They have the best lawyers money can buy. If they had a case for that I assume they would have made it.
Yeah, this. IIRC, among other things the agreement between the Florida and Disney explicitly authorized the state to revise it through legislative acts.
Just one of several reasons why Disney was legitimately going to lose its lawsuit.
Yeah, this. It was a really ugly piece of bad-faith wishcasting among some libs on Twitter to ever say Florida was going to lose this. And probably the same for a few liberals here as well, though tbh I wasn't following close enough to be sure.
Politically speaking, it would make my life quite a bit easier if Donald Trump is removed from the ballot, being ruled by the judiciary that he is ineligible for the office by virtue of the 14th Amendment.
That said, January 6 was not an insurrection and Donald Trump was not an insurrectionist. And frankly it's bad faith argument to say otherwise.
Your own definition speaks to this clearly enough, but just for emphasis it's important to speak clearly about what an insurrection is. An insurrection is a revolt against a previously established authority in some jurisdiction, by those who were previously subject to that authority (or others acting on behalf of those people).
What Donald Trump did, in its most serious purpose, was not to overthrow or in any way diminish the authority of the federal government or the Constitution in any way. It was to assert that he, Donald Trump was the legitimate agent or representative of that authority. That could very well still be a bad thing, but it is not an insurrection.
There may (or may not) be other reasons why Donald Trump did not lead an insurrection, or otherwise be eligible to be President by the 14th Amendment. But that is the most important one.
One of the reasons I just don’t care at all about the current social media discourse around Harvard is because the two loudest folks making noise about it, Elise Stefanik and Christopher Rufo, also made sure their own CV’s of ambition has Harvard emblazoned on it. They wanted the influence and power social cheat code of Harvard nomenclature themselves before anyone knew who they were.
Yeah that's not right. In fact it's almost entirely backward.
Leaving aside ideological considerations, Stefanik and Rufo have, more that most, made a significant investment in Harvard's brand and therefore ought to be upset when their investment is depreciated through stupid hijinks.
Yeah, this is mostly probably right. It's worth noting for me, that this is one case of a larger pattern: nothing meaningfully good is going to happen to Trump between now and Election Day. But there's lot of things bad that can happen. In fact most of the things that are likely will be bad for Trump.
You could have exogenous things come out of the blue which hurt Biden and Demos, eg Gaza, but even there I think people will be looking for other options before making Trump the beneficiary.
It's why even if the pro-Trump polls are right, I don't think they are necessarily indicative of a Trump win. Even good polls are mostly a static snapshot of a dynamic process and even if the snapshot is right the dynamics are still against Trump, by a lot.
You can have a shotgun in the UK. You have to get a license, a ‘Section 2 Shotgun Certificate’, but it’s not particularly hard, and Tony Martin had one…and then he lost it, because he shot at someone’s car years earlier.
David, the various facts you are asserting in this line of comments aren't necessarily wrong, but you are misunderstanding the implications in the context of this thread eight ways to Sunday, for my comments and your comments both.
First of all, whatever the legality of gun ownership in the UK is, the incidence of it is much lower there, especially in rural or rural-ish low-pop-density areas.
Criminals are deterred by the incidence of guns, not the legality of them.
Second, the root assertion of this line of comments has to do with urban vs rural crime, in perception and reality. Guns are a factor in that, but it's an ancillary point nonetheless.
Maybe rural people are afraid of crime because the police are too far away for a meaningful response time. Maybe they are afraid because they are disarmed. Maybe they are afraid because of some other reason.
In any event the conclusion is the same which I helpfully mentioned some comment ago. At least in some circumstances, it's possible to be afraid of rural crime, or the victim of rural crime as much as it is for city crime.
Finally, for I dunno, the fifth or sixth time, in the USA we basically have the same cities now that we had in 1960 or some relevant date. Those cities have more or less the same opportunities and the same vices they had then. Therefore, the ups and downs of urban crime in America have to attributable to something other than the fundamental nature of cities.
"I think polls do not reveal much. Election results reveal much and 2022 and 2023 were generally pretty bad for Republicans in both special and general."
Against the run of some evidence, I'm inclined to believe this is right.
The GOP is defined by Trump, and the American voters hate Trump, even those who substantially agree with him a fair percentage of the time. Maybe even especially those. Push comes to shove that will end up carrying the day.
