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Eugene Volokh | 9.5.2025 3:00 AM
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The Washington Post reports:
Senior Justice Department officials have held multiple meetings since last week’s deadly Minneapolis Catholic school shooting to consider banning transgender people from owning firearms, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The talks — described as in the early stages by the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations — began after a 23-year-old transgender person allegedly carried out the Aug. 27 shooting that killed two children and injured 17 others during a Mass at Annunciation Catholic School.
Senior Justice Department officials have held multiple meetings since last week’s deadly Minneapolis Catholic school shooting to consider banning transgender people from owning firearms, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
The talks — described as in the early stages by the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations — began after a 23-year-old transgender person allegedly carried out the Aug. 27 shooting that killed two children and injured 17 others during a Mass at Annunciation Catholic School.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/04/guns-transgender-justice-trump-bondi-shootings/
Oh, dear me! What will a MAGAt who hates trans folks but fetishizes firearms do? Shit? Or go blind?
Well it is at least as rational as banning marijuana users from owning or bearing guns, but of course I oppose that too, even for Hunter.
I think it just a troll, however if somehow it did make it to the Supreme Court it might make for a robust decision protecting gun rights of all individuals who have not been convicted of a felony or adjudged incompetent.
Obama did the same thing to Veterans who had someone else managing their financial affairs. Such a ban would quickly get to SCOTUS.
This raises the question of if SCOTUS would want to wander into the quagmire of Gender Identity Disorder versus Gender Dysphoria and the extent to which either (or both) might define someone as a “mental defective” per the Brady Bill – or would SCOTUS take the easy way out and simply declare the “mental defective” part of the Brady Bill to be unconstitutional?
Remember it's broader than "adjudged incompetent."
There's also trying to use the desire to own guns as evidence of mental instability. It might very well be in some cases, but I'm not sure a desire to exercise a right should properly ever be used as argument to deny it.
Well, as we see with the big DC Gun Roundup, Trump's views on guns haven't really changed since he was a NYC Democrat. Then again, getting shot at by a fellow Republican probably didn't make him any less suspicious of guns.
Why the use of the term "allegedly"?? It's like in Med Screw-el when you'd have a 3-time loser, career criminal, murderer, rapist, get shot by the cops, or stabbed in state prison, and the Case Presentation would start, "Mr. Ja'rav'ius Washington, is a 35 yr old gentleman who incurred multiple gunshot wounds and blunt force injuries in a confrontation with the Mobile Police......." Only once did I see an Attending stop the presentation and say "This.........is not a "Gentleman"
Frank "I'm no doorknob either"
Only once did I see an Attending stop the presentation and say "This.........is not a "Gentleman"
Man of grammar.
"Anonymous"..."Discussions"...."Early stages"
Much ado about nothing....
Never mind that imposing any such restriction would require an act of Congress.
Oh, dear me! What will a leftist troll do when confronted with the reality that the trans movement is a vile project to exploit and abuse mentally disturbed children? They will make absurd efforts to attack those who challenge the trans groomers rather than confront the obscenity that is the trans movement itself.
Bot not programmed that conservative motivated shooters outnumber trans ones.
There are no “conservative” motivated shooters. There are various mentally disturbed individuals, including most recently those exploited by the vile trans movement.
Look at this as progress as they will clean about 1% of the school shooters.
Well, you'd have to go after inner city gangs to clean up 98% of them.
You want to ban guns in the inner city?
Or just take an empty swipe at ‘Urbans.’
I’d also check you stats. Plenty of rural school shootings. https://apnews.com/article/8660507c56b04dd0b580b248d39d2a2c
Why would anybody but an idiot jump straight from dealing with inner city gangs, to banning guns? Is that the only tool law enforcement has available? I wouldn't even call it a law enforcement tool, it's just another victimless crime law generating an even larger black market.
Depends on how you define "school shootings". If you restrict yourself to just what people generally think of, yeah, it's as much rural as urban, maybe more, but it's not actually a huge problem, not where you'd aim your resources if your goal was to save lives.
If you define them to include shootings that happen near schools, as is commonly done to inflate the statistics, urban gangs become a bigger fraction of the problem.
But since the urban gangs cause a lot of problems outside the immediate vicinity of schools, why wouldn't you prioritize going after them, over going after the rare psycho student?
Why would I be following the subject of this thread, including the comment you replied to?
If you define them to include shootings that happen near schools Yeah, but even you admit no one does this.
I also note that you seem to think law enforcement doesn't go after gangs, and needs to prioritize that. You really don't know much at all about cities, eh?
"Yeah, but even you admit no one does this."
You're hallucinating again.
Sarcastr0 -- What are you talking about? If "no one does this," then why pass the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 that was the subject of Lopez??
That's not a relevant point to the discussion.
The key here is that the term 'school shooting' does not mean 'shooting near a school.'
As Brett admits, that's what people generally think of. Him substituting his own definition is just lame.
Il Douche cements his position at the top of the douche list.
Hey Brett. How does it feel to have a remora swimming around your comments?
I know, right? This man-crush has been brewing for a LONG time now. Just screw up your courage and ask him out, Gaslighto! You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
He's got no shot with me, I'm a happily married to a total babe.
Maybe quit being a tease, then. Ever consider that? With your "come hither" posts and sassy replies. You know what you're doing.
Like I said last week, I originally was thinking that having a personal nemesis was going to be cool, but really, it's just creepy. And he's not even a quality nemesis, either, his capacity to respond to other people's arguments instead of what he hallucinates them arguing is diminishing rapidly.
I expect it's due to the stress of realizing that Trump's policies are actually fairly popular, and that the future isn't going to look like the inevitable march into a progressive utopia he was thinking it would be. I know that realizing that libertarianism wasn't very popular, and likely never would be, hit me pretty hard, too. But I'd kind of known it all along, which took the edge off.
Yeah, saving child victims of the vile trans movement and preventing harm to other children in future school incidents. Why do democrats hate children?
NG - Your focus on accusing people who are in favor of sound medical and mental health treatment for individual suffering from gender confusion is simply deranged and delusional. Its people that promote embracing their mental health delusions that are the true haters of trans individuals.
You are simply projecting your hatred of trans individuals on those who promote sound mental health treatment
I like that he fails to put proper punctuation at the end of his last sentence. Because he’s a mental health expert, not a hateful troll, and totally knows what he’s talking about here (and in epidemiology, and climatology, and macroeconomics, etc.,).
This is already entertaining and the process hasn't even started. I wonder if we'll see an injunction against publishing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.
As a practical matter, the rule can't be as vague as "no guns for cross-dressers." The government could make gender dysphoria a disqualifying mental illness. And then you get two legal questions. 1: Do the dysphoric get special legal protection? 2: Is there enough evidence in the administrative record to justify the rule under the Administrative Procedure Act?
The answer to 1 is definitely yes at the trial court level – suitable judges will be shopped for – but probably not in the Supreme Court. I don't know the answer to the second question. "Some of those people committed gun crimes" will not be good enough.
If gun ownership were just the privilege gun controllers want it to be treated as, it would easily pass rational basis analysis, because transgenders have an enormously elevated suicide rate.
But as a constitutional right, I can't see it clearing any sort of scrutiny.
That shouldn’t work under Bruen-Rahimi and how the case law is developing based on that. Basically there appears to be a growing consensus that categorical disarmament can only happen for:
1. Individuals convicted of violent felonies in which case lifetime bans are likely appropriate;
2. Individuals who have been determined presently dangerous after some kind of contested hearing with the understanding that there is an avenue for later relief.
So you can’t just say “trans people are mentally ill” therefore they can’t have guns. Present dangerousness would need to be adjudicated person-by-person, and it could only be a temporary order.
Rahimi could be temporarily disarmed because he was the subject of a DV protection order that he had the opportunity to contest at a hearing which found him presently a threat and there was a 5 year limit on the order.
"Rahimi could be temporarily disarmed because he was the subject of a DV protection order that he had the opportunity to contest at a hearing which found him presently a threat and there was a 5 year limit on the order."
And even that exceeded the Bruen relevant historical practice, (Which was limited to having to post a bond to take your guns out of your home!) but the Court wasn't interested in being strict about it.
Well the problem is that Bruen is an unworkable standard for the lower courts and lawyers that actually have to decide these things case-by-case. I've even had a conservative pro-second amendment federal judge admit that to me. He also agreed with me that Rahimi presented a workable solution.
Where "unworkable" doesn't mean, "You can't figure out what you're supposed to rule under it.", but instead, "It's clear you should rule something you really, really don't like under it."
But that's not what "unworkable" actually means. It's more like "unacceptable". Fully upholding the 2nd amendment is simply something the vast majority of jurists can't tolerate, even though the things they'd have to give up on, like red flag laws, are actually relatively recent developments.
Well, that might eventually change. For a few decades there, the judiciary were ready to write the 2nd amendment out of the Constitution, so many of them so disliked it. We've come a long ways from when Burger declared an individual right to own guns a "fraud", it's just that we've got a long way left to go before judges are ready to tolerate entirely upholding that right.
See the thing is Brett. You’re not a judge you don’t have to deal with this. There’s a reason everyone who has to deal with real cases thinks you’re wrong. You have the luxury of abstract absolutes. No one else does.
Individuals convicted of violent felonies in which case lifetime bans are likely appropriate
On the merits, I know this might seem strange to some, since I'm some socialist woke person, but this seems absurd.
(I'm not denying it might be a valid rule under the current misguided jurisprudence in place.)
A "violent felony" can be a bar fight when you are 20. This is supposed to be the subject of a"lifetime ban"? SMH.
The reportedly being discussed trans ban should be deemed illegitimate on basic equal protection principles. I say "should."
It also obviously presents an equal protection problem even under rational basis review.
Yeah the reasoning for lifetime disarmament of violent felonies is sort of dumb. Basically at the founding if you are convicted (either by jury or because you waived those rights and were tried to a bench or pleaded guilty) of a felony you could simply be executed...so obviously it's okay to disarm. But Range v. Garland out of the Third Circuit called into question disarmament for a white collar felony like fraud. So I really do think we're going to settle on: you can temporarily disarm people on a case by case basis after a hearing where their present and future dangerousness is established. Which honestly is a fine rule to me.
