On this day, American politician Grover Cleveland, who was the first U.S. president to serve two discontinuous terms (1885–89 and 1893–97), was born.
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 the front page.
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 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.
I mentioned these in the waning days of the last thread but I’m going to mention them again because they strike me as indicators for the summer and autumn:
From The Daily Mail: Labour minister ‘rubbished’ spy chief’s secret dossier on Wuhan lab leak theory during pandemic despite Boris demanding probe… to ‘avoid offending China’
And, on Sunday, the NYT published Zeynep Tufekci: We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives
Lotta passive voice in that title, there.
Report
And we have a new constitutional crisis and it’s not even 8AM.
Donald Trump has announced that the pardons Biden handed out in his final days as president were not signed by Biden but were, instead, signed by autopen and Biden knew nothing at all about the pardons.
Given that Biden didn’t know about the pardons and that they weren’t “signed” by him, Trump has declared the pardons null and void.
How difficult is it for a contract to be annulled because the person who signed it was an elder who was non compos mentis? If that’s something that never happens, it should be easy to dismiss the claims that it applies to pardons.Report
Surely we could ask the former president….
I’m sure he can confirm.Report
As far as I know there’s no bar to a presidential pardon in the Constitution.Report
If Biden didn’t know about it and didn’t sign it… is it still a presidential pardon?
While reasonable people all know that the answer is “yes, because we believe that if Elon put a pardon for himself in the machine and pressed the button that it’d be a real pardon”, there are unreasonable people out there who think that an Elon Pardon that Trump didn’t know about and didn’t sign wouldn’t be a real pardon.Report
Here are the qualifications for holding the office:
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
Here is the pardon language: “…he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States…”
The language is unequivocal. Calling plain language “controversial” is nonsensical.Report
So you agree that Elon can put a pardon in the autopen machine without Trump knowing about it and it’s perfectly legit?
Because that’s the argument. Elon can put a pardon in the autopen machine without Trump knowing about it.Report
First of all, is this just Trump bloviating at 0300 or is he actually offering some evidence.
Secondly, yes.
If he has evidence of a crime, he should produce it and have the offender charged.Report
What if the special investigator comes back and says “I’m not sure we can try Biden… he’ll come across as an elderly man with memory problems”?
Because if that happens, it’ll be to the benefit of Trump’s argument.Report
So be it. He’s got no argument. The language of the Constitution (again) is plain. There is no signature requirement.
You think DJT personally signed all of the insurrectionist pardons?Report
That’s a good point too. I don’t think Carter signed a pardon for every draft dodger.
But, he did sign a document that pardoned a class of people. So he did sign/issue a pardon.
https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/proclamations/04483.html
But I’m not sure you’ll get very far with the constitutional argument… the argument isn’t for a signature, its for proof that the President issued the Pardon and not a staffer.
I could theoretically back this concept if the President were to orally pardon someone by invoking a clear statement of intent publicly witnessed and validated.
Did that happen?Report
I believe that the J6 pardons were all a single document. I believe that he signed it on camera (there are pictures of him holding up the document having been signed).
But to address the fundamental point, I believe that the argument about the president issuing pardons is that the president has to issue them.
Not his staff. Not his best buddy. Not some guy who sneaks into the room with the autopen device and pushes a button.
If the argument that a guy who sneaks into the room with the autopen device and pushes the button has a legit pardon, I think that there are legitimate complaints about that argument and it’s not to the argument’s benefit for them to become (even more) public.Report
It’s worth pointing out that there is literally no requirement that pardons _even be signed_, only that the President has granted them. There is nothing, textually, stopping the president from just issuing them verbally. This is probably a bad idea, but there’s nothing stopping it.
This is because pardons are not laws.
They are merely affirmative defenses you can use in court. The best affirmative defense is indeed a signed document, but it’s not invalid if it is not.
Also, it is _completely insane_ that Jaybird has decided to talk about this as if it is some reasonable legal theory Trump can operate under. Is that hows it’s going to work, as we descend farther and farther into fascism and the executive keeps spewing more and more nonsense?
—
For the record, it being an affirmative defense means it is the _court_ that decides if the pardons are valid, not the president or law enforcement. Trump can indeed direct the justice department to investigate and even charge, and the second they end up in court, in front of a judge, the lawyer for the defense will hand over the pardon and say ‘Here you go, the pardon. Say the words, judge’, and the judge will say ‘This case is immediately dismissed with prejudice. The defendant can go. Prosecution lawyers, stay here, I have to sanction you so hard literally everyone in your office who glanced at this case get disbarred.’Report
It’s worth pointing out that there is literally no requirement that pardons _even be signed_, only that the President has granted them
I agree! The question is whether someone who is not the president can give a pardon on the president’s behalf because it’s what the president would want.
Which… well, it’s not a slam dunk, is it?Report
This is JAQing off.Report
I don’t think that mocking the question is going to be a good play going forward.
I think that it signals the weakness of the position instead of its strength.
“Of course Biden directed the subordinate to issue these pardons and it’s offensive to imply that he didn’t! Trump is offensive!” is, at least, an argument that addresses the core issue.
“It doesn’t matter if Biden knew about the pardons that the autopen signed!” is not an argument that I’d want to defend.
Though I’d probably think that dismissing the issue entirely is the best play…Report
This is like asking the Jewish question in 1933. How about that? Trump is providing an answer for a question that was never asked.
Besides, as DavidTC pointed out below, there is no signature requirement.
If you want a real constitutional crisis, here ya go: https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/trump-white-house-defy-judge-deport-venezuelans.Report
Addendum: if we’re going to treat every raving utterance on Truth Social as a constitutional crisis, we’re in for a long 4 years of very dull conversation on this site.Report
We’re entering some severe “diminishing returns” territory on the Hitler thing.
Isn’t there a Harry Potter reference we could use instead?
“The implication that the Imperius Curse was used to procure these pardons is preposterous!”Report
Whatever works for you, my friend.Report
You know, I actually typed this and deleted it in another post, but there is literally no way to invalidate a pardon if the president has granted it, and I mean the word literally literally.
For the harshest example, if a president grants a pardon at gunpoint, it is still a granted pardon and can be used. It cannot be revoked or invalidated. This may seem Obviously Wrong, but it is not.
The pardon power is almost entirely absolute, exempting only impeachment or state law violations. It used to be slightly restricted by the idea we could prosecute a president who misused it, like selling pardons, until the Supreme Court said no. So now, as long as it’s on a violation of Federal law, that presidential power is literally unchecked and absolute. It’s even uncheckable, after the fact, by the person who used it!Report
“How dare people in a discussion forum point out every level of what Trump is trying to do is complete and utter bullsh*t instead of just picking one!”
Gee, I don’t know, could it be that Trump _himself_ introduced two different arguments, one about the way they were signed, and one about Biden not knowing about them?
Could it be that this is, in fact, exactly how this administration operates, a gish gallop of nonsense that moves from one thing to another, constantly falling back from nonsense position to different nonsense position, and it’s worth pointing out preemptive how it’s _all_ nonsense from top to bottom, and in fact Trump not only does not have the legal power to question pardons, he does not even have the _ability_?
Could it be that is all extremely stupid?Report
Stupid enough for NPR to deal with them.
There’s also the NYT and BBC but, honestly, you’re not going to click on those any more than you clicked on the NPR one.
The issue isn’t “is the autopen sufficient for a pardon?” because OF COURSE IT IS.
The issue of “did Biden direct these pardons personally?” is troublesome because the possibility exists that he didn’t is a larger possibility than “and monkeys might fly out of my butt” due to Biden’s severe cognitive decline.
“There is no reason to believe that Biden didn’t know about these pardons” is a better argument when there is no reason to believe that Biden didn’t know about those pardons.Report
Co graduations then in drawing us into another Jaybird time suck that leads precisely nowhere.Report
Why are you taking his assertions at anything close to face value?Report
Why are you denying that Trump said these things?
“Um, I’m not?”
“Well, I’m now going to argue against you as if you were.”
Here’s a link to what Trump said.
If your argument is that we still don’t know whether Trump *ACTUALLY* said that or if he just had one of his staffers write it on his behalf, yes.
That is the fundamental argument here. Yes. Exactly.Report
I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!!!Report
You arguing such bad faith sometimes.
You are uncritically assuming Trump is correct to say these pardons were done without Biden’s knowledge or consent – it’s the root of your “can Elon do this” digression.
So again – why are you assuming anything Trump says is true?Report
I don’t know that these pardons were done without Biden’s knowledge or consent.
I don’t know whether they were done with his consent or not.
I am agnostic on whether they were.
If Biden comes out and says “Oh, I’m the guy who directed my subordinate to press the button on these pardons”, that would clear everything up.
However, I do think that the question of whether Biden personally directed his subordinate to affix a signature is an interesting enough question that it is in everybody’s best interest to have the question cleared up.Report
And the what? He issued pardons. He made statements about them. He left. His successor wants to reign as a tyrant and you are in the weeds of whether he held the pen. Which gives creedance to the tyrant.Report
If someone snuck into the autopen room and put a pardon in the machine and pushed the button WITHOUT THE DIRECTION OF THE PRESIDENT TO DO SO, do you believe that this is a legit pardon?
Because that’s the debate being forced on us now.
“That’s an absurd question!” might be a good counter-argument but Trump is making the allegation that Biden’s staffers were running things and not Biden himself.
And I’m not sure that moral indignation will work as a tactic against people who do not recognize your moral authority.Report
No I don’t t believe that would be legit. I also don’t believe it happened just because one guy said so.Report
Okay. Not believing that that would be legit gets us to the core issue.
I don’t think it’d be legit either.
I also don’t think that Trump has any special knowledge about how the pardons came about.Report
No, Jaybird, it’s the debate _you_ are choosing us to have.
If you think it’s absurd, you had a chance to comment on that WHEN YOU INTRODUCED IT.Report
Unfortunately, it’s not just me choosing to have the debate. Apparently the White House press room is now involved.Report
Now that’s JAQing off.Report
This is probably one of those things that doesn’t constitute fraud prima facie as Trump seems to imply; *but* is probably one of those things that we either need to put very strict controls around verifying that the eSignature is executed directly by the Executive via a secondary validation – like video.
