I certainly would! And have, on the occasions I've seen people open carrying, mainly on my journeys to Southern and Eastern Oregon.
And by "people" who I've seen open carrying, I mean "men," and by "men," I mean "middle-aged white men."
I don't fear the gun, I respect its power. I fear the dude carrying it. I fear him because he's made it a point to wander around with a weapon on display, making a plain statement that he has the capability to use it. So I fear that he has a temper, that he's short on patience, that he's intolerant of conflict, that he's got some kind of a chip on his shoulder. The fact that this guy has chosen to open carry makes it seem more likely in my mind that he possesses those personality traits than otherwise.
Because even in rural places populated mainly by very conservative, gun-loving folks, places like Southern or Eastern Oregon, open carrying is unusual, ostentatious behavior.
I don't think that would fly before even the current watered-down can of Establishment Clause Lite that's on tap at today's SCOTUS. But if I were going to bring a challenge to that, I'd do it on behalf of a Seventh-Day Adventist minister rather than an Orthodox rabbi, and I'd include a Free Exercise Clause claim along with the Establishment Clause.
Em may have thoughts as well, but numbers like these are consistent with my experience. Of the verdicts I've seen with punitives awarded, more of them have been fractions of the compensatory than multiples. Why? Lots of theories but generally, I posit that juries don't like the idea of punitive damages much after they get explanations of what non-economic compensatory damages are for.
An example of the futility of the idea of further restrictions on AR-15s is the report from the Associated Press that a Republican-led committee in the Texas House advanced a bill to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 from 18 to 21. We don’t know where Garcia and Oropesa got their guns, but we do know that they were 33 and 38 respectively. The bill would have changed nothing.
...
Many of my readers believe that banning AR-15s is at least part of the answer. I disagree. There really is no evidence that either of the two shootings would not have happened or been as deadly without AR-15s. We know that Garcia had a multitude of other weapons at hand and Oropesa might also have just as easily used a different type of rifle in his crimes if his AR wasn’t available.
So, because we can't prevent all violence with a single change in the law, we aren't even going to try anything? This sounds like a cognate of people refusing the COVID vaccines because it didn't make the virus bounce off their bodies like bullets on Captain America's vibranium shield. They weren't going to get the vaccine anyway even if it did do that, and the Texas Legislature's gun caucus wasn't going to let a bill advance even if there were data available suggesting it could help. And it irrationally obstructs efforts to make things better.
That is because possession of guns, particularly when it is public and prominent, is a marker of political-tribal identification. To have weapons, to open-carry them, to brag of having them and to mention them in conversation (even in jest) as a conflict resolution tool -- these behaviors are, or have become, cultural. And no, you can't legislate a culture away, particularly when the members of that culture weild significant political power.
I too support red flag laws, despite serious misgivings that they will 1) be used disproportionately on racial minorities and 2) reveal a terrifying truth that a much higher percentage of our population is closer to the edge of mental health breakdowns than we'd ever suspected. But they aren't and can't be enough. Nor will any amount of effort eliminate all violence.
But let's please remember that we're necessarily going to talk about marginal improvements taking hold over time and only measurable statistically and in retrospect with necessarily vague causation if we're going to talk about anything but the status quo. The passages quoted here skirt the edge of allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the better-than-right-now.
Take heart: none of this ignominious collapse would have been possible without years of greatness building up the Tide's athletic program to the point that this much attention and money would be there in the first place. You don't see this sort of thing from, say, UC Santa Barbara or UW-Eau Claire. It is the dominance, wealth, and swagger of Alabama sports that makes all this scandal possible.
Interesting column today in the inbox:
https://open.substack.com/pub/theliberalpatriot/p/young-voters-are-more-moderate-than?r=dy2cv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Young people (18-29) mostly identify as moderate and will adopt the "conservative" position on issues, although even after reading the column, I'm struck that a) still only 25% of The Youngz identify as overtly "conservative" and b) a large number of The Youngz identify as LGBTQA+ and are repelled by the heteronormative political agitation that has occupied so much of the online consciousness lately, including a high percentage of the comments on this page.
Which, if I were advising Republicans, would make tell them "back off on the Transgender business and explain how you're going to get these people JOBS" but that of course would be concern trolling. Y'all rejected my advice of "No more creepy weirdos" ten years ago after Todd Akin helped re-elect Obama in a race Romney could have won. So keep on keepin' on there, GOP friends. Don't let me tell you what to do.
