More like pick your little piece of turf and defend it and let whoever is most self interested pick their little piece of turf and defend that. Trump will win some but probably lose a lot of others. The end result is to turn the situation from some kind of existential threat to to the constitutional system to just politics.
Honestly I think the best strategy may be to turn Jaybird's theorem from the OP on its head. Instead of trying to unite disparate people, institutions, and interests, force Trump to try to dismantle everything he doesn't like one by one.
Though I think what's really going on with a lot of this is the belief that we should have less a king than a CEO. One of the reasons I think that the Democrats have struggled to deal with Trump is the slow but sure elimination from the coalition of people with insight into the private sector and total take over by those used to environments where you get your way by manipulation of processes and succeding via proceduralism. They're just not used to dealing with people like this, who play chicken and/or engage in a bunch of puffery and craziness as a tactic. The lack of perspective makes Trump seem stronger than he actually is.
I myself have dealt with this kind of thing, particularly in tech, when the business people enter into regulated industries. Tech is mostly unregulated so unless your tech services something like finance or healthcare you can do a lot of moving fast and breaking things. But when you get into something like government you have to deal with rules and stakeholders and people who are bound to follow a playbook you can't control. In the government that playbook is what the law actually is, as it is written.
I am starting to hear and read that very few feds are taking the 'buyout' (really more of an extended resignation). If the civil service doesn't blink, and I think it's looking increasingly likely that they won't, he will end up with no choice but to go to Congress. While I have no doubts Johnson and Thune will do their best for his agenda, as they find it helpful to them, it will not be this kind of unilaterlism. And that's not even getting into the delays and road blocks that are going to start coming up as this works through the courts.
Heh while I appreciate the enthusiasm I think you're overly optimistic about how a lot of this will work out. Trump's record in court on in his first term was terrible. From 2019:
Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a nearly 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trump’s win rate at about 6 percent.
Now you're right that if Congress passes an appropriations bill eliminating funding for an agency then that that will indeed be the law of the land, but we all know that hasn't happened yet and we also know that the GOP majority has barely been able to pass continuing resolutions by itself. So I think your best case is that this is all a lot of cart before horse. But until that happens I think we should fully anticipate that he is going to lose in court and lose a lot.
I think he's on much firmer ground when it comes to the DEI, 'gender' wackiness, and similar stuff which has never had a strong statutory basis and always rested on the weird internal politics of the bureaucracies and those who work in them. You know my posting history well enough to know that I personally won't mourn the end of that sort of thing and that I actually agree, that the Democratic party could help itself quite a bit by moving on from it.
Lastly though I think you also know that 'because the president said so' has never been the final word in this country and I don't expect it will be on the policy, or for Musk and his minions. All glory is fleeting.
Federal. So probably not much to really worry about while Trump is president (though who knows what happens if there is some kind of falling out or disaster that results in finger pointing). But that's why I bring up the statute of limitations issue. Again, not predicting what's going to happen one way or the other, just saying the advice I'd give to a young vassal of the DOGE in the moment.
One of our more scholarly lawyers would need to chime in. I'm not sure if there is any precedent that might be instructive. I do know that there are some very broad statutes on the books. The last place I'd want to find myself is standing between an AUSA and a federal judge whenever the winds change. Maybe it's a worthwhile risk for the richest man in the world but if you're just some guy being there in the first place means you've already lost.
I don't think it's 'hold out hope' so much as that for at least the next 2 years, unless Congress wants to step in (lol!), all anyone who wants to push back on (nominally) official action can do is raise a fuss look to the courts. However I think North is right about the inclinations of the federal judiciary. There are certainly some hacks on the bench but one upside of the lifetime appointments is that the courts tend to have longer and more circumspect view of the world that goes beyond the next election cycle or two.
For that reason, if I had the ear of one of these 19 or 20 year old muskrats going into federal buildings, I'd warn them that there are not, I don't believe, any statutes of limitations on various unpermitted access felonies. Of the many things that could happen, one that I think is very unlikely would be daddy Elon's writ extending to club fed.