So, eSignatures could be a legitimate ‘tool’ for signing things, but the tool can’t be automated to the extent that we’re not sure that each and every signature was reviewed by the executive at the moment of signature.
To be clear, the signature can’t be ‘delegated’ to a batch of things… each thing has to be signed, the button has to be pressed each time by the person authorized to push the button.
Anything else is something we should put explicit checks around (if we haven’t already). So, I’ll wait for statements as to how the process is actually managed before passing judgement.Report
Yeah, how the process is actually managed is going to be really important here… because what the process actually is versus what people assume it is (to the extent that they’ve considered it at all) is likely to have very little overlap on the Venn diagram.
The process getting sunlight is probably to the benefit of everybody except the people involved with the process itself.Report
Pardons do not even need to be signed. Or even _written down_. They are not laws, they are affirmative defenses in court.
All they have to do is be ‘granted’ by the president.
And everyone seems very confused about this, thinking Trump can do anything about pardons. He cannot. He can say anything he wants, he can direct the justice department to investigate anyone he wants, even if pardoned for it. He can declare them invalid. Sure, he can do that.
And the defense will walking into court, or not even ‘court’ but the very first hearing in front of a judge, their lawyer will silently hand the pardon to the judge, and the judge will turn to the prosecution and says ‘Case dismissed with prejudice, and you are all sanctioned to the full extent I possible can, and I’m going to make you stand there while I write to the bar to have you disbarred’.
It is such incredibly obvious legal misconduct that it would be hard to conceive of a few months ago from government lawyers, but, hey, here we are. Should be funny as hell if it happens.Report
Sure, what’s the official record that Biden pardoned those people?
It’s the eSignature, no?
What’s the process to verify that Biden executed the eSignature and not a staffer?
As I said above, I’d be fine if Biden publicly read from a list all the people he’s pardoning… no signature required.
You guys are getting hung up on ‘THE SIGNATURE’ not what’s the process to validate that the President ‘granted’ these pardons?
Otherwise, what’s the ex-post facto defense in court that Trump privately pardoned me over the phone… as long as Trump – after he’s president – says he pardoned me privately over the phone.
It’s a lot like Trump claiming he declassified the documents in his heart as he was leaving the oval office.Report
There is basically nothing stopping that from happening. If you were trying to prosecute that person, you could maybe attempt to introduce doubt that had happen, like the defendant’s behavior later did not indicate they thought they were pardoned. But that evidence is very circumstantial, and, as I said, presenting a pardon is an affirmative defense, which means the prosecutor has to prove it _wasn’t_ issued.
It’s really hard for a prosecutor to prove that certain things were not said in private between two individuals if those two individuals are saying it was, and there’s no other record. I think that’s sort of obvious?
The classification of documents is a process laid out under the law, and Trump did not follow it. Until he does follow it, as President, they are classified.Report
The Office of Legal Council issued an opinion all the way back in 2005 on the topic of signing bills into law:
I think that we can similarly conclude that if Biden directed a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to a pardon, then that pardon is officially official and it’d be silliness to say that it wasn’t a real pardon.
“But what if Biden didn’t direct the subordinate to affix the signature? Like, what if the subordinate was acting on his or her own?”
“What part of ‘the president may direct the subordinate to affix a signature’ did you not understand?”
“I’m asking about a subordinate affixing a signature without having been directed.”
“WE HAVE ALREADY ESTABLISHED THAT THE PRESIDENT MAY DIRECT THE SUBORDINATE TO AFFIX A SIGNATURE!!!”
And so on.Report
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn’t even need to do that. Because pardons don’t even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just ‘granting’ them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they’re just…said.
The idea that the court is going to take an official government document issued and posted by the Executive Office of the President and represented by the government at the time as signed by the president, and allow that fact to be _debated in court_, is just utterly insane.
This not only is something the prosecution would have to prove (Because it’s an affirmative defense), but they’d have to have all their evidence before hand. Because this is otherwise a pre-trial dismissal that will be issued instantly from the bench.
By a very very angry judge.
And if they tell the judge that they have enough evidence to demonstrate that, what would actually happen is that the defense would just get a sworn statement from Biden that he did sign the thing. The End. It’s over.
This would probably make the judge _even angrier_ at the prosecution.Report
Yes, but I was pointing out that he doesn’t even need to do that. Because pardons don’t even _need_ be signed. Bills need to be signed into laws, pardons do not. Just ‘granting’ them is enough. They are usually printed and signed, just like executive orders are printed and signed, but they have the exact same validity if they’re just…said.
I agree with every word you’ve said here.
The pardons *ARE* all listen on the official Justice.gov website. All the t’s crossed and i’s dotted.Report
Probably should have Biden announce that he approved all those pardons while he’s still able to.
Also I strongly expect this was more Trump running his mouth than any sort of legal evaluation.Report
Of course it’s Trump running his mouth. But that’s different than any other day how?
I also don’t think Biden making an announcement now is going g to do anything to refute this for the people
Who believe he didn’t know the first time – his statement form the WH on issuing these not withstanding. They want him to be one and doddering and senile and out of touch no matter what the truth is.Report
Ah, I see you’re still clinging to the hope that Trump will not order the Justice Department to do obviously moronic things and fire people until someone agrees to do it…yet again. I sorta gave up after like the third time it happened.
So I fully expect to see an announcement that Justice Department or FBI is opening an investigation to something very obviously covered by a Biden pardon under this legal theory. No one can really stop that from happening.
Whether or not a lawyer is willing to instantly torpedo their own career by setting foot in front of a judge with charges against someone that has been pardoned for those charges is unknown. There’s loyalty, and then there’s ‘Walking directly into running chainsaw for no benefit except the boss is a lunatic and said to’.
But…that used to be an obvious no, but it appears people have wildly overestimated the amount of professionalism and intelligence in Justice Department lawyers. Who have, at this point, made half a dozen judges _incandescently angry_ and we’re nearing the point where the government is going to be start held in contempt in multiple places.
(I really hope the DoJ does get classified as a vexatious litigant, that would be hilarious.)Report
DavidTC: we’re nearing the point where the government is going to be start held in contempt in multiple places.
And what happens at that point?
If it’s not [this specific lawyer will have something bad happen to them] then I’m not hopeful anything will change.Report
C-SPAN reports that Trump has announced that the JFK files get released TOMORROW.
He announces lots of stuff, though.
I’ll believe it when I see it.Report
We have met the enemy – and they is us.
https://theintellectualist.com/black-saturday-us-constitutional-crisis-2025/Report
Are we ready to relitigate why Harris lost the election?
David Shor and Vox are… Why Kamala Harris Really Lost
Here are two takeaways to give the Dems some hope (the others? not so much):
• Democrats’ most effective message in 2024 was an economically populist one.
• Donald Trump is leaning into the most unpopular parts of his agenda.
p.s. not sure if the link will work… google took me to msn.com but vox had it locked.Report
This link should work.Report
Dang it… here’s the msn.com one that isn’t paywalled.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/elections/this-is-why-kamala-harris-really-lost/ar-AA1B9iF3Report
This part is interesting:
How in the heck would one go about turning this around?
How do you turn it around without ticking off The Groups?Report
You offer people a choice – a real diametrically opposed clear choice – not GOP light.Report
Is there a typo or some nuance about polls versus people who showed up to actually vote I am not getting?
I am struggling to understand how voters under 30 could have ‘supported Biden by large margins’ but ‘Trump probably narrowly won 18-29 year-olds.’Report
Maybe it’s in the distinction between Biden and Harris?
“Biden had skibidi rizz but Harris was skibidi Ohio so I went with Trump who was bussin fr fr”Report
Got it now I understand.Report
Heh. That’s gotta be it!Report
It’s comparing 2024 to 2020 – switching from under 30 to 18-29 was just a stylistic choice.Report
While we are avoiding discussing the downfall of the republicans, let’s whistle past some very misogynistic voter suppression, shall we?
https://www.nhpr.org/nh-news/2025-03-11/nhs-new-id-requirements-send-some-would-be-voters-home-to-grab-passports-birth-certificates?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1tovOUKBR1BG4a06Hy-j4bKLYugsFC_PIPaz1h0YrMu6dr0AVxO9z2vXs_aem_SYw1hxju-IDbCZnI37J8swReport
Why would Republicans want to selectively suppress the vote of married women? Married women lean Republican!Report
Misogyny.
Duh.Report
Ask the republicans who keep passing these bills. I agree it makes little sense but here we are.Report
As a general-ish thing, a lot of “conservatives” believe in some sort of “married women are not separate entities from their husbands; the married couple is a single item, represented by the husband, and the wife acting separately from the husband is an exception that needs to be specifically documented.”
So it makes some sort of sense -for them- that there has to be a process for married women registering to vote on her own, as opposed to as part of a couple.
Remember, there’s no one so crazy that will do something that it doesn’t make sense to them.Report
The DOD apparently removed info on Jackie Robinson from its website. A completely bonkers explanation as to why:
https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/1jf6zpp/pentagon_press_secretary_john_ullyot_said_the/Report
White supremacists are going to white supremacists.Report
Now restored, as is the Gen. Charles Rogers Medal of Honor Monday page that people were talking about earlier.
As much as the idea that they’re trying to erase all record of black achievement might turn you on, I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s happening.Report
They very clearly _are_ trying to erase all records of Black achievement, they’re just willing to back off very specific examples that people get outraged by and call attention to.Report
That’s how it’s done.Report
Germany revised its website on travel to the U.S. in light of recent detentions of German Citizens with valid visas. ComicCon is advising people not to travel here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/1jf6zpp/pentagon_press_secretary_john_ullyot_said_the/
Good job everyone!!!Report
Bending the knee: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/breaking-doge-strong-armed-usip-security-contractors-to-switch-sides
Yesterday I noted that when DOGE showed up on Monday at the USIP offices, they came with what appeared to be private security in addition to FBI agents. It turns out that those private security people were USIP’s own security contractors, only they’d switched sides to DOGE. That contractor is called “Inter-Con.” Realizing that DOGE might try to suborn Inter-Con, the USIP’s head of security had already canceled Inter-Con’s contract and that cancelation had been acknowledged. USIP was able to close out Inter-Con’s swipe badges, but there was one physical key they had not been able to get possession of yet. That key was in the hands of Kevin Simpson, the Inter-Con account manager for USIP. It was that physical key, which Simpson brought to the offices on Monday, which allowed DOGE to get into the building. Once they made entry they immediately made for the gun safe and took possession of the premises. DC Metro Police were also soon on the scene and ordered the incumbent staff to leave.