This seems like the same cohort who were the target audience for the "Trump Campaign = Galactic Empire" internet spots, so I would revise your statement by striking the phrase "did the right thing and". What they're celebrating is a vi tory. The moral gravity of the intent behind their actions is at most secondary.
At some level they have to know that they were bullies, but they don't care. What feels good to them is winning.
Agreed that Andor is a blue ribbon Star Wars product. IMO excelled only by Rogue One (which uses the same character, but that's not why). The writing team Disney has out together really gets it: Show, don't tell; the protagonist's moral choice is decisive to the plot; grow the character through struggle so that choice makes sense when it happens.
Everyhthing else is, frankly, decor, although Star Wars has wonderful decor. From the very first movie, with its use of scaled models to awe us with the size of the Star Destroyers and go-nuts-y'all instructions to the alien costume makers. And the Eye of Aldhani is definitely in that vein. Easy to see how a mostly-secular society like the galaxy of Star Wars would find such a thing mystical and spiritual, and kudos to the visual artists who showed it to us.
Your explanation for the exposition around the Eye never, ever occurred to me. Thanks for that! I just ran with it, loved the visual, and was on the edge of my seat to see the heist underway.
Yes, although I'm wary of what "border security" looks like for Republicans, because I've noticed that's a code phrase for "building a moat from San Ysidro all the way to South Padre Island and then stocking that moat with hungry rabid crocodiles armed with frickin' laser beams and then building a thirty-foot high curtain wall with palisades and electrified concertina wire and then densely manning that wall sharpshooters behind the moat and not having any gates or highways actually go through the wall or over the moat" which I strongly suspect is not what most Republicans would actually want in practice but does seem to be the minimum threshold level of border security that their chosen elected representatives would request.
In fact, I think border security is at least as much about what happens in the international terminals of airports as it is at border crossings, but saying something like that apparently means I'm in favor of open borders.
With that out of the way, yes, absolutely, this is a potentially reasonable set of planks for an immigration reform policy and I'd be very happy to see Dems and Reps sitting down to manner out the details of it.
Sure. Not every voter in Oregon is a black-bloc-loving, public-transportation-taking, gluten-eschewing, homebrew-drinking, fuzzy-animal-rescuing, used-bookstore-patronizing, stoned-all-the-time middle-aged hippie vegan socialist.
This is what I would posit as well, albeit with different verbiage: regardless of any moral principle about debts or epistemological assessment of what debts are, a practical, normative, outcome-based rule is at work. Lawyers (and probably others) call this sort of rule a "policy decision."
It may inform your further consideration that what Anglo-American law sees going on here is a continuation of legal personhood for a time following the death of the human being. This is a person's "estate." Some other person, typically a descendant, administers the estate, which means that person gathers and disposes of both debts and assets to settle the decedent's accounts. Assets left over after this are distributed to the heirs in the form of an inherintance. But should debts exceed assets, the law makes a policy decision to not pass those debts along, shifting the burden of the death from the heirs to the creditors; this is thought to produce (on a society-wide scale) a better outcome by way of greater overall economic activity and more potential for upward social mobility.
OR Republicans like their weed just fine. They like smoking it, they like taxing it. It's a product here, like any other. What were things like ten, fifteen years ago?.I dunno, I wasn't here then.
By "reparations," do you mean any redistributive effort? Or are we speaking strictly about a wealth redistribution aimed at realizing a particular goal; as identified here, the goal of ameliorating future discrimination?
ETA: You posit that creditor status is heritable. If I harm Jaybird's father, who subsequently dies, Jaybird as his heir is entitled to receive the damages from me. This makes sense: a credit is a form of property. Why, then, is debtor status not heritable? I owe Jaybird a debt. If I die before Jaybird is able to collect the debt from me, why does that debt not pass down to my daughter? I think I know the answer, but I am interested in your approach.
On “Triple Terror In Texas”
I certainly would! And have, on the occasions I've seen people open carrying, mainly on my journeys to Southern and Eastern Oregon.
And by "people" who I've seen open carrying, I mean "men," and by "men," I mean "middle-aged white men."
I don't fear the gun, I respect its power. I fear the dude carrying it. I fear him because he's made it a point to wander around with a weapon on display, making a plain statement that he has the capability to use it. So I fear that he has a temper, that he's short on patience, that he's intolerant of conflict, that he's got some kind of a chip on his shoulder. The fact that this guy has chosen to open carry makes it seem more likely in my mind that he possesses those personality traits than otherwise.
Because even in rural places populated mainly by very conservative, gun-loving folks, places like Southern or Eastern Oregon, open carrying is unusual, ostentatious behavior.
