Open Thread

Auto-post somehow failed today, so I've manually posted this. Enjoy as usual!

Comments

[CountmontyC]

Hey, I get to be first!!!

[ThePublius]

Second.

[Michael P]

I was halfway hoping the Open Thread experiment had been curtailed either entirely, or returned to once or twice a week, considering that it produces much more heat and smoke than light.

[Sarcastr0]

It is a containment zone, to contain people like you and I.

[Krayt]

A few times a week, it was well-read by the movers and shakers. Erryday? I dunno. I suppose talking heads looking for talkings to talk 2nite still frequent what's left of it as producing new things to bounce around echo chambers rather than a scratching post for many to come regurgitate the latest gotcha someone else thunk up for them to think and get that little I thunk a thunk rush.

[LexAquilia]

They made it every day to contain the talk and corral it away from the regular posts.

As they had just descended into an open thread, often, anyways.

That's my take.

[Bored Lawyer]

Agreed. Go back to twice a week.

[Bwaaah]

I was more than halfway hoping it would go back to no more than 3 times per week. With a half-life of twelve hours, the already slight relevance of comments feels even more fleeting than before.

[Malika la Maize]

Bwaaari has praised Frankie’s posts here. I’ve seen malfunctioning septic tanks more full of shit than this guy.

[David Nieporent]

Yes. On ordinary days when ongoing events don't spark something, there is a flurry of AM posts, and then a trickle throughout the rest of the day which almost nobody sees or responds to, and which get forgotten as soon as the next day's thread arrives.

[LexAquilia]

Nobody SHOULD respond to your comments.

HTH

[Moderation4ever]

Agree here. I self regulate and only look at it MWF. I find it more interesting that way.

[John F. Carr]

Uber is launching a women-only service nationwide, continuing its "I dare you to enforce the law against me" business model.

The service already launched in California where the Attorney General won't intervene and Uber hopes arbitrators won't either. Now less liberal Attorneys General have a chance to enforce antidiscrimination laws.

https://apnews.com/article/uber-women-safety-9c974f92dfd7fb25d504d173b2429d06

[Life of Brian]

I'd be fascinated to see their definition of "woman." Just glancing around, it appears both the driver and passenger just have to tick the "W" box in their profile, and it's not clear if/how Uber actually intends to ride herd on that.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, self-identification of race and gender happens a lot, for tracking if nothing else.

A cis person saying they're the opposite gender is still pretty taboo. It It'd be news, but yet it comes up rarely. And when it does it's usually for political reasons.

[Brett Bellmore]

"A cis person saying they're the opposite gender is still pretty taboo. It It'd be news, but yet it comes up rarely."

Are you trying for a tautology here, with that "cis person"?

People claiming they're the opposite sex is actually pretty common at this point, (For 'comes up often enough to need policies' values of common.) and hardly taboo.

[Martinned]

People coming out as trans is pretty common these days, but that's hardly the same thing.

[Drewski]

No, even that is rare. It just seems otherwise to the terminally online. Influencers and activists aren't really representative of general demographics. Out in the real world, a fraction of a percent of people come out each year and the cumulative total is something like one or two percent. Most people don't know and hardly ever meet a trans person unless they run in specific social circles.

Sarcastro is right that not many people would be willing to fake their gender for something like that, and fewer would double down if called out on it. I mean sure Brian and Bellmore would, but they're huge assholes about everything all the time. Their opinion hardly counts.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I'd say people asserting that they are 'trans' is exactly the same thing.

A woman who wants a woman driver in her Uber isn't going to be reassured that the dude driving it calls himself "Betty".

[Sarcastr0]

You do know that trans people usually try and pass as the gender they transition to.

The mean situation is not a dude going by Betty.

[LexAquilia]

lmao, a very very very tiny amount of transes actually have passing privilege.

Most, nearly all, are gross ass men in dress, or dumbass looking women with facial hair. Just fake costumes of what they wish they were.

[Brett Bellmore]

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean, that's a baseline thing about gender dysphoria - you want to conform to your gender identity.

Do you have any information that this would not be the case, or are you just making shit up because you want to pretend trans people are all guys with 5 O'clock shadows saying they're women?

[Brett Bellmore]

My baseline is that wanting something and getting it are quite distinct.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"I mean, that's a baseline thing about gender dysphoria - you want to conform to your gender identity."

You don't have to have gender dysphoria to be trans.

[Sarcastr0]

Maybe you're always paying close attention to people's gender presentment, but clothes+hair are not hard to pull off for most.

Obviously baseline numbers are not going to be easy on this, but you seem committed to a scenario that you don't hear about much.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"You do know that trans people usually try and pass as the gender they transition to."

There's no requirement that they try to pass. There are lazy trans people just like there are lazy normal people.

If a dude in jeans and a t-shirt and a ribbon in his hair shows up on a "woman's" call, it would be understandable for the client to be concerned, even if there were no bad faith involved.

[ThePublius]

"A cis person saying they're the opposite gender is still pretty taboo. It It'd be news, but yet it comes up rarely."

Excuse me? Isn't this the foundation of the trans movement? It's not taboo, nor news, nor rare these days (unfortunately). In fact, I proffer that it's not only celebrated in the liberal establishment (particularly schools), but encouraged.

[Malika la Maize]

What would be the difference between celebrated and encouraged?

[Sarcastr0]

I said a cis person to head off this nonsense at the pass.

The right's getting increasingly into evidence-free child-turning transpiracies. QAnon 2: gender boogaloo.

[Life of Brian]

You can't just declare it nonsense and make it go away.

You're Uber. I have 20" arms and a beard, and tick the "W" box in my profile. Your move.

[Martinned]

If only Uber had some kind of army of lawyers drafting lengthy terms & conditions!

[TwelveInchPianist]

What would the terms and conditions say?

[Malika la Maize]

Bri Bri is volunteering to do drop trou evaluations!

[John 4]

Life of Brian: Genital Inspector

[Malika la Maize]

But totes Classical Liberal!

[Life of Brian]

If you think one would be needed in the scenario I outlined, the problem is with you, not me.

[Sarcastr0]

If you're too ignorant to know what a cis person is, you're too ignorant to have a discussion about this with.

[Brett Bellmore]

You're just being your usual idiot self, pretending that a woman who wants a woman driver is going to care that the male driver is pretending to be a woman.

[Sarcastr0]

That is in fact nothing like what I'm saying.

You're so excited to fight about trans people not being legit you didn't even bother to read my comment above, it seems.

[Brett Bellmore]

I read every begging the question, desperately trying to create a tautology, word you wrote. None of them were persuasive.

[Sarcastr0]

Still not engaging with my thesis.
1) Cis people lying about their gender are rare - it makes the news, and is usually some anti-woke political thing.
2) Trans people want to present as their gender identity, so they generally pass a cursory inspection.