David, what the CDC says still applies to the pregnant 'trans man' in this hypothetical and is still accurate because she is in fact still a woman. Pregnancy is impossible for anyone who isn't a woman and even if she may not like being a woman, absent some crazy scientific breakthrough, it's what she is and always will be. A piece of paper issued by the government doesn't change that and can't change that. The demand and at times willingness of the government to endorse beliefs that are at odds with very easily observable physical reality is indeed at the heart of the problem.
I know your only way of trying to debate that is with histrionics and I used to be more sanguine about all of it. However it is now clear that the language games you demand invariably lead to all manner of unacceptable and unworkable accommodations. In these very comments it's gotten you demanding public schools treat parents as guilty until proven innocent child abusers, whose price for using the public schools is to be treated by the state with extreme suspicion and as a threat to their own children. And that's not even getting into the other absurdities like 'female identifying' male sex offenders in womens prisons.
What those that call themselves trans should do is take their freedom under the 1st Amendment, and their freedom under Bostock and enjoy their lives. What they should stop doing is fighting for an official redefinition of physical sex with the nebulous concept of 'gender identity.' In the former lies a better path to a sustainable equilibrium. As for the latter, well, you see what's happening.
I dunno about the deep philosophical stuff but I still have yet to have someone explain crypto to me in a way that does not sound like an obvious scam.
Fair enough. So as a liberal Catholic I should anticipate vindication but only in the unsatisfying way one might experience it from beating a game on easy mode. :)
I think the most the US could "give" (not sure what else to call it) is to officially tell Israel they have a totally free hand and no matter what they do, no matter how bad it is, there will be no repercussions from the US, no matter what anyone else in the region does or has to say about it.
Maybe that's what this message really is. 'Kill them all or drive them out, do whatever you want, we don't care.'
The gun thing I think is easier to just go back to pre-Sandy Hook Obama era. Treat it as a state and local issue. Hogg is of course the opposite of the type of person you want for that pivot but I think you can get pretty far on let New York be New York and let Texas be Texas.
I read an article on this the other day. Democrats were still very competitive with young women, it's young men where they got killed. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but on the whole I believe young men are less gung ho on gun control.
Hey I'm just glad we've finally established that you understand physical reality, as opposed to a bunch of cultural contingencies and language games.
But here's the part all the words in the world won't get around. At the end of the day, a person calling herself a 'trans man' as you defined that concept is really just a woman who pretends to the social conventions of a man, and may have had some cosmetic surgeries and/or hormonal treatments in hopes of changing her body to better resemble the secondary sex characteristics of a man.
If she has had surgeries and/or hormonal treatments she may have harmed her reproductive system to the point pregnancy is not possible, and while I think an adult has the right to do that stuff if they want, she's still a woman. Again, not really hard.
As an aside I'll also reiterate, no such thing as a 'cis' so please stop with that.
I think you're onto something with this. All volunteer force has made the military more remote than maybe ever. We not only lack the writers for the source material, we probably lack the production people and maybe even audiences to see it as a source of humor.
Of the nominees I saw Dune 2, the Substance, and Anora. I thought all 3 of them failed to stick the ending and would therefore feel pretty meh about any of them being called best anything.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
More like pick your little piece of turf and defend it and let whoever is most self interested pick their little piece of turf and defend that. Trump will win some but probably lose a lot of others. The end result is to turn the situation from some kind of existential threat to to the constitutional system to just politics.
Honestly I think the best strategy may be to turn Jaybird's theorem from the OP on its head. Instead of trying to unite disparate people, institutions, and interests, force Trump to try to dismantle everything he doesn't like one by one.
"
They don't care about that stuff Phil. You know that.
"
Absolutely!
Though I think what's really going on with a lot of this is the belief that we should have less a king than a CEO. One of the reasons I think that the Democrats have struggled to deal with Trump is the slow but sure elimination from the coalition of people with insight into the private sector and total take over by those used to environments where you get your way by manipulation of processes and succeding via proceduralism. They're just not used to dealing with people like this, who play chicken and/or engage in a bunch of puffery and craziness as a tactic. The lack of perspective makes Trump seem stronger than he actually is.
