny to weaponize the federal government and spend millions of dollars to let a prosecutor with a long record of failed cases and flawed theories harass a political opponent.

[Sarcastr0]

So take this logic, and now apply it to your OP. You have as much proof of your narrative here as the same story as applied in the UK.

Congrats on steelmanning yourself!

[Zarniwoop]

Congrats on steelmanning yourself!

hey, take it pr0nhub!

(certain exclusions may apply in FL and TX)

[Michael P]

Speaking of Democrats screwing up: https://www.boundingintosports.com/nfl/nfl-news/philadelphia-mayor-leaves-fans-shocked-with-her-inability-to-spell-the-word-eagles/

“Let me hear you all say, E-L-G-S-E-S, Eagles!” she shouted. “Let’s go, birds!”

[Frank Drackman]

Must be a Pennsylvania thing (Stupidity) remember Sleepy Joe when he was only "Stupid" Joe?
"The number one job facing the middle class. And it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs. J-O-B-S!"

[Armchair]

Question for the legal community, part 2.

Let's say there is a legislator who has repeatedly, loudly proclaimed that only guilty people accept pardons. Innocent people don't accept pardons. That legislator then proceeds to accept a pardon for "undisclosed crimes" implying that the legislator has engaged in undisclosed crimes. Criminal behavior by a legislator is a matter of public concern, regardless if it is pardoned. So the DoJ/Courts/Congress bring in the legislator and under oath ask what criminal behavior these pardons are meant to be for.

1. Must the legislator answer?
2. If he answers untruthfully, can he be prosecuted for perjury? Even if the crime in question that the legislator is lying about has been pardoned?

[Michael P]

1. If Congress asks, maybe. I don't see why the DOJ or a court would have a valid (non-quashable) reason to demand an answer.

2. For a factually wrong answer, I expect so, but why wouldn't someone in that situation answer that their earlier statement was speaking generally while this particular pardon was meant to forestall the burden of a political witch hunt digging for anything that could be painted as criminal under a distorted reading of the law (yadda yadda)? It's easy to give an evasive answer.

[Armchair]

Regarding point 2....

They could. But remember their earlier assertion, that only guilty people accept a pardon. If they answered in such a way they would
1. Be contradicting their earlier statements.
2. If they were actually guilty of something but said the pardon was "just to forstall a political witch hunt, I didn't do anything wrong" then that may be a lie.

[Commenter_XY]

Arm...The answers to 1, 2a, 2b is 'Yes'.

[David Nieporent]

1. One is not required to answer questions from the DOJ.
2. What's the scenario that could lead to a court asking questions?
3. What's the legislative justification for asking these questions?
4. Assuming that someone has the authority to compel testimony, immunity for an underlying offense (or legal conduct) is never immunity for subsequent perjury about that conduct.

[Armchair]

1&2: Really, it's the DoJ asking the questions and the court compelling the answer. An investigation, criminal or civil could lead to a subpoena regarding the conduct.
3. The legislature has a vested interest in the ethical and criminal behavior of its members. There's that whole "ethics committee" thing.

[David Nieporent]

A subpoena by whom for what? There's no such thing a a free-floating subpoena; it needs to be part of some proceeding.

[Zarniwoop]

Reading down the morning thread, I see you are trying “gotcha” hypos!

Surprise, surprise.

[Zarniwoop]

3. Why would anyone see it as unusual that a politician might not practice what they preach?
4. Would anyone care?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Sadly, he never seems to "get" anything.

[Zarniwoop]

And you’re still hung up - like a lot of people - by an inability to differentiate two radically different concepts:
1) the rhetorical device function of “accepting a pardon ‘makes someone look guilty’” (note that Trump himself said this just recently of many of Biden’s pardons. I’m sure many people slobbered that right up.)
2) “accepting a pardon is legally equivalent to admitting highly specific factual statements in a manner that would be sufficient to admit them as evidence in a court proceeding”.

People! The Burdick dicta from 1915 about a general “imputation of guilt” does not an cannot support use case #2.

This is just rehashing the same wankery.

[not guilty]

Let's say there is a legislator who has repeatedly, loudly proclaimed that only guilty people accept pardons. Innocent people don't accept pardons. That legislator then proceeds to accept a pardon for "undisclosed crimes" implying that the legislator has engaged in undisclosed crimes. Criminal behavior by a legislator is a matter of public concern, regardless if it is pardoned. So the DoJ/Courts/Congress bring in the legislator and under oath ask what criminal behavior these pardons are meant to be for.

1. Must the legislator answer?
2. If he answers untruthfully, can he be prosecuted for perjury? Even if the crime in question that the legislator is lying about has been pardoned?

The legislator can tell the DOJ to go pound sand.

A court has no authority to inquire unless it is germane to a justiciable, antecedent lawsuit.

Congress or a committee thereof can subpoena the legislator to testify. Per 2 U.S.C. § 192:

Every person who having been summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee of either House of Congress, willfully makes default, or who, having appeared, refuses to answer any question pertinent to the question under inquiry, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $1,000 nor less than $100 and imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months.

The legislator would be obliged to appear in response to the subpoena. A refusal to answer questions would trigger inquiry as to whether such questions are pertinent to the question under inquiry.

Congressional power to investigate and compel witness testimony is not unlimited. As SCOTUS opined in Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 187 (1957):

The power of the Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process. That power is broad. It encompasses inquiries concerning the administration of existing laws as well as proposed or possibly needed statutes. It includes surveys of defects in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling the Congress to remedy them. It comprehends probes into departments of the Federal Government to expose corruption, inefficiency or waste. But, broad as is this power of inquiry, it is not unlimited. There is no general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification in terms of the functions of the Congress. This was freely conceded by the Solicitor General in his argument of this case. Nor is the Congress a law enforcement or trial agency. These are functions of the executive and judicial departments of government. No inquiry is an end in itself; it must be related to, and in furtherance of, a legitimate task of the Congress. Investigations conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to "punish" those investigated are indefensible. [Footnote omitted.]

If a witness before a Congressional committee declines to answer one or more questions and is prosecuted for criminal contempt, that calls for inquiry, per Watkins, into whether the questions were outside of the proper scope of the Committee's activities and not relevant to its work. The burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the questions were proper is on the government. Since the maximum authorized penalty under 2 U.S.C. § 192 exceeds six months confinement, the witness would be entitled to a jury trial in the District of Columbia. Lewis v. United States, 518 U.S. 322, 328 (1996).

As SCOTUS opined in Watkins, "We have no doubt that there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure." 354 U.S. at 200. The Court elaborated:

It is the responsibility of the Congress, in the first instance, to insure that compulsory process is used only in furtherance of a legislative purpose. That requires that the instructions to an investigating committee spell out that group's jurisdiction and purpose with sufficient particularity. Those instructions are embodied in the authorizing resolution. That document is the committee's charter. Broadly drafted and loosely worded, however, such resolutions can leave tremendous latitude to the discretion of the investigators.

Id., at 201.

If the legislator takes an oath to tell the truth and thereafter willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true, he can be prosecuted for perjury under 18 U.S.C. § 1621. If he makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation, whether under oath or not, to federal officials, he can be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1001.

[David Nieporent]

The legislator would be obliged to appear in response to the subpoena.

This was in effect why Bannon and Navarro went to jail. Not only did they try to invoke executive privilege when they weren't the executive, but they tried to invoke it to entirely avoid appearing. But that's not how it works; you have to show up and invoke it in response to specific questions.

[Swede425]

Guys, we now have black nazis shooting up schools.
What hath hell wrought?

[Frank Drackman]

Well if you're referring to the Nashville shooting it was only a Black dude shooting a Hispanic Girl and them himself, not exactly a "Mass Shooting". Helter Skelter, she's coming on down, only 56 years late

[apedad]

House GOP Troublemakers Frustrate Speaker Johnson's Big Plans

You can read the full story here about seven potential troublemakers who could complicate Johnson’s job in the weeks ahead: https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/house-gop-troublemakers-frustrate-speaker-johnsons-big-plans

But HEY Dr Ed2! What do you think about this?

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.)
The 35-year-old firebrand, who rose to prominence as a conservative social media influencer before joining the House two years ago, is already seeking to shake up things in the 119th Congress. Luna wants the House to allow new mothers to vote by proxy.

Proxy voting was implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and was discarded by her successor Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) when the GOP took back control of the chamber in 2023.

Luna, who gave birth in August of that year, is working with Democrats on a rule that would let members vote from home for a period of time after giving birth. Johnson opposes that rule, contending that proxy voting in any case is unconstitutional.

By working with Democrats to force a vote on this initiative, Luna shows that she’s willing to go around leadership. If Luna’s proxy voting rule succeeds, it will most immediately benefit a Democrat, Rep. Brittany Pettersen (Colo.), who is expecting a baby early this year.

[Commenter_XY]

This is crazy. Make it easy for Mom (and baby). The party label is completely irrelevant.

Hopefully common sense prevails here. Do you know what I would do in this case (new Mom - first week or two); arrange for private transport for Mom and baby to come to the Capitol in total comfort and vote, if it is simply THAT important. And baby gets child care while Mommy votes. Or Mommy can bring baby onto the Floor, if she chooses. I am fine with that.

The alternative is maybe a few members voting present so legislation passes (or not) and spare the trip. That would require common sense and empathy, two things in short supply right now.

[David Nieporent]

This is crazy. Make it easy for Mom (and baby). The party label is completely irrelevant.

This summarizes the MAGA version of the GOP: it's purely about pwning the libs. Pelosi/Dems supported this, so MAGA opposes it. (That it was originally a COVID measure just adds extra spice to the stew; MAGA was required as part of its cult doctrine to pretend — other than when needed to demonize Fauci — that COVID was nothing and therefore any response to it was wrong.)