Bruen is much much stupider when applied to sensitive place restrictions and class of weapons restrictions. There is no historical analog in 1791 saying you can't bring a nuke into the children's hospital!
"Basically at the founding if you are convicted (either by jury or because you waived those rights and were tried to a bench or pleaded guilty) of a felony you could simply be executed"
That's because felonies were exclusively very serious crimes back then. The amount of felony inflation since rivals the degree of currency inflation.
"There is no historical analog in 1791 saying you can't bring a nuke into the children's hospital!"
That would be a much better argument if gun control laws were about nukes, rather than guns not too dissimilar from the guns of the founding era in terms of killing power. Raving about nukes in order to justify restricting popguns and pocket knives really doesn't leave the impression that you're confident of your position.
Makes about as much sense as categorically disarming 18-20 year olds who would otherwise be entitled to own a gun. Yet, even though Left often insists we have to "listen to the wisdom of young people," it also has no problem categorically denying those same citizens their right to keep and bear arms.
Who is the monolithic left you speak of?
I'm aware of a couple of states.
It also makes as much sense as categorically disarming people convicted of check fraud in 1977.
There's been an update on the story of the two Scottish girls that were the subject of the viral video showing the 12 year old girl waving a knife and a hatchet, and telling the person filming to leave them alone.
2 adults have been arrested.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62zre98j85o
The news article is very sparing in details, but there is more detail on Twitter purporting to tell the girls family's side of the story.
"Including the medical record showing one if the girls suffered a concussion when the two adults attacked her and kicked in the head after she was pulled to the ground.
- Police Scotland originally claimed that CCTV footage went missing but it proved that only Lola Moir had committed a crime by being in possession of dangerous weapons
- It is now claimed that this is a lie and there is proof that Police Scotland attempted to cover up the crime of Fatos and his sister assaulting the little girls
- Attached is the screenshot of the hospital record proving that Ruby Moir sustained a serious head injury (concussion) as a result of the assault by Fatos Ali Dumana and his sister
- This was a vicious attack in which they attacked Ruby unprovoked , yanked her to the ground and the pair of them kicked Ruby in the head while she lay on the ground defenceless
- This is what motivated Lola to pull out the weapons to scare off Fatos and his sister
- The Moir family also claim they have a recording of an interview with Police Scotland in which the Police admit that Ruby and Lola's sequence of events is correct corroborating their entire story.
- Police Scotland have promised to issue a statement in the coming days confirming all of this”
https://x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1963623418428805498
(with a tip O' the hat to Edward I) "The Problem with Scotland is it's no longer filled with Scotts (but with Fatos Ali Dumana's and his 40 thieves)"
Frank
+1
It's time for another Crusade...
Modern liberals largely fail to understand that the Crusades were a reaction to Islamic invasions of Europe, and the decision by Islamic leaders to deny access to Christian holy sites. It was the West finally fighting back.
BrettHistory is always so nice and simple.
It's all fairly complicated, as with all history, but that's generally what happened, yeah. Islamic conquests took a good deal of Europe before beating beaten back, and the Conquests didn't really get much steam until Islamic countries started blocking the passage of Christian and Jewish pilgrims.
1. You link a blow-by-blow that has nothing to do with your thesis.
2. You shift your goalposts by now only talking about when they 'picked up steam.' Not your original scope! Because the First Crusade was more about Urban II burnishing his local power than any kind of access.
3. The Crusades were about conquest, not access. I've not heard that the motive was that Christian and Jewish pilgrims were kept out of the Holy Land in any generalizable numbers or period during the crusades. ------- You do love to see things as good guys and bad guys, but there's no better example of that *not* being the case than the Crusades.
Hey everyone, the Great Sarcastr0 hasn't heard of an historical event! Therefore IT CANNOT BE TRUE.
For HE is HIM and HE is the GREAT SARCASTR0!!!
Please don't try to incorporate us into your fake history. The crusades were not about protecting Jewish pilgrims. They were, however, about killing Jews.
No, of course the crusades weren't about protecting Jewish pilgrims. But the Islamic countries were still blocking their passage just as much as they were Christian pilgrims.
As usual you have a hatred actual facts which "bretthistory " is a reasonable accurate description of the actual history.
As usual your angry and unsourced assertions have little to do with actual facts.
Lex and Brett destroy your alternate universe of history. Yet you lash out in anger when you version of the alternate universe is exposed
Brett just repeated his assertion, and Lex is a weirdo antisemite I have blocked.
But OK Joe.
I think once you provide evidence, it's more of an "argument" than an 'assertion'.
That does not explain the Albigensian Crusades, nor the Teutonic knights' predations in Eastern Europe, nor the wholesale slaughter of Jews across Europe as the Crusaders moved from west to east.
"Because we were deprived by Muslims of the right to pray at our holy sites, we're going to massacre Jews"/.
Yeah, I'm not saying it was all conducted in a perfectly admirable manner, far from it.
All I'm saying is that it is widely under-appreciated that the Crusades, far from being a war of conquest, were a war of reconquest after Islamic conquests of originally Christian areas, and that what got them going was Islamic countries blocking passage to pilgrims.
Carl Sagan once said, "If two religions are in logical conflict, one must be wrong. But if one, why not both?"
And take the modern quasi-religions of politicians with 'em.
Possibly better to regard the Crusades as "polyphyletic", therefore.
VMFA(drawing on my Flight Surgeon training, “V” is for Fixed Wing, “M” for Marine Corpse, “F” for Fighter, “A” for Attack, 122, was known as the “Crusaders” since WW2 when Pappy Boyington commanded them in Corsairs, they also flew the F-4, FA-18, and currently the F-35 in Yuma AZ, In 2008, to placate our A-rab “Allies” the name was changed to “Werewolves” and the Crusader cross removed from the jets. I’ve already communicated (telepathically)with Secretary Hedge-Sex to change the name back, as they used to say in the newspapers, “Watch this spot” Frank “what’s in a name?”
No comment about what actually happened, but in which reality do 12 year-old girls "pull out the weapons" (a large knife and a hatchet) to "scare off" people who have allegedly physically attacked and tried to kill them?
Where, exactly, were the weapons before this incident occurred?
In a reality where 12 year old girls are routinely being physically attacked in that area, and the girls in question have gotten sick of it, I suppose.
Love the way the BBC blurs the image.
They blur the girl's face, the knife and the hatchet, leave her hands unblurred, and for good measure, they blur the small end of the knife and hatchet handles protruding below her hands.
The DOJ has opened an official criminal inquiry into the Lisa Cook mortgage fraud allegations.
If she ends up convicted of a felony will she regret fighting her firing, and not just negotiating a non-prosecution agreement?
https://abcnews.go.com/US/justice-department-opens-criminal-investigation-federal-reserve-governor/story?id=125261793
And it is longstanding DOJ policy that:
"Any proposed plea agreement in a significant public corruption case must be approved by the Department of Justice leadership to ensure it fairly addresses public interests."
Who knew that being a Fed governor was so financially rewarding that you could afford to hire Abbe Lowell to try to save your job? I wonder if the IRS will be looking at her returns to see if she properly disclosed income from her three "primary" residences? Asking for a friend.
Kazinski, that last graph seems to be you suggesting vengeful disparate treatment for Cook by the Justice Department. I doubt they need your suggestion, but why endorse anything so unwise? Do you want that as a continuing norm when Ds are back in power? Or do you presume a Calvinball SCOTUS will protect your side?
OMG! Lathrop is right! We wouldn't want Democrats to use lawfare against their political enemies, too! Great call, Steve!
Its been policy for a while under multiple administrations to treat public officials more harshly than ordinary miscreants, in order to deter public corruption.
But we don't know yet how disparate her treatment is yet.
What we do know is the administration launched an AI mortgage fraud detection effort 3 months ago to detect mortgage fraud, its not surprising they would go after public officials first for the deterrence effect.
https://www.fanniemae.com/newsroom/fannie-mae-news/fannie-mae-launches-ai-fraud-detection-technology-partnership-palantir
Ask Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon.
its not surprising they would go after public officials first for the deterrence effect
This has got to be some kind of lying to demonstrate loyalty thing. Because I cannot believe anyone, a born sucker like you included, thinks a generalized focus on public officials via AI is what's going on here.
That might be the previous policy of the US Government, but it seems hard to take seriously given the number of corrupt public officials Trump has pardoned. Now he's taking it one step farther and offering them ambassadorships!
(Aside: kind of surprised Adams didn't ask for Turkiye.)
DOJ investigating individual causes of alleged mortgage fraud. Are they also getting ready to work on speeding tickets and parking violations.
Depends. Are the speeding tickets and parking violations felonies? If so, then maybe you're onto something.
At least some US Attorney's offices handle speeding tickets.
Serious question: Who gets the job? Is it intern level? Does a regular prosecutor take a day off work to appear in traffic court.
What if she doesn't end up convicted? What if the jury throws the case out like the grand jury threw out the felony sandwich thrower?
Assumes that if they bring a case it will be in DC. The fraud (if it was in fact fraud) was committed in other jurisdictions where an action by be undertaken.
Presumably, a case against Cook will be brought in front of a jury that isn't 95% Democrat.
It you assertion that Republicans on a jury would not be smart enough to see the stupidity of this prosecution?
"It you"?
If she would just start running for a political office, this would trigger the lawfare exemption and she would therefore not be prosecuted
Oh my stars, DoJ leadership! Well, that's gotta be full of integrity and legitimacy then.
About as much integrity as Comer, I'm sure.
Kaz may be the biggest sucker for GOP propaganda on this website.
The man can't refrain from showing his partisan colors.
Remember how just a year ago, Sarcastr0 would be painting similar comments by the Other as "harming our sacred democracy" and would be working with his comrades in government agencies to censor and punish the perpetrators.
Several years prior to that Sarcastr0's were sicc'ing police on praying grandmas or lone beach walkers and mean tweeters.
