TSN Open Mic for the week of 4/3/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these on the Sidebar every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Ok, I know we all want to flex our fabulous Finnish election hot-takes:
https://yle.fi/a/74-20025438
I have no idea who these people are and what Govt. they will form… I just like the fact that the three Major factions all got 20% of the popular vote and the Top Getter (Neo-Libs ::wink::) have to negotiate with either the Left OR the Right to figure out how much of their agenda they can prioritize and at what cost to the other faction(s).
I mean, there are so many hypothetical jenga configurations… I’m rooting for Swedish coalition partners!
My uninformed guess based on the Law of Corporate Entropy is that NCP will form a coalition with SDP rather than Finns because the SDP has more institutional ‘heft’ and experience.Report
Sanna Marin now has more time to get drunk with friends.
Lucky duck.Report
If Boris were beautiful, he’d have had the oppty to lose gracefully in the next election.Report
Well, if what you’re looking for are conventionally-attractive incumbent female heads of state or government from European nations, now that Sanna Marin will no longer be prime minister of Finland, let me point you to Maia Sandu of Moldova, Kaja Kallas of Estonia, or Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland (who, IMHO, looks more than a little bit like Björk but that probably isn’t very surprising and I still think Björk is good-looking too). If you’re going to go beyond Europe, Jetsun Pema of Bhutan is strikingly attractive.
Personally, I think that I’m able to assemble such a list because a) all politics is becoming more visual since television, b) women are assuming more prominent roles in positions of power and influence in this phase of feminism (in nations hospitable to feminism), and c) I am in their general age group, which colors my subjective assessment of attractiveness.
I’ve little opinion of Ms. Marin’s performance as her nation’s head of state beyond noting that Finland is one of the wealthiest, and happiest, nations on earth although I’m not sure how much she had to do with that. Also I’m glad to welcome Finland into NATO, a decision with which Ms. Marin probably had much to do.Report
Heh, I’m not sure I was looking for such things; merely noting that there seems to be a hidden cache of political capital for the beautiful among us.
Mostly I was intrigued by the three-way tie and the bizarre voting mechanism — it seems you can vote for anyone on a Party Slate such that they track who the ‘Vote Magnets’ are — and then the party slate gets elected in depending upon arcane mathematical proportional tallies.
“Finland’s electoral system is based on the d’Hondt proportional representation model. This allows voters to pick one candidate from party lists, with the candidates then arranged in order of popularity. Each party list allocates seats in proportion to their vote share. In short, this means that the more popular candidates a party has, the better the party does. And celebrities can garner a lot of votes, so there are plenty on the party lists this year.”
Yay for proportional representation and bizarre electoral gimmicks!Report
I’ve always found this to be a helpful guide for figuring out the basics of multi-party coalition building in Europe:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2458327-political-compassReport
Checks out.Report
The irony is there will be plenty of uniformed hot takes about Marin’s performance, but her party actually gained in seats, it’s just that her coalition partners in the Left, Green’s, and Centre had pretty severe drops (the Green’s lost 33% of their vote from last election).Report
Yeah, I noticed that. I was trying to figure out how the votes may have migrated.
It makes intuitive sense that the Center Party (Rural) seats might have migrated to either NCP or Finns… but while they lost 8 seats NCP/Finns gained 17. So that doesn’t explain it all.
The Parties to the LEFT of SDP – Greens and Left [sic] lost 12 seats… let’s assume that 3 of those seats went to SDP. Intuitively it’s harder to imagine that the Green/Left voters migrated to NCP/Finns to the tune of 9 seats??
Possibly it’s an artifact of the d’Hont system? Or maybe everyone including SDP migrated one step to their right?
Like I say, it’s hard from a pure outsider/intuitive sense to figure out where the Green/Left voters went. Stayed home?Report
So… it seems that NCP (Neo-Libs) will first attempt to form a govt with Finns Party (Right Pop) plus the Christian Democrats (Center Right) and Swedish People’s Party (Center Left Swedes).
Swedish kingmakers in Finland!
SDP “Grand Coalition” is being kept as ‘back-up’ plan to keep Finns honest, I suppose.
There’s a theoretical “Grander Coalition” where SDP and every party *except* NCP and Finns form a Govt… but it depends on how the laws are structured regarding Govt. forming and whether/if they’d get a chance in the event of NCP ‘failing’ to form a Govt. But figuring that out is a level of Finnish parliamentary detail I’ve no particular wish to possess.Report
I believe I’m on record as saying that there should be a norm that any body of elected officials ought not take up new business in lame duck sessions. They should resolve old or pending business and respond to emergencies only, for the sake of respecting democracy.
But still, it’s hard not to giggle a little bit when it’s an ox I dislike that gets gored.Report
Let’s discuss MTG appearance on 60 Minutes. She reiterated her paranoid and false slanderous beliefs that Joe Biden and Democrats generally are pedophiles and other delusions. The only thing Lesley Stahl did in response was mutter “wow” while also providing a general glowing profile for far-right.
1. Legacy media is high on their own supply of alleged journalistic neutrality and can’t bring themselves to admit that some statements are so false and defamatory that they need a harder response than “wow’ because that would be taking a side in the coke v. pepsi battle of American politics. Of course not pointing out that a statement along the lines of all Democrats are pedophiles is dangerous and defamatory is taking a side.
2. People do not understand that giving an interview subject enough rope requires more than just letting them talk.
3. Legacy media also can’t imagine ignoring MTG because she is a rising star in the GOP even though it would completely ignore her if she were a LaRouchite handing out pamphlets on a city street or just a rando on TikTok or the gram.Report
Legacy media’s “high on their own supply” is why they are turning to the MTGs of the world, they are getting less and less of a high off Trump and need the next thing to keep it going. So you get someone who openly does business with Nick Fuentes and is barely hiding her horridness publicly as the better cut product for ratings high.Report
True statement.Report
“The reactionary centrists will sell us the airtime with which we will hang them!’Report
Well, she is a sitting member of the House of Representatives, which whether we like her or hate her, elevates her above some rando passing out pamphlets on the street corner or posting bizarre disconnected-from-reality screeds on social media.Report
To an extent, there is a fancy French term I can’t recall right now which basically involves putting up an imaginary sanitation zone around a politician with unacceptable beliefs even if a sitting member of the House of Represenative.
Even with your claim, Stahl could have said more than just wow.Report
I think its cordon sanitaire or something like that.
I’m not opposed to them covering the wackos because the wackos hold power and that itself is newsworthy.
I just get irritated at the softball “opinions about the shape of the earth vary” type of coverage.Report
The fact that MTG holds high office is not a reason to treat her as anything but a nutcase. The fact that MTG holds such high office and is a nutcase is a very good reason for the media to challenge her hard.Report
More than just being a rep in the house, as I read the way the speaker election played out, she is also an important Republican power broker. I think that distinguishes her from your Ron Pauls or, if I need to make it bipartisan, the Dennis Kucinichs of yesteryear.Report
I don’t think “power broker” is a meaningful term when it’s 222-213.Report
I dunno. I think MTG’s support for McCarthy may well have been critical in allowing the Freedom Caucus to make their point but then eventually switch their votes without losing credibility with their constituencies. My take on congresses and senates of razor thin majorities is that the prominent members really do run cover for those less so.Report
Lesley Stahl is old enough and in a big enough bubble to be floored by MTG giving far right propaganda with a straight face on national media. In the past, the more unhinged politicians were always in command enough to appear respectable and this makes legacy media unable to deal with crystal meth attack squirrel politicians.Report
Fun! Fun! In normal situations of high profile criminal defendants, the prosecutor lets the defendant’s attorneys know what the defendant will be indicted on before the hearing as a professional courtesy. Trump’s ravings caused the Manhattan DA to not follow this courtesy.Report
MattY wrote a post about gun control.
In it, he pretended to not understand why “Assault Weapons” were totems and handguns are ignored and progressives actively do not want gun laws to apply to handguns:
Here’s an excerpt from the middle:
Read the whole thing.Report
Conservatives: “Liberals want to take your guns away!