"
This is a good point. People rarely engage in violence to other people who are closely related to themselves.
On “Religious Liberty Returns to the Supreme Court”
I don't think that would fly before even the current watered-down can of Establishment Clause Lite that's on tap at today's SCOTUS. But if I were going to bring a challenge to that, I'd do it on behalf of a Seventh-Day Adventist minister rather than an Orthodox rabbi, and I'd include a Free Exercise Clause claim along with the Establishment Clause.
On “What the Trump Verdict Means, and What it Doesn’t”
Em may have thoughts as well, but numbers like these are consistent with my experience. Of the verdicts I've seen with punitives awarded, more of them have been fractions of the compensatory than multiples. Why? Lots of theories but generally, I posit that juries don't like the idea of punitive damages much after they get explanations of what non-economic compensatory damages are for.
On “Triple Terror In Texas”
Agreed. It needn't be tacit, either.
"
So, because we can't prevent all violence with a single change in the law, we aren't even going to try anything? This sounds like a cognate of people refusing the COVID vaccines because it didn't make the virus bounce off their bodies like bullets on Captain America's vibranium shield. They weren't going to get the vaccine anyway even if it did do that, and the Texas Legislature's gun caucus wasn't going to let a bill advance even if there were data available suggesting it could help. And it irrationally obstructs efforts to make things better.
That is because possession of guns, particularly when it is public and prominent, is a marker of political-tribal identification. To have weapons, to open-carry them, to brag of having them and to mention them in conversation (even in jest) as a conflict resolution tool -- these behaviors are, or have become, cultural. And no, you can't legislate a culture away, particularly when the members of that culture weild significant political power.
I too support red flag laws, despite serious misgivings that they will 1) be used disproportionately on racial minorities and 2) reveal a terrifying truth that a much higher percentage of our population is closer to the edge of mental health breakdowns than we'd ever suspected. But they aren't and can't be enough. Nor will any amount of effort eliminate all violence.
But let's please remember that we're necessarily going to talk about marginal improvements taking hold over time and only measurable statistically and in retrospect with necessarily vague causation if we're going to talk about anything but the status quo. The passages quoted here skirt the edge of allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the better-than-right-now.
On “Alabama’s Baseball Disgrace”
Take heart: none of this ignominious collapse would have been possible without years of greatness building up the Tide's athletic program to the point that this much attention and money would be there in the first place. You don't see this sort of thing from, say, UC Santa Barbara or UW-Eau Claire. It is the dominance, wealth, and swagger of Alabama sports that makes all this scandal possible.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 5/1/2023”
If only there were a convenient, easy-to-understand list of nations ranked by GDP per capita. (Yes, we are a wealthy nation when viewed by this index. But since when did Ireland beat us so handily! here's the answer: some time between 1999 and 2000.)
"
No one heard me last time. I'll say it again though.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/04/19/fbi-data-oregon-crime-starts-to-go-down-in-2022/#:~:text=A%20rise%20in%20crime%20during,property%20crime%20decreased%20by%202.6%25.
Crime is going down. At least, it looks that way. Article above focuses on cities in Oregon but Oregon isn't going to be weird in this respect.
"
Interesting column today in the inbox:
https://open.substack.com/pub/theliberalpatriot/p/young-voters-are-more-moderate-than?r=dy2cv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Young people (18-29) mostly identify as moderate and will adopt the "conservative" position on issues, although even after reading the column, I'm struck that a) still only 25% of The Youngz identify as overtly "conservative" and b) a large number of The Youngz identify as LGBTQA+ and are repelled by the heteronormative political agitation that has occupied so much of the online consciousness lately, including a high percentage of the comments on this page.
Which, if I were advising Republicans, would make tell them "back off on the Transgender business and explain how you're going to get these people JOBS" but that of course would be concern trolling. Y'all rejected my advice of "No more creepy weirdos" ten years ago after Todd Akin helped re-elect Obama in a race Romney could have won. So keep on keepin' on there, GOP friends. Don't let me tell you what to do.
"
This seems like the same cohort who were the target audience for the "Trump Campaign = Galactic Empire" internet spots, so I would revise your statement by striking the phrase "did the right thing and". What they're celebrating is a vi tory. The moral gravity of the intent behind their actions is at most secondary.
At some level they have to know that they were bullies, but they don't care. What feels good to them is winning.
On “Video Throughput: The Eye of Aldhani and May the Fourth Be With You”
Agreed that Andor is a blue ribbon Star Wars product. IMO excelled only by Rogue One (which uses the same character, but that's not why). The writing team Disney has out together really gets it: Show, don't tell; the protagonist's moral choice is decisive to the plot; grow the character through struggle so that choice makes sense when it happens.