Now, why did Inter-Con switch sides? Why did they continue acting as security contractors after their contract had been terminated? According to the sworn declaration of the USIP head of security Colin O’Brien, Derick Hanna, Vice President of Inter-Con, told O’Brien that “DOGE threatened to cancel every federal contract Inter-Con held if they did not come to the USIP building and let Kenneth Jackson [the purported new head of the Institute] inside.”
How big a threat was that? According to USASpending, Inter-Con has $209 million in government contractors currently. So it sounds like DOGE made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.Report
Netanyahu apparently decided to launch a surprise attack on Gaza for no good reason with Trump’s backing. We are in a world ruled by mad men.Report
Peace through strength Lee.Report
I am on the record for not trusting Palestinian leadership as negotiators either. They either see any such negotiations as temporary ceasefires or are too afraid of starting a Palestinian civil war, imagine like the civil war in Ireland between those that accepted the Irish Free State proposal and those that did not, either. The Palestinians and their allies are going to have to come to some painful conclusions as well like Israel exists and it is going to continue to exist, no right of return, etc. So far, a lot of Pro-Palestinian protestors seem to want to spray paint “F-word Israel” and go on and on about Anti-Zionism or Settler-Colonialism than make sensible alliances with anti-Netanyahu Jews inside and outside Israel because they are petulant children.Report
Far as I can tell, the cease fire technically ended a while ago. Ergo Hamas has stopped handing back hostages and Israel and Hamas were supposed to negotiate what comes next.
They disagree fundamentally on pretty core issues (like whether Hamas will continue to exist and engage in terrorism) so resuming the war is almost expected.Report
Wanting Hamas not to exist is like the people who think that Israel can be made not to exist, bloody stupid. For the foreseeable future, the Muslim world is going to be filled with a lot of groups that really shouldn’t exist but they do. These groups will exist until Islam confronts itself and this might make the European Wars of Religion look like pikers. I don’t think that better policy from the West can get read of the attraction of groups like Hamas but I don’t think the West can bomb them out of existence either. Muslims themselves must decide to confront groups like Hamas or Boko Haram.Report
This is like saying only the Germans can remove Adolf from power and reshape Germany.
Israel can keep the war up in Gaza forever. If they insist on living in shattered rubble rather than have peace then that’s their choice.
Let the civilians of Gaza flee to whatever country will take them.Report
I might have over stated but I don’t think that Israel can diplomatically get away with that level of violence without becoming North Korea diplomatically.Report
Hamas has convinced Israel it is an existential threat. Full stop.
Implications:
Israel isn’t willing to leave Hamas in power, that’s their top priority.
If Hamas insists on staying in charge and continues to launch terror attacks and/or hold hostages, the war will go on.
This also means the two state solution is off the table for now. Israel isn’t giving Hamas a state.
Also off the table is rebuilding Gaza.
And I get that actually destroying Hamas is probably impossible, so this is the new normal.Report
Good Lord, the only existential threat Hamas poses is to its own people.Report
Slade: Good Lord, the only existential threat Hamas poses is to its own people.
We went to war after 911.
I fail to see why Israel shouldn’t be able to after a worse attack. Especially with the group right there on their border claiming they will do it again.
Israel wants to win and have it’s civilians to not be subjected to random terror attacks. That’s a reasonable goal but Hamas will never agree to it.Report
Not being subject to random terror attacks is a laudable goal. Trying to reach it by causing more people to want to perpetrate them is a questionable strategy.
10/7 was hardly worse than 9/11, by the by.Report
Slade: Trying to reach it by causing more people to want to perpetrate them is a questionable strategy.
So in other words, letting Hamas run the educational system and indoctrinate every child into it’s ideology will result in fewer people that back Hamas?
How does that work exactly?Report
I’d appreciate you not putting words in my mouth.
Hearts and minds, baby, hearts and minds.Report
Slade (and the rest of the board), my apologies. I should have phrased that very differently.
If Hamas is left in charge, they will continue to run the educational system and indoctrinate every child in their ideology.
When you say something like “Israel blowing people up creates more terrorists” you are ignoring the whole “Hamas is left in charge is the alternative” which will also create terrorists.Report
So Hamas does the things it agreed to in the initial cease fire, then entered into negotiations for the next phase and the proper Israeli response is to resume bombing civilians? And hamas is the only party here with agency?
Weird flex dude.Report
Philip: and the proper Israeli response is to resume bombing civilians?
Israel blew up 4 Hamas leaders and their crews. We don’t know how many civilians were killed.
Yes, Hamas claims that every death is a civilian death. I suggest we not treat that claim seriously.
RE: negotiations
Again, they disagree on pretty core issues and they’re always going to disagree.Report
So Israel is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority, then, right? To put them in charge?
I mean, that’s the other, obvious government that could take over, and theoretically sorta legally is. Hamas was elected to run the Gaza Strip under Palestinian elections, and then seized full control of the Gaza Strip from the PA, but the PA still are the government of all of Palestine, in a theoretical legal sense. We can just sorta pretend the Hamas-Fatah civil war didn’t happen, and Israel is ‘fixing’ it.
Like, legally, that’s a grey area and no one would really have a problem with the PA ending up in control. And Fatah controls the PA, and Fatah has recognized Israel and works with them as part of the PA. They seem to be mostly honest partners, a lot of corruptions and criticized for things, but one of the things they are criticized for is letting Israel walk all over them.
So surely, that’s what Israel is doing, working with the PA . Trying to put Gaza back how it was in 2003 or whatever. Now, obviously, Hamas, being a bunch of death-seeking fanatics who will never settle unless the other side is fully destroyed, will reject the idea of turning over Gaza to a bunch of people it thinks are cowards and collaborators with Israel.
So Israel will have to remove Hamas by force, but they’re presumably planning to at least get the PA on board before that and say what they’re planning on doing-
*is handed a note, reads it*
Sorry, this can’t be right. I’ll be right back.
*footsteps, door opens, closes, more footsteps, long whispered argument, door opens, closes, footsteps back*
So apparently _Hamas_ proposed handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel rejected it.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-said-to-agree-to-cede-gaza-governance-to-pa-netanyahu-not-going-to-happen/
So, again, as always, my question is when do we stop pretending that Israel is looking for any outcomes that are not ‘Israel owns Gaza and eventually all of Palestine and none of the annoying existing people are there anymore’?Report
So apparently _Hamas_ proposed handing Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. Israel rejected it.
Israel thinks the PA is not up to the task. Maybe it’s the shear incompetence and corruption. Maybe it’s the PA’s ideological support for an Israel destroying “Right to Return”(*). Maybe it’s the paying terrorists by the number of Jews they kill.
However, if we use the normal rules for wars, if Israel wins and Hamas surrenders, Israel gets to have more of a say in who runs the place afterwards than Hamas or the PA.
(*) During Trump’s first term he proposed a RoR only into a Palestinian state and the PA said that was hot garbage.Report
You think war is better than incompetence and corruption?
Yes, it sure it weird that the PA has not pre-negotiated that demand away. I’m going to address that in a different comment.
Because that’s completely irrelevant here. We are not talking about the border agreement, we are talking about stopping the war.
Are you not aware how closely the PA and Israel work together? Like, literally all the time? That’s literally part of the corruption I was talking about.
You mean the thing the PA agreed to end a month ago as part of the ceasefire?Report
DavidTC: You think war is better than incompetence and corruption?
I think Israel evaluates this on whether they’ll end up with a terror army on their border again, not based on the suffering of Gaza civilians.
DavidTC: we are talking about stopping the war.
Israel isn’t willing to return to October 6th and wait for the next terror attack. They view the current situation as better.
Rather than calling for Israel to not worry about terrorism the world should be calling for Hamas to surrender.
DavidTC: You mean the thing the PA agreed to end a month ago as part of the ceasefire?
Paying for random Jews to be murdered is so heinous that offering to stop doesn’t do them much credit nor earn them much trust.Report
As for the right of return: In actual reality, is extremely clear that that is going to be something that the PA is going to walk into a discussion with Israel, them saying yes and Israel saying no, and some sort of compromise will be reached. Likely payments.
I know you _think_ that’s what all rejections of peace hinge on, I know you think that’s why Arafat rejected the deals offered, but it’s not. I want you to read this Op-Ed literally by Yasir Arafat a year after the second talks: https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/General-2/Story3024.html
“We must be realistic about your concerns, and you must be realistic about ours.” really sounds like “This can be figured out.” not “We will never settle for anything other then the absolute!”.
Meanwhile, the actual reason he rejected the agreements in 2000 and 2001 is that Palestine would not be allowed to have actual sovereignty under them, with them not allowed to have a military and Israel controlling their airspace. Also, the first proposal was insultingly stupid about territory, demanding Palestine give up 9% of territory, some of which was rather important, in exchange for a vague 1% to be defined later. The second proposal was somewhat better, but still had the sovereignty thing.
I’m kinda tired of addressing this.Report
DavidTC: …really sounds like “This can be figured out.” not “We will never settle for anything other then the absolute!”.
At the negotiating table his actual peace proposals matched his charter and what he told his own people, not what you want to hear.
And you’ll notice even in your Western facing article he didn’t define “reasonable” much less say he would settle for something less than “No Israel, No Jews”.
That’s word salad designed to be spun to the West as what you want but to his own people as what they want.
DavidTC: …the actual reason he rejected the agreements…
All I can evaluate is his actual proposals.
If we’re going to speculate then imho he couldn’t accept (or make) a peace proposal without a (non)serious RoR because he was afraid his own people would kill him if he did.
Also imho this is why the Palestinians so rarely make counter proposals. They understand just how badly “No Israel, No Jews” plays in the West and just how unreasonable it is, but they also have to live with their people.Report
Trump’s AG seems to be in bloody defiance of a court order:
https://www.rawstory.com/pam-bondi-perkins-coie/Report
Why shouldn’t she be? She controls the people who would have to enforce any contempt citations against her.Report
Federal courts can actually deputize people. So theoretically, the court bailiffs can be used to carry out court orders.Report
In mathematics, there’s a thing called an “existence proof.” Such a proof typically tells you that for a particular type of problem a solution exists. It tells you nothing about how to find the solution.