In more granular terms, polling quality has deteriorated horribly over the last ten years or so for a variety of reasons, and I don't think those have been comprehensively addressed. In addition to 2022 and 2023, election returns for 2018 and 2020 also show profound antipathy to Trump. Also, there is some reason to believe that the improved polling for the GOP represents improved margins in states, where they are still a long way from being competitive, eg, New York and California.
If the Palestine issue goes away and Americans flip to the perception of an improving economy, the floor for a GOP debacle is very very low, much lower than people are allowing for imo.
But that's not the end of the story. There's quite a few things that might lead us to believe the worm is turning in favor of the GOP. First is an important but banal observation that the 2022 House election extrapolated to 2024 leads to a comfortable GOP victory. No one has really noticed this because that election was perceived to be (and was) a horrible disappointment for the GOP. But disappointment notwithstanding, GOP 3% win in the popular vote will lead to a comfortable Presidential victory for Trump or any other GOP nominee.
Furthermore, the GOP electorate now is less educated, less civic-minded, more minority-heavy than it was 15 years ago. As a consequence the GOP might be stronger in Presidential years as opposed to midterms.
Finally, I think Palestine is a huge net negative for the Demos, where they are bleeding votes from both the Left and Right. This has particular salience for me, since for the moment at least I have mentally flipped my own vote over it.
Finally, Sean Trende wrote this a couple days ago. I have a lot of respect for Sean Trende, and he says Trump is winning. But for me, too much of the reasoning is about polls to completely believe.
Overall, this was a very good comment, touching on a lot that I don't know enough about to speak definitively on. Nonetheless, I'm still skeptical of a few things.
This can be summarized by observing that they have developed formally better relationships with the dictatorial elites in the nations in their immediate neighborhood while their formal relationships with the first world have remained roughly the same and their relationships with the wider autocratic world has remained transactional.
I'd be very interested to know the mentality of the Saudi royal family regarding its prospective treaty with Israel. And in general, I suspect you're using the word "transactional" in a few places where it's either wrong or doesn't mean what you think it means.
As far as the residents of Saudi Arabia go, I'm sure a strong majority of them have negative thoughts against Israel, because of the settlements and a hundred other things more or less unrelated to the settlements.
But in terms of the Saudi national interest, it's become pretty clear over the years that Saudi Arabia and Israel have very strong mutual interests. They have an interest in being at peace with each other, in favor of economic development, in maintaining good relationships with the United States and in solidarity against Iran.
And in addition to those things, Saudi Arabia is basically a billion square miles of sand on top of a resource curse. Such curse which, Israel uniquely among all nations is in a position to unwind.
How all this adds up in the minds of the Saudis as they do their do-si-do with Israel, like I said before frankly I have no idea. I would actually be very interested to know.
But, it does seem to me to be too dismissive to call the whole thing transactional when are there are very substantial strategic interests in play.
Same for the idea that the US diplomatically flips against Israel.
youtube.com/watch?v=4Sma7qpV1Sc
If that happens it means that these idiots have taken over America and if that happens we've got way bigger problems than anything that happens in Israel.
Finally, just to state my own intentions. I have no particular need or love for settlements and if Israel gave them up tomorrow I wouldn't shed a tear. Though frankly I'm not anticipating that to happen.
The UN would have a lot more moral authority on this issue if they didn’t consistently object to Israel existing.
Well yeah, but my guess is even that is ancillary.
What's more important than that are actual authority and resources which can be brought to be bear on Israel's behalf.
And what's most important of all is the moral authority that Israel has or Israel represents. Though this is a different sort of thing than most people might imagine when they hear about Israel's moral authority.
Ie, "Jews suffered so much in the Holocaust, they deserve their own homeland and whatever, and this was given to them in the Bible and the Balfour Declaration, etc blah blah."
I don't mean to denigrate such things and push comes to shove I probably believe them myself, at least a little bit. But what was talking about above is something different.
For example, one thing which I should have mentioned in reply to North a couple days ago but didn't, the immediate context of the Hamas attack was a last-ditch attempt by Hamas to disrupt an agreement of mutual diplomatic recognition between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
For some time, Israel and Saudi Arabia (plus Jordan and Egypt) have had fairly effective working bilateral or multilateral relationships to address this or that. This latest treaty, though, goes well beyond that. Embassies, ambassadors, trade delegations, foreign direct investment, the whole bit. Haters can fcuk right off.
Even if Hamas successfully delays the ratification of the treaty, this is clearly the direction things are heading, and have been for a decade or so.
The Western Left and its fetish for "ZOMG what about the West Bank and Gaza!?!" haven't stopped it, or even materially slowed it down.