Also conservatives: “Liberals don’t want to take away your guns!”
Maybe they need to get a bunch of stakeholders around a table to decide what they’re saying.Report
I’d phrase it like this instead:
Progressives: “We want to take *YOUR* guns away! We don’t care about their guns.”
I mean… it’s got explanatory power.Report
Uh huh.
But then you might need to explain who the “Your” and “Their” are.
Or…maybe you won’t. IfyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo.Report
The Progressives are obviously speaking to the people who own assault weapons and saying that they don’t care about handguns.
Seriously. MattY’s essay got into this.
Again: It’s got explanatory power. It’s got explanatory power *DESPITE* insinuations.Report
I searched his essay in vain for any examples of Progressives asserting that handguns aren’t a problem.
Did you post the right link?Report
Here, let me give you the excerpt that talks about the Progressives’ revealed preference:
Report
I didn’t think his essay was wrong exactly but it did sort of conspicuously not address how this positioning came about. That being the racial disparity in incarceration that would (and indeed in the Broken Windows era did) result from really aggressive enforcement of laws against carrying handguns and/or pretextual stop and frisks with the aim of confiscating handguns. Both approaches have of course also become a lot less constitutionally tenable in the interim with NYPD’s stop and frisk policy held illegal and the Bruen case last year.
I also think if your position really is that all private ownership of firearms should be curbed to the greatest extent possible then it isn’t totally crazy to focus on those where polling seems to suggest some level of public support for the idea, as opposed to those where it is a non-starter.
Now I personally fall on a different side of the gun debate but where I see it as unpersuasive to the intended audience is in failing to take on competing priorities in the Democratic coalition.Report
The concepts of low-hanging fruit and political possibilities seem to desert some folks on a random basis.Report
MattY’s essay tackled that too!
Report
It’s not even particularly failing to take on competing priorities, it seems to fail to acknowledge them.
Arguing for gun control at the same time as arguing for lighter gun possession sentences at the same time that homicide rates are going up?
That’s some serious dissonance territory.Report
This data point- that prosecutors are choosing not to prosecute some gun possession charges- doesn’t support the conclusion that progressives “actively do not want gun laws to apply to handguns”.
Has Matt talked to some of these prosecutors to find out their reasoning?
Has he looked at some of the cases to see if maybe there are good reasons not to pursue them?
Has Matt looked at progressive governors in California and Colorado (to name just two) who are aggressively pursuing gun control legislation that yes, includes handguns?
Has Matt looked at progressive advocacy groups to get their opinion of whether gun control laws should apply to handguns?
Like I said, his assertion seems like it was airlifted in from an entirely different link, and left to wander until it perished for lack of support.Report
Chip, if the law is on the books and the prosecutor declines to apply the law, that does seem to result in “this law doesn’t apply”.
I mean. That’s tautological.
I get that you want to argue that, no, this is good!
But you don’t get to argue that it’s good at the same time that you’re arguing that it’s not happening at the same time that you’re calling for more gun control.
Well, you can, I guess. You can do whatever you want. Knock yourself out.
Here’s MattY’s conclusion:
Report
I think its cute … errr … quaint how you believe Matt Y is anything close to a progressive, much less a leftist. Almost roll on the floor cute.
I own hand guns and long guns. I shoot regularly. And because those guns were gifts, there has yet to be a single background check of me in receiving them. Its almost on the sketchy edge of strawman purchases. Now, having to pass FBI background checks every 10 years to stay employed means I can probably do it. But i have yet to be forced to. Which means there’s no record of me interacting with guns in a commerce setting. That strikes me as wrong.
It also strikes me as wrong that a black man – with a well reasoned skepticism of the police, trying to feed his family with all sorts of side hustles he has to protect, is gonna get popped for possession of a weapon – usually a hand gun – and have “Felon” added to his pronouns while I can keep amassing an arsenal. Neither of us has an administrative record of acquiring those guns. But he’s in legal jeopardy and I’m not.
Oh, and to put a really fine point on it – when the NRA campaigns as vigorously against black concealed carry holders getting killed by cops for reaching for their concealed carry permit AFTER telling the cops they had one and they were carrying, then we can talk about the “ethics” of banning semiautomatic rifles in military calibers with tactical enhancements (which is what an Assault rifle is).
But we knw from long experience that we won’t ever see that will we?Report
He was a Progressive 20 years ago. I suppose that makes him reactionary in the current year. (Remember when he helped found Vox? Good times.)
Go Howard Dean!
Anyway, I also understand why the fight to end gun violence focuses on Assault Weapons and not handguns.
But that’s because I understand it’s not about gun violence.Report
“I own hand guns and long guns.”
“with a well reasoned skepticism of the police, trying to feed his family with all sorts of side hustles he has to protect, is gonna get popped for possession of a weapon”
So, swap out “black man” with you. You don’t think you’re gonna get popped? Got a concealed carry permit? If not, in almost every “liberal” state, you’re getting arrested.
If you replace yourself with black man, that man wouldn’t’ have problems either UNLESS he didn’t have a permit to carry–unless you live in a constitutional carry state.Report
even in Mississippi – which is a weird open carry/not open carry state, a black man will get popped and I won’t. And no, having lived in the liberal republic of Maryland, where CCWs are may issue not shall issue, I assure I wouldn’t. Because I’m not the guy the police are looking to pull over.Report
“assure” I assume you meant to type “assume”. I think you give MD too much credit. What’s he getting popped for if he’s LEGALLY carrying?Report
I wrote what I wrote. I didn’t mistype.
The carrying is almost never the pretext for the stop. Philando Castile was legally carrying, and got stopped for a traffic violation. Which is the leading way cops initiate interactions with black men in the US. Hell, even in shall issue states like Florida, black men are denied ccw permits between 3 and 5 times as often as white men.Report
OFC carrying is rarely the reason for the stop….. OFC it’s always something else.Report
After Bruen last year all states are shall issue, including MD. The response to that currently working through the legislature (and already sort of in effect at the county level in the big DC burbs, though no one knows if it’s enforceable) is to issue the permits but prohibit actually carrying virtually anywhere. Doubtlessly it will be on its way to the 4th circuit the second it passes.
But really I think your view on this is pretty misplaced, at least with respect to Maryland. There is no white guy exception to getting caught carrying illegally.Report
in our 11 years in MD, never once were my wife or I asked if we had weapons in the car when we were stopped for various traffic violations. My black neighbors were asked every time. And that story is repeated across a swath of the folks I know who still live there. Now sure that’s anecdotal evidence with a small n , but when you consider that whites outnumber blacks in MD roughly 2 to 1, and yet are stopped by cops at the same rate for traffic violations, the likelihood of black man getting popped for a handgun in the car is significantly higher.Report
I don’t entirely disagree. But also keep in mind that when you lived here carrying a firearm anywhere and for any reason except in a bag, out of reach, ammo separate, to and from a shooting range (or I guess a hunting spot) was always illegal.Report
And NOT in the Cabin of the car.Report
When did you leave Maryland? Because a year before covid, I was pulled over for speeding (65 in a 55) and was specifically asked if I had any firearms in the car.Report
We “moved” in 2016 but I still worked up there (commuting by Southwest airlines) through December 2019.
And I’m not saying things haven’t or won’t change. Just relaying experiences which – like all of us – colors our perceptions.Report
Up the road a bit and much longer ago, a NJ state trooper stopped me on my first day of work at Bell Labs because I had Texas plates. He searched the car for firearms and then gave me a lengthy lecture about NJ gun laws. The woman in HR who was in-processing me said it was the best excuse she’d ever heard from someone late to their first day.Report
Heh, when I moved to MD a long time ago, I recall people talking about the cops driving through neighborhoods noting folks with out of state tags. Cruise by again, 30 days later? Bamp citation. MD law only allows a short window to get state tags. Gotta get that 5 percent tax on the car.Report
Speaking of Vox founders, Ezra Klein has a great little opinion piece in the NYT: The Problem With Everything-Bagel Liberalism
Man, it’s weird how these former Progressives keep becoming reactionaries in the current year.