I myself have dealt with this kind of thing, particularly in tech, when the business people enter into regulated industries. Tech is mostly unregulated so unless your tech services something like finance or healthcare you can do a lot of moving fast and breaking things. But when you get into something like government you have to deal with rules and stakeholders and people who are bound to follow a playbook you can't control. In the government that playbook is what the law actually is, as it is written.
I am starting to hear and read that very few feds are taking the 'buyout' (really more of an extended resignation). If the civil service doesn't blink, and I think it's looking increasingly likely that they won't, he will end up with no choice but to go to Congress. While I have no doubts Johnson and Thune will do their best for his agenda, as they find it helpful to them, it will not be this kind of unilaterlism. And that's not even getting into the delays and road blocks that are going to start coming up as this works through the courts.
"
Heh while I appreciate the enthusiasm I think you're overly optimistic about how a lot of this will work out. Trump's record in court on in his first term was terrible. From 2019:
Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a nearly 73-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal “win rate” for the government in such cases is about 70 percent, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trump’s win rate at about 6 percent.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-real-reason-president-trump-is-constantly-losing-in-court/2019/03/19/f5ffb056-33a8-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html
Now you're right that if Congress passes an appropriations bill eliminating funding for an agency then that that will indeed be the law of the land, but we all know that hasn't happened yet and we also know that the GOP majority has barely been able to pass continuing resolutions by itself. So I think your best case is that this is all a lot of cart before horse. But until that happens I think we should fully anticipate that he is going to lose in court and lose a lot.
I think he's on much firmer ground when it comes to the DEI, 'gender' wackiness, and similar stuff which has never had a strong statutory basis and always rested on the weird internal politics of the bureaucracies and those who work in them. You know my posting history well enough to know that I personally won't mourn the end of that sort of thing and that I actually agree, that the Democratic party could help itself quite a bit by moving on from it.
Lastly though I think you also know that 'because the president said so' has never been the final word in this country and I don't expect it will be on the policy, or for Musk and his minions. All glory is fleeting.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
This seems troublingly plausible.
On “Keynesian Beauty Contests, Schelling Points, and the Omnicause”
Federal. So probably not much to really worry about while Trump is president (though who knows what happens if there is some kind of falling out or disaster that results in finger pointing). But that's why I bring up the statute of limitations issue. Again, not predicting what's going to happen one way or the other, just saying the advice I'd give to a young vassal of the DOGE in the moment.
"
One of our more scholarly lawyers would need to chime in. I'm not sure if there is any precedent that might be instructive. I do know that there are some very broad statutes on the books. The last place I'd want to find myself is standing between an AUSA and a federal judge whenever the winds change. Maybe it's a worthwhile risk for the richest man in the world but if you're just some guy being there in the first place means you've already lost.
"
I don't think it's 'hold out hope' so much as that for at least the next 2 years, unless Congress wants to step in (lol!), all anyone who wants to push back on (nominally) official action can do is raise a fuss look to the courts. However I think North is right about the inclinations of the federal judiciary. There are certainly some hacks on the bench but one upside of the lifetime appointments is that the courts tend to have longer and more circumspect view of the world that goes beyond the next election cycle or two.
For that reason, if I had the ear of one of these 19 or 20 year old muskrats going into federal buildings, I'd warn them that there are not, I don't believe, any statutes of limitations on various unpermitted access felonies. Of the many things that could happen, one that I think is very unlikely would be daddy Elon's writ extending to club fed.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
David, what the CDC says still applies to the pregnant 'trans man' in this hypothetical and is still accurate because she is in fact still a woman. Pregnancy is impossible for anyone who isn't a woman and even if she may not like being a woman, absent some crazy scientific breakthrough, it's what she is and always will be. A piece of paper issued by the government doesn't change that and can't change that. The demand and at times willingness of the government to endorse beliefs that are at odds with very easily observable physical reality is indeed at the heart of the problem.