No tautologies, just you not caring much about actual facts.

[Brett Bellmore]

1. It makes the news when they rape somebody, sure. Or the actual women on the swim team complain. Or some girl gets a fractured skull in a contact sport. The sort of news the women using Uber don't want to feature in.

2. Wanting something and getting it are two different things. I'm gonna assume that 'Rachal' Levine wants to pass as a woman. Are you going to claim he actually does?

[TwelveInchPianist]

"Cis people lying about their gender are rare - it makes the news, and is usually some anti-woke political thing."

What is this lying crap? A dude has some degree of gender confusion, so he says he's a woman. He's wearing jeans and a t-shirt, as many men and women do. He's not really into grooming, like many people of either sex, so he hasn't shaved in a week. He has a ribbon in his hair.

Is he a trans woman or a lying cis dude? And do you think the gal who ordered the woman's ride will view him as a suitable driver?

[Sarcastr0]

1. No, it makes news when a dude goes into the women's locker room. We're squicky about seeing wangs more than we are violence!
I will allow that the reverse doesn't make the news so much.

2. Yeah, I'll claim that.
If you weren't told Rachel Levine was trans, I'm sure there'd be mannish woman jokes, but I don't think it's beyond conception that she'd pass.

[Life of Brian]

If you're too ignorant to know what a cis person is, you're too ignorant to have a discussion about this with.

I know exactly what a "cis person" is: a term invented by activists to try to recast pretending they're the opposite sex as just part of a normal, coin-flipping choice that everyone has to make.

Anyway, Uber, your move: How do you police the program you just created in the name of safety, to ensure it actually is something beyond a feel-good facade?

[Sarcastr0]

OK dude.

If you don't want to engage with the discussion because the words make you mad, that's on you I guess.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Annnd... Sarcastro loses the argument.

[Reallynotbob]

I just don't understand the "right" we're protecting here. If women want to have women (i.e. those who ticked the box "W") drive them around instead of whomever ticks "M" then why can't they?

Like, Damon doesn't have a legal right to make Sally get in his car if he picks up the fare first.

[Life of Brian]

If women want to have women (i.e. those who ticked the box "W")

I may be going out on a teeny-tiny limb here, but my guess is that knowing your driver ticked a certain box on a form is not exactly what the vast majority of women using this service are looking for.

[Brett Bellmore]

You said "cis" to create a tautology, where any guy who DID claim to be a girl would no longer be "cis".

[Sarcastr0]

Haha, for once Brett forgets bad faith is a thing that exists.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I guess it's a good thing the left didn't create any taboos or anything like that against second-guessing someone's gender identification or accusing them of bad faith.

[Sarcastr0]

Yeah, that's not new.

Shakespeare relied on it.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I do agree that men who claim to be women are acting in bad faith, but that would kind of swallow the rule.

[Sarcastr0]

Not the subject you started on, which was about the left is making people scared to check if people are lying about their gender.

People been assuming other people's genders based on vibes for 400 years, it's not a woke initiative.

[Martinned]

A trans person coming out isn't "a cis person saying they're the opposite gender".

[Brett Bellmore]

And how, exactly, do you tell the difference between " a trans person coming out", and "a cis person lying"?

And why, exactly, should the passenger give a damn about that difference in any case?

[Sarcastr0]

For one, trans people often try to pass. Unless you're checking for peckers, you're not going to know.
For another, revealed behavior is that a cis person lying is a rare scenario.

You, with no expertise, are confident being trans is a mental illness, and want them banned from policymaking positions.
And you work hard to not understand anything about trans issues,

I mean, why bother when you mostly want to assert that being trans isn't legit over and over and over again?

[Brett Bellmore]

"For one, trans people often try to pass. Unless you're checking for peckers, you're not going to know."

Yeah, that's why Bruce, excuse me, "Catlyn" Jenner gets the airbrush treatment every time he's pictured in a magazine. Because he's successfully 'passing'. About as successfully as Rachel Levine, to tell the truth.

You are enormously exaggerating how successful they are at deceiving other people. We have a long evolutionary history that has centered around instinctively telling the difference between men and women, it isn't as easily spoofed as that.

[David Nieporent]

You are enormously exaggerating how successful they are at deceiving other people. We have a long evolutionary history that has centered around instinctively telling the difference between men and women, it isn't as easily spoofed as that.

While I agree that many cannot "pass," you do understand that you really have no way to tell how many can, right?

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I'll grant that. While I've encountered a fair number of weirdos who perhaps thought they were 'passing' while the people round them rolled their eyes, I obviously can't rule out that some particularly effeminate looking men might, aided by surgery and hormones, manage to outwardly look like a woman at first glance.

I've seen no good statistics on the relative numbers, all I know is that the gross failures are out there and insisting that you take them seriously.

[Sarcastr0]

the gross failures are out there and insisting that you take them seriously

Mere crossdressing is also still a thing.
No gender identity or passing involved, just some dudes like wearing skirts and blouses.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"A trans person coming out isn't 'a cis person saying they're the opposite gender'."

Right, it's just a person saying they're the opposite gender. Why add unnecessary words.

[Bob from Ohio]

"cis person"

Newspeak from the left.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"A cis person saying they're the opposite gender is still pretty taboo. It It'd be news, but yet it comes up rarely."

Yeah, you don't see many square circles either.

And you've got it backwards. It's not taboo for a cis person to say that they're the opposite gender, it's taboo to claim that someone who says that they're the opposite gender is cis.

[Sarcastr0]

Accusing people of faking being trans is a rare thing, but more because it'd be like accusing someone of pretending to be a Jew in 1930s Germany.

I still don't understand your super conspiratorial deal when trans people come up.
Schools are urging kids to be trans.
And hospitals are secretly doing trans surgery on children.
And cis people are pretending to be trans, but no one calls them on it thanks to the left!

You're a mess, and I don't think it's about politics.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Lol. You're conflating a bunch on things here.

"Schools are urging kids to be trans." I don't know about urging. Encouraging? Sure, and then keeping it a secret from their parents.

"And hospitals are secretly doing trans surgery on children." Uh, this is a documented fact. Although "secretly" is pretty much baked in because medical stuff is private.

"And cis people are pretending to be trans..." I don't even know what that means. There are plenty of men pretending to be women, but a cis person pretending to be trans is a contradiction in terms.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, not really, you've got publicized cases of sex offenders pretending to be 'trans' in order to gain access to women's spaces, and those sad, sad, failed male athletes who like collecting women's sports' trophies.

[John F. Carr]

I did not find the definition and there may not be one. I think discriminating against trans drivers or passengers would be more offensive to Attorney General Bonta than discriminating against men.

[BadLib]

Perhaps drivers and customers will be required to upload a picture of their external genitalia and, at pickup, the driver checks that the customer's uploaded picture matches "real life" and the customer does the inverse.