Ie, in the context of _this kind_ of moral authority for Israel, for Saudi Arabia (and others) the association with Israel carries with it the possibility of technology, agriculture, entrepreneurship, energy and the prosperity and development that comes with those things. Or they could go the other way and be in solidarity with Rashida Tlaib and Jeremy Corbyn.
Don't look for Israel to become the next South Africa.
Which is why I find it sadly amusing that the GOP thinks Biden has somehow botched this. And offensive that the legacy media seem to agree in the ways they are covering his response.
I don't think Biden has necessarily botched things as much as his political situation has substantially and materially deteriorated from where it was pre-October 7.
Biden's reaction has been sort of meh, and not necessarily important.
But it's pretty clear that Biden is losing votes from the flaky, young-ish Left over the situation.
It's less clear but just as true that he's losing votes among Right/Center/normies as well.
In particular he's losing my vote. Now I was pretty late to the party for the cohort potential Biden voters that I belong to, so I could be the first one to leave, but it's definitely a cohort that Biden needs.
If we're in the same situation now by say March or April, Biden's losing. Even to Trump, let alone anybody else if somehow the GOP nominee isn't Trump.
The silver lining for Biden is the hope that this goes away in a month or so and something else takes it's place, either by some sort of meaningful resolution, or even the lack of meaningful developments which are big enough to capture the US media cycle.
Well North, even though we haven't made this explicit I don't think necessarily very far apart on at least most of the premises.
If I'm reading you right you're not especially bothered by the Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza. As far as Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank I care about that some but not very much.
Basically you care about Palestinians in the West Banks maybe two or three clicks more than I do. That's an entirely respectable position as far as I'm concerned but I don't think it will necessarily be vindicated.
Specifically, I think there's a blind spot over the plain reality that the diplomatic standing of Israel has vastly improved over this recent period of expanding settlements.
That is, with the help of the United States (and whether we like it or not a lot of credit has to go to the Trump Administration and Jared Kushner), Israel is at peace with most of its neighbors in the region. And the ones it's not at (diplomatic) peace with are the problem children for the whole world, not just Israel.
The commonplace theory from say 2000 to 2010 that the underlying cause of conflict in the Middle East is Israel and especially settlements is pretty much shown to be plain wrong.
So in this world where Israel is perfectly capable of getting along with its neighbors and even its adversaries, I don't think it's likely that Israel will go to hell in a handbasket over the West Bank. It's much easier to simply conclude that the problem is the Palestinians, which IMO it is.
And somehow if, presumably the US or the US in coalition with other nations, tried to make Israel a pariah nation a la South Africa, it might not work even then.
South Africa then (and now) very much wants to be part of the Anglosphere, of the Commonwealth, of the first world. It definitely wants to be at peace with the black nations in Africa as well, but it feels deep kinship with Australia, the UK, Canada, etc and being cut off from them hurts a lot.
Israel, though a small country, is already the center of its own world. It is already a leader, or the leader of most of the things it cares about.
The countries who think they are in a position to sanction Israel, though much bigger, are much worse off demographically and financially. As it will become more clear soon enough, trying to sanction Israel will only accelerate the cultural decline and further downward spiral of those countries at least as much as it would impact Israel.
Circling back and very much related to that, to the extent I do care about Israeli human rights abuses in the West Bank (which I do think are widespread and bad), it is because of the adverse knock-on effects of Palestinian activism in the United States and other countries outside the Middle East. And to some extent we could, probably should, pressure Israel to improve its human rights record in the West Bank.
But for me at least, it's quite obvious that it's much more topical, much more useful, much more in our American interest to put the hammer down on the protestors here in America than anything having to do with what happens in the West Bank.
That is literally not a thing that was believed by anyone in the UK. In fact, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there are not bandits and highwaymen in the UK, and the British, oddly, know this, and knew it back under Tony Blair, too.
I was reading UK newspapers fairly regularly at the time and I can tell you this was a medium-to-big cause celebre at the time.
As far as Tony Blair goes, I don't know what that's supposed to prove since at least by conventional wisdom Tony Blair was politically successful because he successfully repudiated the explicitly socialist tendencies of the prior Labour party. And in fact your link would tend to support that conventional wisdom.
Even there, I'm not sure exactly how relevant Tony Blair was. My understanding is that UK partisan politics is heavily concerned with socialism and immigration. I'm not sure if criminal justice issues are as important as they are here, especially over a decent interval, say 60-80 years.