Tradeoffs? That’s just discrimination with extra steps!Report
As with Matt Y, if you think this is some new phenomena, you aren’t paying attention. Glenn Greenwald used to be a die hard leftist, then he wasn’t. Klein used to be a reliable, if slightly centerist liberal. Ditto Matt Y. their positions, and the field of political play has evolved over time. which means they now appear reactionary, when in fact they have been stepping in this direction for a while.Report
Eh, my take is that they’re pretty much where they were in 2004 and if you plopped a whole bunch of 2004 “progressives” into the current year, they’d (initially) come across as right-wing nutjobs until they learned the new semiotics of the current moral fashion.Report
The only true progressives are trust fund kids doing their best dirt bag left impression on twitter and marginalized groups too downtrodden to understand the reactionary sentiments they at times express in public polling.Report
You know, most trust funds aren’t even that much. They cover rent and food and not much else. So coming down hard on trust fund kids just because their grandparents worked hard is unfair.Report
A person with progressive views on race in 1960 may seem pretty conservative by 1980. Welcome to social change and getting old. 2004 is actually a long time ago, nowReport
Yep-
A person with 1960-era conservative views on economics would be a liberal today.
In 1973, a lot of evangelicals supported Roe but were bitterly opposed to premarital sex.
A lot of the Hippies had astonishingly misogynistic views on women.
And so on.Report
Sure.
But they haven’t been stepping in the direction of reaction.
They’ve merely been standing still.Report
I don’t know that any of the old Vox gang was or is conservative. They’d make an effort to discuss both sides of an issue before they came down on the standard liberal think-tanky side. These days, hardly anyone on the left bothers to engage in discussion or recognize limiting principles.Report
What is the phrase? “A conservative is a liberal that grew up”?Report
Then I guess I’ll never grow up.
Thanks for the sideways insult.Report
The phrases used to be:
“A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged” and
“A liberal is a conservative who has been indicted.”Report
There we go.
@ Phillip…wasn’t intended as an insult.Report
Thanks for clearing that up.Report
You’re right that the Everything Bagel model of governance is the problem, but the thing about Everything Bagel is that everything on it is good. Liberals tend to do this thing where they figure that the way to get people to eat rat turds is to sprinkle them on an Everything Bagel and we’ll be so happy about getting starchy dough with onion and garlic and sesame seeds that we won’t be upset about the rat turds. (And then we say “yeah, no” and then everyone wonders Why The Labor Class Refuses To Accept Things They Say They Like…)
Although that’s only one failure mode; the other one is where the Everything Bagels are free (and free of turds) but to get one you have to file request forms with two different clerks and show at least one form of identification that’s in-date and has your photo and a home address within city limits, and the bagels are locked inside a case and if you take one without authorization you go to jail, and everyone figures that Structural Racism is the reason nobody seems to want to take the free bagels…
(also my fingers really want to spell it as “bagle”.)Report
Good news!
People who hate Rowling can take comfort in the fact that the show’s writers are likely to be even worse than the writers for Wheel of Time (which I kinda liked!) and the new Lord of the Rings show.Report
I assume you meant to type “DIE DIE DIE!” under this story rather than the next one.Report
Nah, I’ll wait to see what the writers’ room comes up with.
The writers are used to being able to fight against dorks who do stuff like read “Wheel of Time” or “Lord of the Rings”.
They ain’t ready to go up against Potterheads.Report
The same fanbase that spent more than $1.5 billion on seats for the Fantastic Beasts movies?Report
And Hogwarts Legacy and tickets to the Wizarding World.
The Star Wars movies made a freakin’ mint… but the Disney television show writers seem to have earned more goodwill than the folks in charge of the flicks.
And after all of the static and *MONETARY* feedback given to LotR, and The Witcher, and Wheel of Time, and whatnot, there does seem to be a willingness to not immediately resort to “people who don’t want to consume our product are problematic”.
Because, lemme tell ya, the Potterheads seem 100% immune to that criticism in ways that the Tolkien folks could only dream of immunity.Report
I somehow missed this.
We all know that NPR had layoffs. We all know that this was regrettable.
What *I* didn’t know was that the layoffs were problematic.
It’s always DEI, DEI, DEI! until it’s time to figure out who doesn’t get laid off and then it’s just DIE DIE DIE!Report
Via Balloon Juice, Alejandra Caraballo:
The under 20 demographic is majority minority with 20% identifying as LGBTQ. They are mostly non religious.
They are the future of the country. No amount of dumb policies attacking “DEI,” “wokeness,” “critical race theory,” or “gender ideology” will change that.
All of these horrible laws targeting LGBTQ people, people of color, education, etc. are a vain and futile attempt to turn back the clock and enforce their world view on a culture that’s no longer theirs. They’ve lost and they know it.
Rather than demonstrating power in their moral panic, the people stoking this are demonstrating their immense weakness. By the end of this decade, they will be irrelevant, culturally and electorally. A vestige of an intolerant past raging against a more tolerant culture.
They’d rather turn to pathetic attempts at authoritarian and fascist politics than relinquish their power over this country. They will fail despite the fact we have a system of government that disproportionately favors their voting base to enable minoritarian political power.
Power doesn’t panic.
The far right has already lost. They will continue to lose their power.
They are in their death throes and that’s why they are panicking.
We are the future. They’ll soon be just another sad, pathetic footnote in the dustbin of history.
I would very much like to join her victory dance atop the grave of reactionary bigotry but history only bends in the direct we force it to bend. As examples from Iran and Afghanistan and Hong Kong demonstrate, nations can regress into authoritarianism just as easily as progress into freedom.Report
She is also assuming constant politics on the part of young people. The youth will save us and bring us the Revolution has been a thing on the Left since my parents were young. This turned out largely not to be true. The definition of what it means to be White has expanded in the past when necessary. Asian and Hispanic Americans have a high enough intermarriage rate to show that this happening. Just because a person is LGBTQ doesn’t mean that they share a certain set of politics.
As to DEI, my understanding is that nobody likes it for the most part. I’m part of a business group that is diverse and filled with people who would have “in this house” signs un-ironically on their property. Nobody likes DEI stuff. It literally got zero votes in a survey about what we like in the group. It is literally seen as leftist grift by most people.
Ms. Caraballo is also underestimating how a cohesive and determined minority can impose itself on a diffuse and less passionate majority as you noted. For the most part pro-immigrant Americans, who aren’t directly involved with the immigration business, put up a poster that says “Every refugee boat is a Mayflower” and call it a day. If they pass by the poster, they might take a photo put on social media and get emoji likes. The Right is willing to use the firm and righteous beating hand to get what they want.Report
Despite popular belief, I think the research generally shows most people stick with the politics of their youths.Report
the fun part is when it turns out that the politics of someone’s youth were “smear the queer”Report
I’ve read this too. I am not entirely convinced based on political shifts that occurred throughout the 20th century.Report
I think the reality is that we are going to be a more progressive society in certain ways. Some of the ideas that have come out will not go back in the box, including things like greater visibility of LGBT people, and probably some long term impact on the way the country’s history is understood, and more considerations about disparate racial impact that would have been taken a lot less seriously, say in the 90s.
At the same time I think you’re right. Demographics is not destiny and it strikes me as very unlikely that people with a hispanic or asian parent or grandparent that grow up in the middle class burbs, speaking English are going to en mass adopt the kind of political racial solidarity of post civil rights era black Americans. Even that solidarity doesn’t seem to be quite what it used to be. I’ll also touch a third rail and say that I think there are a lot of… operationally (?) heterosexual people claiming alternative sexual identities inconsistent with how they live their lives. And that’s whatever. It also doesn’t mean there are no gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans people. You never know what is in peoples hearts or heads (or what turns them on) but I think for many younger people this is an identity they are trying on for size but will ultimately end up in heterosexual relationships, with the same kinds of politics that stem from normie family life. Frankly I think that’s also the same thing that will and is happening with many gays, now that civil marriage has freed them from their very selves and relationships being a radical thing.