[RedheadedPharoh]

Just think with "proxy voting", Congress never really needs to even show up. Only the vote counters. And we'll make sure they're good Democrat vote counters and they can count the votes in secret... just like our elections!

[David Nieporent]

Literally what the fuck are you talking about? Proxy votes aren't secret. And Democrats can't count anything anyway since the GOP runs the house.

Also, it's more Schroedinger's arguments: members of Congress are out of touch because they spent too much time in DC instead of in their home districts. And also it's terrible that they're not staying in DC.

[RedheadedPharoh]

It's terrible that DC exists, frankly.

[Frank Drackman]

Alot of peoples here think it's terrible Frank exists, Frankly.

[RedheadedPharoh]

Well, if it's any solace, I'm glad you exist. You're a big luvvable half-Jew (from the waist down) goofball whose barely good at anything but fun to watch sometimes. Kinda like a sideshow filled with circus geeks.

[Commenter_XY]

I know, the commonsense move would never prevail.

[Zarniwoop]

Grandpa Ed is probably still fuming that women are allowed to be Reps and Senatuhs in the first place. Fix that, and making it easier for new moms to vote stops being an issue!

[Dr. Ed 2]

She wants 3 months of it, and for fathers, too. And this would apply to all other medical issues as well.

No. Pelosi abused it...

[David Nieporent]

In what way did she "abuse" it?

[Swede425]

Oh, no.
Not Emmanuel Macron!
Manny! NO!
I just can't believe it!
BUT I HAVE TO BELIEVE IT! I saw the video!
A. Goddamn. Nazi.
I'll never be able to enjoy french fries again.
If any of you eat french fries ever again, you might as well be goose-stepping through Poland.

[John F. Carr]

NPR reports: "This economist survived a wildfire. Now she's taking on California's insurance crisis"

The article covers California's subsidies of building in fire country and the ironic fact that property values go up after a town burns down.

I was thinking of the updates to flood maps on the East Coast a decade or so ago. FEMA said "you live in a flood zone." Upset homeowners called up their Congressmen to make the floods go away by redrawing lines on a map.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Some of those lines never should have been drawn -- i.e. hills.

[Don Nico]

CA is not alone in this. It is commonplace in Sicily, but "goes up" is not for the original landowner, but for the Mafia:
"Land on fire: The spatial production of the mafia"
Criminology & Criminal Justice 1–17, DOI: 10.1177/17488958241286117
journals.sagepub.com/home/crj

[SRG2]

Why Trump is threatening Panama (possibly):
https://www.ifcreview.com/news/2024/december/panama-trump-organization-accused-of-tax-evasion-in-panama/

[RedheadedPharoh]

Or, more likely, he's threatening Panama for the reasons he stated.

Panama is overcharging the US and has let China take control.

Is it smart for the US to let China control the Panama canal, or is it not smart?

[SRG2]

Panama is overcharging the US and has let China take control.

Only according to Trump. It's a lie, surprise surprise.

[RedheadedPharoh]

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/right-to-be-concerned-about-chinas-influence-over-the-panama-canal/

Of course, you're knee jerk Trump=Bad reaction makes you look like a typical Democrat. A buffoon.

[SRG2]

Your link doesn't support your argument. First, China operating ports dfoesn't mean that China controls the canal itself, and second, the rising charges apply to everyone.

That you couldn't find a link that actually supports you is strong evidence, that, yanno...

[RedheadedPharoh]

Right, the Atlantic Council, FP experts, are concerned and saying Trump is rightfully concerned, but Trump is totally lying whole cloth to lather the rubes.

Because reasons!

Note:
"China’s economic control on both sides of the canal raises concerns about the potential for rapid militarization and its ability to control canal access. Panama’s willingness to relinquish critical economic control of strategically significant areas and infrastructure—a hallmark of China’s Belt and Road Initiative strategy—casts doubt on Panama’s resolve and capacity to effectively safeguard the canal’s neutrality as agreed to in the treaty. "

But don't worry, guys, SRG2 says this is one big Jewy CCP nothing-burger!

Trump's just lying whole cloth!

No offense, but does it ever get tiring being that stupid?

[Stella Link the dog]

RedHeadedKnob says: "Panama is overcharging the US and has let China take control."

Panama is charging US users just like other users. China as not taken control of the canal.

No offense, but does it ever get tiring being that stupid?

[Commenter_XY]

Sir Stephen, I'll be honest. When he said during his inaugural speech, We're gonna take the Panama canal back, I was pretty shocked. I could tell a lot of the ex-Pres' thought it was humorous. I didn't think the inaugural speech was the right time or place to talk Panama. The only other thing I'll note...

The Donald was not laughing when he said it.

[SRG2]

A Trump pardon that seems to have escaped scrutiny:

Trump pardons two police officers convicted in murder of Black man in Washington

Their offences were inexcusable - and one would have said, unpardonable.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not necessarily defending it, I know nothing of the case. The only thing that comes to mind is, "Welcome to my world." Democratic pardons routinely outrage Republicans, though the failures to prosecute are often even more egregious.

Here's an account from the other side.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

"I'm not defending it, but I will immediately justify it and minimize it, and throw in my partisan bullshit because I can't help myself."

You aren't fooling anyone.

It's weird how your 'side' doesn't mention the effort to cover-up what happened and obstruct justice - you know, what they were convicted of.

"Sutton was found guilty by a unanimous federal jury in late 2022, after a nine-week trial, of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of justice. The same jury found Zabavsky guilty of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice.
The jury had found that Sutton caused Hylton-Brown's death by driving a police vehicle in "conscious disregard" for an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury to Hylton-Brown.
It also found that Sutton and Zabavsky conspired to hide from officials the circumstances of the traffic crash leading to Hylton-Brown's death."

Your 'side' isn't an 'account' of anything, It's propaganda from police supporting other police like they almost always do.

[DixieTune]

They were found guilty by a mostly black jury for a pursuit that ended in death for the suspect. Had he not fled, he'd be alive.

As I said yesterday, whites, especially police, cannot get justice before a majority black jury.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

It's weird that you know that nobody believes you, and yet you post your racist lies anyway.

How long until you're banned again, do you think?

[SRG2]

Not necessarily defending it,

But the first thing you did when you came across this was to find some - any - justification for the pardon because Trump must have been right. And then you whatabout.

Why are you lot so cripplingly unable to avoid whatabouting?

[Brett Bellmore]

Huh? No, the first thing I did was tell you that Democratic pardons frequently outrage Republicans, so welcome to my life.

THEN I linked to an account giving the other side of the story. Which I'm guessing Trump found the more persuasive. I know the notion that there are two sides to these cases outrages you, but you should get over it.

[SRG2]

It doesn't outrage me. But your projection is noted. I draw attention to the double standards.

And it doesn't outrage me because I lack the splenetic gene so evidently expressed in Trump and his supporters.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

As I explained above, you did not give 'the other side' of the story. You provided propaganda that deliberately avoids mentioning that his conviction was also for conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice.

I wonder if those convictions have relevant facts which further destroy the 'other side' narrative bullshit you put forth?

Let's take a look, shall we?

https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/two-mpd-officers-sentenced-2020-murder-karon-hylton-brown-and-subsequent-coverup

At about 10 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, officers observed Mr. Hylton-Brown, 20, driving a moped, helmetless, on a sidewalk in the Brightwood Park area of Northwest Washington. Mr. Hylton-Brown, who was unarmed, ignored Sutton’s attempt to stop him and drove off. Sutton then began chasing Mr. Hylton-Brown on neighborhood streets for minutes, over more than 10 blocks, at unreasonable speeds, and at one point proceeding the wrong way up a one-way street. In the pursuit’s final moments, Sutton followed Mr. Hylton-Brown into a narrow alley, turned off his car’s emergency lights and siren, and accelerated behind the moped. When Mr. Hylton-Brown reached the street at the mouth of the alley, he was struck by an uninvolved oncoming motorist. As Mr. Hylton-Brown lay unconscious in the street in a pool of his own blood, Sutton and Zabavsky, agreed to cover up what Sutton had done to prevent any further investigation of the incident.

Neither Sutton, as the lead officer at the scene, nor Zabavsky, the ranking MPD official, preserved the crash scene for investigators; they allowed the driver of the car that struck Hylton-Brown to leave the scene within 20 minutes of the crash. They then turned off their own body worn cameras, conferred privately, and left. Zabavsky designated no other MPD official to supervise the scene upon his own departure. Sutton further compromised the integrity of the crash scene by driving his MPD car directly over the crash site, audibly crushing pieces of debris from the collision as he left. At no point did either defendant contact MPD’s Major Crash Unit (MCU) or its Internal Affairs Division (IAD) to initiate an investigation by those units.

Sutton and Zabavsky continued the cover up back at the police station. First, they misled their commanding officer about the nature of the incident by substantially downplaying its seriousness, denying that a police chase had even occurred, and omitting any mention of Mr. Hylton-Brown’s critical injuries. Zabavsky also falsely implied that Mr. Hylton-Brown had been a drunk driver. Both defendants also hid their direct involvement in the incident, thereby avoiding the assignment of other, uninvolved MPD officials to investigate what had happened. Sutton drafted a police report that memorialized a false narrative of the incident. Despite video evidence to the contrary, his false narrative gave the impression that no police pursuit had occurred, that officers had lost sight of Mr. Hylton-Brown and were engaged in a “canvass” of him in the area until shortly before the crash, and that the officers were wholly uninvolved with the fatal collision in any way. The defendant’s account also described Mr. Hylton Brown’s observable injuries only as “superficial abrasions on [his] left eyebrow line.”