This could spawn a whole segment for Uber - customers could select the surprisingly popular "Show me yours, I'll show you mine" option. If coupled with selection of the "visually impaired" option - presumably only for customers, the comparison would obviously have to be tactile and this could be especially popular and bring a whole new customer and driver base into the Uber tent (customers of course would "self identify" as "visually impaired" and that classification could not be questioned).

[Michael P]

Does Uber limit the "woman" identity to cisgender women?

I am sympathetic to the goal, and maybe the general principle: I think there remains enough racial animus in the US that "separate is inherently unequal" still applies to race-based apartheid, but I think it's a lot easier to make the case that women-only services can be separate but equal, or at least equitable. Part of that case is that women are a very slight majority of the population. Part of it is that these restrictions could encourage more women to be drivers on the platform, and they are currently "underrepresented". Part of it is that people have to opt in to the program, and can opt out at will. But the history of anti-discrimination laws for public accommodations applied on the basis of sex are complex, and have been undermined greatly in the wake of Bostock, so it's hard to be confident about what the law says.

[Dr. Ed 2]

An equal case can be made for male only service.

[Michael P]

Oh? Are male drivers underrepresented on Uber? Is there much demand for such a service?

One could certainly make a case, but I am skeptical that it would be as strong on the facts or on sympathy. It might be defensible on legal grounds, but that seems like an example of "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should".

[David Nieporent]

Dr. Ed is scared of women.

[Reallynotbob]

Because women attack men with equal frequency to men attacking women. Riiiiight.

[Bob from Ohio]

"cisgender"

Don't go along with the Newspeak.

You can just call them women.

[Malika la Maize]

Do you deny that there are women who identify as women and men who identify as women?

[Life of Brian]

"Identify as" rather than "are" sorta concedes the point, dunnit?

I agree that there are women who accept the reality they are women, and that there are men who deny the reality they aren't women.

[Malika la Maize]

And so a term for the latter is describing an actual phenomenon, right?

[rswallen]

A term like "delusional"?

[Life of Brian]

I feel you have a Very Clever Point in the making. Please just cut to the chase.

[Bob from Ohio]

You are a woman or not. Giving into the Newspeak term just acknowledges a falsehood.

[Malika la Maize]

Certainly these are men acting in a very different way, we often have different terms for such things.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, we do. "Nuttier than a fruitcake", "delusional", "clinical", "squirrelly", the terms go on and on.

And none of them alter the fact that the guy is a guy, or provide any reason to treat the guy as a girl, rather than a guy who is crazy or lying.

[Sarcastr0]

You're not a psychiatrist.

Bigotry is not a good stand-in for expertise.

[Swede425]

You are so unenlightened.
You need to be more open-minded.
So open-minded, in fact, that your brains fall out.
Then you can unironically use terms like "cis" and actually believe that men/women can be women/men by magically saying so.
Because magic is real.

[Bob from Ohio]

"we often have different terms"

Effeminate

[Frank Drackman]

Of all the reasons I admire the Fairer Sex (As Rush Limbo said, I love the "Women's Movement" especially when walking behind one) their Driving Ability isn't one of them.
OTOH I can see why riding 45 minutes to JFK with Abdul, Moe-hammed, Sodomy, Yassar, might be uncomfortable.

Frank

[Malika la Maize]

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them," -Margaret Atwood

[Brett Bellmore]

Ah, technically, men are afraid that women will financially ruin them.

Anyway, I can't complain if a woman would prefer a female taxi driver. As I like to point out, the ERA was rejected, the courts should have respected that.

[Krayt]

On the other hand, it's hard to be self-sufficient when you can't get a job, or only a girl's job, and can't own property.

That the dude could kick her to the curb with nothing, because he earned it all, well, I can see why men didn't wanna give that up.

[Brett Bellmore]

When I got married the first time around, my first wife was in her early 30's, with an established career, and an established $25K in credit card debt. Every cent of which she had 'earned'.

A year later she was one year older, and I was divorced and $25K deeper in debt. So, who got kicked to the curb?

[John 4]

Ah the bitter divorced man with a new mail order bride tells everyone how the world works. Classic stuff.

[Brett Bellmore]

What "new"? I'm going on 19 years happily married. And I'm informed that I'm a "mail order husband".

You DO know that "mail order brides" is just online dating, right? It's no different from something like EHarmony or whatever, except the two people are in different countries.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No, Delta Charlie, men are afraid of being falsely accused, knowing that the false accusation will be accepted unquestionably.

Now, as to Atwood, she makes me reconsider the legitimacy of the eighth amendment.

[Frank Drackman]

You're not a "Real Man" if you've never said
"I wouldn't fuck (Insert annoying Yenta's name here) her with YOUR Dick!"
Which I've always thought was funny as hell since I first heard it in 5th or 6th Grade, first of all because the Girl in question was pretty hot and the guy saying he wouldn't fuck her was probably 12 or 13, and then just the thought of trying to fuck a Girl with someone else's Dick, funny.
Same with a Monkey trying to fuck a Football, if you saw a Monkey trying to fuck a Football, you'd laugh.

Frank

[Sarcastr0]

I am reminded that the rejoinder to #notallmen is #yesallwomen.

It may not just be murder, and it may not be a ton of guys, but they do a lot of terrible work, and most don't get a lot of comeuppance.

[Life of Brian]

Women are afraid that men will kill them

It's recently not been acceptable at all to acknowledge that basic reality. That's a good part of why I'm so fascinated that Uber actually went there.

[Malika la Maize]

That woman doesn’t seem to be dead, dude. Having trouble with basic reality?

[Sarcastr0]

Not quite on-topic anecdotes seem all the MAGA posters on this site have these days.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Margaret Atwood"

Writer of bad fiction book says something.

Neither statement is true as a general proposition.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them,' -Margaret Atwood"

Sounds sexist. Does she think that women are afraid that black people will kill them as well?

[BadLib]

Especially women who recall the late Jesse Jackson (a.k.a. "Shakedown Jackson") quote:

There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.

After all, he presented himself as a subject matter expert.

[Brett Bellmore]

Daylight savings time delenda est!

[SRG2]

*saving 🙂

[Krayt]

This was done as an idiotic push to save a little energy of light bulbs. It wasn't needed, was stupid, and sure as hell isn't needed anymore with light bulbs only 15% the consumer they once were.

But getting participatory buy in from the yokels, well, that sets up the next bigger getting-in-the-wayism from the waggle-finger class.

[rswallen]

I've never understood how it would save light bulbs. Why not just turn the lights on an hour later?

[Brett Bellmore]

IIRC, they came up with this nonsense during WWI, as an energy saving measure, and then just dug in and refused to put a stop to it after the war was over.

[David Nieporent]

And by "they" you mean the entire industrialized world.

[Brett Bellmore]

If there's anything we've learned in the last century, it's that the West's political leadership are increasingly a monoculture prone to all making similar mistakes and getting caught up in the same fads.