So I think the world will be different, maybe even unrecognizable in certain specific ways, but there will still be conservatives and they will be powerful politically. There will be no revolution.Report
” I’ll also touch a third rail ” — is it really though? One could argue about specific numbers or percentages, but it’s obvious that this happens.Report
I agree with LeeEsq. What is kind and practical in the modern left understanding of LGBTQ+/DEI/CRT matters will likely persist and be absorbed into the masses as received common sense. But a lot of the stuff that our current modern LGBTQ+/DEI/CRT advocates consider both radical and integral in these things is likely going to fizzle out. You can see it happening already with DEI. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s in decline but the bloom is assuredly coming off the rose for it. In corporate world it’s quickly becoming recognized that money spent on DEI is money that can be cut from budgets without actually costing the organization much in any practical terms.
What’ll be most frustrating, no doubt, will be how everyone will rewrite history to say they always supported what was enduring in these ideologies and quietly sweep the radical and unpopular stuff under the rug. Take Same Sex Marriage for instance. The LGBT+ radicals were vociferously opposed to SSM in the 90’s and early aughts. Then, when they came around on it, they leaped to the front of the parade and pretended they’d been pushing it all along. It’s weird having lived long enough to actually see the whole sweep of that history from one side to the other. Getting older is odd.Report
See above re: Glenn Greenwald, Matt Yglesias, and Ezra Klein. If you ask them, they would say they are still liberal and probably do still hold to most of the beliefs they held in their early 20’s.
(Well, I’m a little bit iffy about Greenwald on this score, TBQH.)Report
IMO Ezra Klein is still a liberal but he is of the technocratic variety. I do not fully think his Sunday column on everything bagel liberalism was wrong but it also kind of misses the forests for the trees and does not really analyze why various city governments felt it was important to add provisions at the time they were added.
Glenn was never really on the left and his main audience appears to be knee-jerk contrarians who hate winemom liberals more than anything else. Matt Y once admitted that he will always take the most contrarian possible take he can without someone being able to accuse him of being a reactionary so there is that.Report
” does not really analyze why various city governments felt it was important to add provisions at the time they were added.”
This isn’t actually important to his point. Anyone who’s serious about good government needs to grapple with the fact that regulations aren’t free — there should be not just a solid ROI analysis for any individual regulation but also a concept of a regulatory budget. Prioritize the most effective/most important/highest ROI ones, don’t just argue for each one in isolation.
I’ve been saying this for years, but sadly no one listens to me…Report
“I would very much like to join her victory dance atop the grave of reactionary bigotry”
yeah, see, the problem is that if part of your politics is doing victory dances atop the graves of etc. then you’ve got a nasty shock coming
because the kids aren’t queer-positive, it’s not An Identity, they don’t consider this to be A Struggle
they’re queer-neutral. they’re queer-accepting because they don’t care enough to be queer-rejecting.Report
Apparently something is going on in Tennessee:
Nashville school shooting updates: Students demand gun control; shooter fired 152 rounds
Hundreds have already packed into the Tennessee Capitol, with more waiting to get through security, ahead of floor sessions Monday night. Many are parents who brought their young children. The crowd chanted “What do we want? Gun control. When do we want it? Now!” House members will be arriving soon and will have to pass through the crowd to get to the chamber.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2023/04/03/nashville-shooting-latest-updates-protests-tennessee-gun-law/70073429007/Report
And meanwhile, Tennessee Republican lawmakers are going to toss out three duly elected democrats for having the gaul to stand up for their constituents.
https://wpln.org/post/republicans-bar-three-democrats-from-committees-following-their-gun-control-protest-on-tennessee-house-floor/Report
THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED!!!
(reads story)
oh
Wait. What does “supporting protesters” mean in this context?
Does it mean “agreeing with them”? Does it mean “letting them in”?
The story doesn’t say.Report
Stop trying to Jan 6th this Jaybird.Report
Oh, sorry.
Wow! They’re going to toss out three duly elected democrats.
This is unprecedented.Report
In this case it means sitting in the protests in the state house.Report
Cool, where did you get that info? I’d like to see it.Report
Its in the story I linked to.Report
Here’s what it says:
Report
Yes, those are the protests in Chip’s story. These three joined those protests, and after having already been stripped of committee assignments by the GOP majority – in one case for not strictly adhering to the dress code – they are now about to be thrown out.
So what’s your real question?Report
You’re assuming there’s a real question?Report
What “taking part those protests” means.
Holding hands in a prayer circle in the gallery?Report
I didn’t follow the story, and I haven’t seen the footage. Is there an articulatable standard according to which these people shouldn’t have been shot?Report
Wow – we are talking about elected representatives being potentially tossed out of office by the opposing party for taking part in legally protected protests regarding gun sales, possession and use, and you want an articulatable standard? How about this – the kids that dies in Nashville, as US citizens, were entitled to the right life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the elected Tennessee House democrats who are being threatened with being kicked out of office are being thusly punished for holding their Republican colleagues accountable for state level failures to deal with gun violence.Report
Nothing? Nothing at all?Report
Report
OK, let me try again: is there an articulatable standard according to which these protestors and representatives shouldn’t have been shot?Report
You need to try a different word – talking about anti-gun violence protestors being “shot” is a tad dark, and a tad confusing.
That aside – I don’t believe elected officials of any party can or should be tossed out of their legislative body for participating in constitutionally protected activities. The three districts these three state House members represent are in danger of loosing representation over this. Which is unconstitutional, never mind immoral.Report
A protestor at the U.S. Capitol was shot. Why weren’t these protestors?Report
AH, now I get it, you want to January 6th this.
Wow.
Just wow.
No.Report
Well, if your answer is “wow”, that makes me think there isn’t a standard.Report
January 6th was an Insurrection, where the U.S. Capitol was being physically attacked. Doors were being broken in. Police were being beaten.
This protest in Tennessee was orderly – people came into the state capitol via normal entrances, submitted to security screenings, and chanted. When they were told to leave they did.
Apples and ice cubes.Report
Man, cancel culture is outta control.
Bari Weiss must be furiously typing as we speak.Report
The President of Hamline University, who was responsible for firing an art teacher who showed Islamic art that pictured Mohammed, (a plan announced to students so pious Muslims could skip the lecture) is stepping down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/03/us/hamline-university-prophet-president-fayneese-miller.htmlReport
Man, cancel culture is outta control.
Bari Weiss must be furiously typing as we speak.Report
Any joke that requires an explanation is a bad joke.Report
There is a collision happening creating Stalin-level dissonance on the right.
As with “woke”, “cancel culture” means “anything I don’t like” .
Meanwhile, “conservatism” means “the opposite of whatever liberals want”.
So in this case, the conservative position is to oppose the firing of a university president, because that’s what liberals want, and label it cancel culture.
But the president was fired for firing (cancelling) an art teacher over a politically incorrect exhibit.
So conservatives are engaged in a struggle session with themselves to determine the correct party line to answer the question “What is CorrectThink when liberals cancel a person who cancelled a politically incorrect act?”Report
I’m pretty sure that the conservatives are more taking the attitude that “the left eats itself… thus has it always been”.
As someone who got a degree a million years ago, my sympathies were always on the side of the art professor who showed the art. I think I thought something like “that’s what art classes are for” and “the administrators who fired the professor were stupid, stupid, stupid”.
But I could see how the conservative position would not be confusion as much as “good, let them fight… we will root for injuries.”Report
The president acted in an illiberal manner, and liberals rallied to criticize her.
Isn’t this exactly what the champions of free speech are demanding?
Why then would they root for the victim of censorship to be injured?Report
There were several rallies, if I recall correctly.
Not all were devoted to the same liberalism.Report
Uh huh.
So, what is the conservative CorrectThink here?
Art Perfessor, Good or Bad?
President, Good or Bad?
Who should be injured, and why?Report
“Yay, these places are discrediting themselves a little bit more every day!”
That’s my best guess.
The injuries seem to be to the entire institution.