Weird how your little police bootlicking website didn't mention any of that.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Where’d you go Brett? Did bird flu finally get you?

Oh, nope. It’s just cowardice.

[hobie]

Be grateful it's finally a pardon that doesn't involve cronies or his personal army

[Bob from Ohio]

"Officer Sutton located Hylton as Hylton was operating a motorized scooter illegally on a sidewalk without a helmet. Sutton attempted to stop Hylton by activating his emergency lights. Hylton fled on the scooter. After attempting to evade police for about three minutes, Hylton drove through an alley, failed to yield the right-of-way and was struck by a civilian vehicle."

Are these facts [from Bret's link] wrong?

[SRG2]

Is riding an illegal scooter and driving away from the cops a death penalty offence?

And even if you accept - as the jury who heard all the evidence did not - that it wasn't murder, how do you justify the covering up and obstruction afterwards?

[Brett Bellmore]

"Is riding an illegal scooter and driving away from the cops a death penalty offence?"

No, but riding an illegal scooter into the path of an oncoming car frequently results in death anyway, which is not murder on the part of the cop trying to arrest you, and who neither was driving the car nor threw you in front of it.

[DixieTune]

The jury convicted them on the basis that the dead man was black and the cops were white.

[Bob from Ohio]

"how do you justify the covering up and obstruction afterwards?"

Did I do that?

I don't find obstruction of justice "unpardonable" though. Its not good, but it had nothing to do with the death.

DOJ seemingly over-reacted by charging murder for political reasons if they had them on obstruction and perjury. So Trump then acted for political reasons as a make up to FOP which criticized the 1/6/21 pardons.

[DixieTune]

The fact that Biden's DOJ went after them showed that their concern about the evidence was justified, and maybe the coverup was too.

[Sarcastr0]

Way to write off that murder conviction, Bob.

I guess your usual bloodthirst on behalf of the victim doesn't apply in this case. For some reason.

[Bob from Ohio]

"For some reason."

Oh, the race card. Surprising!

Assuming the facts are correct, it wasn't murder. The cop's car never even hit him, it was a third party.

[Sarcastr0]

Or just owning the libs. Or defending Trump. Or defending Trump to own the libs.

I'm not too picky why you're not even consistent in your ghoulishness.

Assuming the facts are correct, it wasn't murder.
No need to check further, I guess.

[Bob from Ohio]

"No need to check further, I guess."

No, SRG brought it up. Were the facts correct or not?

[DixieTune]

In the 1930s Deep South, white juries would convict black defendants based on flimsy or no evidence. That was a violation of due process.

In 2020s America, black juries convict white defendants based on flimsy or no evidence. That is also a violation of due process.

Why are you concerned with the first, but okay with the second?

[SRG2]

What evidence have you that there was an all-black jury who convicted on flimsy or no evidence? If there was flimdy or no evidence, the two cops wouldn't have needed to cover up or obstruct the crime, right? You don't cover up what isn't there.

We know for a fact about white Dixie juries - it's well documented, though your dates re wrong. It happened up to far more recent times.

(Thurgood Marshall noted that if a black defendant in a rape or murder case received a life sentence, it showed that the defence attorney had proven to the jury that he was innocent..)

[DixieTune]

My guess is they covered it up because pursuing the suspect probably violated department policy. Many liberal jurisdictions have decreed that police can't chase suspects because of the risk to the suspect, which of course just encourages them to flee even more recklessly.

[David Nieporent]

Many jurisdictions have decreed that police can't chase [non-violent] suspects because of the risk to everybody — suspect, cops, and bystanders.

[DixieTune]

Maybe, but all that means is that if you're eluding police, all you have to do is start driving extra recklessly, and then you get off scot-free.

Scalia made this point in Scott v. Harris.

Also, many supposedly non-violent suspects have warrants, which is why they're fleeing. Better to take the opposite position. Tell SCOTUS to go fuck off with its Tennessee v. Garner abomination, and make it clear that fleeing from police justifies deadly force. That would mean that police would be justified in spraying bullets at a fleeing car. That's as it should be.

[SRG2]

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

[Kenneth Almquist]

“Are these facts [from Bret's link] wrong?”

More like incomplete, since they are insufficient, without more, to establish a charge of second degree murder.

“Officer Sutton located Hylton as Hylton was operating a motorized scooter illegally on a sidewalk without a helmet.”

True.

“Sutton attempted to stop Hylton by activating his emergency lights.”

True, though of limited relevance because Sutton’s emergency lights were not activated at the time Hylton was struck by a car.

“Hylton fled on the scooter. After attempting to evade police for about three minutes...”

I don’t think the evidence establishes Hylton’s state of mind during the entirety of that period. Also, the phrase “evade police” would more commonly be used to describe an attempt to avoid arrest that to describe an attempt to be run over by a police car. Nevertheless, it does appear that the evidence established that when Sutton accelerated his car in the ally, Hylton believed Sutton was attempting to run over him, and that Hylton was attempting to evade that attempt. I would rate the above sentences as mostly true.

“Hylton drove through an alley, failed to yield the right-of-way and was struck by a civilian vehicle."

True. But assuming that Sutton placed Hylton in a position where Hylton reasonably believed that stopping to look both ways before entering the intersection would place Hylton in imminent danger of injury or death, Hylton’s decision to enter the intersection stopping doesn’t absolve Sutton from placing Hylton in that position in the first place.

[Brett Bellmore]

His actions in the alley were a continuation of his effort to evade, that had begun earlier. So, yes, he died evading police. His decision to not just man up and get his ticket led to this.

If they'd just charged the cops with obstruction of justice, I'd agree that the pardon was unwarranted. If Trump had just given them commutations, I'd be happier. But neither happened, and while I wouldn't have done this were I President, I wouldn't have issued a lot of Biden's pardons, either.

I do respect Trump for issuing his pardons up front, rather than making the beneficiaries rot in what Trump apparently thinks undeserved prison for an extra four years. Last minute pardons stink.

So, I again return to my fundamental point: Get used to the fact that the other team is in control right now, and will be doing a lot of shit you don't like. "Welcome to our world", that's where we've been the last 4 years, and I am as unimpressed with your complaints as you were with ours.

Pace your outrage, it's going to be a long 4 years, and you're not going to last if you try to maintain this level of rage for long.

[David Nieporent]

If they'd just charged the cops with obstruction of justice, I'd agree that the pardon was unwarranted.

What is the logic here? You know Trump could've just pardoned them for the murder charge and not the obstruction charge, right?

[SRG2]

Factual: Trump today pardoned a cop who murdered an American citizen who was riding a scooter illegally, and also pardoned the cop who helped him cover up the crime and who later obstructed an investigation.

Counterfactual: Biden today pardoned a man who murdered an American citizen who was riding a scooter illegally, and also pardoned the associate who helped him cover up the crime and who later obstructed an investigation.

Identical true statement of facts. But do we suppose that the usuals would have defended Biden?

It's (R)eprehensible.

[DixieTune]

I would have supported a pardon from either of them. They should have never been prosecuted in the first place, much like the two border patrol agents who shot Aldrete-Davila.

[RedheadedPharoh]

Meanwhile you excuse "pre-emptive pardons" for someone whose arguably responsible for millions of deaths. And probably lost your shit when that same multi-millionaire had his government funded security pulled.

[Noscitur a sociis]

There’s no hypocrisy that my opponents won’t sink to—not even the completely hypothetical kind.

[SRG2]

How did Trump supporters like yourself react to the pardoning of those two cops? What do you think of the pardons?

[Frank Drackman]

I’m figuratively jerking off about it

[Noscitur a sociis]

I followed the case a bit when it happened, and I remember feeling that the charges seemed pretty thin. I haven’t gone back to confirm my impressions, but if so that seems like exactly the kind of thing the pardon power should be used for (as opposed to protecting your family from the consequences of their actions, letting unrepentant murderers out of jail, or—yes—excusing the actions of people who rioted at the Capitol. Or the Silk Road guy.). Where you run into trouble is the suggestion that I or anyone else would have felt any differently if Biden had done it instead.

[SRG2]

I can understand the argument that the murder charge was thin, but the coverup and perjury? Nope. Bang to rights.

Where you run into trouble is the suggestion that I or anyone else would have felt any differently if Biden had done it instead.

LOL, seriously? The only way most Trump supporters can tell right from wrong is who's doing the telling.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I can understand the argument that the murder charge was thin, but the coverup and perjury? Nope. Bang to rights.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think either of them were charged with perjury. And as best I can tell, the obstruction theory mainly relates to their purportedly failing to investigate the collision seen well enough. That strikes me as pretty thin.

The only way most Trump supporters can tell right from wrong is who's doing the telling.

I certainly don’t think it’s implausible that some of our usual suspects would be hypocritical here. But the fact remains that the hypocrisy you’re complaining about currently exists exclusively in your imagination.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Then you might want to look at the case a bit more.

https://reason.com/volokh/2025/01/24/friday-open-thread-4/?comments=true#comment-10886218

[Frank Drackman]

It was Washington District of Colored People and the "Black Man" murdered himself by engaging in a high speed chase with the Po-Po, as Grail Knight said,
"He chose poorly"

Frank

[DixieTune]

Exactly. The Constitution requires that white male defendants get a white jury.

[not guilty]

"The Constitution requires that white male defendants get a white jury."

Is that as true as everything else you have said, DixieTune?

[DixieTune]

It is true. It says "an impartial jury."

Angry and resentful blacks are never impartial toward white defendants.