[Sarcastr0]

You're allowed to dislike daylight savings now without indicting the world 110 years ago as a wrongheaded monoculture.

Goddamn the pridefulness to go that rout, rather than just saying it's outlived any usefulness back then.

[ducksalad]

China, Japan, Korea?

[Frank Drackman]

Used to be called "War Time"
maybe should go back to that.

[John F. Carr]

Two top members of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts are suing to block a ballot question replacing party primaries with a jungle primary (a single nonpartisan primary). They don't want to reduce the power of the party to decide which Democrat wins in November.

Of course they don't say so. "They contend the change would violate the state constitution by depriving third-party candidates of a chance to secure a spot on the general election ballot and by denying voters the ability to pick third-party options in November."

To the extent plaintiffs Martina Jackson and Ann Roosevelt claim they are concerned about the rights of third parties, they are lying. Democratic party insiders should not be granted standing to make such a challenge. If members of the Green-Rainbow party want to make the same claim, they would have standing. The Green-Rainbow party itself supports the question. So does former governor Deval Patrick.

https://commonwealthbeacon.org/politics/two-veteran-democrats-sue-to-block-all-party-primary-ballot-question/

https://ballotpedia.org/Massachusetts_Top-Two_Primary_Elections_Initiative_(2026)#Text_of_measure

[jb]

Wasn't it just last week that Republicans were assuring us that this type of primaries in liberal states was just to entrench Democratic dominance, though? Seems surprising that the Democratic Party would oppose it if so.

[OpinionsVary]

Contrarian opinion - states have no business being in the primary game. How private political organisations elect their officers is not the government's business. And trying to back end that business via gating ballet access for the main election makes it worse not better.

[Martinned]

Agreed, although it might mean that having a two-round system (like in Georgia and in France) is a good idea. And I'm not sure how different that is, in practice, from a jungle primary.

[jb]

Don't jungle primaries directly address your concern, though? They're nonpartisan ways of narrowing the field prior to a general election.

[ThePublius]

OpinionsVary raises an interesting and compelling point. Yes, why is the government involved in primaries at all? How is it there business to regulate election of candidates of political organizations?

[Bored Lawyer]

Agreed.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Their officers? They are not choosing who is going to run the local party. They are nominating people to run for the general election to serve in the government. I don't think, for instance, that the nominating process should discriminate by race.

[Brett Bellmore]

And I think that, in a democracy, the incumbent office holders should have essentially no say AT ALL in how the people trying to replace them get selected. It's a terrible conflict of interest.

[Martinned]

I think, given the First Amendment, that it's difficult to explain why the Neo Nazi party of the United States shouldn't be able to have a rule that only white people are allowed to be nominees. Likewise for the (equally hypothetical) Catholic Party and Catholics.

[John F. Carr]

See Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944). As far as I know it's still good law.

[Martinned]

O, I'm sure there's a Supreme Court case about it. But from first principles it's pretty difficult to explain.

And this is a pretty strange way to talk about primaries:

The court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state to delegate its authority over elections to parties in order to allow discrimination to be practiced.

[David Nieporent]

And this is a pretty strange way to talk about primaries:

The abstract concept of primaries, sure. The real world operation of elections at the time, no. It was the equivalent of selling off municipal swimming pools to private companies in the wake of Brown and then saying, "Hey, we know we can't exclude blacks from these facilities… and we're not. These private companies are, and that has nothing to do with us."

[Brett Bellmore]

Your 'real world' description flatly inverts the history of the matter, though. The parties started out totally disentangled.

[ducksalad]

I think he's less wrong than you are.

By the time the first court cases came around, the primaries in many Southern states had become deeply entangled with the government. Legislatures had passed laws regulating the details of how the primaries were conducted, including exclusion of blacks by law.

When they got called on it by the courts, then - more or less exactly like DN's scenario - they handed control back to the private political parties, who continued the rules the state had established.

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

[John F. Carr]

The membership of the court mostly overlapped with the membership when Shelley v. Kramer was decided four years later. The court at the time wanted to make private racial discrimination unconstitutional.

[Krayt]

I am in virulent disagreement with the desire to "get rid of the power of parties to decide their candidates".

It sounds like this is being pushed for the same reason it's pushed in other blue states, where they want the general populace to muck about in Republican primaries. Here they don't want being done unto them what they do unto others.

In any case, parties and primaries fall out naturally from the freedom to associate and put forth your chosen candidates and policies.

It's damned sinister for those in power to wax poetic about how they love The People so much they want open primaries...so challengers get broken by interlopers.

[Sarcastr0]

As a policy question, the main state's I'd favor jungle primaries in are the ones that are essentially single party - CA, WY, OK.
MA's trifecta doesn't seem locked in as a permanent thing right now.

But as a procedural question, this seems a pretty weak case.

[Frank Drackman]

Georgia's DemoKKKrat Primaries have been "Jungle" for years, especially in the Atlanta area.

[Ridgeway]

Why do you see a benefit to Jungle primaries in "single-party" states?

It seems to me that it increases the chances that a candidate with an energized base, but a low (and hard) ceiling among the general electorate would have a better chance of winning a jungle primary and then losing the general (even in a "single party" state). The more candidates in the mix, the better for the ones with an energized base.

Of course that is the basic flaw in primaries in general. The electorate that votes in primaries is very different from the electorate in the general.

In theory at least, having the parties choose candidates directly in smoke filled rooms should be more likely to result in an electable candidate. But that process is (sometimes literally) opaque, and increases the power of the political machines. And if the state party has itself gone insane (which has happened in many of our single-party states -- I'm looking at you CA and TX) they're probably even more likely to choose a crazy candidate than the primary electorate.

TL;DR -- there is no good answer

[Sarcastr0]

In non-single party states, the political parties at least have an incentive to look at electability, which keeps them somewhat grounded.
And for the most part (looking at you NY) the parties provide a start ideological and policy choice where a top-2 primary might not.

I do agree that it's in no way flawless, but I tend to prefer a party primary in a competitive state vs. a jungle primary.

But it's also not a hill I'll die on.

[Malika la Maize]

Graham Arnold is asking FIFA to come to Iraq's aid as the conflict between neighboring Iran and the United States threatens to derail his plans to help his team to its first World Cup in 40 years…

The Lions of Mesopotamia are set to face a one-off match with the winner of a playoff between Suriname and Bolivia in Monterrey, Mexico, on March 31, with the FIFA window due to start on March 23.

That match with Suriname or Bolivia will decide whether Iraq qualifies for its first global tournament since 1986.

But preparation for Iraq's match has been plunged into turmoil by the widening conflict in the region. Iraqi airspace is not due to reopen until April 1, the day after Iraq's scheduled fixture with the winner of the Suriname-Bolivia clash.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/48148224/iraq-coach-arnold-begs-fifa-reschedule-wc-playoff

[Krayt]

How to manipulate an org oriented around waggle-finger principles?