A judge saying, “Bailiff! Take Pam Bondi into custody and hold her for 30 days for contempt!” strikes me as something similar. The authority exists. It says nothing about how to actually take Ms. Bondi into custody if, eg, the US Marshals Service stands between her and the bailiff. Or (assuming success on the custody bit) where the bailiff could hold her and provide the legally required food/health care/etc.Report
There are a lot of practical problems for deputizing the bailiffs that need to be worked out.Report
We are so fished:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/politics/musk-pentagon-briefing-china-war-plan.htmlReport
We areReport
Trump and China are negotiating how to settle the issue of TSMC, the only company in the world that can fabricate integrated circuits at, for example, 2nm scale. Musk is representing the US tech bros’ interests.Report
Has anybody seen the new Snow White yet?
How is it?Report
Reviews are really bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSLKrkSAq9o
Rotten tomatoes is extremely low for a Disney movie.
Rachel Zegler’s songs are one of the few high points of the movie.
Plot was redone to go serious girl-boss in charge.Report
I was expecting a bunch of bad reviews from chuds who hadn’t seen the movie but I expected them to be offset by Team Good people reviewing it as a masterpiece (who also hadn’t seen it first).
If the latter don’t show up, it might be legitimately bad.
I mean, as a movie. I don’t mean morally.Report
Disney repeatedly cancelling red carpet opening is a strong tell.
It does sound like they went full woke with it. Prince was downgraded to a commoner and Snow repeatedly saves him. Rather than serve the dwarfs when she’s at their place Snow just orders them around.Report
Fairy tales and other stories are continually updated to meet modern social conditions but there is an art to doing this. Adding a Moorish/Arab character in Robin Hood stories so that non-white can see the Robin Hood stories as something they aren’t excluded from is doing this correctly. Adding a lot of girl-boss to a fairy tale is not. You want to add something rather than divide, multiply, and subtract from it.Report
Yes. It’s really telling that they didn’t just make Snow stronger and a Mary Sue, they also nerfed everyone else. She defeated the Queen by protesting/telling off the Queen’s guards. Everyone is just waiting for her to assume her leadership position by virtue of her inner nobility and point out their flaws.
And this is after massive story fixes and reshoots. Presumably the original was even worse.Report
It seems like a movie steeped in the ethos of college educated bougie liberals but with the subtlety of the hammer.Report
That. One of the problems is they moved so far away from the source material that there wasn’t much left.
If they wanted to do a full remake and change everyone but still do female power, then copy Wicked and make the Queen Good-but-not-understood and Snow White Evil.
That upends the story but it’s so obvious we’d care less about the Prince and the 7 being made into footnotes.
It would have effectively become a different story but it’d also own that.Report
Dargis at NYT starts out with the appropriate ritual denunciations:
but summarizes her own take with:
Report
One has to be amazed at just how intentionally Disney has gone about sabotaging its ownership of the market they themselves created.Report
Speaking of which, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows released this week and, as of Friday night, has a little under 40k players right now and an all-time peak of 47,616.
By comparison, Veilguard’s all-time peak is 89,418. It achieved that on the Sunday after it launched so we can’t compare apples to apples quite yet… but it had 77K on the day after it launched.Report
I am completely unfamiliar with this controversy.Report
Lucky you! I have some wine.
How far back do we want to go? Let’s go back to Origins. No, wait. Let’s go back to Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire.
Back in the original XBox days, we had Bioware. They made the *BEST* RPGs. Founded by three guys who dropped out of the medical profession, they said that they wanted to make the games they wanted to play.
Knights of the Old Republic is probably the greatest Star Wars game of all time. You start out as a Force-Sensitive Level 0 schmuck with amnesia and are put on the Hero’s Journey to take on The Big Bad. Along the way, you pick up a team of companions, maybe fall in love, learn how to use a lightsaber, choose the light side or the dark side, and clear up all of the questions you have.
I didn’t see the twist coming from a mile away… more like from two or three yards away… and so it hit me and the protagonist at the same time and I had to put down the controller and run upstairs and tell Maribou about the game I was playing. “Well!”, she said. “I’m glad you’re having fun!”
Jade Empire was its own franchise made by the same team. You were a kung fu level 0 schmuck who did *NOT* have amnesia, you were merely the brightest star in the best school of the best kung fu teacher ever and you had to run around and do the hero’s journey yourself. Pick the open hand or the closed fist. There was also a twist that I did *NOT* see coming at all. I was left with my jaw on the floor and and sputtering in indignance. It made the fight against the Big Bad that much sweeter.
How I *LOVED* Bioware. They were a day-one purchase. They were *PRE-ORDER* purchases. That’s how much I loved them.
Well, for the 360, they were coming out with a brand spankin’ new franchise called “Dragon Age”. You were in this weird fantasy world and it was brand new. There were humans and elves and dwarves. There were fighters and thieves and mages. Mages tended to go mad and blow up everything so they were kept on a short leash. Dwarves didn’t have magic at all.
The game started with one of *SIX*, COUNT-EM, *SIX* potential builds:
Human noble, human mage, elven mage, Dalish Elf, Dwarven noble, Dwarven casteless.
I haven’t played the game since Obama’s first term but I still have all of those memorized.
Each one of those beginning classes had a unique start in the game and each unique start took about two hours… you’d have your backstory, you’d have a tutorial on how to fight and how to talk and intimidate and charm, and then you’d be inducted into the Grey Wardens and the story proper would start.
Along the way, you’d pick up a team of companions, fall in love, and pick between being a paragon of virtue or an amoral mastermind and fight the big bad and it was *AWESOME*.
And then Bioware was bought by EA and Dragon Age 2 came out and it was… I wouldn’t call it a *GOOD* game but it was more a game that I could tell you what it was trying to do. “I could see what it was going for.”
Around this time, Mass Effect 3 came out and it had a very controversial ending and Bioware had the choice between listening to the user base and changing the ending *OR* yelling something about artistic vision and shutting down the Bioware forums.
They chose to shut down the forums.
Dragon Age: Inquisition came out and it wasn’t *BAD*… it tried to recreate the whole World of Warcraft experience for the single player. A lot of grinding. I didn’t finish it. But I see what it was going for.
Anyway, years and years and years passed. Dragon Age: Something Or Other was being worked on, abandoned, revamped, worked on as an iPhone game, abandoned, revamped and, eventually, we got Veilguard.
Veilguard had very, very little overlap with the original Origins game. Instead of having choices that mattered, you had to pick between agreeing because you were nice or agreeing but being really snarky about it.
And, along the way, you picked up companions and some of the companions would explain to you that they were now non-binary.
I am not making this up.
There’s also a scene where they explain the best way to deal with misgendering someone.
I am not making this up.
Anyway, Dragon Age: Veilguard sold about 1.5 million units and EA said that their expectations were about 3 million (Dragon Age: Origins has sales of about 3.2 million).
Veilguard is considered a failure when it comes to sales. The studio that created it was shut down and a handful of devs were sent to other in-house studios and the rest were thrown to the winds.
Which brings us to Assassin’s Creed.
Assassin’s Creed, as a franchise, was *AWESOME*. It was a game the combined sneaking and combat and some light puzzling and a handful of twists and turns and there were two levels to the game… one where you were Desmond, a guy in the current year, and one where you were Altair, an ancestor of Desmond’s that you’d visit while in the machine that tapped into your ancestral memories.
And in Assassin’s Creed II, you were Ezio Auditore (and there were two sequels to Assassin’s Creed II that had you move from angry young man to experienced killer to wise assassin leader).
And in Assassin’s Creed III, you came to the new world and played Connor, a half-Native, Half-Brit assassin who was pitted against the Redcoats!
And in Assassin’s Creed IV, you played Kenway, a pirate!!!
And then the game got a little bloated. There was stuff in France and Egypt and Victorian England and the Viking Lands and… well, I stopped playing after IV. I got the Victorian England one but didn’t get too far into it. I was irritated at all of the monetization stuff they added.
Anyway, they were finally going to come out with an Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan! FINALLY!
And the lead character was Yasuke. Yasuke was a historical dude. An African in Japan who was given a sword by his master and occasionally carried his master’s weapons and, some historians say, this means that he was a samurai.
So you’re playing Yasuke during the something-or-other period and you have to deal with the Big Bad.
People who are not exactly charitable are spinning this as “so you’re a black guy running around Japan killing Japanese people? They should have set the game in 2021 in San Francisco!” and stuff that is even worse than that.
It being the current year, the Assassin’s Creed: Shadows devs have included an option for Yasuke to have a fling with the enby Ibuki character and that created as much drama as you imagine it did.
Anyway, at this moment in time, Steam numbers have Assassin’s Creed: Shadows as having a little over half of the peak numbers of Veilguard’s peak numbers.
And Veilguard was considered a disappointment bad enough to shutter the studio.
That is about 80% of it, I think.Report
OK don’t make fun of me. My last serious gaming was of the Quake Team Fortress and C&C Red Alert era. Did the original run Halo games with my little brothers. Dabbled in Warcraft 3. Sometimes would get really drunk and play Soul Caliber with my friends in like 2004. I gave up games to chase tail and haven’t persojally owned anything for gaming, console or PC, since the first term of the W admin. I am completely ignorant and uninformed. My questions:
1. Are those cut screens actually in a video game? Because they look like South Park. I mean.. the voice…LMAO
2. Are you telling me they made a game in feudal Japan but your character is a black dude? Because that’s also f-ing hilarious.Report
Those cut scenes are actually in an actual video game.
They made a game in feudal Japan and your character is a Black dude. (You have the option of switching to a female who is a ninja. But if you want to play as a male, you will be playing Yasuke.)Report
My goodness. If you find yourself in the market for new hobbies I can vouch for those things my Clark Griswald lifestyle permits, which currently are lifting, shooting, and a very unserious dart league. Otherwise all I can say is I am deeply sorry for your loss.Report
All-time peak is now 60,086.
Broke 60k.Report
Four hours ago, they hit 64,825 and now they’re down to 59,860.
64k is higher than Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (62k) so that can be considered a win.Report
So, I preordered Shadows because I loved Odyssey and Valhalla, and I loved Ghost of Tsushima. I basically didn’t care about the delays in release. I figured if all they did was put the Valhalla gameplay in fedual Japan, that’s good enough for me. That is pretty much exactly what it is with a couple of new mechanics that are good.