[hobie]

I remember around 2017-2018 Putin was considered the most powerful man in the word. He had won another reelection, influenced America's election, tapped Hillary's emails, leading Trump around by the nose ring, assassinating people everywhere with impunity, making or breaking countries as he pleased

Yet now, he's finally diminished. But I don't know who is more powerful now: Musk or Trump

[Dan Schiavetta]

He was gambling that Biden would fold when Ukraine was invaded. Instead Biden assembled a multinational coalition and got him bogged down, to great expense and embarrassment.

[Frank Drackman]

Roosh-a's winning, if you haven't noticed.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I remember around 2017-2018 Putin was considered the most powerful man in the word."

You should go to a doctor for your memory issues.

[hobie]

A photo in today's post shows a very less chubby Trump. His jacket looks like a zoot suit on him. So I'm going with Musk. Trump just heads the collectively-owned syndicate know as America. But Musk has complete dominion over things like outer space and, shortly, global communications

[Bob from Ohio]

In further Pardon-pallooza news, 24 anti-abortion protestors got pardons.

[Frank Drackman]

It's "Pro-Life", and he won't do it because Posthumerous Pardons are Bullshit, but I'd love to see "47" pardon John Brown, who more and more people are recognizing I've noticed.

[Stella Link the dog]

"47" pardon John Brown

Brown was prosecuted by the State of Virginia.
Trump can't pardon someone for a state conviction, dummy.

[Frank Drackman]

You can't pardon a dead person either, dummy

[not guilty]

President Biden posthumously pardoned Marcus Garvey. https://apnews.com/article/biden-pardons-marcus-garvey-fc8a98481f2139f908814476e883e764

[Frank Drackman]

Room full of Shysters here, so what Federal Statute(s) are Prison Officials committing by not releasing the pardoned "January 6th" prisoners "Forthwith"??
As a frustrated Perry Mason, I already know the answer.
And of course "Corrections" Officers aren't hired for their intelligence, but might not be the best Life move to piss off a bunch of "Armed Insurrectionists"

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Trump fired the head of the BOP.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/bureau-of-prisons-director-out-as-trump-s-justice-department-reforms-take-shape/ar-AA1xFsfz#

[Frank Drackman]

That's a start, but pretty sure they aren't all just in one Prison.

[SRG2]

Trump's self-pardon for his shooting of a Haitian tourist on 5th avenue was widely praised by Republicans today. He had already, through a spokesman, indicated that he would have faced no charges anyway. He suspected the tourist was an illegal ailurophage and hence the shooting fell under a core executive function. This argument was accepted by the DoJ according to a spokesman. But the president wanted to ensure that an incoming Democratic admin would be unable to engage in lawfare against him.

The GOP-controlled house later passed a resolution praising Trump for taking action against illegals

In response to observations that he was not legally able to own a gun in NY, President Trump said that a Secret Service agent handed him the gun to unable him to fire it. His account was not, however, supported by video evidence,

Trump supporters cheered Trump's actions, one poster on the Volokh Conspiracy website posting, "if Trump isn't allowed to be above the law, who can be?"

[RedheadedPharoh]

While you're here living out your retarded fantasies, President Trump is kicking govie ass and cleaning house.

He also told WEF, to their faces, to get bent.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Unfortunately not so much a stretch. Trump's supporters have already made their peace with tax fraud, extortion and rape.

[RedheadedPharoh]

I should report you to the government for your defamation of the President. Your CCP-backed lies are harming our sacred democracy, undermining faith in our institutions, harming public health, therefore your comments are illegal.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Now, this has to be parody.

[MoreCurious]

Dear Mr. Pharoh [sic]: Perhaps you were asleep during the Torts 101 class when defamation was discussed. Otherwise you would know that the supposed plaintiff must show that the written or oral statements were false and that his reputation was harmed. Someone like Trump -- an obvious public figure -- must also prove that the false statements were made with malice. Perhaps you could explain to us exactly what is false about what Dan posted. And while you're at it, please explain how Trump -- a convicted felon, philanderer, and admitted sexual assaulter -- could possibly have his reputation harmed. By the way, what possible role does the government have even if what Dan wrote is false? P.S. In my opinion, Trump is a vulgar, xenophobic, transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic bully. Are you going to report me to "the government" as you threatened to do with Dan?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

I'm sure he would, if such an avenue were available. Fortunately, Trump has yet to establish the "U.S. Department of State Security". (But we should certainly expect it early in his third term.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

The Worcester (MA) School Department says:
"ICE agents will not be allowed access to Worcester Public Schools facilities based on an administrative warrant, an ICE detainer, or “any other document related to civil immigration enforcement,” Monarrez said. Agents will not have access to the facilities unless they have a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. "
https://www.boston.com/news/education/2025/01/22/mass-s-2nd-largest-district-says-ice-wont-be-allowed-in-schools-without-criminal-judicial-warrant/

Is this legal?!?

[David Nieporent]

Yes. Why would you think otherwise?

[Frank Drackman]

Because it's not, you should change your handle to "David Niecoherent"

[Armchair]

"Why would you think otherwise?"

Typically speaking, if someone from the EPA or OSHA or INS shows up at your place of business with an administrative search warrant signed by a United States Federal District Judge, I think that gives them the legal right to enter the place of business as according to the terms of the warrant. But then again, I'm just an "armchair lawyer".

What legal reason do you have whereby someone can in general refuse such warrants?

[Noscitur a sociis]

The warrants being discussed are issued by ICE officials, not United States Federal District Judges (who, incidentally, aren’t usually the ones to issue any type of warrant at all).

Other than that, great point!

[Dr. Ed 2]

Did you notice what I quoted?

[Noscitur a sociis]

What part of what you quoted are you referring to?

[Armchair]

Issue is, David made a large blanket statement. And words like "usually"...may not apply in all situations. If you're talking about just an ICE detainer, sure, ICE can't enter. But we're talking about administrative search warrants.

But, it's not impossible for ICE to get an administrative warrant signed by a judge... In fact, administrative warrants signed by judges are reasonably common for other organizations like OSHA and the EPA.

The case in hand at Worchester Public Schools implied that only "Criminal Search Warrants" would be allowed entry. That's a whole different burden. If an Administrative search warrant, signed by a judge showed up (I.e., like OSHA), then the school refused entry, there would be significant legal consequences most likely.

[David Nieporent]

But then again, I'm just an "armchair lawyer".

And because you are just an armchair lawyer, you are apparently unaware that administrative warrants are not signed by federal judges. (Oh, and by the way, search warrants are typically signed by federal magistrate judges, not district judges, but that's just a separate error on your part..) Federal judges issue search warrants or arrest warrants. "Administrative" warrants are issued by (wait for it) administrators. They do not have the legal force of an actual warrant; they are not court orders.

[Armchair]

Huh. Because I'm an armchair lawyer, I read the law.

§32707. Administrative warrants
(a) Definition.-In this section, "probable cause" means a valid public interest in the effective enforcement of this chapter or a regulation prescribed under this chapter sufficient to justify the inspection or impoundment in the circumstances stated in an application for a warrant under this section.

(b) Warrant Requirement and Issuance.-(1) Except as provided in paragraph (4) of this subsection, an inspection or impoundment under section 32706 of this title may be carried out only after a warrant is obtained.

(2) A judge of a court of the United States or a State court of record or a United States magistrate may issue a warrant for an inspection or impoundment under section 32706 of this title within the territorial jurisdiction of the court or magistrate. The warrant must be based on an affidavit that-

(A) establishes probable cause to issue the warrant; and

(B) is sworn to before the judge or magistrate by an officer or employee who knows the facts alleged in the affidavit.

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title49-section32707&num=0&edition=prelim

So, what was that again?

[Armchair]

In regards to who signs warrants....

Are you implying that a federal district court judge CANNOT sign a warrant, legally speaking? Or just does not typically sign warrants, (but could if they wanted to).

It's an important distinction to make. I await your answer.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Which part of this did you not comprehend?

"(Oh, and by the way, search warrants are typically signed by federal magistrate judges, not district judges, but that's just a separate error on your part..)"

[Dr. Ed 2]

Teresa Youngblut, 21, was charged in Monday’s killing of Border Patrol Agent David Maland, the FBI said, noting that Youngblut and a German man who died in the firefight that also killed Maland had been under surveillance for several days leading up to the confrontation.

About two hours before the shooting, investigators watched Baukholt exit a Walmart in Newport with two packages of aluminum foil. According to the affidavit, he was seen wrapping unidentifiable objects while seated in the passenger seat.

https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2025/01/24/fbi-arrests-washington-state-woman-fatal-shooting-vermont-border-patrol-agent/?p1=hp_featurestack

[John F. Carr]

Looks like the immigration check was a pretext for a criminal investigation.

[Kenneth Almquist]

But nothing in this story indicates that Youngblut is a Trump supporter so I assume that no pardon will be forthcoming.

[hobie]

I see that armed Hamas are parading around and immediately taking back control of GAZA territory left by IDF. I thought the whole idea was to eliminate Hamas, or their control, or their ability to reconstitute and fire missiles again. This seems like a disaster to me. Where's the permanent police force like in the West Bank? What's going to happen to Hamas unsupervised?

[tylertusta]

There is no alternative to Hamas in Gaza because Hamas was the official government. They will probably remain the official government.

[hobie]

Then leave a peace force. Install the PA as a puppet government. Letting Hamas retake control means more Oct. 7ths guaranteed. Who the fuck negotiated this expedient bullshit?

[Commenter_XY]

I don't think the ceasefire holds; hamas has violated every single one. The war will resume.

[grb]

Minus tens of thousands of civilian dead, of course :

"The UN's Human Rights Office has condemned the high number of civilians killed in the war in Gaza, saying its analysis shows close to 70% of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children. The agency said the high number was largely due to Israel's use of weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas, although some deaths may have been the result of errant projectiles by Palestinian armed groups.