Even the course correction makes the institution look sillier than it did yesterday.Report
Why?Report
Because it’s yet another ham-handed reaction based on the winds of outrage rather than based in anything rooted in principle.
Here’s a question for you:
Are they going to have this class next year?Report
Have you considered the possibility that the outrage the whole time has been rooted in principle?Report
I have no doubt that it was rooted in principle.
It’s just a set of entirely different principles than that of the academy when, say, *I* was there back in the neolithic.
And those principles conflicted with the New and Improved principles.
The New and Improved principles resulted in the ouster of the poor professor… then the old principles reasserted themselves and now the administrator who was the face of adopting the New and Improved principles rather than keeping the old ones is tossed out.
And you should see how the numbers for the Humanities are doing across the board.Report
Isn’t “getting outraged over an illiberal abridgement of free speech”, the very definition of principle?
I mean, according to what you’ve told us, you should be applauding the professor and liberals who successfully defended freedom.
What did they do wrong?Report
They didn’t do anything wrong; they were the wrong people.Report
What did they do wrong?
They failed to gatekeep properly and allowed a buffoon to be in charge of blunders large enough to cause a loss in reputation.
It was worse than a crime. It was a mistake.
It has resulted in a mess instead of a victory.
Again, are they going to have this class next year?
(And if you want to see where we discussed Hamline in January, you can do so here and here.)Report
I got it.Report
Running with themes today… from a few weeks ago: The End of the English Major.
The subhed: “Enrollment in the humanities is in free fall at colleges around the country. What happened?”
My go-to hypothesis on this topic remains “It makes sense to get a humanities degree for $X. It does not make sense to get a humanities degree for $4X.”
But I saw a new hypothesis today that said something to the effect of “The Humanities Department used to allow much more disagreement than it does today. It used to be a department were you could go and non-conform.”
That idea appeals to too many of my priors to just drop my old hypothesis and pick up the new one but I could see how the current Humanities Enrollment problem has a thousand parents.Report
Money should never be discounted (see what I did there?) as a factor. But it’s also hard for me to imagine a more unpleasant environment than what I have heard these places have become if you are anything other than a member of a particular chorus.Report
I’ve joked about this before…it used to be a Hollywood trope of the square uptight guy (math professor) falling in love with the free-spirited gal (English professor). Me, I’ve never had a boring conversation with a math person and maybe one interesting one with a humanities.Report
YMMV. This is a variant on, or subgenre of, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope?Report
Yeah, the creative type who looks upon the world in a different way.Report
One of my fond memories from undergraduate days, when I was painfully shy around women, was when a woman at a party told me, “You can’t be a math major, you’re much too normal.”Report
We all know about that legal thing going on in NYC today featuring a well known and mildly popular public narcissist. Buried in the press today was another story about him, losing again:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/04/politics/trump-aides-testimony-january-6/index.html#:~:text=Former%20President%20Donald%20Trump's%20legal,to%20a%20new%20court%20filing.Report
I’m simply amazed at the number of lawyers who are taking on the huge risk of not getting paid. Have they managed a fat retainer up front?Report
They plan to make it up on volume.Report
Among the first things I remember my legal writing professor saying was ‘you guys are going to be shocked at how many dumb lawyers there are out there.’Report
North Carolina State Rep Tricia Cotham is allegedly going to switch her party affiliation from D to R: https://jezebel.com/north-carolina-democrat-plans-to-switch-parties-to-allo-1850299650
This will give Republicans a veto-proof supermajority and an ability to institute an abortion ban. Ms. Cotham’s district is deep blue and switching parties will doom her electorally unless the NC Republicans do some really freaky redistricting.
Everyone seems floored by the news and the speculation is that she is doing this out of spite because her absence was criticized on a veto over ride of a gun bill and/or because she became rich by selling services to charter schools and switching will allow a bill to go forward which allows charter schools to receive public money more easily.Report
There’s some more…interesting rumors out there as well.Report
Is that the one about her alleged romantic relationship with an NC House GOP member?Report
Cothan was also apparently big into reproductive rights and very open about having an abortion in the past.Report
Well, we all know that NC Republicans would never stoop to freaky gerrymandering.Report
Wisconsin Supreme Court election called easily for the Democratic-backed candidate, the special election for Senate Election 8 is still too close to call. It looks like Valas is going to lose the Chicago Mayor’s race:Report
The very weird supposed anti-woke backlash from voters that was supposedly coming that’s actually leading to the most left-leaning Chicago mayor ever and hopefully, legislative democracy actually returning to Washington.
Maybe 45-year old centrists in D+40 areas upset their kids are using different pronouns don’t have the ear to the pulse of what voters actually want.Report
Wisconsin but yes. Unfortunately the Republican won the special election and we need to wait and see if the GOP in Wisconsin is insane enough to preemptively impeach and convictReport
The R house speaker said “No’ to impeaching her today. Really hard to try that in any case but when she wins by 10% that is a bridge to far.Report
Keeping it classy in Wisconsin: “I do not have a worthy opponent to whom I can concede,” calls Protasiewicz campaign “beneath contempt,” alleges “rancid slanders” and calls Protasiewicz a “serial liar”Report
Did Justice Kelly say that himself? Wisconsin judges are governed by a Code of Judicial Conduct that requires all judicial officers, including Justice Kelly, to do the following:
SCR 60.02 A judge shall uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary. An independent and honorable judiciary is indispensable to justice in our society. A judge should participate in establishing, maintaining and enforcing high standards of conduct and shall personally observe those standards so that the integrity and independence of the judiciary will be preserved. This chapter applies to every aspect of judicial behavior except purely legal decisions.
SCR 60.03 A judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities. … (2) A judge may not allow family, social, political or other relationships to influence the judge’s judicial conduct or judgment.
SCR 60.04 A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially and diligently. … (d) A judge shall be patient, dignified and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity
SCR 60.05 A judge shall so conduct the judge’s extra-judicial activities as to minimize the risk of conflict with judicial obligations.
(1) Extra-judicial Activities in General. A judge shall conduct all of the judge’s extra-judicial activities so that they do none of the following:
(a) Cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially as a judge.
(b) Demean the judicial office.
(c) Interfere with the proper performance of judicial duties.
SCR 60.06 A judge or judicial candidate shall refrain from inappropriate political activity.
… (3) Campaign Conduct and Rhetoric.
(a) In General. While holding the office of judge or while a candidate for judicial office or a judge-elect, every judge, candidate for judicial office, or judge-elect should maintain, in campaign conduct, the dignity appropriate to judicial office and the integrity and independence of the judiciary. A judge, candidate for judicial office, or judge-elect should not manifest bias or prejudice inappropriate to the judicial office. Every judge, candidate for judicial office, or judge-elect should always bear in mind the need for scrupulous adherence to the rules of fair play while engaged in a campaign for judicial office.
I’ll let y’all decide if Dan Kelly is crosswise with any of those rules.Report
He’s currently a lawyer in private practice, so one could argue that only the last section applies.Report
My mistake — I thought he was still sitting on SCOWI.
Nevertheless, the remarks Saul reposts are not exactly scintillating exemplars of good judicial demeanor.Report
GOP politicians seem to have abandoned any pretext of shame some time ago.Report
I generally find that a lot of states are not willing to actually enforce codes of judicial conduct against their own. This includes blue states. I am generally suspicious of professions being able to police themselves.
Tom Girardi was able to steal from his clients for a long time because the Cal Bar looked away and was also bribed. Cal Bar’s solution to the scandal is more about making themselves look good. In 2022, I had to ask my bosses for the IOLTA account numbers as part of the annual renewal. This was the first time I needed to do it in all my years of being a lawyer. How does making associates have awkward conversations with their bosses fix the Girardi problem?Report
It is much easier to police a basically ethical person that makes a mistake rather than a powerful unethical person.Report
Compact Magazine has a really, really funny article about a A Black DEI Director Canceled by DEI.
Here’s a fun excerpt:
Read the whole thing. It’s a gas.Report
SO that’s an Op-Ed by the person fired, not an article reported by a journalist. Context is important.