I have about four hours into it. Why so few? I’m a middle aged dad with responsibilities. Finishing Valhalla took me the better part of … five months? Maybe six?
I am not woke or leftist in the slightest. I don’t care about representation in games or the gaming industry. I just care about if I have fun because it’s a hobby. And Shadows is fun.
You don’t even have to play as Yasuke for much of the game if you don’t want to. There’s a prologue where you play as both him and Naoue, and then an extended section where you can only play as Naoue apparently. Then you gain the ability to switch between them. They have different abilities. He’s all ground attack. A tank that just muscles through everything, including shut/locked doors. She’s a ninja, stealthy and speedy. He parries, while she dodges. She has a grappling hook to reach high places. He can’t climb/parkour as well as she can. You get the picture.
But regardless of what style you want to play, both characters seem pretty cool. Yasuke – a slave of some Portugese priests (I presume they’re templars, we’ll see) whom a Japanese warlord becomes fascinated with bc he’s never seen a black man before. It’s basically Shogun. Naoue, a ninja with a pretty dramatic opening back story that I won’t spoil although you’ll see it coming a mile away.
Look, ninjas and samurai are fun. I don’t care if the makers of the game want to make a social statement by making the samurai black and putting non-binary NPC’s in the game. It has no bearing on how fun it is to play ninja and go around making the markers on the map disappear, assassinate every bad guy on the island, explore feudal Japan, etc.Report
Hey, if you’re having a blast, you can’t ask for more than that from a video game.
Graphics good? Mechanics fun? Familiar and different at the same time?
Great! Glad you’re having a blast with it. As a fifty-something, I keep looking for a new game that will capture the magic of, oh, 2011 or 2007 (even as I know we’ll never have 2010 ever again).Report
Disney used to be able to slip in light liberalism into their movies with out being blunt about it.Report
I don’t know that it’s liberalism exactly. It seems to me more that they’ve decided that the princess archetype, which inherently involves a plot around interpersonal/social (as opposed to violent) disputes, vulnerability, and a romantic heterosexual resolution is just too problematic to deliver. The result is they don’t make them anymore or when they do it’s reluctant, soaked in derision, and embedded in a constant pitch for something else.
Their problem is that people but in particular lots of little girls still love the princess archetype. Not all, nothing wrong with those that don’t, or boys that do. But there are enough that love it to support a several hundred billion dollar a year business empire in an otherwise tough and fractured media market. Disney used to serve up the best princesses but now it’s like going to a steakhouse where the ownership has gone vegan, the waiter won’t stop asking if you’re sure you don’t want the sustainable fish paste instead of the ribeye, and when they finally bring you the meat its dressed up in a bunch of crappy sauces and bewildering sides that weren’t what you came for. Maybe the best way to think about it is that while Disney invented the modern steak house they seem unable to understand that they did not invent the steak.Report
I am not sure that Disney is all in on girls kicking physical ass. The, for lack of a better term, In This House version of the Disney princess is still far from an anime heroine who can and will kick ass. There does seem to be a sort of an inmates running the asylum thing going on where some very ideological sincere people working for Disney decided that this would be a great propaganda and teaching opportunity and that it was possibly also bad for little girls to watch stuff with romance.Report
No, they certainly aren’t doing the anime thing, though one gets the sense there’s a part of them that at times might kinda sorta want to be, but for the fact that those are also problematic in their worldview. No matter how much that genre has matured we all know who the butt kicking babes were originally designed to please.
I also didn’t mean to imply it was that simple. That’s just one small subset of their problem, which is that they don’t believe in their own product anymore. However they also know they can’t totally get away from it so keep releasing mediocre messes.Report
I mean obviously the fan service is problematic for their world view but I think the violence is even more problematic from a Western liberal-left world view. Japanese parents don’t seem to mind their kids watching the good guys use a large amount of violence against bad guys as much as American and European parents do. They would have issues with boy heroes dishing out as much violence as anime boy heroes do.Report
That is an interesting angle I would never have considered.Report
I’m fascinated on why Japanese parents have a higher freak out threshold compared to parents in basically every other developed democracy, including ones from the same Confucian world view, on the amount of sex and violence they can deal with in kid’s entertainment compared to everybody else.Report
It really is interesting to watch people talk about this and come out with complete nonsense implications. ‘a romantic heterosexual resolution is just too problematic to deliver’ is just hilarious. As opposed to all the…romantic non-hetrosexual resolutions that Disney has delivered over the year?
Anyway, by your definition, Disney hasn’t had a traditional animated Princess movie since 2009’s Princess and the Frog, which didn’t do well, or possibly Tangled, the next year, which did a little better. (Although Tangled was pretty high on action and low on romance.)
Meanwhile, they were wildly successful with Frozen, which pretends to be a traditional princess movie under your definition until everything shatters into pieces. The next princess movie was Moana, which also had no romantic relationship and which _also_ did very well. Then there was Raya and the Last Dragon, which did make money, but not really as much as expected, but it was mostly because the movie repeatedly delayed by COVID and movies still were not doing good at all in March 2021 when it came out.
Meanwhile, Disney has had a lot of success with other animated movies. I don’t think I need to list them, but there’s a reason Inside Out got a sequel. Or The Lion King got like four.
Also, have you noticed that…KenB was literally complaining about live actions remakes of animated princess movies?
What a weird thing to use to conclude that ‘Disney decided that princess movies are not cool and is failing because they moved away from a winning formula.’. Disney actually concluded the _other_ thing, that everyone would pay to see a live-action remake of traditional princess movies! (Which they were apparently wrong about.)
If you want to make a conclusion about the traditional princess movies from the dislike of the live-action remakes, it’s that traditional princess movies _don’t_ have drawing power. (Although my conclusion is just ‘No one wants damn remakes of some of the most iconic movies ever. Stop it. Also, having a live action version of The Lion King is gibberish.’)Report
I’m just glad my comments can be interesting.Report
“KenB was literally complaining about live actions remakes of animated princess movies?”
Um… I what now?Report
Don’t worry about it. We all said a lot of things back there in that thread. The important thing is that we now have this review and can move on with our lives.
https://youtu.be/dzk0yH9Achw?si=cBJy_E3hzy1DHt98Report
This is a good way to put it; the Disney creative types kinda hate the Disney vibe.
Its funny, we were visiting my folks in FL and took an impromptu trip to Disney. We’ve been going to Fort Wilderness since 1973, and the new ‘Cabins’ are really nice for families. Anyhow, we went to the nightly Campfire where you roast marshmallows, sing songs, do the hokey pokey, and then watch a Disney movie. Pretty much the same thing since 1973.
The ‘singer’ is really a sort of stand-up act with corny G-rated jokes plus a few insiders for the Moms/Dads… actual Chip and Dale in costumes come up as props (my kids have no idea who Chip and Dale are). And everyone sings Country Roads and a bunch of other Americana. My 10yo boy laughed at the jokes, groaned at the puns, sang the songs and then did the big group hokey pokey (with Chip and Dale).
As I say, completely on-brand Disney lightly humorous Americana.
Then the Disney Movie started: Long Live Evil music video
Sure, the movie (Descendants 2) is a dreadful ‘Saved by the Bell’ quality tween drama, but dreadful cringe it is. Desperate to be cool and failing at every step. We left after act 1 (as did everyone else), but the drop off from 200 people dancing the hokey pokey with a 50yo guitar playing comedian? Couldn’t be more clear when witnessed in person.
Anyhow, my 17yo daughter went to see Snow White last night with her friend because they like princesses and are a little ironic tuned; her friend is ‘really’ conservative (which, given us is, well, remarkable) so I’ll get the 17yo conservative girl princess take when she gets back from work.
Report
That is very interesting anecdata. My perspective on the park is minimal. We did it twice when I was a kid but our version involved ferrying back and forth from my dad’s high school buddy’s house where you slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. Fun was of course had but it wasn’t the immersive experience they designed the place to be.
That said, a couple years ago we decided to forego our normal OBX trip due to the pending arrival of our little guy. Just seemed crazy to do it with a newborn. As a consolation prize for my oldest we did a long weekend at the Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg. Now obviously this was not at the level one would expect of Disney but it delivered that slightly hokey Americana thing, same kind of vibe you’re describing with the sing along, and damned if kids didn’t still eat it up. My son (5 and a half at the time) was in heaven. We have a picture of him from that trip sleeping with the most serene look of happiness on his face I have ever seen. This is consistent with similar experiences at various other little camp grounds and things like that we’ve done that were clearly ripping off Disney whenever they went live in the 70s-90s.
All of which is to say there is still juice in those old formulas. I was never invested enough to feel that sense of betrayal you get from other people about Disney but it’s hard to look at them without asking ‘wtf are you people doing?’Report
The night before was ‘The Incredibles’ and was packed when we drove by (in our golf cart… which is something people do now — in my day you took open sided Trams and liked it).
‘Ways to be Wicked’ is the opening to the Descendants 2 movie that cleared the room. Long Live Evil is more of a slogan, I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX6g_cm2rM4Report
Good news! Benjamin Netanyahu assures everyone that there will *NOT* be a Civil War.
(Translation provided by Google.)Report
An English language version of the controversies surrounding Netanyahu:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-22/six-controversies-plaguing-israel-benjamin-netanyahu/105080272
This just shows the utter stupidity of the Pro-Palestinian movement in the West. Netanyahu is not popular in Israel. By making the entire protest movement about “Anti-Zionism” and anti-colonialism, they made it impossible for Anti-Netanyahu Israelis and anti-Netanyahu Diaspora Jews to team up with them.Report
My “There will not be a civil war” t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.Report
Vox has an article: America — and the media — needs a Covid reckoning
Here’s the subhed: Our Covid mistakes did lasting damage. No one wants to talk about it.
We’re getting closer to actually talking about it. I suppose that that’s progress.Report
…um, you did read that, right?
The thing she says is that the media massive downplayed the virus, which, along with the idiotic claim it only spread by touch (Which was not the media’s fault.), diminished trust.
But once again, talking about out failures with COVID, we somehow end up talking about the lab leak theory, a thing that is…utterly irrelevant to how we should have handled the situation. Literally, could not be the slightest bit relevant.