And beyond all that it still has to be said, again apparently since you seemed to have missed it the first time, that Chip's argument is trying to explain a variable with a constant, which in general doesn't fly.
Ie, in America we have now basically the same cohort of cities that we did 1950 or whatever time. So right wing boogeyman fears about the vices of the big city can't really explain why crime went up during this interval but went down in some other interval.
Israel is a profoundly trade dependent nation and is, accordingly, profoundly dependent on good will from its developed peer nations.
It's really not, though. Nobody is doing Israel any special favors in trading with them. Other nations trade with Israel because they think it is in their best interest. Israel pays 100 cents on the dollar for whatever they buy, and they are the best alternative in the market for whatever they sell.
The whole peer nation thing doesn't make any sense. Frankly I can't think of who Israel peer nations are, maybe Switzerland, Singapore and Liechtenstein.
In any event, Israel is not dependent on the good graces of anybody except the USA, especially the EU nations who tend to get the most pissed off. And even there, it is probably less dependent on the USA now than at any other time in its history.
Suffice to say, the people who want to put the hammer down on Israel over the settlements have shown a lot less leverage over Israel than they have talked.
It’s interesting you used the word ‘thought’ there, because that’s actually not true.
That could be, but I'm thinking back to the Tony Blair era in the UK, and at that time the urban legend (or rural legend if you prefer) was the countryside was full of bandits and highwaymen, and the decent people had no way to defend themselves.
And even if you thought that the part about the highwaymen and bandits was fiction, the part about the decent people being unable to defend themselves was true.
Which means, at least in this case, that Chip's idea of being irrationally motivated by the depravity of the big city is not true.
Of course, the essential wrongness of Chip's theory is not limited to that.
We have, more or less, the same cities we've always had. And we've also had, over a reasonably long enough time frame, good crime statistics, at least to the point of being able to see macro scale trends. Short-term crime stats can be ad hoc, controversial and subject to manipulation, but over years and decades you can see clear enough what's going on.
And in this context, it's clear that the problem is the libs. Not just for the DA's they elect, but much more for the nearly explicit empowerment of crime and criminals.
It was true back in the day, from the Warren Court until the days of Giuliani and Broken Windows, and it's true now, from Ferguson till now.
And if the libs have a point to say that whatever has happened since Ferguson, we haven't regressed all the way back to the pre-Giuliani era. You also have to say that the lib cultural empowerment of crime is worse now than then, because back then it was really more about criminal justice policy and court decisions.
So far as criminal justice policies are concerned here really isn’t much daylight between red states and blue states, between big cities and small towns. A prosecutor in Portland isn’t really much different than her counterpart in Des Moines or Houston or Biloxi.
Maybe yes maybe no, but in any case it's barking up the wrong tree. Being a lib, especially a criminal justice lib, is much worse than the particular policies the lib advocates for, or the DA candidates he supports. Those are merely one facet of the problem.
A much bigger deal is lib advocacy for crime itself, typically in the most noxious racial terms as well. To be more precise or pedantic or whatever, you could say it's strong advocacy against accountability for crime.
But no matter what you call it, it's a big and it's real. And it is clearly has a lot of causal power for the increase in crime starting with the Ferguson, Missouri, aftermath, continuing through the George Floyd/BLM stuff. And we'll probably see another episode of it with the Hamas/Palestine thing, unless somehow the issue just goes away in a relatively quick period of time (which certainly could happen).
If Israel divests itself of the West Bank than the world will likely simply stop caring to Israel’s great benefit. But as long as that occupation continues… tick tick tick goes the bomb.
A lot of libs and establishmentarians think this, here and internationally. I'm not sure about this myself, but for now at least I'm not buying it, and I think the people who do believe this are substantially overrating their own leverage in the situation.
I suspect in Israel things look a lot different. I know they look different here, as a generic non-Establishment American.
When you look at the history of Israel as a nation-state, it looks to me that they are stronger now than they have ever been: diplomatically, militarily, economically, demographically.
Libs say, "OMG what about the West Bank??!!?" but I'm not sure where the traction for that is supposed to come. In particular, it's not clear to me why Israel is supposed to care about demonstrations in the UK (or elsewhere) when Israel is a thriving country and the UK isn't.
It would be freakish if cities didn’t have higher rates of crime, because they always have, since the dawn of humanity.
Actually this is not true, at least by stereotype. It is true in the United States, but here we have widespread incidence of private gun ownership, especially rural gun ownership.