Going after politicians using government to investigate your enemies feels great, and we can facete concern for rule of law.
Launch all talking heads!
Is this "a significant public corruption case"?
...and in case you missed it: "...In August, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ruled that the alleged “environmental harms” of the famous Florida illegal alien detention facility outweighed the facility’s necessity. But that decision was overruled Thursday as the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked her order to close the illegal alien detention facility in Florida and halt all construction there. https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/09/04/breaking-court-halts-closure-of-alligator-alcatraz-n4943353 The federal appeals court also blocked Williams from proceeding with the case until Florida’s appeal is complete...."
The district court made reversed the decision on these grounds:
Using NEPA as the basis for a cause of action is inappropriate because NEPA only applies to Federally financed projects AA, was financed by the state.
There was no federal final agency action which is required under the APA.
Dismantling AA goes beyond the scope of remedies for a preliminary injunction. Even if a preliminary injunction could be supported, at most freezing additional construction would be the most far reaching remedy that could be appropriate.
Allegations of irreparable environmental harm seem way overstated. The site has been operating as an airport well before it was repurposed as an immigration detention facility, and there have been 28,000 flights in and out of the airport in the last 6 months, about 140 a day.
The case was probably heard in the wrong venue, it should have been heard in the middle district of Florida, not the southern district.
If AA is intended for federal use, how can that not be basis for an EIS? That sounds like the usual setup for a typical airport expansion EIS. A state or local authority proposes to fund and build a project which will be used under FAA jurisdiction.
How can ICE be using the facility already, without a final agency action?
How can it be a proper function of a federal appeals court to decide that environmental harm is way overstated, when the statement of harm in question has yet to be researched, let alone published?
Sounds like more bullshit from Kazinski. Kazinski, are you just reciting the government's objections, and calling them the court's opinion?
I read the majority decision, a few hours ago when I was watching Thursday Night football, so my summary above was from memory.
But here is what Google AI says about the reasoning: "Reasoning: The majority concluded that Florida and the Department of Homeland Security were likely to succeed in their appeal. It held that the detention facility was not subject to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because it was state-funded and state-operated. The court reasoned that since Florida had not yet received federal reimbursement, it did not qualify as a "major federal action" requiring a federal environmental review."
Although your results may vary with AI response you can see for your self, or scroll down and read the PDF as I did.
https://www.google.com/search?q=11th+circuit+alligator+alcatraz+%22pdf%22
there have been 28,000 flights in and out of the airport in the last 6 months, about 140 a day.
I'm curious where you got that number. I just ran a report using the FAA's TFMS system and it tells me there were a total of 188 arrivals and departures between Mar 1 and Sept 1 of this year.
(To duplicate using that interface: Click Airports and enter "TNT", click Groupings and check Flight Type and User Class, click Dates and select Range Mar 1 to Sept 1, then click Run)
Thinking maybe you meant 6 months before the Alligator Alcatraz ramp-up, I also ran Jan 1 2024 - Jan 1 2025 but the numbers were even lower, only 183 for the full year.
Dade-Collier was never a high volume airport. It was planned to be, when construction began in the late 60's it was going to be the biggest airport in the world with a half dozen runways and cater to the supersonic transport traffic everyone anticipated, but due to environmental concerns and cancellation of the Boeing SST project airport construction halted after building only one runway.
Since then it was lightly used for training airline pilots and general aviation. It never had accommodations or sanitary facilities for thousands of people.
I got it from memory, before that I got it from page 4 of the decision:
"Before FDEM assumed control of the Site, TNT was a small but bustling working airport. DE 116-1 ¶ 6. According to flight logs, the airport saw 27,997 landings and take offs in the approximately six months prior to the Site’s conversion, or around 137 flights per day. Id. ¶ 11. Of those 27,997 f lights, 4,349 involved multi-engine planes, 391 involved business jets, 137 involved private helicopters, 521 involved military planes, and 199 involved military helicopters."
I didn't check the cites, but you could probably download the decision and find out where the judge got it from, probably one of the defendant briefs.
They should use Guantanamo as a backup, I hear they have vacancies.
Cat got your tongue? or just garden variety stupidity?
"Cat got your tongue?" We should be so lucky.
Nope. Realized when I read it that I had drafted a comment which contained assertions I had not researched, and did not have time to go after now. Let me know when you see Kazinski do likewise.
Like I said, Cat got your tongue, and Garden Variety Stupidity, with a schmidgen of Pompous Ass-osity.
Well Stephen that's par for the course for you.
But you should have had time to do enough research to retract your comment above about the AA decision.
Nope. I read that decision. I conclude it is the work of a lawless MAGA panel trying to further a recent lawless MAGA/SCOTUS initiative to gut the statutory requirements for Environmental Impact Statements.
I guess MAGAs everywhere, including in the judiciary, figure that is done now, so everyone ought to move on. No more real requirement for environmental impact statements. That is the part that was new to me, and also by my lights a part of the case more important than the outcome on Alligator Alcatraz.
Not surprised gutting the EIS requirement happened without proud chest thumping from right wingers. It's a victory most of them no doubt want to hide under a barrel. Not many folks liked the old days when politicians in cahoots with land developers wiped out critical ecosystem resources without telling anyone it was happening.
So now SCOTUS has gutted the Clean Water Act, and declared an EIS a mere requirement for needless paperwork. Up next, no more clean air.
Progress. Couldn't be happening without a corruptly partisan Court to overrule Congress unaccountably. Keep your eye out for upcoming reports on Lewy body dementia.
1) What are you talking about? 2) What are you talking about? 3) What does SCOTUS have to do with it?
Bit that's not actually what you said, you said I made it up.
"Sounds like more bullshit from Kazinski. Kazinski, are you just reciting the government's objections, and calling them the court's opinion?"
I think you just made that up.
Judicial lawfare is not designed to withstand appellate review. It’s simply a delay tactic to undermine the Trump administration.
Seems dumb. Wouldn't it undermine the Trump administration more if it withstood appellate review?
Based essentially on the underlying political preferences of the particular activist judge(s), it is intrinsically incapable of withstanding any real scrutiny.
You mean like in AARP? Good point.
If you mean the 5th Circuit panel’s assumption of the role and powers of the President, yes it is.
Ah, so now the 5th Circuit is also not applying any actual scrutiny?
The dispute, like many before it, is over the meaning of a conjunction. Under circuit precedent an environmental impact statement is required if a project is federally funded and federally controlled. The district court held the requirement applicable if a project is federally funded or federally controlled. There is no federal funding yet. It is not clear to me if FEMA will need an EIS to approve funding for an already-completed environmental nuisance.
See pages 15-23. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca11.92709/gov.uscourts.ca11.92709.42.1.pdf
One goes into government to get in the way, to get paid to get back out of the way. Even meaningful regulatory instructions are used by pols to line their pockets in one roundabout way or another.
This is the way of the world, and the plague of human history. Fundamental Theorem of Government.
With free speech and the press, they have to hide it a little better here, which keeps the "shitholing burden" relatively low, but the thought is there.
Rarely though, do we see heartwarming environmental rules used so brazenly for their intended purpose, to get in the way.
Trump has kept his promises. That lie is much beloved by MAGA apologists. Some of them have the effrontery to recite it to justify Trump's lawlessness. But Trump did not promise lawless action. He promised specific results, without specifying means. Had he done otherwise, the marked decline in his approval evident in recent polls would have happened before the election. He would never have been elected. Thus, Trump can claim no mandate now.
That ought to be a salient point in Trump's case outcomes before SCOTUS. The Court seems cowed by Trump's claimed popularity, by his mandate. He has no mandate, and if the Court mistakenly relies on a notion that he does, it will retain no legitimacy.
Do you ever get tired of yelling "get off my lawn"?
I never tire, because my commentary continues to draw tacit concessions such as your own.
I'd use another word that ends with "it"
And if Common-Law had won, "Dougie" would be nailing maids in the residence, like AlGore used to do (do they put Viagra in the Water at the Naval Observatory?maybe try some Salt Peter) When he wasn't slapping around X-Girlfriends at Cannes (typical "Progressive" not slapping a waitress at Hooters, a Dancer at Scores, but his Girlfriend at Cannes)
The Court's aren't supposed to consider mandates, although I have to admit that's what apparently caused Roberts to call a fine a tax in NFIB.
But they wouldn't admit if they did.
Wow, that's absurd 'reasoning': "Sure, he's done what he said he'd do, but he didn't say how he'd do it, so that doesn't count as keeping his promises!"
Exactly, Bellmore. Political promises are never rightly supposed by the public to announce lawless intent.
And anyway, you understand what Trump's poll decline shows about your ridiculous presumption that Trump has some electoral mandate. Trump has since lost many times the decisive margin which his vote count demonstrated. With the actual political actions and policies Trump chose in full sight, the American people have rejected those on the basis of experience. That is why Trump, MAGA, and you, are in a panicked rush to gerrymander the mid-terms.
Then I guess a lot fewer political promises get "kept" than is conventionally thought. Per Lathropian standards for promises being kept, anyway.
As I've said before, while Trump's chosen means are far from ideal, the simple fact that he's even trying to keep his promises is sufficiently novel for a Republican President that Republicans will continue to cut him a lot of slack; They're just not used to their Presidents even trying to keep campaign promises, and they happen to like it.
Based on Nate Silver's numbers, Trump's popularity has been in the same range since his honeymoon ended; Since April he's been consistently polling in a tight range of 43-47% approval, without any significant trend. 43% appears to be his floor, and this represents basically every last Democrat despising him, which was unavoidable, and a very high level of popularity with everyone else.
So, yeah, he's unpopular with the people who were never going to like him no matter what he did, go figure.
Same general trend on the issue polling: As every last Democrat hates him with the white hot fury of a thousand exploding suns, he has a hard ceiling under 50%, but he's not doing badly with the people who aren't committed to hating what he does no matter what the results.
Presidential approval by members of the opposing party has been trending down for decades. With Trump, (And Biden before him!) it has gotten so low that polling for Presidential approval has been become interchangeable with asking somebody's party affiliation: Trump has approximately 2% approval among Democrats.