And there is _still_ no evidence of it. Literally the entire argument seems to be over whether it _could_ be a possible origin.
You want to know what destroys trust in society and institutions, Jaybird? It’s this sort of thing. Coming up with theories, spreading them on social media, and having the media reprint them, then having other people go ‘No, that’s not true’, and the media reprints that, and then the original people come up with some non-peer reviewer pre-print that claims it statistically must be true, and the media prints that, and then others go ‘That’s not right’, and the media prints that.
You see the problem there? There is exactly one bad actor in that, and it’s the people who started spreading a theory without real evidence. The media sorta has to report it, and the actual scientists have to say ‘Look, that doesn’t appear to be true’, and the media has to report that.Report
There is real evidence. There just isn’t real proof.
The fact that the conversations were not just disagreed with but SHUT DOWN is one of the things that needs to be discussed.
And we’re getting closer to actually talking about it. I suppose that that’s progress.Report
“Shut down” is doing a lot of work here. Especially for something that has been out in public and widely discussed for years.Report
“They stopped banning people on Facebook for talking about it! They stopped banning people on Twitter for talking about it!”
Yeah.
Like I said, the fact that the conversations were not just disagreed with but SHUT DOWN is one of the things that needs to be discussed.
And we’re getting closer to actually talking about it. I suppose that that’s progress.Report
Where, and how long ago, had we heard all this before?Report
Which “all this” are you referring to?
I’m assuming it’s not places like Vox publishing “we, the media, need to have a Covid reckoning”.Report
The stuff people have been talking about since, oh, 2020.Report
Part of the problem is the Chinese are bad actors and can be trusted to lie if the truth would make them look bad. No, not just “lie”, shout down, use intense political pressure for others to lie, and so on.Report
Brian Schatz, the chief deputy whip of the Democrats in the Senate, retweeted this Vox article and said:
Report
https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/us-authorities-closing-canadian-access-to-library-that-straddles-quebec-vermont-border/
We are governed by idiots.Report
We’ve gone from the uncouth but love-able neighbors with a rednecks that won the lottery vibe to total dicks with a penchant for the petty and vindictive.Report
Right? It’s like our government is controlled by a bunch of internet trolls.Report
“Like”?Report
Heh. You got me there, sir.Report
Polling indicates that rank and file Democratic Party voters want the Democratic Party to fight against Trump but also move to the center on many policy issues like police reform and housing construction:
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/dems-need-to-moderate-and-fightReport
So apparently in his letter from an ICE jail, Mr. Khalil states that Biden and Trump were equally bad on Palestine. He might not be a terrorist but dear Lord is this representative of the stupidity in the pro-Palestinian movement. They have been following the same strategy since my grandparents were kids during the mandate period. Like literally massive uprising or spectacular terrorism violence and when that doesn’t work, stubbornly insist on their full demands being met despite not winning any battles. Then insist that anybody who doesn’t agree with them fully or insists on working from the basic reality that Israel exists, is not going to stop existing, and showed repeated determination to fight for it’s existence, plus that 45% of all Jews live there, are just as bad as the worst of their enemies. It’s the do the same thing and hope for a different result again and again.Report
I’d say we’re the ones who are being stupid. They are saying where their heads are at, and we pretend it means something other than what they say.
Yes, they’re dialed up to eleven by the existence of Israel and/or the presence of Jews in the Middle East. Ergo yes, they’re serious about driving away the Jews and/or destroying Israel.
That’s their minimum threshold for “victory” and it’s what they mean by “reasonable”. Any suggestion that they let Jews keep a country is unacceptable, it’s Arab land full stop.
This is what individuals on the street say during Youtube interviews.
This is what their negotiators argue for in peace talks.
This is what their charters have spelled out.
This is what they say to their people.
Whenever one of their leaders suggests a compromise short of that they have to walk that back.
This is not “Palestinians have bad leadership”, this is “Palestinian leaders do what their people insist”.
Yes, they’re serious. It’s reasonable for different cultures to have different mindsets. If they have to choose between having a better life by accepting the Jews and crushing side effects of war by not accepting them, then the people insist on the later, not the former.
All of the evidence we have supports that conclusion. All the “reasoning” which opposes it starts by assuming they’re reasonable, putting ourselves into their shoes and asking why we would be enflamed.Report
There is no easy or good solution to a movement that proves to be as stupidly obstinate as the Palestinian movement under the liberal order.Report
As far as I can tell, this cultural attitude predates not only the liberal order but the existence of Israel.
Around 1920 some high level British guy trying to make everyone happy said the Jews’ first priority was getting a state but the Arabs’ first priority was the Jews not having a state.Report
It does pre-exist the liberal order. There is an arrogance in Islam that nobody has any idea how to handle.Report
Unlike that other religion in the Middle East?Report
The global left criticizes those and Hinduism or even Budhhism for good measure while basically deciding that Islam needs to be allowed to naturally evolve rather than marched forward into modernity.Report
The solution for “how to deal with” the other religion is the normal rules apply.
If it’s an argument that we never use against a country that’s not Jewish, then the issue is us and not them.Report
India sometimes gets something like this. I’d argue that most countries do get a lessser version of what Israel gets from the Left. Muslim majority countries are give a big freaking exception to liberalism or if problems are acknowledged, it’s all blamed on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Monarchies.Report
Here’s a headline that’ll get your noggin joggin’: Prime Minister urged to call ’emergency meeting’ after Trump administration cuts funding to seven Australian universities
We’re funding seven Australian universities to the point where ceasing to fund them is causing an emergency.
Why in the hell are we funding seven Australian universities to the point where ceasing to fund them causes an emergency?!?Report
Do you think this is a good thing. I mean maybe universities in other countries shouldn’t be so dependent on American aid that turning off the spigot is a mortal threat but this is just a mafia tactic. It isn’t like Trusk is going to re-channel the money towards American universities or other things for the benefit of the American people. Trusk will just pocket the money for themselves.Report
I wish that there were stronger defenses of funding Australian universities to this degree than “But Trump and Musk are bad”.Report
America not becoming a pariah state and hated by most of the entire world isn’t a strong defense? Trusk is undoing decades of hard work done by Democratic and Republican Presidents to make America the leader of the free world and the liberal order for no reason but pure spite and the fact that they see everything as a zero sum game. Tens of millions of Americans are seemingly fine with this. They are turning us into what the further left clowns accused us of being and you are fine with this?Report
I am fine with us not funding Australian universities, yes.
Honestly, learning that we were funding them to the point where ceasing to fund them caused a government emergency was confusing.
I mean, if you asked me “how much funding of Australian universities do you think we’re doing?” I would have asked for clarification on whether “work study” counts as funding because I think that it’d be appropriate, barely, for an American student getting work study money.
Not this much money. Not enough money to have the PM call an emergency meeting.Report
There are ways to do these things with tact. I might be even prone to agree with you that maybe America shouldn’t be funding universities in developed democracies. Just turning off the money spigot suddenly and without warning is not the way to do it though. Even from a pure realpolitik standpoint it is incredibly bad because it makes us look like a big villain.Report
OH! You’re looking at this from the perspective of non-US citizens!
I wasn’t doing that.
Yeah, I can see how this would really make us look bad to Australians and Europeans.Report
I am looking at this from the perspective of United States citizens. What good does this do to the people of the United States? Will the money be re-invested in American universities? Of course not. Nor will it be used for anything else.Report
Given the whole “deficit” thing, I think it’s easy to make the argument that “not using it at all” is a real option that isn’t a bad one.Report
Research is much more global these days, with lots of collaboration across borders.
In some fields, Australia has an inherent advantage. Far southern oceans, for example. Their interest in that is rather more “personal” than ours. Or their view of the southern sky. Northrup Grumman is spending $341M in federal funds for a facility for the Space Force’s Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability in Australia. I’m sure Australia is getting a nice chunk of funding for signal-processing R&D out of that.
The US federal government is spending $201B on R&D in FY2025. The $600M that is being spent in Australia is 0.3% of that. The Australian federal government is spending $14.4B on R&D this fiscal year (quite comparable on a per capita basis). Would you be as surprised if you found out that $43M of that was being spent to fund work in US laboratories?Report
The story, sadly, doesn’t go into what was being funded.
I think I could be talked into “it’s important to fund Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability”, though.Report
When you are a US researcher writing a proposal to study coral reef bleaching on a global scale, you collaborate with some Australian group because of the Great Barrier Reef.
When you are a US researcher doing climate change modeling and need to improve how you handle atmosphere/ocean interfaces in that part of the world, you collaborate with some Australian group.
When you are a US radio astronomer with a project that requires certain continuous observations, you collaborate with the Australians who build and operate world-class telescopes from a unique global position.
When you are a US researcher in toxicology looking at venom chemistry that leads in certain directions, you collaborate with some Australian experts on the poisonous species Down Under.
When you are a US battery chemistry researcher and the work leads you into certain reactions and the best group on that is in Adelaide, you collaborate with them (if you can get them interested).
The US federal government funds an incredible array of R&D topics. If you want to argue that the federal government should confine itself to the D, and only go outside the US when there’s no other choice, say that.Report
This would be one hell of an opportunity for an intrepid journalist to find out what is no longer being funded.
Imagine if radio astronomy were impacted? That’s, like, the one research area that has 97% approval.
The story, instead, said this:
“How is radio astronomy Marxist?” is a question that I can’t imagine any government spokesperson answering well.
On the other hand, “we stopped funding a LGBTQ+ Aboriginal dance troupe that was researching the racism and sexism in Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” is something that reasonable people can reasonably disagree about.
The failure of the story to mention *WHAT* funding has ceased is a massive failure.Report
The text of the required questionnaire has been posted. OMB’s estimate is that it will take 30 minutes to complete. Looking at it, I’d put the time to do any sort of accurate response at days/weeks. Applied at a university level, none of the Australian schools will meet the requirements.
The Australian media seems to be moving towards describing this as an “America First” fallout — Trump doesn’t want to invest money in any other countries. My knee-jerk reaction would be, “US staff for all of NASA’s network terminals in Australia are expelled. Ditto for DOD’s deep space radar work. The US Navy’s visiting privileges are revoked. We’ll get back to you about whether we’re going to return any equipment.” But I’m not a nice person.Report
My eyes glazed over at question 24. 36 questions and, yeah, I was thinking about my job and how we have a handful of those things at our fingertips (or know the guy who knows a guy who has it at his) but that’s a week-long task right there.