You missed the best paragraph:
That tells me she was set up to fail by the school from the beginning, and that while the hiring committee may have indeed wanted what she practiced, they weren’t politically competent or influential at the school since they never provided top cover. The ideological critique she delivers is far less convincing due to that bureaucratic fact alone.Report
Hey, maybe she’s *LYING*. I’ve heard that that’s a problem among the DEI crowd.
That said: If she’s telling the truth, then the whole issue of whether she was set up to fail by the school from the beginning is a fairly interesting buried lede.
To what extent is this representative of DEI in general? I mean, perhaps this chick is an outlier.Report
This is probably the wrong crowd to ask that question of. Most folks here are at best DEI skeptical. I myself have seen and continue to see enormous personal and professional benefits to the DEI I’m getting, especially since in my agency it has been led for years by women of color. SO when the usual suspects go off on their screeds about bad DEI I mostly roll my eyes and move on. All of which is to say we aren’t the droids you’re looking for.Report
Well, my take on this stuff is that it’s like Trumpism. Everybody is the biggest fan of Trump when he’s on the way up. Everybody denies ever having voted for him when he’s on the way down.
This article shows another couple of cracks in the façade of the pendulum.Report
I have yet to meet a Trump supporter who is denying voting for him. They keep buying new flags about every 6 months to make sure I know they voted for him down here.Report
I guess if it’s true in one of the reddest states in the country, it’s true elsewhere.Report
How many trump supporters do you know or read who have done a 180?Report
180s? Few. I don’t know anybody who went from Trump to Biden.
I *DO* know several who went from Trump to “disgusted with the whole s—show.”Report
Yeah, also, there haven’t been any primaries yet, and since most people don’t announce their positions in real life, we don’t know how many have abandoned Trump or to what extent they have.Report
“when the usual suspects go off on their screeds about bad DEI…”
i kind of feel like you should look at the demographics of the author of the article before you start talking about “usual suspects”Report
You know good and well who I was referring to with that comment. And it wasn’t the original author.Report
Bad DEI seems to be getting worse.
If you enjoy comedy, you’ll enjoy this:
The silver lining might be about how the DEI roles are being eliminated so bad DEI might be in the process of being hamstrung?Report
A giant has passed:
Report
That’s a bummer. Our Catan Saturday nights are epic.Report
Oh man. I think I shall dedicate this month’s game-and-potluck night to him.Report
30 under 30 keeps winning:
Report
The LSU/Iowa story keeps getting dumber somehow.
Report
Someone is getting cold feet:
https://twitter.com/JonSchweppe/status/1643434430265016323
Republicans need to figure out the abortion issue ASAP. We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.
Time for everyone to suck it up and unify behind
@LindseyGrahamSC
’s 15-wk bill w/ exceptions. That’s the play.
The alternative is suiciding the pro-life movement. We are months away from that happening.
The correct response here is “No, Mr. Schweppe, you chose to copulate with the absolutists, so you must carry this issue to term, even if it results in your political death.”Report
He seems to have missed the memo where the GOP united behind total bans on abortion because that’s what the base expected in a post-Roe world since that’s what they have been promised for 40 years. And yeah if that’s not the outcome the GOP wanted in Wisconsin – which it surly would have had with a 4-3 conservative court and the 1896 total ban law being triggered – they had an entire campaign to say otherwise.
TLDR: F*ck around and find out has arrived.Report
From Schweppe’s thread: “We need to give GOP politicians a winning message on life NOW. If we don’t, they will abandon us and embrace ‘no federal role.'”
For five decards you argued “no federal role,”
With Nixon, Reagan, Trump, and Dole,
But you don’t want to deal with the Dobbs mess, now do ya?
You sent your Senators out to D.C.
To confirm Neil, and Brett, and Amy,
This isn’t their problem anymore, hallelujah!
Hallelujah, hallelujah. hallelujah, hallelu-oo-oo-oo-jah. Report
We need a “like” button.Report
This is pure win.Report
What are conservative so afraid of when it come to transgender women and bathrooms?
https://www.kcur.org/2023-03-08/kansas-republicans-vote-bar-transgender-women-bathrooms-prisons-sheltersReport
You left out prisons. Why did you leave out prisons? Why didn’t you start by saying that Republicans want to keep biological men out of women’s prisons?Report
What do fear from housing transwomen in women’s prisons? Rape? That happens now to biological women incarcerated with biological women just as it does biological men incarcerated with other biological men.
What do you fear from trans women that requires all this legislation?Report
You’ve accused me of caring about women being locked in a cell with a male sex offender who claims he’s a woman. OK, yeah. I’m against prison rape.Report
How many of these exist in Kansas? And why does segregating a prison population require segregating library bathrooms, or any other space referred to in this story?Report
I’m going to regret stepping into this issue again but I would say the critical issue is maybe less trans people than it is rules that would make it very difficult to filter out predatory men, i.e. the most basic reason for sex segregation in certain sensitive places.
To me for a productive conversation to take place on the subject, we ought to think about what rule (assuming one is possible) would let a legitimately trans identifying transwoman into womens’ spaces but would still filter out predatory men attempting to gain access in bad faith. I don’t think relying on something nebulous and infinitely mutable like self declared gender identity is workable.Report
All fair points. Why then does the prohibition need to extend to library or school bathrooms? Or sports event? Or sports participation?
What’s the fear driving this?Report
Well for my two cents I think we’re going about the entire conversation the wrong way by trying to mandate blanket bans or de facto eliminate the ability to enforce any sex based distinctions even where it is totally reasonable to have them.
To me what makes sense is to try to define what trans is, particularly if it arises from a consistently diagnosable condition. Once that happens it becomes possible to have a conversation about what accommodations are necessary for those individuals. Is this a form of gatekeeping? Sure. But I don’t see any other way to go about resolving the issue.Report
Gender dysphoria – the psychological diagnosis underlying all transgender treatment in the US presently as Standard of Care – is found in the DSM V. Its been there for some time. SO that’s covered. And treatment up to and including hormone replacement and gender reassignment surgeries are Standard of Care in the medical community. And again have been for some time.
Which tells me we know scientifically as best we can know what transgenderism is. And we can know what accommodations we need to make.
But this bill isn’t about accommodating. This bill isn’t about taking the medical information and psychological information and criminal statistics and personal histories of trans people, and making legal and policy decisions. This bill is about trying to force transgendered Americans from public spaces on the FEAR that a trans woman MIGHT rape a cis woman. As if our rape statutes are not good enough to deal with that rape.
Because some conservatives have decided that transwomen are not in fact women, just men crossdressing for prurient sexual purposes. And cis women and girls must be protected form them at all costs.Report
And as previously noted, the new laws rarely differentiate between medical transition, social transition, and drag.
So the goal posts keep getting motte and baileyed between children getting medical treatment and men wearing a dress in public.Report
I can understand your point, but I think we really need to look at what Philip just said. Remember, this starts with just using someone’s preferred pronouns. It doesn’t hurt anyone to be polite, right? It took a couple of years to go from affirming someone’s subjective view to denying objective reality. Philip would rather see a woman locked in a cell with a male rapist than admit the rapist is male.Report
Philip Would rather see rapists handled by existing rape laws then create all sorts of new discrimination in public spaces. As I said, if this was just about prisons, and there were good sound data to back it up, we could talk. But segregating sex offenders can be done under existing laws. It doesn’t require banning transgender women from bathrooms in libraries, or banning them in sports.
And for that matter – why are you ONLY concerned about transgendered women? There are transgendered men afterall.Report
Why am I only concerned about men who claim to be women? I’m not. But I am a man, which means both that I know how dangerous we can be and I’m naturally protective of women. You would have the state lock a woman in a room with a violent male criminal with a penis rather than admit that he’s a man. Of course that concerns me.Report
Yep, the best way to stop a violent male from raping someone is to lock him in a cell with another man.
No way can rape happen then! I mean, it’s just science.Report
The possession of a penis is only one way to define malehood.
And again, we already have laws for segregating sex offenders and for punishing rapists.