[Martinned]

Meanwhile, it turns out Iran was less Soviet than I would have thought a month ago. Hereditary rule is possible after all. Of course, it doesn't help that many of the other contenders for the job of Great Leader where murdered by the Great Leader of the US and his cronies.

But good to know that setting the entire Middle East on fire and giving Russia an unexpected boost in its war effort was worth it!

[Krayt]

I'm sure Trump will get right on helping Ukraine have a revolution over its own dictatorial invasion disease.

And Germany Strong now!

[rswallen]

But its a Republic! Hereditary rule is impossible in a Republic

[ducksalad]

Trudeau I, Trudeau II
Bush I, Bush II

It can happen anywhere.

[Malika la Maize]

Three Palestinians were killed — two of them shot in the head — when Israeli settlers raided their village in the northern West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
The Israeli military said that the Israeli police had opened a criminal

investigation into the violence in Khirbet Abu Falah, a village about two miles south of the Israeli settlement of Shiloh.
In all, six Palestinian civilians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran just over a week ago, in what appears to be an intensification of settler violence while worldwide attention is focused on the fighting enveloping much of the Middle East.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/world/middleeast/palestinians-killed-west-bank-israeli-settlers.html

[Martinned]

You can add 400 casualties in Lebanon to that.

https://news.sky.com/story/nearly-400-killed-in-lebanon-conflict-as-first-israeli-casualties-announced-13516918

[Dr. Ed 2]

Good riddance.

They had 60 years to live in peace, and repeatedly chose not to.
There are consequences for that….

[Malika la Maize]

Collectivist sociopath.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Fascist genocidal witch.

[Malika la Maize]

No, your use of “they” in justifying this killing is collectivist.

[Martinned]

How were they supposed to live in peace if they keep being attacked by Israel?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Look up when you’ll tried that 20 years ago, removed all the Jews put up a fence and asked him to stay on their side of it. And did they?

[Malika la Maize]

Did those particular victims?

You’re a collectivist.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And you are so open minded that your brains have leaked out.

[Malika la Maize]

I get you hate open minds.

[Bob from Ohio]

"You can add 400 casualties in Lebanon"

Hezbollah launched rockets at Israel. Self defense not allowed for Jews?

[Martinned]

Killing civilians isn't self defence. It isn't self defence when Iran does it, and it isn't self defence when Israel does it.

[David Nieporent]

Deliberately killing civilians isn't self defense. (Note how real people spell that word.) But civilians are killed as collateral damage in all wars, including wars of self-defense.

[Dr. Ed 2]

is more a case of hiding legitimate military targets behind civilians, at which point you have no choice, but to kill the civilians.

Hamas has a lovely tactic of shooting civilians in the back if they tempt to flee…

[SimonP]

And we, of course, implicitly trust Israel, as the most moral army in the world, while they evaluate expected civilian casualties against the military value of whatever it is they're targeting.

How many people did they kill when they were going in to scoop up the remains of a long-dead airman?

[Frank Drackman]

I don't know, how many did they kill rescuing the Hostages at Entebbe? How many Arabs did the US kill responding to 9-11??. Some 5,000 killed at Pearl Harbor, how many killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki??

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

To bad it wasn't 400,000

[Bored Lawyer]

The Israeli military said that the Israeli police had opened a criminal investigation into the violence

Whereas if a Palestinian from the West Bank had blown up a cafe in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians would be cheering and the PA would be giving him or his family a stipend.

[Malika la Maize]

What a weird what about.

“It’s ok these were murdered because if people like them were the murderers other people like them would be bad about it!”

[Bored Lawyer]

Whoosh. Went over your head. Or you choose to be willfully blind.

Let's see if I can spell it out for you.

One society treats criminals as criminals.
The other treats them as heroes and rewards them.

Which society do you support?

[Malika la Maize]

What a weird collectivist comment. I don’t support “societies” but individuals. Maybe you should look into this?

[ducksalad]

Investigation. So impressive.

How many neighborhoods (not of the victims - of the suspects) were put under lockdown or curfew?
How many houses did they forcibly enter in their investigation?
How many suspects have they arrested?
Will the suspects get pretrial detention rather than a please-stay-home order?
How many will be sent to prison?
Will their family homes be bulldozed?

[Bob from Ohio]

"Palestinian officials and witnesses said"

So it never happened.

[Malika la Maize]

All Palestinians are liars?

[Bob from Ohio]

Unfortunately true when Jews are involved.

[Malika la Maize]

Bigot.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes.

[thesafesurfer]

The authors on this blog rest on a premise that the American legal system is impartial, objective, and apolitical. They ignore the reality that the America judiciary has fallen into widespread disrepute with the American public because unelected, unaccountable, blind ideologue, partisan politicians wearing robes populate the court system today.

The majority of isolated professors and lawyers on this blog live in willful ignorance and total delusion by ignoring this reality.

[SRG2]

Translation: judges should obey Trump, not the Constitution.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Trump exists because they’ve been ignoring the constitution for the past 40 years.

[Krayt]

Well, they played a game of control over the Supreme Court. Republicans played that slow game over 50 years, and, Marquess de Democratsberry Rules, finally eked out control.

Ergo, since power is the goal, not philosophical consistency, let's change the rules! Of which party do I speak?

Yes.

[David Nieporent]

No, just the last few. If they hadn't invented fake ex-presidential immunity in 2024, Trump would be in jail, not the White House.

[Moderation4ever]

So what is your solution? Should judges and justices be elected? May judicial offices at the state and local level are elected. Should that be case for Federal judges and justices? I think a simpler solution is for all Federal judges and justices to have a defined term. Longer that Presidents and Congress but less than a lifetime. Say maybe 18 or 20 years.

[Martinned]

Judges are by definition not elected. People who are elected are politicians.

Term limiting judges doesn't make them less party political. The only solution for the mess the US is in is to take the power of appointment of judges away from the politicians.

[John F. Carr]

There's a difference between running for election and running for reelection. The first-time or one-time candidate may be expected to promise. The incumbent facing reelection or reappointment may be expected to deliver.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Judges are by definition not elected."

Obviously false since we elect many.

Appointed judges can be politicians as well.

[Krayt]

I'd start with senators and congressmen being term-limiter. Judges cannot make slanted judgements before they are approved to begin with. The solution to sad doggies is not to yank their chains harder.

The whole point of lifetime appointments vs. politicians appointing and approving is to ahhhhh what's the point. The reader can finish this.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Abolish the ABA and all law schools

[SRG2]

On the cicada principle, 13 or 17 years.