The report said it found "unprecedented" levels of international law violations, raising concerns about "war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes". Israel has in the past said it targets Hamas and takes steps to mitigate risk to civilians by using precise munitions. The BBC contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment in response to Friday's report.

The UN agency said it verified the details of 8,119 people killed in Gaza from November 2023 to April 2024. Its analysis found around 44% of verified victims were children and 26% women. The ages most represented among the dead were five to nine-year-olds. About 80% of victims were killed in residential buildings or similar housing, the agency added. The report said the data indicates "an apparent indifference to the death of civilians and the impact of the means and methods of warfare".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo

Not that long ago, many of the Israeli government's supporters here expended a frantic effort to deny those numbers. Will they continue to obfuscate? Probably so. You get the impression truth holds a secondary importance to them. Meanwhile the cause of this mass butchery is already established :

"In past conflicts with Hamas, Israel approved many strikes only after officers concluded that no civilians would be hurt. That procedure changed after the Oct. 7 attack, allowing Israel to mount one of the deadliest air wars of the century.

A Times investigation found that Israel changed its rules of engagement so the military could endanger up to 20 people in each airstrike against Hamas fighters. This shift let it target even rank-and-file militants when they were at home with relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside. On a few occasions, strikes on Hamas leaders were approved even though they would each put more than 100 noncombatants at risk — crossing an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary Western military."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/briefing/israel-plane-crash-russia-tsunami.html#:~:text=A%20Times%20investigation%20found%20that,when%20they%20were%20alone%20outside.

As I noted months ago, the only equal in past decades to the wholesale slaughter of civilians by the IDF was Assad civil war in Syria and Putin's butchery in Chechnya. That painful fact was greeted with pious lies how the Israel military was the most careful with civilian risk in the world.

[Commenter_XY]

grb, war is all hell. Sherman said that. He was right.

When hamas violates the ceasefire agreement, the war will resume. MK Katz (DefMin) has been clear about the fact that rules of engagement will change.

hamas is a Judeocidal terror group, there is no place for them in gaza.

[Mr. Bumble]

More to the point:
"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are."
[Sherman] Letter to James Guthrie (August 1864)

[Frank Drackman]

I'm a proud Son of the South (others say of other things, too obscene to repeat in this August company) but I admire Lincoln, Sherman, Grant, they did what it took to win, while Jeffy Davis was telling his Generals to give the troops less food, and then they stumble into the biggest battle of the Wah looking for shoes.

Frank

[Jason Cavanaugh]

The subject was the IDFs numerous violations of international law and killing of civilians.

It was not an ask to see your bloodthirst and hatred demonstrated yet again.

Good job reminding everyone who you really are though.

[grb]

Commenter_XY : ".... war is all hell"

Sigh. Deflection may be frustrating, but its usually not complicated and openly transparent in its dishonesty. As I've pointed out in the past, the issue isn't whether civilians die in war. They do in large numbers in every armed conflict.

But the IDF has butchered woman, children, the old, and the infirm at rates monstrously higher than seen in modern conflicts. As I noted, Netanyahu's only recent match in massacring civilians is Putin in Chechnya & Assad in Syria. There have been attempts to match Israeli conduct with the U.S. in Iraq, but they went nowhere. Look at the numbers and they fall apart. Even in prolong urban conduct, the U.S. forces still killed civilians at a rate 10-20X lower than the IDF.

Now I get it. You don't care about indiscriminately murdered women and children if (say) the dead eight-year old is Palestinian. But please remember: I warned you back when this started the IDF would leave, Hamas would resume control, and they would eventually reconstitute their numbers and arms.

And please remember: Pre-07Oct, Netanyahu and the Israeli government nurtured and supported Hamas behind the scenes. Israeli officials repeatedly escorted Qatar agents across the border carrying millions of dollars. They did so because as crudely brutal and bloodthirsty Hamas is, Netanyahu preferred to support them as a counter to the Palestinian Authority. Yes, the PA has cooperated with Israeli security for decades, but the continuing rule of Hamas made a good excuse for postponing peace talks. For Netanyahu, that was adequate price for the occasion murdered Israeli civilian. He could let the PA in Gaza now and have a security partner there, but won't. Even after October 7, the same reasoning holds. And when Hamas inevitably murders again, it will result from the same reasoning. Doesn't that bother you even a bit after tens of thousands of civilian dead?

I've never once denied Israel had to make an overwhelming response to the vicious Hamas crimes on 07Oct. But setting aside basic human concerns over the IDF's wanton butchery, there's a larger picture: Israel only has three long-term choices:

(1) Continuing apartheid as they steal the West Bank. Remember, accused of that before an international tribunal, Israel's defense against the charge of apartheid was "ongoing peace talks for a final settlement". Of course that excuse is a transparent lie, and that fact becomes clearer, year by year. When you take land but refuse the people who've always lived on it any citizenship, that's apartheid.

(2) One state for two peoples. But I trust neither side with that. Israel's rule over the Palestinians has been brutal, ugly, often pettily cruel, and totalitarian. I trust the Palestinians even less.

(3) Or two states for two peoples. There's no easy way there. The leaders on both sides are blind fools, interested only in the shortest of short-term gains. But given that's the only real long-term answer. A far-thinking Israeli (or Palestinian) leader would be looking for any chance to inch towards that objective, even with the most minuscule of steps. Letting the PA in Gaza would do that while pushing Hamas towards extinction and increasing Israeli security. But even post-07Oct, Netanyahu won't do that. That's another thing to look at while you consider tens of thousands of civilian dead.

[Sarcastr0]

Commenter believes using indiscriminate with Israel is blood libel.

[Commenter_XY]

But the IDF has butchered woman, children, the old, and the infirm at rates monstrously higher than seen in modern conflicts.

This is a lie. No need to read the rest of the screed.

[Sarcastr0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war

"Scholars have estimated 80% of Palestinians killed are civilians
while a study by OCHR, that verified fatalities from three independent sources, found that 70% of Palestinians killed were women and children."

-Ayoub, H. H., Chemaitelly, H., & Abu-Raddad,
"Comparative analysis and evolution of civilian versus combatant mortality ratios in Israel–Gaza conflicts, 2008–2023." Frontiers in public health, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1359189

-Spagat, Michael (24 September 2024). "Tracking Gaza's war death toll: Ministry of Health improves accuracy in latest casualty report". AOAV.

-"Six-month update report on the human rights situation in Gaza:
1 November 2023 to 30 April 2024"
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/opt/20241106-Gaza-Update-Report-OPT.pdf

If you have countervailing sources, by all means put them out there. Or argue that the character of this conflict is why you see these numbers.
Know-nothingism does Israel no favors.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

C_Bitch,

It's remarkable how much of a poster-baby for Hamas' messaging you are, and you're too stupid and hateful to even realize it.

[grb]

Commenter_XY : "This is a lie."

Three Points:

1. It's not, of course. The source is described and the methodology clear. What's more, there's a second source with additional reporting on the rules of engagement which also supports the numbers. And there's reporting by CNN and the New York Times that documents Israel dropping approximately (500) 2000lb bomb - each with a kill radius of 1000ft - into one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world.

https://www.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html

2. Nonetheless, this is an encouraging sign from XY. Though his reply is the equivalent of sticking fingers in your ears and making loud noises until the troubling words go away, that shows some some hint of shame. Please remember, his initial response to tens of thousands dead women & children was a smirk & facile cliche. If he now sees butchered civilians on a truly massive scale as meriting something more than smug humor, that's gained ground.

3. You see, Commenter_XY, you shouldn't need to lie to support Israel. If screaming "up is down" until your face gets red is required, don't you see that as a problem? When you find yourself needing to memorize a long list of untruths to be an official "supporter", that only proves something's wrong.

Please give this real thought. As I note above, Israel's long term options are few and only one isn't a ruinous dead-end. Real supporters wouldn't treat this ugly bloody war like it's a football game, cheering, "Rah, Rah, Team". Put the pom-poms down and really analyze the situation.

[Commenter_XY]

Surprising exactly no one, hamas has violated the ceasefire agreement.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402880

The ceasefire terms are specific.

Despite committing to provide a list by Saturday night, Hamas has not yet reported to Israel on the status of the remaining hostages.

POTUS Trump has called for implementation of the ceasefire, as agreed.

Judeocidal terrorists will never honor any agreement they make with Israel.

[Brett Bellmore]

Somebody who was expecting the ceasefire to be violated by Hamas so fast that it wouldn't amount to anything more than a chance to take a breath before resuming killing Hamas, I assume.

[Frank Drackman]

"Peace Force"? what, to walk around putting Daisys into the barrels of Ham-Ass's AK47's? You get rid of Gaza like the Romans did with Carthage, which is why the Carthaginians haven't bothered anyone in a long time

[hobie]

Poor Frankie 'Wounded Warrior" Drackman, America's neediest veteran, I forgot peace is not in your lexicon. Re. an occupying force of IDF to make sure Hamas doesn't reconstitute and start to parade down the streets and reoccupy infrastructure. This sure looks like Afghanistan II to most. At least in Afghanistan we held the cities for 20 years before handing it all back to the terrorists

[Frank Drackman]

"Occupying Force of IDF"? They not teach Roman History at your Pubic Screw-el? the Roman's didn't "Occupy" Carthage, they killed everyone they could find, burned it down, and spread salt into the soil. In fact you don't need any "Occupying Force" to take care of Ham-Ass, simply cut off their water, power, "Humanitarian" deliveries, and the problem will solve itself, in fact, that's whats going to happen.