Why do we need laws seeking to punish transgendered women sex offenders that ALSO prevent the use of public facilities or sports participation by transgendered women?Report
Here are the DSM-V’s criteria for gender dysphoria, one set for adults and adolescents, and another for children. Criterion “B” in both seems to me to be the part that is how one would distinguish between “legitimately trans identifying transwoman into womens’ spaces but would still filter out predatory men attempting to gain access in bad faith.” If living as one’s natal sex rather than one’s aspirational sex causes profound mental and emotional distress, well, that’s what characterizes gender dysphoria and yes, this is an actual trans person.
More specifically, this is an actual trans person driven to suffer profound mental and emotional distress. So to me, the ball really needs to get moved to: is there some point, short of manifestations of profound mental distress, at which we can accept that a person who says they are transsexual is saying so in good faith? Maybe not drive them to the point that they get diagnosed with a condition found in DSM-V?Report
Ben Dreyfuss noticed something weird with the whole Amazon television shows thing:
If you want to read the Hollywood Reporter story yourself, you can do so here.
Looking at the sections that Ben pointed out…
I get the whole issue of saying something like “We’re going to drop the problematic ranking system that they used in the past” thing. I do. I even get saying “well, we dropped the problematic ranking system that they used in the past and our show went on to bomb horribly but there was no way to foresee that outcome.”
I suppose you can’t run with something like “It’s not our money but it is our vision and you shouldn’t pretend that you’re not going to eat the swill we feed you.”
Saying it out loud, anyway.Report
Even if Vince McMahon says it for years at a time.Report
“Amazon took the issue seriously and dropped the system of ranking shows based on audience scores.”
Well, let’s hope schools don’t start dropping advanced courses if their outcomes don’t fit the preferred demographic distribution.Report
Let’s see who secretly accepted luxury gifts from a major GOP donor…why it is Clarence and Ginny Thomas: https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crowReport
Not that it will ever happen but I think the case for impeaching Clarence Thomas had gotten unexpectedly strong over the last few years. Nothing to do with his jurisprudence, just apparent total disregard and disrespect for the sanctity of the incredibly important office he holds.Report
I saw AOC tweeting about this earlier. I thought “of all the spokespeople…” but, hey, she has reach.
There is a precedent for impeaching Supreme Court Justices… we could explore what that would entail.Report
It would take the same thing as impeaching any other federal official. My view has always been that it’s an inherently political power of Congress, not really a legal standard. Either the votes are there to do it or they aren’t and they most assuredly aren’t.
But I do wish that he would think about the damage this sort of thing does, and the damage having a spouse with apparently no remote sense of propriety does. I mean, what happens if one of the cases against Trump ultimately ends up before the Supreme Court? Is there anyone who could say with a straight face that Thomas is impartial, or is going to put the law above whatever his wife is texting him? I don’t think so. And what are the ramifications of that? It’s totally nihilistic and disgraceful.Report
He got his. And he doesn’t care because he thinks none of that will hurt him.Report
It requires a 2/3rds majority and there is not a 2/3rds majority to do itReport
I think the long game for liberals is to get our side to view SCOTUS the way conservatives do.
Enlarging the court, jurisdiction stripping, whatever it takes for the people to regain control.Report
I think that it was really unfair of the Republicans to make the court larger. That could have been avoided.
The stripping of its jurisdiction, however, was perfectly Constitutional.Report
As someone once said, the game is iterated.Report
The key is to figure out the stopping point and then do one final defection right before that.Report
The stopping point is where they no longer have the ability to defect.Report
Make defecting illegal.Report
We don’t need to. You need to be n power to defect.
The GOP has only very narrow paths to be in a position to defect.
They haven’t won the most votes in a presidential election since W.
Their political coalition is stagnant where it isn’t shrinking outright, and demographics, while not destiny, are not favorable to them.
Their choice of signature issues-abortion bans and hostility to LGBTQ folk- are unpopular.
Their only path to victory involves elaborate and arcane gamesmanship of gerrymandering and rigging of voter rolls.
This can work, but as we saw in 2020, 2022, and in Wisconsin it needs to work every time otherwise they end up worse than before.
Their defeat isn’t assured but right now defection and conflict escalation doesn’t look favorable to them.
Compromise and conciliatory gestures wold be the smart move, but I don’t see much effort being made there.Report
You need to be n power to defect.
This is not true.
The GOP has only very narrow paths to be in a position to defect.
This is not true.
Their political coalition is stagnant where it isn’t shrinking outright, and demographics, while not destiny, are not favorable to them.
This is a conspiracy theory.
The big problem, as you have pointed out, is that the game is iterated.Report
People with liberal lawyer brain will never think like this.Report
50,000 North Korean Commandos Prepare To Join Russia’s Special Military Ops In Ukraine
https://eurasiantimes.com/50000-north-korea-commandos-prepare-to-join-russias-special/Report
he can’t conscript any more of his own people! HAHAHAHAHA!Report
Does anybody actually believe that? If so why?Report
I guess we’ll see won’t we if they actually show up in Ukraine.Report
It seems like it would be a pretty crazy move by the North Koreans. Right now no one really knows what their capabilities are, and purely for purposes of deterring an attack on NK and maintaining the NK government, it seems like it would be much better for them if it stayed that way. Even if they aren’t hollowed out by corruption like Russia’s military has been there’s really no upside for NK to losing any men or materiel in a war on the other side of the planet. Not that stupider decisions haven’t been made but I think this one would be pretty shocking and a very surprising risk.Report
I don’t see this as a crazy move by the Norks.
It’s a move by China.
If they see this as a proxy war, they might see it as a proxy war.Report
Yes, but even from China’s perspective aren’t NK’s troops better left threatening American and SK forces so they can’t be as readily used to intervene in a situation involving Taiwan? Seems like it would weaken their position not strengthen it if the result is to free up any US and allied forces in the Pacific.Report
I honestly don’t know where NK’s troops would be best used from the perspective of China.Report
LOL…NK isnt’ sending thousand of troops anywhere. There is crazy pants ridicdalous.
Does putin want to admit needing help from a client of the Chinese???
Help from a weak pariah that can barely feed it’s own people?
Hell of a supply line for NK to URK? Can’t see how that would difficult?
Why? What does NK gain from getting thousands of good troops turned in Kim-chi in UKR?
Exactly how well woiuld troops speaking another very different language work with russia’s own poorly trained troops?
NK deeply fears SK. So they send 50k troops out of country??? Huh wha?
All this is w/o even thinking that hard about it.Report
Did you read the whole article? The part about the 500,000 additional troops?Report
Everyone cares a lot about federalism until it becomes inconvenient for their side, S 118: Ep. 4.Report
Activist Alejandra Caraballo has reported that Rebekah Jones’s son has been arrested for posting a meme in a snapchat group:
Report
In the states they control the GOP is in a doom loop of authoritarianism.
They can’t win hearts and minds, so they resort to brute force and coercion. Which then infuriates and radicalizes those who might be neutral or even favorable, which as we see in Tennessee leads them to impose further force and coercion, and so on.
It sounds preposterous today, but Reagan won the under-30 vote by 60-30 over Mondale. In 2020 it was nearly the opposite and there is nothing on the horizon to give any promise that this trend will reverse.
Again, the signature Republican issues- LGTBQ and abortion- tilt heavily in favor of Democrats. But this isn’t news, right?
The GOP knows full well that their coalition is stagnant. If you didn’t vote Trump in 2016, you didn’t vote for him in 2020 and almost certainly won’t vote for him in 2024. This is why they are so eager to prevent young people from voting.
History shows us that minorities can hold power for quite a while, but almost always fall into the doom loop from which it is hard to pull out of.Report
The Miami Herald is reporting on it too!
Report
The Pensacola News Journal reports that the memes involved shooting up the school.Report
In a related story: Former Colorado Springs student accused of planning school shooting.
This was District 20.
District 20 was the school district that I went to.Report
Bit more to it…
https://weartv.com/news/local/former-congressional-candidate-rebekah-jones-son-arrested-in-santa-rosa-county
Money shot:
“A search warrant of Jackson’s Snapchat was conducted, where a report states that the Snapchats shown to them by students did come from his account.