As you can see from Pew's numbers, Trump's approval is buried under the foundation when it comes to Democrats, but at a normal Presidential level when it comes to everybody else. And has only dropped by a perfectly conventional post-honeymoon degree among those who were ever going to approve of him.
The closest Democrats and Republicans come to agreeing about is whether Trump stands up for what he believes in. Only a 43% gap, because nearly half of Democrats will concede that he does, they just don't like what he believes in.
Bottom line is, the days when a President might expect to get an over 50% approval rating past his honeymoon are over, because members of the opposing party automatically give a President low single digit approval numbers, which puts a hard ceiling on overall approval. Trump is not unique in this regard
I don't want to exceed my link count, so continued...
Biden job approval
Oh, look, Biden spent most of HIS Presidency in the low to mid 30's, not the middle 40's. With a consistent downward trend. That's what it looks like when even your own party members think you're a lousy President. Trump's doing a lot better than that, so far.
So far. He could still blow it. He hasn't yet, though.
He'll get a bounce after the 2028 Convention
Oh, didn't you hear? They're talking about having a mid-term convention.
I heard, but the Third-Term Convention will be more important.
Why not?
"He promised specific results, without specifying means. Had he done otherwise, the marked decline in his approval evident in recent polls would have happened before the election. He would never have been elected. Thus, Trump can claim no mandate now."
Decline in polls? What decline in polls?
"A Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll showed Trump has a 55 percent approval rating, the Mail reported on Thursday.
J.L. Partners co-founder James Johnson said, “This is the highest approval figure we have ever shown for Donald Trump,” and the outlet noted a six-point uptick from another poll conducted by the same groups in July.
The Mail reported, “The poll of 867 registered voters was conducted from August 21 – September 1 and has a 3.3 percent margin of error.”
Johnson also said, “It might seem surprising, but the news cycle has been ace for the president in recent days: his crime surge in DC is backed by the public, and economic news has been positive.”
A Harvard-Harris poll in June showed Trump at his highest approval regarding the issue of immigration, per Breitbart News."
Plus, your assertion that he has no mandate now because of what hypothetically might have happened in the past is logical nonsense.
Here’s some advice that democrats absolutely cannot and will not follow. Stop reflexively and stupidly opposing every policy and action of the Trump administration and put forward your own agenda. They can’t and won’t because their agenda is despised by the public that elected President Trump to undo it and implement the very policies they reflexively and stupidly oppose.
" Stop reflexively and stupidly opposing every policy and action of the Trump administration "
LOL Totally impossible. Their hair has been on fire for a decade.
Easier to command the tide to stay out.
Will the call soon be going out for "clean-up" at CBS News as a result of exploding heads now that Paramount is reported to be buying Free Press from Bari Weiss for $100 million and as part of the deal giving her a position at CBS News? While $100 million is not what it used to be, most people would consider Weiss as now being rich. Was that just luck as Il Douche claimed in Wednesday's open thread?
It does kind of sound like the old recipe for making a small fortune: Start with a large one... At one time, the Free Press was genuinely worth more than that, and in nominal, much less inflated dollars.
Sure wasn't being paid $100M for the Free Press, (It's not worth THAT much anymore.) wonder what most of the money was for?
When was The Free Press worth more? It was only started by Weiss four years ago.
OK, my mistake, I thought it was the old Detroit Free Press from Michigan. Well, then, I guess I retract my comment about it formerly having been worth that much.
And the rumored number is "$100M to $200M."
I had to go look this up, too. I used to deliver it back in the day.
Wild start to the NFL season last night, from an immediate unsportsmanlike ejection for spitting to a lightning delay capped by a close game. Glad the Eagles pulled it out but the Cowboys put up a good fight. If only Jerry wasn’t holding them down so much…
Cowboys always remind me of "Toad" in Amurican Graffiti driving Steve's Bitchin' 1958 Impala, "Man, what a waste of machinery!"
Spitting in a player's face? Jack Lambert would have knocked every tooth out of that (redacted) Eagles player's head, and Jack Tatum??? He'd have put him in a wheelchair (and on a Ventilator) Oh wait, he did that to guys who didn't spit in his face.
A lot of scoring, long break, and then the defense took over.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has backed laws requiring his state’s public schools to display the Ten Commandments and enabling the schools’ adoption of a state-backed, Bible-based curriculum along with designated prayer periods. This week, the Republican went a step further — urging children to recite “the Lord’s Prayer, as taught by Jesus Christ,” if their public schools established a prayer period as permitted by a state law that took effect Monday. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/04/ken-paxton-texas-school-prayer/
They could adopt another bounty law empowering other children to sue any muslim or jewish children that don'r recite the prayer
And he made the Lord's Prayer recommendation on the official AG government website, displaying the office seal, signing himself as Attorney General, and with response link going to the official AG e-mail address.
Remember, this is the same guy.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/10/angela-paxton-divorce-texas-attorney-general-ken/
In her divorce filing, Senator Paxton alleged that her husband had committed adultery, listing it as the "grounds for divorce." The couple stopped living together more than a year ago — "on or about June 1, 2024" — according to a copy of the filing obtained by The Texas Tribune.
The Washington Post has better into self-parody, Twitting:
As many as 58 percent of people with depression who menstruate might have premenstrual exacerbation of depression, studies suggest.
My heart truly goes out to people with depression who menstruate.
My Mom had Post Partum Depression BEFORE I was born! (Rimshot)
Doesn't that just mean that you had an older sibling?
You’re right, it should have been,
“My mom had Morning Sickness AFTER I was born!”
She was relieved to see that all that came out was afterbirth. Then the black muslim doctor informed it was an actual living Frankie. Then she became sick
Your mom thought she'd taken a really nasty shit, and you know, she did!
No guns for people with PMS.
When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines.
Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well.
The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri, since cities under their purview all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. Yet no Republican governor has asked for federal intervention.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/us/politics/crime-republican-states.html
Like Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri...All the towns and cities within Tennessee are crime-ridden shitholes. Red states have serious crime problems
"Like Ohio, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri...All the towns and cities within Tennessee are crime-ridden shitholes. Red states Blue cities have serious crime problems." There, FIFY.
You keep doing this. They may be red states, but the worst crime cities in them are almost without exception Democrat run, i.e., with Democratic mayors. It's not a red state problem, it's a blue city problem.
That old fallacy. Ohio has rampant meth, opiate and property crime in the hayseed areas, and black crime in the cities. At some point - like with Illinois and California and their governors - you have to hold state government accountable. But we all know why we don't ask for that same kind of accountability in red states. Don't we, Publius?
Uh, don’t state governments have way more power than city ones in the same states? Also, how does this answer the initial point about why Red State governments aren’t sending their Guard to their own crime infested cities?
Simple honest mistake. Pub was unaware that states have National Guards but cities don't.
"blue city problem"
Its a demographics problem really. We dance around it with "blue city".
Just getting closer and closer to outright racism huh?
Let's put it into terms Bob can understand: why be da niggas in red states moe wack than dem niggas in blue states?
Blacks are blacks. They commit crimes at higher rates no matter where they are.
Facts are not racist.
Murders are the best reported crime since bodies stink and are pretty visible
" Number of murder offenders 2023, by race Published by Veera Korhonen Nov 7, 2024 In 2023, 8,842 murderers in the United States were white, while 6,405 were Black. A further 461 murderers were of another race, including American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. "
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1466623/murder-offenders-in-the-us-by-race
Wait until you connect the dots and realize that every urban shithole has been run by Democrats for a generation.
Just as their are no prosperous and healthy black communities/societies, there are no clean and safe Democrat cities.
Try to look at it logically, bro. All cities in every state are blue. Nearly all of them. So why do the cities in red states have much higher crime rates than those in blue states? There's your answer, bro.
Good point. When you compare cities of similar size, those in red states generally report higher violent crime rates than those in blue states. Tulsa, has a higher violent crime rate than Portland. At the state level, red states have posted 20–30% higher homicide rates than blue states in recent years according to the URL below. Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation — and the state-level factors behind those numbers are numerous.
If you think of it like a function, the output (crime rate by category) depends on inputs like poverty, inequality, gun laws, policing policy, education, and density. Those parameters vary widely between states, which is why the differences show up so consistently in the data. And I’m sure this has been studied in extreme detail — the patterns have been persistent for decades.
They describe their sources at the URL but I would have preferred links to raw data. https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-21st-century-red-state-murder-crisis
Like many other things there is just too much data to ingest and not enough time.
"poverty, inequality, gun laws, policing policy, education, and density"
Missing any?
Because, as we've seen, Democrats cook the books to mask their failed ideologies.
Two comeback stories collided on the tennis court Thursday night when American Amanda Anisimova and Naomi Osaka of Japan — who was also raised in the U.S. — played each other in the U.S. Open semifinals….
Anisimova and Osaka have both been working their way back up the rankings after returning from mental health breaks in recent years. Each battled her own set of challenges — as well as some of the top-ranked players in the world — to advance to the penultimate round of the final Grand Slam tournament of the year.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/04/nx-s1-5528663/naomi-osaka-amanda-anisimova-us-open-semifinals
Current reports are the average GPA at Harvard is a 3.8. Wow. Talk about grade inflation...
Seriously, just switch to a pass-fail system. With a 3.8 average GPA, there's basically no real differentiation. Everyone gets an A.
They’re so selective there that it’s little surprise, these are the best of the best when it comes to getting grades. You might as well complain that average NFL combine scores are so high.
That's baloney, there are a lot of legacy admissions, and affirmative action admissions as well. It's well known that Harvard has engaged in grade inflation for years.
A good grading system would spread people over the range. When they're all compressed at the high end it shows the grading system is not discriminating.
That’s not necessarily true, a good grading system can reflect the material you want learned and standards, but it’s entirely possible that at that elite level most everyone will meet those standards. According to Gemini “The average SAT score for admitted students to Harvard is around 1530 to 1550,” the whole point of SAT is to predict college performance. Again, this is the NFL of getting grades.