Frank

[Estragon]

I have a question I’m hoping one of the denizens here can answer:

"They have a valve, think of a sink but multiply it by many thousands of times the size of it, it's massive. And you turn it back toward Los Angeles. Why aren't they doing it?”

Im assuming that the President of this blessed country doesn’t actually think there is a literal giant “valve” somewhere up by Mt. Shasta— I understand that these days we are meant to take him seriously but not literally. I am guessing that this valve talk is actually proxy for another issue— ag use in the Central Valley? Dam removal on the Klamath? Rollback of environmental laws (i.e. the smelt stuff)? What’s the actual issue he’s talking about? It feels important to be clear here, given he indicated yesterday that federal disaster relief would be conditioned on opening of said valve and “letting the waters flow.” What’s the ask here?

Alternatively if he really is talking about a giant faucet somewhere— where might that be? I would love to check it out! Sounds cool

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, he may be talking about all that extra reservoir capacity they raised bonds to build, and then didn't bother building. But I will admit I am not fond of this sort of metaphor.

I'm also not fond of news reports that quote a few out of context lines, and don't link to original sources or larger in context transcripts. In fact, I'm a lot less fond of that, than Presidential metaphor.

[Estragon]

“Well, he may be talking about all that extra reservoir capacity they raised bonds to build, and then didn't bother building.”

I see. So federal disaster aid to California for recent fires is conditional upon construction of additional reservoir capacity? What is the timeline on that sort of construction? Years, I presume— but perhaps Kaz can chime in.

Say YOU were governor of California (I know, lol, but just pretend)— what concrete steps might you take to fulfill this
“Metaphorical” request in order to secure some aid money for your constituents?

Or can I just chalk you up for “I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about, either”?

This metaphorical faucet has to be a stand-in for something else. Anyone else from the swamps have insight here? I am not immersed in very-online Trumpworld like some of you…

[Brett Bellmore]

You missed the link, maybe? He thinks there was water California could have diverted.

[Sarcastr0]

It is monstrous to withhold disaster funding from a state.

Feds want Cali to build more water infrastructure, they have plenty of carrots or sticks that won't kill people.

[Mr. Bumble]

Please feel free to send your donation to CA.
Ca has done nothing to solve their water problems for decades but somehow is pissing away hundreds of millions on a train to nowhere.

[Estragon]

“pissing away hundreds of millions on a train to nowhere”

Yeah but what does that have to do with valves

[Mr. Bumble]

There would be valve to turn if CA was proactive about water storage.
See this re 2014 prop 1:
https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-california-droughts-science--74bbbd535f6519b8aa79d57737e6eef4

[Estragon]

This is great! So “turn the valve” to get disaster aid… the valve that could have existed but doesn’t. Hmmmm.

[Estragon]

And gosh how lucky for North Carolinians that their disaster aid isn’t conditioned on metaphorical hypothetical valves that never got built and their unsatisfactory voter ID laws!

[Brett Bellmore]

So, here's the "valve", a federal water diversion project California sued to stop during Trump's 1st term.

Trump plan could bring growers more water. But will it harm California’s rare salmon?

Turns out that's the valve, and one of Trump's EO's orders work restarted on it.

[Estragon]

“Growers”

It’s right there in the caption!

[Mr. Bumble]

https://apnews.com/article/business-environment-and-nature-california-droughts-science--74bbbd535f6519b8aa79d57737e6eef4

[Estragon]

See this is great. Bumble knows more about this stuff than me! I’m glad he’s here to decode it…

“Turn the valve” actually means “you shouldn’t have spent money on high speed rail”? Is that right?

Since as you point out the money has already been “pissed away” it seems like a pretty impossible condition to fulfill to receive disaster aid— quite the Catch-22… wouldn’t you agree?

[Frank Drackman]

Does the train go to Rio Linda? I spent a month there one day.

[Estragon]

Yes, we know— by turning the faucet in the “many thousands times larger” sink! “Limitless water!”

It just seems a little vague for people living in the here and now— don’t you think?

While we’re at it, what does voter ID have to do with all of this?

[grb]

Brett Bellmore : "He thinks there was water California could have diverted"

And you believe Trump isn't lying ?!? But that's unfair, you carefully step around the factual question by saying Trump "thinks" water could have been diverted. This because you know it's all a lie. And if we stick to the Bellmorean tradition, you'll insist on DJT's delusional sincerity long after the lying is exposed. After all, that's the fallback strategy you used with Trump's election-steal lies. And given Trump's "sincerity" is safely within his head, that gives you carte blanche to excuse any mistruth Pretty smart move, Brett.

As for substance, let's check-in with Kevin Drum who (a) is a California native, and (b) has the integrity to call out both sides on any issue (rare, that). His account today is too long and convoluted to adequately summarize, but there's a link below. As bonus, I'll throw in a Drum post re a Musk tweet on the fires. Musk makes eight claims in the tweet and every single one is fraudulent. Lying-wise, I'm tempted to paraphrase Star Wars, Musk to Trump : "Once I was but the learner, now I am the master"

Nah. Musk was a habitual liar long before he started playing Trump.

https://jabberwocking.com/49544-2/

https://jabberwocking.com/elon-musk-is-the-new-emperor-of-misinformation/

[Brett Bellmore]

You know, I've said this before, but when I say something, I'm saying that something, not whatever you read into or in place of it.

He said it. You may casually assume that he's a figure out of some Greek logic puzzle, but I don't.

[David Nieporent]

You know, I've said this before, but when I say something, I'm saying that something, not whatever you read into or in place of it.

What's weird is that you apply this to yourself and Donald Trump and nobody else, especially not liberals.

[Frank Drackman]

Yes, it's called the Pacific Fucking Ocean

[David Nieporent]

He thinks there was water California could have diverted.

Brett regularly uses the Costanza defense — it's not a lie if you believe it — on behalf of Donald Trump.

[Estragon]

“quote a few out of context lines”

Also LOL to this! My dude. Every time he talks it’s all out of context lines. Even the Trump people acknowledge that— they call it “the weave”

[Mr. Bumble]

Meanwhile what might have been:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nijhuis/pipe-dreams-the-forgotten-project-that-could-have-saved-amer
Estimated to have cost $1.5 trillion in 2015 dollars.
Meanwhile we've spent:
"In fact, since Lyndon Johnson declared “war on poverty” in 1965, government efforts to fight poverty have cost more than $23 trillion."
(as of 2019).
Think some of that could have been better spent?

[hobie]

Can't seem to get all the white hillbillies off the dole. If we could, California's disproportionate tax burden flowing to red states could be repurposed for buying the Everything Valve

[Frank Drackman]

You don’t have to clean up your language Hobie-stank, you can say White Niggers like your Hero the late great Senator (D, WVA) Robert KKK Bird

[ThePublius]

I don't know why you say these things, hobie. Whites are under-represented among welfare program participants proportionate to representation in the population; hispanics about even; and blacks 2:1 or more.

"50.1% of those receiving SNAP, TANF, and rental subsidies were Black and 27.7% were Hispanic in 2014."[1] So, it's even worse for this combination of benefits, since blacks made up only 13% of the population.

I just glanced at SNAP demographics to make that statement, but it seems to hold up for other programs.

Note to Sarcastr0: pointing this out is not racist.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/05/who-is-receiving-social-safety-net-benefits.html

[Sarcastr0]

Poorer people get welfare, not blacker people.

You're bringing in race for reasons of your own.

[ThePublius]

No I'm not, I'm responding to hobie's invocation of race regarding "white hillbillies on the dole." Didn't you get that?

[Mr. Bumble]

Il Douche has NO trouble being willfully ignorant.

[Sarcastr0]

That is a group that exists.

You didn’t take issue with his point or even tone but abused statistics to tu quoque black people.

Go read more of that guy who got fired from a right wing paper for being too racist.

[ThePublius]

You're so full of it. How did I "abuse statistics?" And when did you become the official arbiter of how one is to frame comments on this blog?

[Sarcastr0]

Citing black people as connected to something something caused by being poor is abuse of statistics.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Well, he gave this answer to his own rhetorical question:

“ They either have a death wish, they're stupid, or there's something else going on that we don't understand.”

Let’s see you argue with that, smart guy!

[Estragon]

Ha! He’s got me there… I wouldn’t even know where to begin!

[Frank Drackman]

That's what your wife says about you

[Mr. Bumble]

Rimshot!

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Trump understands about as much about water management as he does about magnets.

[Estragon]

The lengths to which some habitual commentators will go to in order to deny the obvious is on display here.

Why deny disaster aid? Because of political decisions made ex ante! Bumblemore has said it openly above.

I just am curious about why they feel the need to spend hours out of literally every day of their precious lives posting here of all places pretending that it is not so.

It reminds me of Bob— here for hours the other day— insisting that the awkward hand gesture wasn’t what it was because it was at an angle. And you three don’t even get paid to do this (do you?)— you do it for free!!

I mean, FFS!!

[Frank Drackman]

Something's rotten in Vermont,
4 days after an ICE Agent murdered only hours into 47's term by a "German National", still not even a name for the murderer, usually the next day we have the "Manifesto", Interviews with neighbors, High Screw-el friends, teachers, but for this, Zilch, Zero, Nada,
Supposedly there was a "Second Gunman" which is why they shut down the Interstate for hours, and the one photo of the Female Accomplice, she has the stigmata of A-rab Origin. Also supposedly, the FBI was "aware" of the group and was surveilling them (like the Miami 1986 Shootout Fiasco?) and also supposedly the group was in Vermont looking to buy land.....
OK, call me an Asshole (1, 2, 3, "You're an Asshole!") but there's nothing on AlGores Interwebs except that an "ICE Agent shot by German National" and the other tidbits I reported are from local Vermont stations,

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

Only shut down the Southbound side for 23 hours, northbound reopened 2-3 hours later.