[Martinned]

In Baden-Württemberg, home of every German car manufacturer you've heard of except BMW (Bavaria) and Volkswagen (Lower Saxony), there were state parliament elections yesterday. Green leader Cem Özdemir will almost certainly end up as prime minister, because his party narrowly beat the CDU (30.2% for the Greens, 29.7% for the CDU). The AfD got 18.8% and the SPD narrowly cleared the threshold at 5.5%. The right-liberal FDP missed the threshold in its historic stronghold.

The consequence of all this is that the Green/CDU coalition will continue, albeit with a different prime minister. (Winfried Kretschmann stepped down as Green leader and prime minister, having served in both capacities since 2011, which seems fair enough for a 77 year old politician.)

[Michael P]

every German car manufacturer you've heard of except BMW (Bavaria) and Volkswagen (Lower Saxony)

So, that's Opel (oh wait, they're in Hesse), Audi (oh wait, owned by VW and based in Bavaria), Porsche (oh wait, also VW) and Mercedes-Benz? We can't even include the North Rhine-Westphalia-based Ford-Werke. But Maybach counts, if one separates it from Mercedes, so you have one and a half examples.

[Martinned]

Opel is General Motors, that's an American car. (As is Ford.) And, as you say, Audi and Porsche are part of Volkswagen, which I mentioned. But forgive me for trying to explain to my American friends why they might care about something that didn't happen in/to the US.

[Bob from Ohio]

"why they might care about something that didn't happen in/to the US"

Yet we don't.

[Michael P]

It's not my fault you wrote "every German car manufacturer you've heard of" when you meant "Mercedes-Benz and their extreme-luxe marque Maybach". That's just signature Martinned inaccuracy.

[Martinned]

In other news:

Only the Appointments Clause or the Vacancies Act’s exclusive structure may authorize service as a principal officer, and Lake satisfies the requirements of neither the statute nor the Constitution. “[A]ction taken by any person who is not acting” in compliance with the Vacancies Act’s provisions “in the performance of any function or duty of a vacant office . . . shall have no force or effect.” 5 U.S.C. § 3348(d)(1). Nor may any such action “be ratified.” Id. § 3348(d)(2).

https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2025cv1015-219

[Malika la Maize]

The Best-Selling Vehicle in Every U.S. State

While the Ford F-Series leads across most of the country, a few states break from the pattern. In California and parts of the West Coast, the Tesla Model Y tops the rankings, highlighting the growing influence of electric vehicles.

The Chevrolet Silverado also performs strongly in several states, including Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota…Compact SUVs like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V dominate in several Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-best-selling-vehicle-in-every-u-s-state/

[Martinned]

Aren't those tariffs great?

[ThePublius]

"...the growing influence of electric vehicles."

Ha, ha, ha.... If anything, the influence of electric vehicles is declining.

"GM is already planning to cut EV production, including the all-new Chevy Bolt"
https://electrek.co/2025/09/04/gm-cuts-ev-production-plans-including-all-new-chevy-bolt/

"Ford scraps EV plans, shifts to hybrids, EREVs and low-cost models"
https://www.wardsauto.com/news/ford-scraps-ev-plans-focusing-hybrids-erevs-new-trucks-battery-storage/808026/

[Martinned]

I'm sure oil prices going into triple digits won't affect such plans.

[Brett Bellmore]

The price of gas was $3.19 on my way to work, and tankers are already moving through the straits again.

Look, most people simply don't want electric cars at the current development level. They only got as popular as they did because of massive subsidies, and mandates that forced the auto manufacturers to inflate the price of ICE vehicles.

[hobie]

You hayseeds keep blowing up the world. My company's profits are going bananas!!!

Does that mean we'll now do Drill Baby Drill? Heh. Fuck no. We already have tons of reserves tapped that we don't even use. No sir. We're pocketing our Great Trump Oil Inflation largess. Thank you hayseeds!

[Krayt]

Prices spike up and down in response to market change, and government mucking about.

The former is not a long-term problem, as prices continue a steady, after-inflation decline, over the decades, as long as the latter is kept to a minimum.

[dwb68]

EVs are dead, we dont have the electrical grid capacity for both data centers and massive EV rollout. Silicon Valley wants data centers now. Hybrids are the new old future.

Anyway....How is China going to make all those EVs without oil from Iran?

[Moderation4ever]

Maybe the question you should be asking is about Chinese electric vehicles like BYD. I am old enough to remember the 1970s oil embargos, the import surge of higher mileage foreign vehicles, and how that might happen again.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And I’m old enough to remember when Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter were both too chickenshit to go in and seized those oil wells which have been drilled by Americans, which have been owned by Americans and which had been STOLEN FROM Americans.

An America first president would’ve made it very clear: end the embargo or we seize your country.

[Malika la Maize]

And yet Tesla’s are the leading sellers in those states.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because California at least has artificially inflated gasoline prices that make EV's look cost-effective. I think it would be fair to say that, if you artificially doubled the cost of gasoline in most of the country, EVs would likely achieve the same 29% market penetration you see in California. Give or take, I expect they're doing other things to rig the market in favor of EV's, too.

[Malika la Maize]

Gas is higher via government for several stated reasons and that benefits EVs. But that’s not here or there regarding whether EVs are doing well there.

[Dr. Ed 2]

California no longer has a middle class

[Brett Bellmore]

Nonsense, they do. It's just that they're living in their parents' homes well into middle age.

[Brett Bellmore]

The reasons they're doing well there are irrelevant? Sure, if you'd prefer that the fact that it is purely due to deliberate market distortions went unmentioned.

[Sarcastr0]

So it's a 'yes, but' from you.

[hobie]

"the influence of electric vehicles is declining"

Here in 1950's USA, sure. The rest of the world? Full steam ahead.

Martin: The last time I was at Schiphol Airport (about 7-8 years ago), I marveled at how all the taxis were EVs (even way back then!!). I'll bet Amsterdam is now chock full of EV's.

Hayseeds: "Why can't we sell our coal-powered cars overseas?"

[Sad trombone sound -> Wah, wah wah!]

[Brett Bellmore]

Ironic in that the only coal powered cars ARE the 'electric' cars...

[Bunny495]

I just got my Tesla Model Y back after being in the shop. For me there is no question an EV is the only choice for my lifestyle and a Tesla is the best personal choice. As a retired low milage driver I can easily plug in to a normal 120v outlet and take advantage of those cheap nightly rates and wake up with more than enough charge for my daily needs. When I need to drive a couple of hundred miles on a trip the Tesla Superchargers allow quick charging well within the time it takes me to walk to the restroom, grab some fast food, and walk back to the car. No question even before the Iran mess it was cheaper to charge and fill even my Prius with gas.

For me personally FSD is a game changer. All I need to do is say 'Walmart' the car does the rest and after shopping say 'Home' and smile as the traffic glides around me. Even more impressive is the Model Y is faster than a Corvette or Mustang; not that I have ever tested that. Accident rates are literally an order of magnitude better than ICE vehicles. Bottom line is EVs are here to stay and will only increase in number.