“there are a lot of legacy admissions, and affirmative action admissions as well”
Cite? For “a lot.” And what are the average grades/scores for these groups? Remember that a common argument against affirmative action is it tends to reward well off, already high achieving members of minority groups.
"but it’s entirely possible that at that elite level most everyone will meet those standards."
But are they? While anecdotal, we can look to the internet for case examples.
"I’m embarrassed to corroborate this claim that Harvard has grade inflation. As much as I want to argue that the letter grade I obtained in a class was all my mental prowess and grit, that’s simply not 100% true.
Case in point, I took Economics 1010A my freshman fall (Intermediate Microeconomic Theory). My first midterm exam went horribly: 100/130. My second was better: 113/100. My final was best: 114/130. These tests combined was worth 75% of my course grade. Of the remaining 25% unaccounted for, I earned 23% of those points. There is no way I should have received anything higher than a B based on my numerical grade: 85%. Not even a B+, but the class was graded on RANK not performance. If you scored in the top 50% of the class you received an A or A-.
By the hair of my chiny-chin-chin, I managed to score in the top 50% of the class, “earning” an A-. So I would love to say I deserved that A- because of my performance, but I didn’t. I only earned it comparatively."
https://www.quora.com/Does-Harvard-University-have-a-problem-with-grade-inflation
While anecdotal.
If you want to provide a counter anecdote, go ahead.
Here are a few more anecdotes
"* An economics major received an A on a final exam for identifying "supply" and "demand" as two key elements in the law of supply and demand.
* A graduate student in classics received an A- for a paper in which he asserted that the Theban plays of Sophocles included Xena, Warrior Princess.
* A history concentrator received summa cum laude honors for his senior thesis, Positive Identification of the Body in the Tomb of General Ulysses S. Grant."
Armchair, you've fallen for satire.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2002/03/grade-inflation-resolved-html
Lol.
I'm mainly curious which incredibly credulous right wing source he pulled that from (obviously, it wasn't from Harvard Magazine directly--at least, I hope not!)
My guess is AI.
Internet anecdotes are near worthless, why would I engage in matching them? The question is why you persist
Feel free to dismiss this as an anecdote or anonymous guy falsely claiming to be a professor.
But I talk with lots of colleagues at top 25 places, and with colleagues at open admission community colleges, and with my co-workers at a decent but unranked regional university.
Literally zero of them, in 30 years of conversations, has ever said we're giving higher grades because students are getting better. I've *never* heard an actual faculty member claim there's no inflation. At most they'll claim *they personally* don't inflate but their co-workers do. Some admit they've given in, because giving an above average student a B kills their job prospects when employers, used to inflation, now assume A means marginally competent and B means the student is a bottom dweller. And some say they've been "asked" to raise their grades by management, in some cases with specific numerical targets.
---- In the latter case, it goes about like this: "Dr. X, your grade distributions are lower than other instructors. That means your students aren't learning, and perhaps we need to find ways to help you teach better. For this semester, we're going to assign you to two hours of development every Friday afternoon, and a 2000 word reflective essay on how you can try to be a better teacher who cares about students. At the end of the semester, we'll take a look at your grade distributions and decide if these measures were effective or further actions are needed to ensure our students get the learning they and the taxpayers paid for. Please sign below to acknowledge receipt of this message."
As some who teaches at a non-elite university, I say meh.
I could accept a statement that students at Harvard perform better and therefore have higher grades.
Alternatively, I could accept a statement that an A at Harvard is better than an A at Obscure State University.
But when people make both arguments at the same time, and they* often do, then it strikes me as making contradictory arguments and deserving of some pushback. Decide whether it's one scale or different scales, and don't double dip.
Given that we have no enforced national grading scale, I lean toward the second formulation. But then that means that Harvard IS in fact inflating grades**. If they want to claim they're grading by tougher elite standards then their average student should have a B-.
*Not you of course. **None of this should be interpreted as justifying any of the crap Trump is doing to them.
"They’re so selective there that it’s little surprise..."
Well, there's the little fact that grade inflation at Harvard has skyrocketed. In 1914, the average GPA was 2.14. 1963, 2.7; 1975, 3.05; 1986, 3.2; 1996, 3.4; 2011, 3.6; 2017, 3.7; 2022, 3.8.
Doesn't look like just "selectivity" is the answer.
In the old days Harvard was essentially a gentlemen’s club of legacy type admits. The “gentleman’s C” was a thing. They didn’t start using the SAT until decades after your first stats. Top kids today are strivers at getting grades (fwiw), this is all in line with increasingly better performance.
Your argument seems to be that Harvard was less selective in 1986 than it is today, and that all the performance increase is due to "better students".
And yet...was Harvard REALLY that much less selective in 1986?
There’s an unrelenting race of parents to get their kids into the best pre-schools in recent decades, snowplowing their kids through tutoring, oboe classes, getting consultations for entry essays, everything to get the slightest leg up on other kids to get these selective slots. Admission rates have plummeted. They were like 29% in the 1960’s and now are closer to 5. Yes, it’s more competitive.
"oboe classes, getting consultations for entry essays"
Does that really make the kids "smarter" as you would indicate?
I think I said they were good at getting grades (which is what you’re talking about). These kind of distinctions matter.
Grade inflation is a thing everywhere. It’s pretty transparent to pretend it’s a Harvard problem.
But Harvard is arguably "leading the pack". Where other Universities have GPAs significantly lower, Harvard is starting to hit the 4.0 limit. If you curve the class to hit an A, then grades start to be meaningless.
Why curve? Set what you want to be learned, aim high and rigorous but then if x amount of kids hit that mark who cares what the number is? Given you’ve chosen the best of the best it’s not surprising most will hit the mark.
Harvard is arguably "leading the pack".
Vibes, of course.
I disagree with Malika in that I do expect there's a ton of grade inflation at Harvard. I also don't think their students are invariably the 'best of the best.' Our borked meritocracy is a subject for another day, however.
But grade inflation is a broad issue of incentives, your partisan focus just makes you look like a tool.
What partisan focus? I haven't seen anything partisan in this thread, except your mention of it.
Going after only Harvard isn't partisan? Oh, my sweet summer child.
No, it's not! It's a topic that's been talked about for decades, and there's nothing partisan about it, except in your head.
You have t heard that MAGAns hate Harvard?
Grade inflation has been talked about for decades. Pretending it's a Harvard-specific issue is reserved for tools of Trump.
No one's pretending. He just mentioned Harvard in his post as it's notable for being at the top of the ivy league. You guys just all have a partisan filter for everything.
He just mentioned Harvard in his post as it's notable for being at the top of the ivy league
Again, you're a sweet summer child.
Sarcastr0, get lost with your insults. Make an argument, fine, but don't try to augment it, or denigrate the person with whom you disagree.
That shows an unfamiliarity with Armchair and/or recent politics that does border on naive. He can be counted on to focus on the MAGA enemy d’jour and Trump’s focus on Harvard was a big deal in the news this week and in recent months.
I don’t see why, given Harvard’s greater selectivity and perceived value that Occam’s razor would t suggest that it’s drawing on people who are better/take more seriously the criteria that’s allegedly being “inflated.”
1. The average changing over time cannot be explained with selectivity. 2. Classes at Harvard or other elite institutions will be tuned for the expected quality of the student cohort; that should counter any selection bias. 3. Harvard admissions does not selects only or even primarily for those who they predict will have good grades at Harvard. 4. Grades are a subjective measure not an objective one; they cannot be considered some independent steady variable.
That's all just off the top of my head - there's almost certainly some good sources on the issue that would be more robust.
I don’t follow. As an example, if the value of quick linemen in pro football goes up we should expect to see the average 40 time for them to go down. I agree grades are somewhat subjective but they’re not totally, and we’re trying to explain grades are getting better for a small selection of a growing pool which values and takes grades more seriously.
Take women’s soccer or basketball. It’s hard to deny that the average performance of a pro player is better than it was. Due to things like the growing visibility of star pros in those fields lots more girls are playing soccer, lots more putting in more time hoping to be college and then pros, and what do you know the average player to make pros now from that larger pool of strivers is better performing than they were years ago.
I had a 3.6 overall at Auburn circa 1984, actually did better in Science/Math than the supposedly Easy Liberal Arts (Straight C’s in Freshman Engrish, “D” in an advanced writing course I took after getting my med school acceptance, I did get A’s in Literature, History and German, only B’s in Science/Math were Botany, Physics III(Electricity, still don’t understand it) and Differential Equations (see Physics)
Frink
Straight Cs in English, say It Isn’t so
I was lucky to get that, and I only missed getting an "F" in English, History, and Pre-Calculus at FSU by a few minutes, dropping all 3 just before the deadline. Like "D-Day" in Animal House, my FSU record is "Frank Drackman.....has no Grade Point Average, all courses Incomplete!"
"Seriously, just switch to a pass-fail system. With a 3.8 average GPA, there's basically no real differentiation. Everyone gets an A."
Certainly true. I suspect that the main driver of grade inflation is the lack of demand for differentiation. And given that, maybe grade inflation isn't a problem.
Right. Don't they still have magna, summa etc though.
Who did better, Trump or Biden?
The lowest income category of Americans had the largest gains of income under Trump. The bottom 25% gained 10% in income, the median household gained 8% and the richest 25% gained 7%.
Under Biden the bottom 25% lost money, the median household gained less than 1% and the richest 25%...well, they gained 3-4%
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/09/who-did-better-biden-or-trump.php
The Committee to Unleash Prosperity
Lol
I see that the honest facts of the situation have left you no choice but to have a mental breakdown.
Or just consider other honest facts:
https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/us-econ-republicans-democrats/
I see you didn't respond with a link that was about incomes for people. Just changed the topic.
Laughing at The Committee to Unleash Prosperity does not constitute a mental breakdown, indeed coming up with that name is more likely indicative.
Agreed, the CUP is a joke. They seem to for that Trump 1.0 ended in a recession as Trump 2.0 likely will.
See below.
Are the facts presented incorrect? If not, are you just engaging in an ad hominem type argument?
Perhaps he's announcing that he is part of the Plandemic 2 conspiracy.