"Investigators had been performing “periodic surveillance” of the pair since Jan. 14 after an employee at a hotel where they were staying reported concerns about seeing Youngblut carrying a gun and both of them wearing all-black tactical gear. Investigators attempted to question them but the pair declined to have an extended conversation and said they were in the area looking to buy property.

About two hours before the shooting, investigators watched Baukholt exit a Walmart in Newport with two packages of aluminum foil. According to the affidavit, he was seen wrapping unidentifiable objects while seated in the passenger seat.

Authorities later found a ballistic helmet, night-vision goggles, respirators and ammunition in the car, along with a package of shooting range targets, some of which were used. They also found two-way radios, about a dozen “electronic devices,” travel and lodging information for multiple states and an apparent journal."

https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2025/01/24/fbi-arrests-washington-state-woman-fatal-shooting-vermont-border-patrol-agent/?p1=hp_featurestack

[Dr. Ed 2]

FBI agent was on scene before shooting.

WTF???

Why would you wrap cell phones in aluminum foil???

[David Nieporent]

Um, I think it's obvious why one would do it: one thinks it prevents one's phone from being tracked. That doesn't work, but that's the idea.

[Mr. Bumble]

Homemade Faraday bag?

[David Nieporent]

Exactly.

[Absaroka]

"That doesn't work, but that's the idea."

Can you elaborate? I thought it ought to work, and so in the interest of science I:

1)laid my phone on the kitchen counter
2)called it from another phone - it rang
3)wrapped it in a plastic bag then foil, taking care to get sharp creases
4)called it from the other phone - got the message 'can't connect to 123-4567 right now' or whatever the verbiage is

[David Nieporent]

Well, I guess I should say, it depends how much aluminum foil you use. Foil is too thin to block the signal, according to not only everything I've read but my own experiment. But if you use enough layers, and you ensure that there are no seams, sure.

[Absaroka]

I used one layer of normal foil, 'Kroger' brand, My micrometer says .0036 inches thick, which is about normal for grocery store aluminum foil.

Most of this article went whoosh way over my head, and Wired ain't the Journal of Physics, but it sure indicates one layer may not be enough:

"Suppose you wrap your phone with a single layer of aluminum foil. Aluminum foil is indeed an electrical conductor, but it's also very thin. There aren't many electrons that you can move around, and they can’t get very far apart (because the foil is thin). In the end, they can’t perfectly cancel the electric field inside. So maybe one layer of aluminum foil won't be quite enough.

You don't have to take my word on this: Take your phone and wrap it in one layer of aluminum foil. Now try to call your phone. (You will, of course, need another phone for this.) If your phone rings, your Faraday cage isn't thick enough. Keep adding layers of aluminum foil until it stops receiving a call. That’s when you’ve acquired enough skin depth for your Faraday cage to work."

There you go, boys and girls, get out your phones and some foil and have at it. It's for science!

(like I said, big words like 'capacitance' and 'electron' make my brain hurt. I have heard an insulating layer matters (but only if your phone has a conductive case, which it might not?????), and you want crisply creased seams ... if you just wad it up the little holes leak signals, them thar radio waves are sneaky little buggers. But see again that my knowledge of radio wave propagation and electronics barely qualifies me to troubleshoot a flashlight)

(even multiple layers might require an insulator between them?? C'mon, Sarcastro, you're the resident physicist here)

[Voize of Reazon]

Skin depth decreases with frequency. The lowest frequencies used by cell phones are around 800 megahertz, for which the skin depth of aluminum is about 3 microns. That means your foil is about 30 skin depths thick in the lowest frequency band, so it reduces the electric field by 260 decibels. In the higher bands it would be even more.
The above is for pure aluminum, if it contains impurities it will be less effective at blocking the signal.

[Absaroka]

Thanks! 260 dB is a lot.

My brief google of alloys wasn't productive; apparently a lot of alloys are used, from almost pure to not so much.

[Frank Drackman]

Wonder if Luigi Mangione realizes he fucked up his life yet

[Dr. Ed 2]

Prediction: Susan Collins will not be running fore re-election in 2026.

[SRG2]

Prediction: no-one will care

[Frank Drackman]

I'd predict nobody would care about your comments, except it's like predicting Ohio State will win the CFB Championship, You know everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You're a miracle! Your stories have NONE of that. They're not even amusing ACCIDENTALLY! "Honey, I'd like you to meet SRG2, he's got some amusing anecodotes for you. Oh and here's a gun so you can blow your brains out. You'll thank me for it." I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They'd say, "How can you stand it?" I'd say, "'Cause I've been with SRG2. I can take ANYTHING." You know what they'd say? They'd say, "I know what you mean. The "Volokh Conspiracy" guy. Woah." It's like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn't pull it out and snap it back - you would. Agh! Agh! Agh! Agh! And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the reader!

Frank

[Stephen Lathrop]

With confirmation of Hegseth the former GOP has completed its fateful transformation:

MAGAstein. "It's alive! It's alive!"

[Frank Drackman]

It's Alive? You sure couldn't say that about former Sec Def Lloyd "Where is he?" Austin Powers, or for that matter, his Commander in Cheese Parkinsonan Joe, and when the side you supported has a man in a Woman's Navy Uniform in their Cabinet, another who stole women's underwear from Airport Luggage Carousels, you should, umm, how can I say this politely?
Go fuck yourself

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

The era of the feminist male has ended.

i predict that having had an abortion will become to females what the allegations of domestic violence were to Hegseth, and the women will deserve it.

[John F. Carr]

According to a 2017 report about 1/4 of American women have had an abortion by age 45. It's hard to stigmatize something so common. It's not impossible. America did it with marijuana.

[Dr. Ed 2]

and domestic violence...

[Frank Drackman]

Great to see the IDF Solders back home, I'd say this shows the Idiocy of letting women serve in the military, but then I'd have to explain why my 2 daughters serve in the military (not many other places you can fly F-16 and FA-18's) Is there any way we can trade Mitch McConnell? I know he's not worth any hostages, but maybe for some old stale Doritos?

[Brett Bellmore]

We just have to slip an update in the next time McConnell reboots. He's doing it pretty often at this point, now.

[David Nieporent]

By the way, I wonder when Brett will admit how stupid and gullible he was to believe Trump's pretense that Project 2025 was just some random thing he had never heard of and knew nothing about and didn't have any intention of implementing.
​
​
​
Note: I do not actually wonder that; I know that there's never any chance Brett will admit any such thing ever about any topic.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I wonder if you will admit that Trump NEVER SAID THAT.

What he did say was that it was independent of Team Trump.

[Brett Bellmore]

But Trump didn't say anything at all like the words you're putting in his mouth, and I think you must be perfectly aware he didn't, or at least have no excuse for being unaware.

"“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” he said. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”"

Note the "some". There's a difference between saying that it's not HIS project, and that he disagrees with some of it, and a promise to do the exact opposite of everything they proposed.

It was a grab bag of right wing proposals, and the idea that if he did anything that happened to be in it he was lying all along is absurd.

[Swede425]

Of course Davey boy knows that.
But he's looking at 4 long years of Trump before JD Vance becomes president.
By that time ol' DN will be in a space cult waiting to be saved by aliens. And you know how that turns out.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

His denial has a lie built right into it but you’re too stupid to notice.

That you think Trump ever tells the truth is what is absurd.

[David Nieporent]

Note the "some". There's a difference between saying that it's not HIS project, and that he disagrees with some of it, and a promise to do the exact opposite of everything they proposed.

Here we get Brett playing hyperliteralist again for Trump and Trump alone, but pretending not to see that "I know nothing about Project 2025" and "I disagree with some of the things they’re saying" are directly contradictory.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I know they're directly contradictory. I sometimes come close to face palming listening to the guy talk.

I try to have my thoughts in order before I speak, and then say exactly what I mean. Trump blurts out something vaguely like what he means, and then approaches his actual meaning by a process of successive qualification of the initial statement.

It gets you there, but gives cherry pickers a lot of ammo.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

1) That's quite the fabrication compared to the simple explanation that Trump's a liar.
2) I noticed you ran away from the pardon discussion above. You MAGA dipshits all seem to have a real problem with that.

[Brett Bellmore]

I didn't run away, I said that I wouldn't have granted some of them, or would have made them commutations instead. But when I stack them up against Biden's pardon's, I don't think they're as bad.

Notice that the rest of Biden's family got pardons for any non-violent federal crimes, while Hunter got a pardon for all federal crimes whatsoever? Hunter could, literally, be discovered to have gone on a murder spree in DC during the last decade, and he'd be free and clear.

I don't think that difference was an accident. I expect Hunter's got some nasty skeletons in his closet, and Dad knows it, and means for him to never have to pay for them.

Look, let me say this yet again: I don't expect to like everything Trump does, (Some of it, sure.) I didn't vote for him because I thought he was a great candidate. I voted for him because I thought he was less awful than the alternative. So far he's living up to that expectation.

But that expectation factors in him doing a lot of stuff I disagree with. So get over the idea that when he does something you don't like, and I don't join you in freaking out, it means I'm enthusiastically in favor of it. If I am I'll say that.

You want my real opinion? Our government has become a cancer upon the nation, and if we're unreasonably lucky Trump may turn out to be a course of chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy is nasty stuff, has horrible side effects, and the only thing you can say in its favor is that it's less awful than the alternative. And that's Trump to a "T": Less awful than the alternative.