[dwb68]

Just me wondering when Turkey will invoke Article 5 of NATO because Iran keeps firing ballistic missiles at them. Turkey and NATO defenses shot down the 2nd Iranian missile overnight.

[Martinned]

I suspect the Turkish strongman Edrogan would prefer to communicate to his subjects that he can handle the national defence on his own just fine.

[jb]

I also think Turkey isn't really that interested in having the war escalate.

Not sure the "we can take care of our own defenses" works that well when they're already relying on NATO/the US to shoot down these missiles, though.

P.S. When did we go back to calling it "Turkey"? I remember all of the media coverage being for "Türkiye" a couple of years ago, but all of the online articles seem to be using "Turkey" again.

[Martinned]

It's all about optics with these populist strongmen. Invoking art. 5 instantly makes Erdogan look weak in the eyes of his own people. The current arrangement basically still looks like Turkey taking care of itself, even if it is fighting side by side with the US.

[Bob from Ohio]

"when Turkey will invoke Article 5 of NATO"

Why would they do that?

The only NATO country capable of helping is already bombing the snot out of Iran.

[dwb68]

Because it sends a stronger message (it also puts all of Europe in an awkward spot lol)

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Yesterday, President Donald J. Trump was among the dignitaries who attended the dignified transfer returning the remains of the six U.S. soldiers killed in the military action against Iran to the United States for burial. At the transfer, Trump wore a white USA baseball cap for sale in his campaign store.

Recognizing that Americans would recoil from seeing Trump wear a baseball cap at a dignified transfer, the Fox News Channel declined to show how he had looked yesterday and aired old footage of Trump from his first term without the hat. Caught in their lie, the Fox News Channel admitted they had shown the wrong footage but claimed it was inadvertent. They did not, however, show the real footage from yesterday, showing Trump wearing his merch.

The official social media account of the White House has portrayed its military adventures in Iran as a movie, or a game, splicing images from what appear to be footage of U.S. military strikes with clips from adventure movies and video games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Undeterred by criticism, White House communications director Steven Cheung called for supporters to show their enthusiasm for one of the videos in comments below it.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-8-2026

[Malika la Maize]

Disgusting.

[ThePublius]

What's disgusting?

[Malika la Maize]

Recognizing that Americans would recoil from seeing Trump wear a baseball cap at a dignified transfer, the Fox News Channel declined to show how he had looked yesterday and aired old footage of Trump from his first term without the hat.

For one thing. But you’ve usually been selective on partisan grounds in your disgust, so no surprise there.

[SRG2]

Note that if you had said, "fuck Trump for wearing a white baseball cap", ThePublius would have been outraged by your saying "fuck Trump" but wouldn't have an issue with the cap.

[John 4]

No doubt, he’s currently drafting a sternly worded condemnation of SRG2, who is a big meanie.

[Martinned]

It's like they're trying to be as unpopular as possible, to find out whether there is anything they could do to get kicked out of office.

Karoline Leavitt on Fox yesterday:

“President Trump wisely does not remove options off of the table. I know a lot of politicians like to do that quickly, but the president as commander-in-chief wants to continue to assess the success of this military operation. [The draft] not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.”

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/03/karoline-leavitt-says-draft-is-on-the-table

[Malika la Maize]

He literally early on remarked about the slavish toadyism of his followers with his shoot someone in public comment.

[wvattorney13]

I see the disgraced media is continuing their "he won't rule X out!" shock games.

[Bob from Ohio]

"get kicked out of office."

No risk of that since US presidents are not prime ministers.

[Moderation4ever]

The US military is elite but is elite the same as effective. In 1974 Mohammid Ali brought out the "Rope-a-Dope" strategy. Is that what we are seeing in Iran. The US is stopping multi thousand dollar Iranian drones with million dollar missiles. I have no doubt that the US can beat the Iranians but at what cost and where does this all lead? Is the US repeating the mistake of Iraq and Afghanistan? I don't really think there is an end game. Worse yet President Trump seems to be getting bored and is ready to move on. All this leaves me wondering if the US gets any more than it would have gotten in the 2015 JCPOA.

[Martinned]

The US military is elite

The US military is mostly just big.

One military source cited last year’s Joint Viking exercise in northern Norway as a clear example of the imbalance. During the exercise, American troops struggled to operate effectively in Arctic conditions, prompting exercise commanders to intervene.

“Exercise commanders had to ask Finnish reservists, the most formidable Arctic warriors, who were playing the role of invaders in the war games, to go easy on the Americans,” the source said. “The Finns had to be told to stop beating the Americans as it was embarrassing and demoralising for them.”

https://defence-blog.com/u-s-military-falters-during-arctic-exercise/

[Martinned]

See also:

The president has also disparaged Denmark’s military footprint in its semi-autonomous Arctic territory for including dogsled teams.

Those troops are in fact an elite unit of the Danish army known as Sirius Patrol, from which the new Arctic special forces were drawn.

“The Arctic specialists can move, patrol, and solve tasks where the cold, ice, storms, and extreme remoteness turn even simple tasks into complex challenges,” says Christopher Sohl, acting commander of Sirius Squadron.

In October, the unit was deployed to assist Greenland police in responding to the crash of a small aircraft on Sermitsiaq Island. During that operation, Arctic specialists recovered the deceased pilot, electronic equipment and other effects from the crash site.

The cold weather commandos have also been using their forays into the Greenlandic interior to develop detailed maps of the Blosseville Coast region, including suitable landing zones for helicopter insertions.

“If the Danish Armed Forces need to conduct an operation in the area in the future, concrete terrain knowledge now exists,” says Sohl.

Copenhagen says the new Arctic speciality force represents the “need to build combat power” amidst an “evolving security environment”.

https://www.flightglobal.com/helicopters/denmark-touts-ability-of-new-arctic-special-forces-to-operate-anywhere-in-greenland/166004.article

[John F. Carr]

The 1982 miniseries World War III had American soldiers fighting off Soviet invaders in chilly Alaska. But the thought of an outnumbered band of heroic Danish defenders hiding in familiar terrain also reminds me of Red Dawn (1984).

[David Nieporent]

Wolv[erin]es!

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Red Dawn was an early version of "Young Guns."

Basically, the Breakfast Club Goes to War.

[Bob from Ohio]

"One military source "

Sure, sure.

[SRG2]

And Royal Marines Commandos force US Marine Corps troops to surrender in training exercise

[Sarcastr0]

We are big, and I don't know that our training is particularly elite as compared to peers.

I hear our worldwide reputation is fore super good logistics. It may be forged from 2 unnecessary and lengthy wars, but logistics ain't nothing.

[SRG2]

I recall the moment in "Battle of the Bulge" where IIRC Robert Shaw realises that the Germans have lost, because they find a cake wrapper indicating that the cake was baked in Philly only a day earlier.