These aren't made up numbers by The Committee to Unleash Prosperity. They are based on census surveys and there is a full explanation of the sources and how the results were arrived at in a link in the Powerline article.
I like how it’s conclusion keeps stressing it’s methodology is “feasible,” “credible” etc., in the first paragraph alone!
It turns out, shockingly, that American unskilled labor does really well when you remove a lot of illegal alien unskilled labor. Job growth among citizens has roughly matched deportation numbers. (Including self-deportation, of course.)
One problem with this is it doesn’t seem that many were relatively deported during Trump’s first term (which is what this report is about).
https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/yearbook/2019/table39
I think you're neglecting the extent to which Obama and Biden goosed their "deportation" numbers by changing practice to count turnbacks near the border as 'deportations', while still allowing huge numbers of illegals to enter the country and stay.
Trump's ACTUAL deportations, as defined prior to Obama, were higher, because by persuading illegals to stop even trying, he'd reduced the number of turnbacks needed. While the fact that the influx had mostly been shut down meant that the deportations, self and otherwise, actually were gaining ground, reducing total numbers.
Those numbers had kept rising during Obama, and especially Biden's administration, because they'd been deliberately allowing high levels of illegal immigration far exceeding deportations.
How about a citation for these “ACTUAL” numbers?
Come on, your own source shows that Trump had removals comparable to Obama and Biden. Only at much lower levels of illegal border crossings...
As for Obama's redefinition of "deportation",
High deportation figures are misleading
Well, it said it started in W’s term, so it wouldn’t be Obama’s redefinition, would it?
Also, how do we know how many of Trump’s first term deportation numbers fell under this definition?
Job growth among citizens has roughly matched deportation numbers Big if true.
Even bigger if true after September 30.
Basically, their 'data' fleshes out that both Biden and Obama (surprise!) did poorly and Trump bigly. Ignoring that Obama had to get through bad times for his first term cleaning up the Bush recession. Then handing over a roaring economy to Trump. And that Biden had to clean up the Trump recession so had poor numbers due to high inflation. Again, handing off a healthy country to another republican administration to fuck up all over again. Rinse/repeat.
"Biden had to clean up the Trump recession"
The Trump recession? Try the covid recession.
No Trump's recession. The recession goes wit the President. Most of the Biden inflation was due to spending and mismanagement in the Trump 1.0 administration and its still Biden's inflation. Sorry that just the way it works. The recession during Covid was inevitable but Trump's incompetence made it worse.
Exactly how do you define moderation? You hardly seem to exhibit it.
You mad 'cause he got all immoderate taking y'all to school. Please, please can he just be more moderate?!
The only way he would take anyone to school would be as the bus driver, if he could get a CDL.
Notice how it wasn't the CDC's incompetence to this guy. Nor does he even know that it's Congress that spends the money.
What a dipshit.
Trump didn’t have authority over the CDC?
Do you think Presidents make every decision in every agency? Like how you and hobie think Presidents appropriate funding?
I wake up to find that the DOD is being renamed the Department of War. At what point do the MAGAs realize that Trump has completely lost it. Besides the complete stupidity of the idea, let's just look at this from a libertarian point of view. How much money will be spent on this stupid idea. Changing logos and letterheads. And MAGAs thought Cracker Barrel change was stupid.
It’s a nice distraction from Massie’s work this week though, maybe.
It's being returned to its original name, although it will take an act of Congress to do it officially.
I wanted it to be renamed the "Department of Mean Tweets".
Should just rename it after a Confederate slaver
Renaming* the War Department to DOD post-WW2 was a politically useful move to demonstrate to the Evil Empire that we were not interested in offensive actions. You don't get the same effect from remaining a DOD to a Department of Fuzzy Cuddles, and between Bush II and Obama, nobody would believe the US was still uninterested in offensive war.
* The original War Department only ran the Army, with a separate Department of the Navy, and the merged department was briefly known as the National Military Establishment. But functionally it was as much a renaming as a restructuring.
If it actually comes to pass, this will be some of the stupidest churn I've seen for a long time.
Stupider than the all the DEI signage, policies, and gay flags everywhere?
Surely not. Because that has to go down as the dumbest time in all of human history.
Department of Police Action. For those who remember the 20th century. The expression "police action" has fallen out of use.
Seems like they should go back to "War Department".
"DOD is being renamed the Department of War."
It would be better to rename Space Force as Space Fleet with naval ranks and better dress uniforms.
Star Fleet.
Probably a little too copycat. But ok.
Wrath of Kahn uniforms or Original Series miniskirts for the women?
There you go.
Wrath of Khan. Wrath of Kahn would be Spaceballs.
I'd go back in the service if I could be a Space Commodore. Or, if enlisted, Chief Petty Officer of the Galaxy. I'd get busted down to Space Ranger so fast your head would spin.
They need janitors in space?
If you couldn’t get into the Air Force the first time you’re not getting into Space Anything.
You cleaned the latrines for more physically able grunts. Revel in your time.
You seem to have a thing for latrines. I'm guessing you spend a lot of time in them. For reasons that are your own.
What? I only point them out in reference to your service. “Cleaning the latrines” may mean something else in the service your low ASVAB scores relegated you to, and there might be some trauma there that explains a lot about you, but I’m honestly trying to help you think about your service as something noble.
Oh, I know what you're honestly thinking about. You're the he/she that fantasized about me taking showers with men in the barracks. No doubt you typed the whole thing with one hand. What is it with lefties and their fetish for latrines and showers? Don't answer that. We already know.
Somewhere, George Carlin is enjoying the kerfluffle over re-naming DOD the "War Department"
"Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park....... "Football is played in a COL-O-SE-UM, or a STADIUM, such as "WAR MEMORIAL STADIUM!......." "In Baseball you get "Extra Innings!" "we keep playing! nobody knows when it'll end!" "In Football we have "Sudden Death!"
Can you stop a rolling freight train? Or can Mike Johnson stop the release of the Epstein files? It seems like the amount of effort being expended to stop the release just makes the case for the release. Am I missing something here? Is there any reason to work this hard to stop the release?
The other thought I had this morning is that by refusing to release the files, the administration has made it possible for Massie or MTG or the folks representing victims to just throw out whatever names they want with no context. Heck, they could name names that aren't even in the files and there's no way to rebut those assertions. How is this possibly better than just releasing the actual information the government has?
So Senator Eric Schmitt went all blood and soul “heritage American” in a speech. Said America is “not a proposition” which seemed to me to be a not so subtle attack on Lincoln’s conception of the country as expressed at Gettysburg.
Notably he hired Nate Hochman as a staffer who was fired by the DeSantis campaign for putting Nazi iconography in an extremely bizarre campaign video.
So it’s a good data point supporting the groyperfication thesis and the fascism thesis for describing the Trump era Republican Party.
Dork-ass too-online losers who are brain-poisoned by groyper memes and Nazi aesthetics are helping GOP US Senators openly reject the new birth of freedom that their forerunners created in favor of a personalist leader and a particularly pathetic form of nationalism.
But these assholes will probably still go to Republican Lincoln Day parties. Fuck them. They don’t deserve him.
“groyperfication thesis”
Lots of data points supporting this coming to light recently. It’s “hard not to love” the Bismarck, amirite? I wonder if any of the resident denizens will be brave enough to pop in with the “we should have sided with Hitler” stuff Tucker Carlson has been pushing.
Where has anyone who comments here shown any inclination to side with Tucker Carlson?
“We should have sided with Hitler against Stalin” is definitely something I’ve seen in these parts in the past. Whether you want to characterize that red-hot take as “sid[ing]” with Mr Carlson isn’t really critical to the point here.
I have never read anyone say “We should have sided with Hitler against Stalin” on this blog.
I have. I’ve also been around a lot longer than you. But again— the appearance or not of that sentiment in this particular forum is not really critical to the point here about groyperfication.
Tim Kaine likened the Declaration of Independence's claim that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights to Iranian theocracy.
Cite?
Easy peasy. “The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator, that’s what the Iranian government believes,” Kaine said while attacking Trump’s nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Riley Barnes.
You guys love an out of context quote. Even Fox News bothers to include enough context to make clear what he's talking about:
"The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities," Kaine said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday. "They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling. "I'm a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights."
"The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious minorities," Kaine said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday.
"They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.
"I'm a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights."
I get what he's trying to say, but I don't think he's making the case very well. I don't think we need to look to religion for our natural rights, and agree with him its problematic to do so because different religions will come to very different conclusions. But I think he's wrong to suggest that natural rights come from laws; that doesn't really make sense since then "natural rights" and "legal rights" become identical so the term loses all meaning.
You adding context doesn't alter the meaning of what he said.
You just claimed it was out of context to somehow refute it, but you didn't even refute the complaint. You just quibbled and mind-read.
"I'm a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights." Sure but Tim Kaine is a US Senator and the idea of natural rights is one of the founding principles of the US. And, he's a dumb fuck.
That's what qualified him to be a Top Democrat.
Wait a minute, why do you say “sure” but then that he’s dumb as fuck?
Do you think our rights come from God?
""I'm a strong believer in natural rights, but"
He does not in fact believe in natural rights.
Or wearing eye glasses correctly,
Because he says they’re problematic?
You never believed in something that you also thought was problematic?
https://x.com/theblaze/status/1963597707945414973
Now even though this is a video of him in his own clear words, you will deny it.
Well, the equality part wasn’t in that quote.
Not a great comparison, but it was essentially just positivism vs natural law, a debate that's been going on for centuries.
And FWIW, I don't agree that rights are endowed by a creator because
1) God doesn't exist; 2) That's never how it works and the people who insist on that typically are the worst sorts of abusers of rights. The guy who wrote that owned slaves! Republicans to end birthright citizenship! You'd think the creator would endow you with a right to be able to stay in the place where you were born and spent your whole life but apparently Republicans disagree.