4 days, if I’m not doing anything else and me pointing to Joe Schmoe in this office and Jane Schmaine in that office is sufficient answer to any given question about the stuff that those guys know about.Report
““How is radio astronomy Marxist?” is a question that I can’t imagine any government spokesperson answering well.”
Oh, is that what they mean when they talk about Fully Automated Space Luxury Communisum?Report
More realistically, the question would be, “Do you do battery chemistry research with BYD money?” And the answer is that of course they do.Report
Jaybird, it is not a ‘government emergency’. This is a _research_ emergency.
There are research projects, some of which the American government has funded that need to operate continually. In fact, a LOT of research projects need to operate continually over the time they exist.
If you have live samples, you can’t just stop funding and pick it up a week later, because things die. If you’re measuring the natural world, you cannot just stop because then you have a hole in the data. Etc, etc. Honestly, it might be easier to list projects that can just be randomly paused and put on a shelf than those that can’t.
And the calls for an emergency meeting (Which has not actually been decided to happen yet, these are calls by the colleges to have such a meeting) would be so Australian researchers can actually talk about those thing with the government.
This discussion would probably include some triage to figure out what can be paused, what has barely started and can be stopped without much loss, and what needs to done to salvage projects that are important. And there’s likely some additional funding passed. But this is not going to break Australia’s budget at all.
But Australia, unlike the US, doesn’t want to moronically throw away millions of dollars and months of research because the Trump administration decided they didn’t like climate research and ‘transgenderism’.Report
it is not a ‘government emergency’. This is a _research_ emergency.
The headline, for some reason, didn’t mention that the University Presidents were calling for an emergency meeting but the Prime Minister was calling for one.
The story was written by Patrick Staveley. That’s his Twitter account, if you want to write him and tell him that his editor messed up with headline choices.Report
Yes. That. Good summation.
One of my friends lost her job from this sort of thing inside the US and most of her department will also go so it’s unclear if anyone will pick it up.
She’s working on repairing reefs. Florida might pick up the project, it might not.Report
The money was in the form of R&D grants.
“The surveys they received asked several questions including whether … their university had recognised only two sexes – male and female.”
We are governed by idiots.Report
Being governed by idiots is the style of the time but America’s long tradition of anit-intellectualism isn’t helping here. Our far right is a lot more suspicious of book learning than other far rights.Report
Government agencies formed to do specific tasks should stay in their lane.Report
https://open.substack.com/pub/thomhartmann/p/dark-enlightenment-rising-the-billionaire-071?r=v677&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=emailReport
AP estimates the current death toll in the Hamas side of the Israel-Hamas conflict to be 50,000. Since this is Hamas, they do not distinguish between Hamas soldiers and Palestinian civilians.Report
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fatality-data-has-become-completely-unreliable
The difference in who and how many die between various sources is a thing.
Yet another issue is the “natural” death rate. If we assume Gaza has the USA’s death rate, then we should expect about 17k people to die every year from normal causes (so roughly 25k over the course of the war).Report
50,000 with 20,000 to 25,000 being Hamas soldiers seems fairly reliable. Hamas would obviously love to give a much bigger number and anti-Israel forces were predicting basically over a million dead Gazan Palestinans since the start of the Israel-Hamas War.Report
These sorts of numbers are why I oppose believing “genocide” or that Israel is targeting civilians or even that Israel isn’t allowing food in. There aren’t enough dead people for any of that to be true.
We had about 60k kids born, we had more than 17k people die from natural causes. With the way Hamas plays games with numbers, those 17k are probably in that 50k.
That’s not to say life there doesn’t suck, but it sucks because there’s a war going on and not because Gaza is a massive death camp.Report
The people screaming genocide were applying the very broadly defined Convention Against Genocide to the Israel-Hamas War. The problem is that the Convention Against Genocide, most likely to prevent wiggle room in the case of a trial, defined things like “(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.” Any war that is vaguely intra-ethnic in character and has civilian casualties can be therefore called a genocide. Hamas action on 10/7 were an attempted genocide under this definition.
In conflicts where outside partisan factions rage strongly like the I/P conflict, it wa inevitable that people would scream out genocide. I think this was a really ineffective tactic for the Pro-Palestinian side because it prevented useful alliances with anti-Netanyahu Israelis or Diaspora Jews but they seemed intent on making this about “anti-Zionism.”Report
Lee: The people screaming genocide were applying the very broadly defined Convention Against Genocide to the Israel-Hamas War.
Many of the screaming people also talk about “deliberating targeting civilians”. They’re using the same definition I am and don’t understand they’ve just defined all wars as genocide.
They also don’t understand that Hamas not reporting how many of it’s soldiers died doesn’t mean everyone was a civilian. They especially don’t understand dead civilians in Gaza are morally on Hamas’ ticket and not Israel’s.
Lee: Hamas action on 10/7 were an attempted genocide under this definition.
Hamas killed or kidnaped every Jew they could, civilian or solider. This was their plan and their goal. That’s genocide under any definition.Report
No, that 50,000 number is not an AP estimate. It’s statistics by Health Ministry Palestine that the WHO agrees with.
There is an ‘AP estimate’ that comes out, but that would be what percentage are women and children.
That 50,000 number, incidentally, is probably wrong and way too conservative. A peer reviewed survey showed that they were seriously undercounting deaths: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/middleeast/gaza-death-toll-underreported-study-intl/index.html
Those numbers should probably be ~40% higher, statistically. Their estimate would be ~64,260 dead way back at the end of June 2024.Report
This is claim amounts to “Hamas is seriously underreporting the number of dead”.
I also find it a little weird to always report “woman and children” as one category since there’s a vast difference between a random 10 year old and a 16 year old militant.Report
Some dramallama among the right-wingers of Twitter. There was a somewhat organic movement to get soder off of SNAP. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the argument that sweets and snacks should be bought with your own money, SNAP is for children and that means *HEALTHY* food and vegetables.
Well, what made this interesting is that a bunch of influencers started posting stuff about how Trump has a Diet Coke button and freedom means the freedom to enjoy a Diet Coke without the government saying that you can’t. We want *LESS* government interference! Not more!
And a bunch of folks said something to the effect of “wait, that’s fishy…” and Nick Sortor pointed out some of the big prominent accounts that tweeted pro-soda stuff. Clown World. Eric Daugherty, Ian Miles Cheong, Not Jerome Powell.
And, get this, a bunch of those guys showed up to say stuff like “I deleted it less than an hour later.” Here’s Clown World. Here’s Eric Daugherty. The others just deleted without acknowledging.
Riley Gaines said that they offered her money to post about it too but she turned it down.
Anyway, there’s a handful of influencers who got caught with their pants down and they’re getting yelled at.Report
From an English fried on Facebook:
“We’re visiting the States in July. Just going through Facebook deleting posts about your political situation, just to be on the safe side…”
WTF have we become?Report
*shrug* this is the world that a lot of people wanted. “if you have the Wrong Politics you should be punished”, that’s what we heard was Good, that’s what we heard Ought To Happen.
I guess it sucks that the Wrong Politics turned out to be different from what everyone expected but, well, maybe next time it’ll be your turn to call the tune.
Or we could have just not given the government such power to fuck with your life, but I guess that’s just the sadistic racist transphobic conservative in me talking.Report
…and the point that you think the left gave the government this power is when, exactly?
Because I don’t remember the government doing this before.
It sure is amazing how a bunch of people cannot tell generalized criticism by the population from government power.Report
Heh. Imagine an American thinking lèse-majesté is OK.Report
To do that, I’d have to imagine one being on the wrong side of one for long enough.Report
I’m not sure what that means.Report
It is easy for me to imagine an American thinking lèse-majesté is okay.
I imagine an American being on the wrong side of lèse-majesté for a while and then returning to power.Report
If you can suggest a story where the American legal system has come down on critics of whatever administration is currently in power I might give this some credence. Getting ratioed on social media doesn’t count.Report
Eh, this strikes me as likely to turn into a “find the rock” game where I provide a story and you explain how the person in question is particularly bad and so doesn’t count and then I’ll bring up the government pushing for censorship and bannings on social media and that’ll turn into how that doesn’t count and then you’ll again say that you can’t imagine how an American would think lèse-majesté is okay and I’ll say that you can do it if you imagine one being on the wrong side of one and we’ll be right back here.Report
Pinkie swear not to do that. It’s alarming no matter which side you’re on.Report
There is an old joke. “Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday!” is one formulation (but I have seen the vice-versa before).
Doug Mackey went to prison for making a variant of the joke by creating a meme that said Republicans have to vote in person but Democrats can vote by text.
Seven months in prison.Report
Oh, and here’s part two: Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to ‘censor’ some COVID-19 content during the pandemic.Report
Not touching that one.Report
We figured then. and know now, that Zuckerberg was classified in the wrong phylum. He does not belong among the chordates.Report
Thanks. Not lèse-majesté, but I will agree with you that it was a violation of his 1st Amendment freedom. Besides, what kind of idiot thinks you can vote by text?Report
I believe that that is the joke.
The humor comes from imagining that someone on the other team is so dumb that they’d believe that this is true.
Then you share it with your like-minded friend and you both laugh because ingroup/outgroup.
He went to jail for it. Not banned. Not ratioed.Report
Oh, so now we see that prosecution for criticism of the government has melted away to ‘prosecution for things the person who said them said were satire but the government says were election fraud’.
Neither satire nor election fraud are criticism of the government in the slightest. It doesn’t even matter what the facts of the case are, or even if it’s a first amendment violation.(1) It isn’t about criticizing the government, at all.
But the fact this this does not even _vaguely_ fit the thing being discussed means that Jaybird wins because he gets to claim the goalposts were moved, despite the fact he, very very clearly, is the person who moved them.
In fact, this seems to be a case that conservatives love to stretch to somehow be a political prosecution, they love the idea it was brought under Biden, apparently because they don’t know how time works and thinks Biden could be behind charges that were filed Jan 27, 2021, a week into his term in office and months before his Attorney General took power, and while all the USAs were still Trump appointed.
To repeat: This is a prosecution that actually happened under Trump, even if filed seven days after he left, and Trump’s people were still in there and did this entire case. It seems extremely unlikely it was politically motivated.