[Absaroka]

"the cake was baked in Philly only a day earlier"

That's fast! If my math is right they had a B-24 waiting on the runway when the cake came out of the oven, and must have air-dropped it direct in the Ardennes, with no stops along the way 🙂

[Absaroka]

"I don't know that our training is particularly elite as compared to peers."

I dunno about individual/small unit training, but I think we have the facilities and budget for Ft Irwin, Red Flag, back in the day Cope Thunder, and large scale stuff like that. When you read bios of people who have been through those and then seen combat, they say the scale matters. You can be awesome at 2v2, but that doesn't compare to the chaos when you have dozens of planes in the air. Ditto for the ground maneuver at scale you can't do very many places.

To be sure, some allies get to participate in those, but I don't think as much.

This is all second hand from reading bios.

[Frank Drackman]

Martinned criticizing the US Military from a Country that only exists because of the US Military.

[Krayt]

Mass, cheap drones are the future. As a result, we need a way to stop them.

I don't see why cheap missiles with open source shooter-downer electronic control from Radio Shack won't be a thing someday.

And it if costs until then, well, last time I checked we were borrowing a trillion a year. No problem, our betters tell us!

[Moderation4ever]

The problem I see is the military's infatuation with expensive equipment. Some of that is the people making those system like the profit on high cost high technology equipment.

[Dr. Ed 2]

what is RadioShack?!?

[Dr. Ed 2]

BREAKING NEWS……

One of the perps arrested for throwing a nail bomb at the riot disrupting the peaceful protest at Gracie mansion has described himself as a supporter of Isis and a wanting to be terrorist.

It’s also come out that those nail bombs involve TNTP, the explosive of choice for terrorists.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/isis-inspired-suspects-threw-ied-152700885.html

[jb]

Luckily, it seems like the ISIS infrastructure in the US isn't very good since these guys weren't able to build bombs that actually exploded.

[Bored Lawyer]

Certainly drone warfare is going to be a big development in warfare in general. I hope that some smart people are working on how to deal with it effectively.

[Bob from Ohio]

"The US is stopping multi thousand dollar Iranian drones with million dollar missiles."

A lie.

[Krayt]

Fine. Trying to stop.

[Bob from Ohio]

No, they use other weapons than million dollar missiles to kill drones

[ducksalad]

You're sort of right.

Air-to-air missiles are less than half a million each.
The planes cost maybe $10K/hour to fly so if they're averaging more than a kill per 50 hours of flight time it might still be under a million.

The incremental cost per shot on the new lasers is much less but there's a huge base cost (including development) that has to get paid off. Eventually it'll be low cost....if we keep getting involved in large scale drone wars.

[Ridgeway]

You'd think that those Phalanx-type rotary cannon and gatling gun systems would be really effective against drones. In a populated area, though, I could see big problems as all the shells fall come back to earth at a high velocity.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

One person responded to the opposition of Noem with a comment about how the opponents might not like her replacement. The "devil you know principle." The proposed replacement is dubious:

(NYT)

Mr. Mullin does not fit the traditional mold for a cabinet secretary. He has never held a prominent party leadership role. He has not served on any of the congressional committees that directly oversee the Homeland Security Department or immigration enforcement. He has no law enforcement experience, and before running for Congress, he had never worked in government.

Trump supporters might have at least one criticism:

Mr. Mullin later said he had witnessed a Capitol Police officer shooting and killing Ashli Babbitt, one of the rioters who tried to rush into the House chamber as lawmakers cowered inside and rushed to escape, fearing for their lives. He later defended the officer’s actions, saying he had “saved other people’s lives.”

But Mullin is overall a strong Trump partisan. He promotes a tough guy cowboy image. This is not reassuring given the job.

https://www.dorfonlaw.org/2026/03/the-ominous-normalization-of-casual.html

[Bob from Ohio]

"does not fit the traditional mold for a cabinet secretary"

He absolutely does.

He was a successful businessman and a congressman and a senator.

"He has never held a prominent party leadership role. He has not served on any of the congressional committees that directly oversee the Homeland Security Department or immigration enforcement. He has no law enforcement experience, and before running for Congress, he had never worked in government."

I listed all the DHS secretaries last week. None have these imaginary qualifications.

[SRG2]

Bob, every single person you listed had some relevant admin experience if nothing else, and a lawyer at least knows the rules of engagement. Plumber Mark lacks any relevant experience at all.

But because you're a cretinous cultist - so much kinder than describing you as a dishonest POS - you gots to believe that this is a rational appointment. He makes Michael Brown seem overqualified.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Plumber Mark "

Successful business executive Mark. More than you have ever accomplished.

[SRG2]

Still not qualified.

[John 4]

Conservatives and venerating nepo babies. Like chocolate and peanut butter.

[hobie]

Brad Delp, lead singer for Boston died March 09, 2007

He was replaced by Tommy DeCarlo, a devoted Boston fan who suddenly had his dream. Although Brad Delp's voice was inimitable, DeCarlo gave it as much fidelity as possible.

Tommy DeCarlo, lead singer of Boston died today March 09, 2026

[not guilty]

AP reports:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, has been named as the Islamic Republic’s next ruler, authorities announced Monday, as Tehran widened its attacks across the Mideast to strike oil and water facilities crucial to its desert sheikdoms.

With Iran’s theocracy under assault by the U.S. and Israel for more than a week, the country’s Assembly of Experts chose as the next supreme leader a secretive, 56-year-old cleric who maintains close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. The Guard has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since the younger Khamenei’s father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Feb. 28 during the war’s opening salvo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHViH23jQlg

[Michael P]

Is he still alive?

Was he alive when he was selected as supreme leader?

[Krayt]

Gentle reminder to the formerly glib: How's Democracy and Will of the People justifying easily abandoning ancient control girders, foisted on us by dead white slave owners, going for you lately?

Are you ready to join me in the whole system is out of order bunker, or are you just waiting for an old man to croak so the gravy train can get back to The Life Into Which You've Become Accustomed?

[MoreCurious]

Once upon a time the VC was populated mostly by lawyers who -- while holding different opinions -- mostly discussed the law and did so without meanness, vulgarity, racism, and stupidity. It was quirky but informative. And then came Frank, Dr. Ed, Michael, the Legal Eagle, and others who managed to escape from their trailer parks and learn how to access the internet and use a keyboard. (Some, but not all, even learned to spell and use correct grammar.) Congratulations! If your goal was to screw up a good thing, you did it.

[Frank Drackman]

I resemble that remark!

[MoreCurious]

Then maybe you should just go away. If it were possible to conduct a poll, I suspect that the vast majority of followers of the VC would admit that you contribute nothing of value and wish that you would disappear. It shouldn't be hard for you to find a blog where your meanness, vulgarity, racism, and stupidity will fit right in. Ask your MAGA friends for suggestions.