All humans have inherent dignity and worth and as a moral matter should be treated equally and have the blessings of liberty. But legal rights only exist insofar as societies are willing and able to protect them.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
So you're with Tim Kaine and you believe that statement is wrong. You, and Kaine, believe that the people in government grant you the right to Life. The people in government grant you the right to liberty, and the people in government grant you the right to pursue your own happiness.
Anti-human, and this is the simplest explanation as to why Leftism always results in mass murder and mass misery. Historically speaking, of course.
It’s anti-human to think rights come from human institutions instead of from God?
Since we’re talking about Jefferson’s quote, how do you feel about the created equal part?
God doesn’t exist and it’s just basic reality that rights only matter if societies work to recognize and enforce them.
Slavery was mass misery and murder. Apparently, despite the creator’s intention the rights of American slaves were extremely alienable.
" if societies work to recognize and enforce them"
What would motivate a society to work to recognize and enforce a right?
A belief that some things are unalienable and granted by your Creator, or by the virtue of you being a human.
Did you think about that?
Societies recognize rights because people forced the issue. The Thirteenth Amendment was written in blood. While the fight against slavery was often rhetorically cast as a righteous and holy exercise of God’s wrath against the slavers, the slavers had a strong religious ideology in defense of alienating rights.
The fervent belief that God endows rights has usually been contested by the equally fervent belief that God has ordained that some people don’t have them.
Courts Overturning Elections
The truth is, Democrats as a party no longer respect election results, a key component of self-government. They have moved on from respecting Americans’ individual sovereignty to dominating us by any means necessary.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/09/04/the-atlantic-why-yes-the-point-of-lawfare-is-to-overturn-any-elections-republicans-win/
Wow, just wow. I've never seen the truth put so powerfully before. Democrats really are an existential threat to humanity and human flourishing.
This is laughable stuff. We all remember how the GOP responded to Biden and Obama’s election by not challenging anything they did in court because the people had spoken.
You think the lawfare of the past six months isn't unprecedented?
No, it’s not. Biden’s executive initiatives, from student loans, to immigration, to environmental, etc., were challenged.
lmao, you're not very smart about current events and you can't even read, lol
you named 3, my article referenced 400+
SAD.
I named three *areas* (and with an etc.!), ya goof!
L2read
By "overturn elections", which is the the things Republicans try to do, they mean "tie up the administration in Court to prevent it from enacting its policy preferences", which is the thing that both parties try to do.
As usual an attempt to morph language to excuse Republicans' actual anti-Democratic actions.
Many of these lawsuits are nothing more than attempts to insert Democrat-appointed judges into the office of the presidency to supercede the policies of the person voters chose to place there in the last election. It’s flatly un-American and un-democratic.
BOOM. ROASTED.
You literally chose a quote that made my exact point.
Do you think the lawsuits we've seen with Trump 2.0 are the same as previous presidential terms, or do you think the past six months has been unique in our history?
Yeah. But Trump is also uniquely terrible and a fascist.
Along this point, Trump and/or his supporters have said his first few months were unprecedentedly active, so this alone could explain more challenges.
You must be talking about the homosexual Kenyan and Pedo Joe.
You think Trump is a Kenyan?
Is that in the files you’re working to bury?
I see, so the current anti-democratic actions by the Democrats are to Save Democracy.
That's such a convenient cognitive out you people give yourselves. Of course you have to be a tyrant in order to save yourself from tyranny!!
lmao
Nah. Just have to stop a fascist from doing fascist shit like changing the definition of citizenship or usurping Congress’s spending power.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/021/818/hitlerbook.JPG
You have the order of operations backwards. I don’t call people fascists because I don’t like them. I don’t like people because they are extremely similar to fascists.
No offense, but that's clearly not true. Surely you were alive during the COVID Tyranny and the Tranny Tyranny eras yet you still identify as a Democrat.
No it is. See the problem is that you are operating under the assumption that fascism is things you don’t like, whereas I am operating under the assumption it is a mode of politics with identifiable characteristics that map neatly onto Trumpism.
Nothing about Covid restrictions, whatever you think of them, indicate it was a symptom of palingenetic ultranationalism. Trumpism, however, does. And it’s notable that self-described fascists seem to think so as well.
The lawsuits are similar in character to what we have seen in previous Presidential terms (e.g., the lawsuits against Biden trying to do student loan forgiveness through Executive Order) but way more numerous under Trump because he's attempting to push the limits of Executive power much more than any previous administration.
They are clearly not similar in nature because 90% of them are getting overturned.
Was it un-American when the fifth circuit and some judges in Missouri did the exact same thing during the Biden era?
What was this exact same thing that they did?
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21a477_1bo2.pdf
(Military deployment)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Texas_(2023)
(Executive discretion in immigration enforcement)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-235_n7ip.pdf
(FDA scientific decisions)
While a billion dollars may seem to be chump change today, should the US change the recommendation for tetanus and diphtheria boosters. This article claims we could save that amount every year by doing so. It seems that if you received the recommended series of vaccinations as a child you pretty much have lifetime immunity. This was based on a study comparing the UK (no boosters) with France (regular boosters for adults) which showed no statistical difference between the two countries. https://scitechdaily.com/1-billion-saved-each-year-scientists-question-adult-booster-shots/
Maybe? Even less money involved probably, but they changed the recommendation for the Yellow Fever vaccine to be once per lifetime instead of once every ten years. But the Yellow Fever vaccine also has really nasty side effects, so the motivation was probably more for health reasons than financial ones.
Tetanus seems really really awful, so just from a personal risk perspective I'd probably want to see more than one study before deciding to forgo a booster.
From the article “The researchers stressed that these savings and safety depend on keeping childhood vaccination rates consistently high.”
Of course, which I mentioned.
No, you didn’t.
Plus, the study mentions several decades, that’s not lifetime (unless you’re living dangerously).
"It seems that if you received the recommended series of vaccinations as a child you pretty much have lifetime immunity." I thought this implied that. Also, the study covered 50 years, which while not a lifetime would seem to indicate no need for boosters. It also pointed out that when there was an outbreak of diphtheria (78 cases due due unvaccinated immigrants and more than in the previous 20 years combined) there was no transmission to the general public.
Ah, so now mentioned=implied.
Piss off wanker. I'll retract that and just say you're better than that, or can be.
You’re mad at me because you conflated implied and mentioned?
By mentioning it I thought I implied it but if you've got nothing better then you be you.
You mask-hating patriots had to behave in planes and stores for a few months, and now you feel you need to throw all your toys out of the pram and burn everything associated to the ground. Vaccines, mRNA, boosters surely must go. Sad.
Follow the science and maybe try reading the article.
You leftists insisted on the mask and vaccine mandates long after the science proved the mandates were wrong.
Do you think science proves such things definitively so soon about something like a novel virus?
Some of the mask mandates were objectively really dumb. I remember places still having outdoor mask mandates over a year after we knew that Covid didn't really spread outside. There was a lot of politicization of masking on both sides of the debate.
The problem is this has now crept into vaccine policy where the consequences are much more significant.
I think anybody who knew anything about virology knew from the start that Covid wasn't spreading outdoors.
There were mask mandates. Don't recall vaccine mandates. I wish there had been vaccine mandates
So more children could get myocarditis while Big Pharma and CDC bureaucrats got filthy rich?
So you don't like bureaucrats getting filthy rich, eh?
Though he says he doesn't cherry pick, Kaz seems to have neglected to post the jobs report, for some reason.
I still hold such numbers a snapshot and you really need to look at longer trends, I note that Lutnick says the jobs numbers "will get better because you'll take out the people who are just trying to create noise against the president ... this is gonna be the greatest growth economy six months from now, a year from today"
How promising! I look forwards to Kaz uncritically posting some truly ridiculous and unbelievable job numbers in the future!
I note that Lutnick says the jobs numbers "will get better because you'll take out the people who are just trying to create noise against the president ... this is gonna be the greatest growth economy six months from now, a year from today"
Okay, I looked at this quote and thought he was saying that there were some employers who were actively not hiring just to make the administration look bad, which I thought was really dumb.
Then I looked it up, and and it's much worse than that.
He actually thinks they're going to cook the books for Trump, or at the very least is espousing a view that there's a bunch of folks at BLS that were actively cooking the books against Trump. The damage this administration is doing to the long term credibility and capability of this country is really depressing.
“So he can’t replace somebody two weeks ago, and you expect fundamental change, but what you will get is an agency that’s on [Trump’s] side, just trying to do the best and put out the correct numbers,” he said.(Mr. Lutnick)
Mr. Lutnick talks as if there’s a ‘correct’ number waiting to be unlocked by picking the right side. But the jobs report is a modeled estimate that’s revised by design — it’s never exact, and it never will be.
Unless Congress mandates that every employer and even the self-employed file standardized monthly employment/payroll data and authorizes and funds BLS to perform collection and processing, CES is always going to need modeling.
Sat through the whole segment — no discussion at all of how CES actually works or how it could be improved. Just political spin about ‘correct numbers,’ which isn’t how statistics operate in the first place.
Would’ve helped if the CNBC panel actually knew how the CES works — voluntary survey, imputation for missing data, revisions, and annual benchmarking.
Mr. Lutnick has surely been briefed on how CES works — as Commerce Secretary he can’t not know. Which makes it worse: he chose to spin rather than explain, when a little education about surveys and revisions would’ve built trust instead of eroding it.
I didn't post.the jobs report because its barely 9am on the west coast and I just got up, and haven't even had my coffee yet.
But glad to see you are waiting with bated breath for my analysis.
Looks like you boys have to find yet another BLS hack to get you the jobs numbers you want. Another shitty jobs report this morning
Now that I've had my coffee (Peet's Major Dickson's Blend) I see its exactly what the forecast were, up .1% to 4.3% unemployment, and the economy still creating jobs but very anemic growth, and at least on nugget of good news:
"Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in August (+22,000) and has shown little changesince April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today. The unemployment rate, at 4.3 percent, also changed little in August. A job gain in health care was partially offset by losses in federal government and in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction."
And I guess you already tipped us to the slowdown in the oil patch.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
More detail about the decline in federal employment:
"Federal government employment continued to decline in August (-15,000) and is down by 97,000 since reaching a peak in January. (Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay arecounted as employed in the establishment survey.)"