1) For the record, neither Harvard Law, which claims it sets a troubling first amendment violation about how to treat online culture, nor the appeals courts, which has stayed the sentence pending appeal, liked the results, and I agree with them. There is very little evidence this meme mislead anyone, and he should not be prosecuted for this. Or at best, a small fine to discourage this sort of behavior…there are things that are supposed to override first amendment concerns, and making sure the actual election process is not subject to disinformation and people can vote is one of them, but this punishment seems way out of line.
But, again, this is not about criticism of the government. At all. Nor was it done by someone who who targeted him for political purposes.
Or to put it another way: The troubling part of this case is the fact it was actually satire. It is entirely constitutional under the 1st amendment for people to be prosecuted for deliberately misleading people about how the mechanical process of an election works in such a way that their vote will not count. That is not generally in dispute. If you dispute it, say so.Report
Is censorshp for stuff like “Fauci funded the labs that leaked Covid 19” considered “prosecution” or is it merely censorship?
Is lèse-majesté being defined so narrowly that it only applies to stuff like this or does even stuff like that not count because it’s not an example of criticizing *BIDEN* and, anyways, it didn’t stick?Report
That is more a problem with the application of qualified immunity than with anything else.Report
Well, if stuff like that doesn’t count either, I’m going to be stuck talking about prosecutions of people who participated in J6 but never made it inside of the building and were prosecuted anyway.
“Sedition isn’t free speech”?Report
I was talking about lèse-majesté. You are free to talk about whatever topic you desire.Report
Are we talking about power responding to insults to power and limiting ourselves to that?
Because, if that’s the case, I suppose I can point to Trump in general, including the part where he was president for a while, and how The Deep State (the *REAL* power) responded to this grave insult of Trump being President.Report
Hit it, maestro.Report
Would the Oath Keepers who got busted for “seditious conspiracy” despite never crossing the threshold count?Report
Threshold of what?Report
Again, to repeat what is actually being talking about, the actual topic of discussion: this is the world that a lot of people wanted. “if you have the Wrong Politics you should be punished”, that’s what we heard was Good, that’s what we heard Ought To Happen.
The minimal example of this is showing somewhere where people with the wrong politics got punished for those politics. (Which doesn’t have to literally be the thing punished, we understand pretense.)
And then, the next step would be to show that the people don’t like what’s happening now did like that example. (Or, at minimum, it wasn’t the exact same people doing both instances!)
I feel like you read summaries of his letter, and then people building giant conspiracies off them, and not the actual letter, which weirdly is difficult to find on any media account talking about it. Here it is: https://jcpost.com/posts/17fc484f-376a-4e91-b411-3e3835407b46
You may notice it actually says it was ultimately their decision. Just, straight up, the government didn’t make them do it. It also doesn’t say _anything_ about political speech near Covid-19, and in fact the only speech it calls out as places the government went too far is humor and satire.
Facebook did restrict posts about lab leaks. That is true. There is _absolutely_ no evidence that the government even vaguely hinted to do that. Zuckerberg’s letter does not say it or even imply it. And, of course, that Facebook restriction started in in 2020, under Trump, and was lifted two months into the Biden administration!
So once again we are pointing at the Trump administration, although in this case it’s not even true!
That _is_ someone arrested for criticizing the government, or at least mocking them. By a local sheriff.
Which is why charged were dropped, and why he rightly sued the police. And then failed, because of laws essentially saying you cannot sue the police.
So you found the first requirement, someone being punished for clear political speech, although it didn’t get very far before the courts shot it down. Alright, we got one! The system did eventually work, but it was bad it happened at all.
So we can now we can ask ourselves: Who are the people objecting to the Trump’s administration current fascistic behavior of detaining tourists for weeks without charge because those people don’t like the Trump administration…
…and are they traditionally people who would be defending the behavior of the cops in this story?Report
The minimal example of this is showing somewhere where people with the wrong politics got punished for those politics. (Which doesn’t have to literally be the thing punished, we understand pretense.)
OH!!! Then we’re back to the punishment that happened under Covid. Seriously, there were years of people being banned and censored for having bad opinions (and, yes, it happened under Trump too).
It includes stuff like the Joe Rogan thing where there was a push to have him shut down. Remember Psaki talking about that? I can find you the discussions we had here at the time, if you want.Report
The fun thing about how Jaybird knows this is what will happen, so doesn’t have to do, is that it can be used for _anything_ and Jaybird never has to find a single example. It makes debate so simple.Report
It does if you think there is a “first speaker” privilege. Having grown up in a place where my views were not popular, I learned early on that free speech is a two-way street, and that its exercise takes a certain genital endowment. Spare me the lament of bubble-wrapped sophomores who claim to feel inhibited in expressing thoughts they think they think and might even believe they stand for.
What’s going on now is a different thing, though it has been done before, during WWI and its aftermath, and during the height of the Cold War. Because, all too often, it works.Report
Agreed. As has so often been pointed out on these pages, social media is not the real world.
People should not have to be worried about what legal consequences they might face for expressing criticism of anyone in the government.Report
Reminds me of this famous tweet:
https://x.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1050391663552671744Report
“The ones about how Covid was a lab leak?”
“Bingo.”Report
Strikes me as odd because *in England* you can be arrested for what is posted on Facebook; but while visiting America there is no real or imagined risk of being ‘deported’ while on vacation for something you might have posted on Facebook that wouldn’t get you arrested in England in the first place.
Specifically:
Communications Act (2003)
Online Safety Act (2023)
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127Report
When you say there _is_ no real or imagined risk, you mean before 2025, right?
Or are you completely disconnected from what is happening?
Also, to point out: You would not get arrested in England for being critical of the government either. That law doesn’t result in that.
It’s not a good law, it’s incredibly vague, but it’s not used to stop disparagement of the government. It could be, but is not. It’s also an outdated law that was intended for private texting and email and has ended up being applied to social media, and they’d going to revise it pretty soon.
(But Americans do not get to judge other countries by what their laws _could_ be used for, considering what that Trump is sending people without trial to overseas imprisonment using a 1798 law.)Report
My baseline assumption is that it’s related to Mahmoud Khalil… which strikes me as a bad comp for tourists; are there other instances I should be looking at?Report
…yes?
https://www.newsweek.com/border-patrol-checking-phones-social-media-messages-us-immigration-2048147
They also have repeatedly detained people (Not deported, _detained_.) people who give the slightest indication they might be working or living in the US on a tourist visa, with several notable examples of failing to clarify anything at all. For example, a visiting tattoo artist on a tourist visa saying she was going to tattoo a friend. She meant for free. Or a non-English speaker trying to saying he was going to stay at a friend’s in Las Vegas, which they took to mean he was going to _live_ in Las Vegas permanently.
There has been an extreme crackdown on white people entering the country, which a lot of people find very troubling, because it’s only supposed to be brown and black people subject to this sort of irrational scrutiny. Or long detentions instead of just, as worst, refusing entry. (Oops, I said the quiet part aloud again!)
Various countries have already issued travel warnings.
(One has to wonder why we would _ever_ detain someone even if they did flatly say they were going to do things that would violate their visa. Either they didn’t understand the requirements before and maybe could be corrected and let in, or they aren’t going to follow it and we should _have them leave on the next plane_. Why on earth are we holding them?)Report
Thanks, hadn’t seen that.
So the French Scientist was randomly selected for screening and the TSA (mis-)characterized them as “hate and conspiracy messages” that the FBI investigated and dropped?
Seems like shockingly bad luck and sub-optimal, yes. I’m at least a little curious whether they were orangeman bad memes or kinda unhinged hate speech that would get you arrested in the UK -per links above – by way of comparison.
The other example from Newsweek was:
“Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a physician at Brown Medicine in Rhode Island, held a “valid” H-1B visa when she was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport last week. She was returning to the U.S. following a trip to Lebanon to visit family. U.S. officials said she had photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose funeral she attended.”
Seems potentially optimal… she wasn’t randomly searched, but rather either the DHS knew she attended the funeral and barred her entry or she voluntarily said she attended the funeral (reporting isn’t certain on either of these points) and her case was referred to DHS.
I will, however, adjust my priors one-tick to the left that ‘maybe’ this is something keeping an eye on to see if it’s a real pattern emerges.Report
Beware the horse shoe theory of hate speech.Report
Sigh. One of the problems in a democracy is occasionally the voters decide/insist on bad policy.Report
I put that in parenthesis, but it actually cannot be emphasized enough how screwed up this is, how this is just the impotent bullying you get under early fascism.
The executive has, at the border, the right to reject the admission of almost anyone who isn’t a citizen or permanent resident or asylum seeker. If they’re on a tourist or work visa, they can just no. There’s no due process, no hearing required, they can just say ‘Nope, get back on the plane’. We talked about this with Trump’s Muslim ban, which was fought in court not on the grounds the power didn’t exist, but that it was used in an extremely harmful way by mass rejection of visa holders and causing complete chaos, it unlawfully rejected permanent residents and asylum seekers, and that it also had discriminatory intent.
No one, absolutely no one, asserts the executive cannot just say ‘Hey, you! Yeah, you! Coming here on a 45 day tourist visa. You hinted at working in this country on this tourist visa, so you have to leave!’.
That’s maybe stupidly used sometimes, we should maybe have a bit more discernment, but legal.
What is almost incomprehensible except on the the grounds of ‘We can harm non-Americans’, is _imprisoning_ that person for several weeks. There is no possible crime to charge them for…you could maybe try ‘attempting to lie on their visa application’ because they probably attested they weren’t going to work, but the fact they supposedly _told the authorities_ what they were doing sorta renders any sort of intent claim idiotic…they clearly didn’t understand some part of the rules, so no intent!
The thing you do with those people is say ‘Nope. Back on the plane!’
Unless you are just…fascism, and want to HURT foreigners because they are the designed outgroup. There actually isn’t another word for this, no other explanation. If we were farther along in fascism they’d probably send these people to the camps, but they can just use immigration law, which doesn’t really have the concept of rules about how long you can hold people who walk up the border and try to enter the country and they say no, because no one ever thought anyone would keep those people around!Report
2 countries separated by a common language. My friend’s fear is, I believe, wholly novel for a tourist, and not entirely unjustified.Report