I know your only way of trying to debate that is with histrionics and I used to be more sanguine about all of it. However it is now clear that the language games you demand invariably lead to all manner of unacceptable and unworkable accommodations. In these very comments it's gotten you demanding public schools treat parents as guilty until proven innocent child abusers, whose price for using the public schools is to be treated by the state with extreme suspicion and as a threat to their own children. And that's not even getting into the other absurdities like 'female identifying' male sex offenders in womens prisons.
What those that call themselves trans should do is take their freedom under the 1st Amendment, and their freedom under Bostock and enjoy their lives. What they should stop doing is fighting for an official redefinition of physical sex with the nebulous concept of 'gender identity.' In the former lies a better path to a sustainable equilibrium. As for the latter, well, you see what's happening.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
I dunno about the deep philosophical stuff but I still have yet to have someone explain crypto to me in a way that does not sound like an obvious scam.
On “Welcome to the Quagmire”
Technically I think their enemy is Ottawa.
"
Objectively I think you'd have to say yes. Maybe all thats gone is the fig leaf.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
Birthright citizenship EO stayed by a federal judge.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/02/05/birthright-citizenship-injunction-trump-immigration/
I assume we will be seeing this about 1000 more times in the coming weeks.
On “The 97th Oscars’ Best Picture Race: As Wide Open As It Gets”
Fair enough. So as a liberal Catholic I should anticipate vindication but only in the unsatisfying way one might experience it from beating a game on easy mode. :)
On “Welcome to the Quagmire”
I think the most the US could "give" (not sure what else to call it) is to officially tell Israel they have a totally free hand and no matter what they do, no matter how bad it is, there will be no repercussions from the US, no matter what anyone else in the region does or has to say about it.
Maybe that's what this message really is. 'Kill them all or drive them out, do whatever you want, we don't care.'
"
Jared Kushner?
On “The 97th Oscars’ Best Picture Race: As Wide Open As It Gets”
I must strenuously, strenuously, and even more strenuously object to this totally undeserved denigration of Stilgar.
But also was Conclave legit good? My question wasn't meant sarcastically, I couldn't tell if your endorsement was serious or not!
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
Those are harder issues to deal with.
The gun thing I think is easier to just go back to pre-Sandy Hook Obama era. Treat it as a state and local issue. Hogg is of course the opposite of the type of person you want for that pivot but I think you can get pretty far on let New York be New York and let Texas be Texas.
"
I read an article on this the other day. Democrats were still very competitive with young women, it's young men where they got killed. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but on the whole I believe young men are less gung ho on gun control.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
Hey I'm just glad we've finally established that you understand physical reality, as opposed to a bunch of cultural contingencies and language games.
But here's the part all the words in the world won't get around. At the end of the day, a person calling herself a 'trans man' as you defined that concept is really just a woman who pretends to the social conventions of a man, and may have had some cosmetic surgeries and/or hormonal treatments in hopes of changing her body to better resemble the secondary sex characteristics of a man.
If she has had surgeries and/or hormonal treatments she may have harmed her reproductive system to the point pregnancy is not possible, and while I think an adult has the right to do that stuff if they want, she's still a woman. Again, not really hard.
As an aside I'll also reiterate, no such thing as a 'cis' so please stop with that.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
So much for America first.
On “The 97th Oscars’ Best Picture Race: As Wide Open As It Gets”
I think you're onto something with this. All volunteer force has made the military more remote than maybe ever. We not only lack the writers for the source material, we probably lack the production people and maybe even audiences to see it as a source of humor.
"
You're forgetting the finest comedic war film of all.
Hot Shots: Part Deux.
"
Was it in fact good?
Of the nominees I saw Dune 2, the Substance, and Anora. I thought all 3 of them failed to stick the ending and would therefore feel pretty meh about any of them being called best anything.
On “Open Mic for the week of 2/3/2025”
Ding ding ding ding.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.