So it it were not for the decline in federal employment there would have been 37,000 gain in jobs, still fairly weak but better. You can't male an omelet without breaking eggs.
The takeaway is we are finally going to het an interest rate cut later in the week.
Vaccine policy is becoming decentralized.
Florida wants to end all vaccine mandates for attending school. Legislative action will be required for complete abolition. My understanding is federal law will continue to require insurance coverage for measles, DTP, and a few other vaccines.
The governor of Massachusetts ordered her people to require insurance coverage for COVID vaccines no longer mandated by federal law. California, Oregon, and Washington are joining together to issue press releases about their enlightened vaccine policies.
Aside from a few core vaccines like measles, none of this matters much. Politicians get to promote themselves.
What’s a “core” vaccination?
All 842 of them. Every vaccine ever created, literally, is super mega important and literally every human should literally take every vaccine, literally.
WE LOVE BIG PHARMA AND RICH CDC BUREAUCRATS!
"Aside from a few core vaccines like measles, none of this matters much."
Sure, but Florida's goal includes eliminating a mandate for the measles vaccine, no?
I wonder how many kids in Florida are going to die so that DeSantis can own the libs.
If their parents are stupid enough to not vaccinate them against MMR, polio, and so forth, that's on the parents, not Florida nor DeSantis.
The requirement protects children from "stupid" parents, including children who might, for medical reasons, not get vaccinated, and thus have to rely on herd immunity.
I don't necessarily disagree, but you don't get to spout "My body, my choice" and then apply it only to aborting third trimester babies.
Are “babies” not in the woman’s body?
If only (a) vaccines were 100% effective and (b) these diseases were not contagious then this would make total sense, but it turns out that there's pretty big externalities to these decisions.
There are pretty big externalities to letting women abort unborn children and to letting gay men practice buttsex, but you leftists seem pretty intent on protecting those "rights."
Grouping consensual anal sex and abortion in the same category is kind of odd.
What's the externality to letting a woman abort a non-viable fetus? And who gets hurt from homosexual sex other than the participants?
Stupid kids for choosing those parents!
Infectious diseases are not decentralized.
Partisanizing vaccines is what this is, and that's fucking terrible.
What I am looking forward to:
The Supreme Court taking on the Tariffs case.
Why?
Because then the Supreme Court will have to decide how they will apply one imaginary thing they made up (the "Major Questions Doctrine") would apply in the context of another thing they made up (the "Unitary Executive").
Now, I'm not saying that this has to be the grounds for the decision- there are numerous other reasons that the multiplicity of Tariffs enacted by Trump were unlawful. And I am not hopeful regarding the result (in the Calvinball era, actual law doesn't matter much, so why should imaginary law?). But I literally cannot wait to see the mental gymnastics applied to the opinion.
Pretzels are good with mustard, including the one in those commercials where the actor dresses up as many different people.
Man, I'd kill for a good pretzel.
Also? Have you seen any of the footage of Trump's cabinet meetings? How can any rational person watch that and not feel sick?
If you were making a parody movie about, oh, North Korea (or Authoritarianstan) that's exactly how you'd show the underlings briefing the Great Leader. It's unreal.
“Mr. President, I invite you to see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.” — Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer
After that line, I figured the president probably had to have his shoes repolished.
I look forward to loki13's rants about the Supreme Court making up one thing ("substantive due process") and refusing to explain it in the context of something that the Supreme Court pretends doesn't exist ("privileges and immunities").
But I'm not holding my breath in anticipation.
Katherine Maher, the President and CEO of NPR, joins Stephen to talk about the impact of the devastating funding cuts pushed by President Trump and enacted by congressional Republicans, and why public media is an essential means of connection for local communities across America
https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/video/gfDVJI6orG4cLN3P26dXhEBmfHd0TJaH/
Gee, and all this time they've been telling us that government funding is just a tiny portion of their revenue.
Publius,
Do you actually care to understand, or are just trying to make a bad joke?
For example, if someone said that "X government funding is a small portion of the overall revenue," but also "X government funding is responsible for the free meals we give to the homeless," could you possibly understand that if government funding is cut, then there would be no more free meals to the homeless?
So, feel free to actually look at the issue and you'll quickly see why this is an issue, and for who. You can just look at what Murkowski did and why ... and then try and apply it to the rest of the nation.
Now, you might still argue that the government shouldn't subsidize this. That's fine. But either you understand the issue, and are being deliberately obtuse, or you don't, and you should at least try and understand what the issue is before being snarky.
and they fund all their (redacted) with those (redacted) Tote Bags
Publius, you disagree with loki, that's what he always means by "not understanding" something.
What is the over/under on how long the City of Austin (Texas)'s ugly new logo will last? Will it take longer for them to correct their course because government is minimally accountable to the citizenry, and elections in Austin are largely a competition between the far left and the nutty-far left?
I can't tell whether the curvy bits are supposed to be hills or the letter "s", reading "ass" in a right-to-left direction.
https://www.kxan.com/news/austin-unveils-new-city-brand-logo-redesign/
Atheist Arguments:
God is mean Christians are mean If God real why bad thing happen I'm monkey Shellfish polyester Too many religion ;( Why can't I look outside and see God If God is real why do I like to take it up the ass Out of context Bible verse
--- lmao @PatriarchPrimus nailed it lol
In other news ...
A while back, I did a deep dive into the claimed number of wars that Trump ended (shocker- he lied). But I've recently been looking and doing extra research on ... wtf is happening with India. Specifically, why did Trump slap those tariffs on India, when he did, and cause relations to deteriorate to such a point that Modi went to China's big authoritarian bash and has pivoted strongly to China?
Well... the two topics are related. So backstory- periodically (sometimes several times a year) hostilities break out between India and Pakistan. They did earlier this year. And then they countries resolve them, as they always do (which is good, since they both have nukes).
BUT ... Trump decided to tweet and claim credit for it. Because of course he did. And ... we (the US) didn't actually do anything.
And this is where the schism starts. India was like, "Yeah, thanks, but we resolved the issue with Pakistan the same way we always do." Pakistan, which has been on the outs with the US, saw this as an opportunity, and praised Trump and sent a nomination for him to win the Peace Prize.
See where this is going? One country told the truth, and the other country made the political calculation to thank Trump and nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. So what did Trump do immediately thereafter?
That's when the sanctions started. And then kept ramping up.
In other words, and it's really hard for me to fully believe it ... and yet, we live in the stupidest timeline ... our President torpedoed relations with an ally because they refused to go along with a fake tweet and because it damaged what he thinks is his "campaign" to get a Nobel Peace Price. You can't make this up. I wish I could, but you can't.
I will leave it to others to decide whether Trump's actions and thirst are actually helping him, and why anyone is driven ... not for a desire for peace, but a desire to win a Swedish award. It's weird.
Lotsa vibes in that post...
By the way, I suggest actually looking at the list of prior winners (many of them are organizations) if you want to see what is actually and customarily considered.
Fun fact- only four US Presidents have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Teddy Roosevelt (1906). For ending the war between Russia and Japan. Often forgotten today, that was a big deal back in the "Great Powers" days. Woodrow Wilson (1919). For the League of Nations. Given that US didn't join the League, and it never really worked (it made the UN look decisive and competent), it's ... eh. Jimmy Carter (2002). Not for his work as President, obviously. Jimmy Carter may have been our greatest ex-President in history. And a good person. I think that should count for something. Barrack Obama (2009). Yeah, this was definitely a weird one and a reaction to the end of the Bush administration. There have been worse ones*, but can't say that it was a good idea at the time, or that it aged well.
*Kissinger? Arafat in 1994? A lot of people would say Aung San Suu Kyi, but I'll give that a pass. That was both a message prize at the time, and arguably deserved. It was only decades later that ... well, you know.
Then again, a Nobel (not peace, of course) was given in 1948 to the person who invented the lobotomy. That might take the cake.
I'm still trying to reconcile Trump's desire to be the Peace President with this new War Department.
China and India have had open hostilities the past few years. It takes a special kind of genius to drive India into the arms of China..but here we are.
I think your analysis is spot on, loki
Thought you mind find this interesting
https://nycourts.gov/reporter/3dseries/2025/2025_04842.htm
Denial of City's Summary Judgment motion in civil forfeiture of $40K food truck for misdemeanor admin code violations upheld on appeal based on excessive fines clause.
"Talks Between Adams and Trump Adviser Center on Saudi Ambassadorship" [NYT]
Huh. Would think Turkey would be more his speed.
Close advisers have been crafting a plan for President Trump to nominate Mayor Eric Adams to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, in an effort to end the mayor’s long-shot campaign for re-election in New York City, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Adams is denying it, but leaving some room for maneuvering:
https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2025/09/eric-adams-big-decision-trump-job-or-doomed-reelection-bid/407869
Cuomo is currently Trump's choice. The official Republican in the race was anti-Trump in the past & is generally seen as not a credible option overall. He also likes cats.
I don't think that factors in much, though.
"Huh. Would think Turkey would be more his speed."
Saudi Arabia pays better. You know, fringe benefits.
Eric Adams is all about the fringe benefits.
You'd think Trump would want Adams to be the one who stays in since he's already a toadie.
(Also you stole my Turkiye/Turkey joke from above.)
"torpedoed relations with an ally "
Anyone who thinks India is an "ally" is too delusional to comment.
India started buying Soviet arms during the peak of the Cold War and continues buying Russian ones now. It imports tons of Russian oil in defiance of US and other sanctions. It never votes with the US in the UN.
We have had mostly friendly relations in the last 20 years after some courting by us but friendly is not "ally".
China has actually seized and hold Indian territory plus is Pakistan's patron yet Modi is sucking up to them, but Trump!. China is welcome to them.
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Phillip W. Magness | 9.5.2025 1:35 PM
James Czerniawski | 9.5.2025 11:15 AM
Liz Wolfe | 9.5.2025 9:30 AM
J.D. Tuccille | 9.5.2025 7:00 AM
Katherine Mangu-Ward | From the October 2025 issue