So, why don't you stop whining, and for a change try puking up a candidate in 2028 who isn't so astoundingly awful that Vance looks better?

[Absaroka]

"So, why don't you stop whining, and for a change try puking up a candidate in 2028 who isn't so astoundingly awful that Vance looks better?"

I heartily, pleadingly endorse this. For the love of God, don't make 2028 a choice between Vance and AOC or the like. Reform your bylaws or whatever it takes to nominate someone vaguely centrist. I'd like Joe Manchin, but a Bill Clinton will work.

Repubs, y'all should be thinking as well. You don't have to do a Kamala by nominating Vance. I predict that by 2028 the bloom will be off the MAGA rose, and the independents who were tired enough of wokism to vote R will be looking for someone pretty centrist.

[David Nieporent]

Look, there's no chance in this multiverse that Democrats are nominating Joe Manchin (even setting aside that he'll be 81 in 2028!) If your standard for your willingness to support a Democratic candidate is that he has to be so conservative that he's not even a Democrat anymore, your vote was never gettable anyway. It's like someone saying they'd vote for the GOP presidential candidate if only the GOP would nominate Susan Collins; that person is not talking about the GOP, but about some hypothetical party in some hypothetical country.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You did run away because you're a fucking coward, just like all your fellow MAGA shits wearing the colors of America's enemies.

You posted propaganda and never once, even now, did you acknowledge that your 'account' of the story was utter bullshit.

You insist that Biden's pardons are worse because you *imagine* crimes they committed in your otherwise empty fucking head and then justify that against your partisan fuckwittery which always happens to be just strong enough to pretend that you're right.

The real crimes people were actually convicted for just doesn't matter to you, nor does the truth, or you wouldn't post propaganda and run away like a bitch.

[David Nieporent]

Notice that the rest of Biden's family got pardons for any non-violent federal crimes, while Hunter got a pardon for all federal crimes whatsoever? Hunter could, literally, be discovered to have gone on a murder spree in DC during the last decade, and he'd be free and clear.

Given that he didn't live in DC, it's highly unlikely that some portion of the crime wasn't committed in another jurisdiction, and such jurisdiction (i.e., state) could prosecute notwithstanding the pardon.

Also, you're a loon. "I think Hunter must be a serial killer because Joe Biden didn't think it necessary to exclude violent crimes." As opposed to the more obvious "A month later, Joe Biden realized that the optics of excluding violent crimes were better."

[David Nieporent]

So, why don't you stop whining, and for a change try puking up a candidate in 2028 who isn't so astoundingly awful that Vance looks better?

The Democrats could nominate Ronald Reagan and you'd still find some excuse why you just had to vote for Vance even though you protest that you don't really like him.

Trump is the cancer, not the chemotherapy. We had hoped Biden would be the latter, but unfortunately the remission didn't take.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Trump continues to blatantly violate the law and remove obstacles to his corruption and thirst for power.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-president-news-01-25-25#cm6c78dod00003b6n892v7odr

I wonder how many more Crooks he’s making?

[Frank Drackman]

Even your Clinton News Network link just says "47" is "Advancing his Agenda" umm, thats what we wanted him to do
Crooks chose poorly

[ThePublius]

“Inspectors general are charged with rooting out government waste, fraud, abuse, and preventing misconduct. …"

Yea, and how has that been working out. Draining the swamp - whatever it takes, it's fine with me.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

MAGA fuckwit admits that he's fine with King Trump breaking the law.

Shocking.

[Dr. Ed 2]

If you don't think the IG has been inspecting, you replace the IG.

[Michael Ejercito]

Under what branch do IGs derive authority?

[Michael Ejercito]

How does firing inspectors general violate the law?

[David Nieporent]

5 U.S.C. § 403 requires that the president "communicate in writing the reasons for any such removal or transfer to both Houses of Congress, not later than 30 days before the removal or transfer." (Emphasis added.)

[Mr. Bumble]

....and? What is the penalty for violating "the law"?

[David Nieporent]

Impeachment, obviously, since SCOTUS claims that presidents can commit murder with impunity in the course of their duties.

[Brett Bellmore]

This is not a shock to the people on the receiving end of Hellfire missile launches. Obama ever get charged for that wedding party he had murdered?

[Michael Ejercito]

And because it actually restrains the President from being able to remove a subordinate with immediate effect, it is unconstitutional.

[David Nieporent]

Well, that's definitely a theory.

[Mark In Florida]

Has anything been posted (or did I miss it) about the FinCEN requirement that every little LLC or corporation in every state has to report ownership of all beneficial owners online by 12/32/24? There was an injunction out of Texas stopping it, a panel of the appeals court reversed that, another panel of the same appeals court reinstated it, now the SC reversed them but FinCEN is not enforcing it. Trump vetoed the law but was it was based over his veto, so maybe he'll not enforce it until the SC has final review.

[ThePublius]

12/32/24?

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

Leap month?

[Mr. Bumble]

Dyslexia.

[Mark In Florida]

Bumble fingers.

[Life of Brian]

There's a second national injunction still in place in Smith v. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Case No. 6:24-cv-336-JDK. It just issued a couple of weeks ago, so that buys quite a bit more time as it winds through its appeal process.

[ThePublius]

"An order issued by U.S District Judge Sherilyn Garnett on Friday allows members of Gun Owners of America and the Second Amendment Foundation to apply for nonresident concealed carry licenses in California."

For concealed carry practitioners and advocates, this is big news.

Still, carry firearms should not require a license at all, "constitutional carry" should be the law of the land in all 50 states, and every city thereof.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/24/court-order-allows-goa-saf-members-apply-nonresident-california-concealed-carry-licenses/

[ThePublius]

Friday was a great day for Trump. His visits to NC and CA were nothing short of masterful. People in NC still living in tents and who have lost everything no longer feel neglected or abandoned. Pols in CA were spanked openly in a meeting at a firehouse where Trump promised to do everything he could to help.

More of this, please.

[ObviouslyNotSpam]

You do not seem to have actually watched Trump's performance during that meeting. It was a low-energy Trump, no doubt still fuming about his stupid handshake trick not working on Gov. "Newscum" at the airport, and about how he's going to need higher high heels next time...

On a brighter note, your conversion is now complete: You see only what you want to see. That must be nice.

[ThePublius]

I watched the entire meeting at the firehouse. What's your beef? You think Biden could have done anything like that?

[Dan Schiavetta]

He did, frequently. Except he tended to be truthful, and not point fingers or be mean-spirited and small-minded.

[ThePublius]

Did he go to North Carolina? Did he help those people?

[David Nieporent]

Yes, and yes.

[David Nieporent]

It took literally one second of googling — the terms Biden visited north carolina — to get this link:

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article293356544.html

[ThePublius]

Yea, he went ot Raleigh. And he didn't help the victims of Helene except to give them $750 each. Such B.S.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Sixty seconds of googling would show that you're a gullible dipshit.

https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20241021/biden-harris-administration-provides-billions-federal-assistance-helene

Society should not be required to tolerate your stupidity.

[David Nieporent]

give them $750 each

People who are this dishonest should be beaten to death and fed to alligators. That's what federal law provides for, you lying piece of shit. You've been told this repeatedly and yet you keep saying it.

https://www.fema.gov/node/rumor-serious-needs-assistance

[grb]

ThePublius : "Such B.S."

Yes, you're full of bullshit. But today's Right is addicted to lies. It's fueled by lies. A rightie like ThePublius can't get by without being spoonfed lies daily by one of his handlers. If his source of lies was disrupted, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't break into sweats & tremors like a crack addict going cold turkey.

Where the fuck is his self-respect?

[ThePublius]

So, if I lied, tell me what the truth might be. Did Biden actually put his feet on the ground in Western NC?

[Jason Cavanaugh]

You did lie.
You've been told what the truth is.
You've even been given evidence of the truth.

Fuck off and die.

[David Nieporent]

People in NC still living in tents and who have lost everything no longer feel neglected or abandoned.

Why, did he throw some paper towels at them?

[ThePublius]

Even that would have been more than slow, senile Joe did. But no, he id much more than that. And you should be glad.

[Sarcastr0]

“ he is much more than that. And you should be glad.”

This is dear leader speak.

[ThePublius]

My type was "he id", when I meant "he did," not "he is." Where did you get "he is" from?

[John F. Carr]

Bloomberg Law reports on forum shopping in the birthright citizenship cases.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/birthright-citizenship-suits-show-liberals-target-first-circuit

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D) told reporters Tuesday that the coalition of attorneys general chose to file in her state because of its protections for immigrants and values. She also said that its judiciary that is “quite intelligent,” prioritizes the rule of law, and issues thoughtful decisions.

There were two coalitions, each choosing a district court with all or mostly all Democrat-appointed judges in a liberal circuit. They actually had the bad luck to draw a Republican-appointed judge in the West. They still got a nationwide injunction almost immediately. (Strictly speaking a TRO. They will get an injunction next month.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

The First Circus has become a problem.

[not guilty]

The case filed in New Hampshire is assigned to Judge Joseph N. Laplante, who was appointed by President Bush II. The suit in Washington is before Senior Judge John C. Coughenour, who was appointed by President Reagan.

[ThePublius]

Who here carries daily?

[Noscitur a sociis]

Nice try, fed!

[ThePublius]

What is that supposed to mean? I didn't ask who carries illegally.

[Sarcastr0]

Gathering data for the coming Ban and Camps.

[ThePublius]

Stupid.

[Sarcastr0]

Sorry a couple of us aren't taking your post seriously, Serious Poster ThePublius!

[ThePublius]

"Us?" Did you consult with others on this, or perhaps take a poll?

[Sarcastr0]

Noscitur’s comment is also a joke.

I liked it.