In places without private gun ownership, eg the UK, rural areas are thought to be very very vulnerable to crime.
I know they want the meaning to be “Vote Republican!” but they can’t come right out and say it since that would require an actual coherent thought instead of insinuation.
Well Jaybird can be a bit roundabout at times, so I won't try to speak for him, but for me I'll say the most socially valuable thing a lib in America can change isn't so much to vote Republican as _be_ Republican.
As a practical matter, the best expression of being Republican is vote Republican and be publically associated with voting Republican. But that's not necessarily a comprehensive thing. A lot of times, eg, now, we're not really voting for anybody or close to it. But the _intention_ to support Repubicans, now, is the raw material which creates the possibility of solidarity for America and Americans, long before anybody walks into a voting booth.
So what does conservatism offer, what meaningful contribution does it propose?
As conservatives and Republicans, we carry with us the possibility of good will among each other that your team doesn't have.
The charges and the criminal liabilities in the indictment don't really matter very much imo. What does matter is when and how every news cycle is an occasion for "Trump is pathetic" for Trump supporters instead of "ohh that zany Trump" which is the way it is now.
So maybe it's just hopium but I do think this is going to happen. The way it's played out, the prosecutors don't seem to be particularly vindictive, and the Trump excuses don't seem to be particularly principled.
O rly? You hear any Executive Branch people who sound like DavidTC on this thread? I don't. All that stuff comes from Twitter and the comment section of the League.
They know perfectly well enough that whatever is on offer from the Republicans is miles better than the 14th Amendment or the trillion dollar coin or some other brainstorm. Push comes to shove you think they're supposed to shut up because they have to stay tight with President Biden, and he has to stay tight with Mehdi Hasan?
It could be, but maybe not. It's at least as likely they'll think the whole thing is a teachable moment where they get to square away some libs as to a fact or two in the real world.
And, even if you are right, it probably wouldn't make any difference. GOP has enough leverage to make their play as it is.
This is stupid. The Committe for a Responsible Federal Budget, and people like them, are advocacy groups.
If the members of the opposition party of the legislature aren't fighting over spending levels, it's not like they're going to have more leverage working with anybody else.
I expect the markets are going to need to freak out and the wealthy powers behind the GOP are gonna need to get spooked before any of them GOP congresscritters break ranks.
Oh, and as far as breaking ranks goes, I'd be looking at your side before ours.
You think when Janet Yellen figures out that work requirements and spending caps are the holdup to a debt limit deal, you think she's
going to be like "Yep, I'm gonna get started building that coin right away Mr President."
No, she's gonna say, "Take the deal, Mr President, while it's there and before I go on television to tell you again to take the deal."
If you think Biden and his minions weren’t back chanelling every GOP congresscritter on this matter from the get go you must not have been paying attention.
They weren't, that's exactly what I'm telling you.
Read the dispatches from the NYT, WaPo or the like if you don't believe me.
That’s how they got the chips act through......
If Biden and the White House handled the debt ceiling the same way they handled the Chips Act, specifically as it pertains to relations with Congress and Congressional Republicans, we'd be in a much much different place now.
The more insignificant or more inconsequential you want to characterize the Republican asks as being, the easier it is for President Biden to give them.
......, barely, passed one last month so Biden did the only thing he could do which was ......
Of course it wasn't the only thing Biden could do, that's the whole point.
There was nothing preventing BIden from talking to Republicans, individually or in groups, to figure out what it would take to get some of them to raise the debt limit.
But the libnasties on Twitter said, "Clean lift or nothing!" and talked Biden into that. And so here we are.
The upshot of this is, Biden is (and the Demos) are going to have to sign off on work requirements for TANF and the like. And nobody is going to believe them when and if they say they can't.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Disney Lawsuit Against DeSantis Dismissed: Read It For Yourself”
Yeah, this. IIRC, among other things the agreement between the Florida and Disney explicitly authorized the state to revise it through legislative acts.
Just one of several reasons why Disney was legitimately going to lose its lawsuit.
"
Yeah, this. It was a really ugly piece of bad-faith wishcasting among some libs on Twitter to ever say Florida was going to lose this. And probably the same for a few liberals here as well, though tbh I wasn't following close enough to be sure.
On “The Truth About January 6”
Politically speaking, it would make my life quite a bit easier if Donald Trump is removed from the ballot, being ruled by the judiciary that he is ineligible for the office by virtue of the 14th Amendment.