Everyhthing else is, frankly, decor, although Star Wars has wonderful decor. From the very first movie, with its use of scaled models to awe us with the size of the Star Destroyers and go-nuts-y'all instructions to the alien costume makers. And the Eye of Aldhani is definitely in that vein. Easy to see how a mostly-secular society like the galaxy of Star Wars would find such a thing mystical and spiritual, and kudos to the visual artists who showed it to us.
Your explanation for the exposition around the Eye never, ever occurred to me. Thanks for that! I just ran with it, loved the visual, and was on the edge of my seat to see the heist underway.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Spring has Sprung”
It's springtime in Portland! That means the rain is slightly warmer.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 5/1/2023”
crime is going down again
"
Well, that's because they're cowards.
On “Title 42 Needs to Go Away”
Jeez. I thought I was being cynical about the border hawks.
On “TSN Open Mic for the week of 5/1/2023”
I'm friends with some judges. I don't practice in their courts. But they nevertheless won't let me pick up their check at lunch.
On “Four Proud Boys Found Guilty On 31 of 46 Counts For January 6th”
Buh-bye Mr. Tarrio. May your not-yet convicted co-conspirators scurry out of the light of public view like the cockroaches they are.
On “Title 42 Needs to Go Away”
Yes, although I'm wary of what "border security" looks like for Republicans, because I've noticed that's a code phrase for "building a moat from San Ysidro all the way to South Padre Island and then stocking that moat with hungry rabid crocodiles armed with frickin' laser beams and then building a thirty-foot high curtain wall with palisades and electrified concertina wire and then densely manning that wall sharpshooters behind the moat and not having any gates or highways actually go through the wall or over the moat" which I strongly suspect is not what most Republicans would actually want in practice but does seem to be the minimum threshold level of border security that their chosen elected representatives would request.
In fact, I think border security is at least as much about what happens in the international terminals of airports as it is at border crossings, but saying something like that apparently means I'm in favor of open borders.
With that out of the way, yes, absolutely, this is a potentially reasonable set of planks for an immigration reform policy and I'd be very happy to see Dems and Reps sitting down to manner out the details of it.
On “She Might Have Become The Governor”
Sure. Not every voter in Oregon is a black-bloc-loving, public-transportation-taking, gluten-eschewing, homebrew-drinking, fuzzy-animal-rescuing, used-bookstore-patronizing, stoned-all-the-time middle-aged hippie vegan socialist.
I, for instance, am not a vegan.
On “Rillette and Other Things That Start with “P””
Massive props for the best cooking direction I've read in many a month: "Stud the half onion with cloves so it looks like a battle armadillo."
On “Ethics of Wealth Gap”
This is what I would posit as well, albeit with different verbiage: regardless of any moral principle about debts or epistemological assessment of what debts are, a practical, normative, outcome-based rule is at work. Lawyers (and probably others) call this sort of rule a "policy decision."
It may inform your further consideration that what Anglo-American law sees going on here is a continuation of legal personhood for a time following the death of the human being. This is a person's "estate." Some other person, typically a descendant, administers the estate, which means that person gathers and disposes of both debts and assets to settle the decedent's accounts. Assets left over after this are distributed to the heirs in the form of an inherintance. But should debts exceed assets, the law makes a policy decision to not pass those debts along, shifting the burden of the death from the heirs to the creditors; this is thought to produce (on a society-wide scale) a better outcome by way of greater overall economic activity and more potential for upward social mobility.
On “She Might Have Become The Governor”
OR Republicans like their weed just fine. They like smoking it, they like taxing it. It's a product here, like any other. What were things like ten, fifteen years ago?.I dunno, I wasn't here then.
On “Ethics of Wealth Gap”
By "reparations," do you mean any redistributive effort? Or are we speaking strictly about a wealth redistribution aimed at realizing a particular goal; as identified here, the goal of ameliorating future discrimination?
ETA: You posit that creditor status is heritable. If I harm Jaybird's father, who subsequently dies, Jaybird as his heir is entitled to receive the damages from me. This makes sense: a credit is a form of property. Why, then, is debtor status not heritable? I owe Jaybird a debt. If I die before Jaybird is able to collect the debt from me, why does that debt not pass down to my daughter? I think I know the answer, but I am interested in your approach.
On “She Might Have Become The Governor”
Absolutely. This story is set in Oregon, but there don't need to be many changes in the details to make it damn near universal.