A search warrant also recovered messages sent from the account on Feb. 9 and 12 that said:
“I want to shoot up the school”
“If I get a gun I’m gonna shoot up hnms lol”
“I always keep a knife on me so maybe I’ll just stab ppl idk”
“Nah if I do kill people I’ll just kill myself”
Based on the texts, a warrant was made for Jackson’s arrest.”
Seems he made MULTIPLE threats over several days.Report
Memes.
He posted multiple *MEMES*.Report
Below, you said that speech is violence and violence is speech: how would you apply it here?Report
“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”
–Carl SchmittReport
Twitterlord replaces bluebird with Shiba Inu, but continues to periodically flounder.Report
Dunno, it’s semi accurate. Not in perhaps the definition they are currently using, but in the sense that the vast majority of the employees/reporters in NPR align politically and in views with the left, with Biden, with the Democrats, and generally much of the federal govt administration, regardless of who’s in the white house, as well.Report
I don’t know Twitter. Is there an “opinion” or “issue advocacy” designation? Or to Damon’s point, “political party”?Report
How would Fox “News” be designated?Report
Based upon my comment above, They would not be classified the same as NPR. But it’s fair to include them in the “aligning politically with some in Congress”. I doubt there are a majority of “right leaning” folks as employees of the federal gov’t.
I also say this as not having watched fox news in at least a decade.Report
Continuing their doom loop of authoritarianism, Kansas Republicans authorize genital inspections of school athletes in an effort to
increase test scoresinflict pain on a hated outgroup, while Idaho Republicans make it a crime to provide supportive care to trans youths.https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/politics/kansas-veto-override-transgender-sports-ban/index.htmlReport
The Tennessee events along with DeSantis’ efforts to punish Disney show what I was talking about, how the Republicans could in theory behave like a normal, popular party, but can’t restrain themselves and are in the doom loop of authoritarianism.
They can’t engage with opposition with anything other than coercion and suppression, leading to a further alienation and radicalization.Report
Riley Gaines ‘ambushed and physically hit’ after Saving Women’s Sports speech at San Francisco State
https://nypost.com/2023/04/07/riley-gaines-ambushed-and-hit-after-womens-sports-speech-at-sfsu/Report
Speech is violence.
Violence is speech.Report
The Worst Person You Know Makes a great point: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a3514cc06521f454ee237a8357f01a4e5ae6a5a38550d4e9266c6e4fc4a541c.jpgReport
Fun part about this is MTG could read the entire thing to the person in the mirror, and it applies perfectly.Report
Trump’s most fanatical judge does what was expected he would do and suspends approval of Mifepristone but stays his opinion for seven days for the U.S. to appeal to the 5th Circuit: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/texas-abortion-pill-mifepristone-ruling/index.htmlReport
The decision released on the same day as half dozen Republicans quietly panicking over the Wisconsin results and begging the party to ix-nay on the bortion-ay .
More of the spiraling down into the doom loop where the only movement possible is to further radicalism, deeper fanaticism because they have already established that it is a Manichean clash of unerring truth versus demonic evil, and compromise is surrender.
A normal political party would send the signal to its branches to moderate and confuse the electorate with half measures, compromises and platitudes.
But this isn’t a normal political party, its a fanatical insurgency more similar to ISIS or the Taliban than the Reaganauts.Report
This guy was already a radical extremist. Here is a passage where he describes abortion providing doctors as abortionists: https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48487e377243ffc1c62a32b785aa9e31bc83117629e5056a766bd19e3ef213f1.jpgReport
Dumped late on a Friday which isnt’ going to help at all. Monday morning we’re gonna be hearing people find out a 26 year old drug will be going off the market. Why??? All the legal bs isn’t going to matter. It’s gonna hang like an albatross on the pro-life side. And so many R’s are going to hate it and twist into 10 Dimensional pretzels trying to tap dance around it.Report
Interestingly blue state AGs received a preliminary injunction to maintain the status quo: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pjcv7c6fogfzw9k/WA%20FDA%20decision.pdf?dl=0Report
The destruction that’s going to be caused in the interim is of course wrong, and not only because it’s unnecessary. Nevertheless I think that even with Dobbs maintaining strict abortion bans is going to prove impossible over the long term, if for no other reason than pre-emption and the dormant commerce clause. I don’t believe there’s a popular appetite for the kind of dismantling of the federal regulatory state that would be necessary to effectuate stated Republican ends nor for the strangling of commercial activity, all in the name of an extremely unpopular policy objective.Report
“Impossible”, how?
What makes you think Republican judges like this give two craps about “pre-emption” and the commerce clause? They obviously don’t give a crap about “logic” or “rationality” and are totally untroubled by “reality” and the “possibility of causing thousands of needless deaths and untold suffering”.
The Republicans really don’t have any guardrails or concern for even the veneer appearance of law and order.
If it takes passing a law to criminalize women traveling to another state, or if it becomes necessary to conduct genital inspections of children, or mifepristone-sniffing dogs at airports and interstate checkpoints, well, that’s what they intend to do.Report
What the Washington decision does is create a circuit split and make it harder for the Supreme Court to ignore Judge K’s decision. I don’t get preemptive cowardice here.Report
To be clear me either. I’m in full favor of the federal government asserting itself.Report
So is “ignoring court rulings” one of those genies that will continue to do good once it’s out of the bottle?
Because, if so, we should totally let it out of the bottle.
Report
Judge K is defecting in response to what defection from a Democrat?
None of course. He was going to write this ruling since he got on the bench no matter what Democrats did or didn’t do.
The illogic of your comments about defections is premised on the bizarre belief that somehow the Republicans will reciprocate to Democratic overtures, but they have demonstrated that this isn’t so. They continue to spiral down into freakish radicalism even in places like Tennessee where Democrats are utterly irrelevant.
So it really doesn’t matter what Democrats do or don’t do, the next Republican administration will do whatever lawless acts it wants. All we can do is use whatever tools we have to block them from power.
And right now, getting the public to shed their innocence about judicial impartiality is probably a good tool.Report
And right now, getting the public to shed their innocence about judicial impartiality is probably a good tool.
Awesome.
Imagine what will be possible after that gets established!Report
Don’t feed the bad-faith rhetorical tools of JaybirdReport
Hey, you’re a lawyer. What do you think about Congresspeople calling for the Executive to ignore court rulings?Report
What’s funny about the “defection” stuff is that it works in favor of the Democrats now, not Republicans.
This is because lawlessness invariably empowers the majority and the views and policies of the Democrats are held by the majority, while the Republicans are in the minority.
Yes, the Republicans can command majorities in pockets but overall, the response to your question of “What will be possible” if Democrats use bareknuckled power politics, is that Democrats can win and shut Republicans out of power.
Example: Suppose Biden publicly and ostentatiously orders the FDA to refuse to follow the ruling. Will this increase or decrease his chances of re-election? Increase or decrease the chances of Democrats retaking the House?
I know which way I would bet.Report
Then they *SHOULD* do that!
It’s foolish for them to *NOT* do that!
FULL STEAM AHEAD, CHIP!!!Report
“The public already distrusts the Supreme Court so we can’t investigate obviously unethical behavior from Supreme Court justices, it will hurt more”
https://twitter.com/themaxburns/status/1644033008792399874?s=20Report
Harlan Snow, the Billionaire who bank rolls private holidays for Thomas, also collects Hitler Memrobillia: https://www.washingtonian.com/2023/04/07/clarence-thomass-billionaire-benefactor-collects-hitler-artifacts/Report
Good news!!! Gov Abbot TX has already vowed to pardon a guy who was found guilty of murder yesterday. Sadly the conviction occurred in a Soros court in Austin so gotta let the guy the jury thought was guilty out.Report
What? But that subverts the system!Report
Benjamin Ferencz, last living Nuremberg prosecutor has died. He was 103: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/world/europe/benjamin-b-ferencz-dead.htmlReport