That said, January 6 was not an insurrection and Donald Trump was not an insurrectionist. And frankly it's bad faith argument to say otherwise.
Your own definition speaks to this clearly enough, but just for emphasis it's important to speak clearly about what an insurrection is. An insurrection is a revolt against a previously established authority in some jurisdiction, by those who were previously subject to that authority (or others acting on behalf of those people).
What Donald Trump did, in its most serious purpose, was not to overthrow or in any way diminish the authority of the federal government or the Constitution in any way. It was to assert that he, Donald Trump was the legitimate agent or representative of that authority. That could very well still be a bad thing, but it is not an insurrection.
There may (or may not) be other reasons why Donald Trump did not lead an insurrection, or otherwise be eligible to be President by the 14th Amendment. But that is the most important one.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/1/2024”
Yeah that's not right. In fact it's almost entirely backward.
Leaving aside ideological considerations, Stefanik and Rufo have, more that most, made a significant investment in Harvard's brand and therefore ought to be upset when their investment is depreciated through stupid hijinks.
What they did is the opposite of a cheat code.
On “The Democratic Weakness”
Yeah, this is mostly probably right. It's worth noting for me, that this is one case of a larger pattern: nothing meaningfully good is going to happen to Trump between now and Election Day. But there's lot of things bad that can happen. In fact most of the things that are likely will be bad for Trump.
You could have exogenous things come out of the blue which hurt Biden and Demos, eg Gaza, but even there I think people will be looking for other options before making Trump the beneficiary.
It's why even if the pro-Trump polls are right, I don't think they are necessarily indicative of a Trump win. Even good polls are mostly a static snapshot of a dynamic process and even if the snapshot is right the dynamics are still against Trump, by a lot.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/20/2023”
David, the various facts you are asserting in this line of comments aren't necessarily wrong, but you are misunderstanding the implications in the context of this thread eight ways to Sunday, for my comments and your comments both.
First of all, whatever the legality of gun ownership in the UK is, the incidence of it is much lower there, especially in rural or rural-ish low-pop-density areas.
Criminals are deterred by the incidence of guns, not the legality of them.
Second, the root assertion of this line of comments has to do with urban vs rural crime, in perception and reality. Guns are a factor in that, but it's an ancillary point nonetheless.
Maybe rural people are afraid of crime because the police are too far away for a meaningful response time. Maybe they are afraid because they are disarmed. Maybe they are afraid because of some other reason.
In any event the conclusion is the same which I helpfully mentioned some comment ago. At least in some circumstances, it's possible to be afraid of rural crime, or the victim of rural crime as much as it is for city crime.
Finally, for I dunno, the fifth or sixth time, in the USA we basically have the same cities now that we had in 1960 or some relevant date. Those cities have more or less the same opportunities and the same vices they had then. Therefore, the ups and downs of urban crime in America have to attributable to something other than the fundamental nature of cities.
On “The Democratic Weakness”
Against the run of some evidence, I'm inclined to believe this is right.
The GOP is defined by Trump, and the American voters hate Trump, even those who substantially agree with him a fair percentage of the time. Maybe even especially those. Push comes to shove that will end up carrying the day.
In more granular terms, polling quality has deteriorated horribly over the last ten years or so for a variety of reasons, and I don't think those have been comprehensively addressed. In addition to 2022 and 2023, election returns for 2018 and 2020 also show profound antipathy to Trump. Also, there is some reason to believe that the improved polling for the GOP represents improved margins in states, where they are still a long way from being competitive, eg, New York and California.
If the Palestine issue goes away and Americans flip to the perception of an improving economy, the floor for a GOP debacle is very very low, much lower than people are allowing for imo.
But that's not the end of the story. There's quite a few things that might lead us to believe the worm is turning in favor of the GOP. First is an important but banal observation that the 2022 House election extrapolated to 2024 leads to a comfortable GOP victory. No one has really noticed this because that election was perceived to be (and was) a horrible disappointment for the GOP. But disappointment notwithstanding, GOP 3% win in the popular vote will lead to a comfortable Presidential victory for Trump or any other GOP nominee.
Furthermore, the GOP electorate now is less educated, less civic-minded, more minority-heavy than it was 15 years ago. As a consequence the GOP might be stronger in Presidential years as opposed to midterms.
Finally, I think Palestine is a huge net negative for the Demos, where they are bleeding votes from both the Left and Right. This has particular salience for me, since for the moment at least I have mentally flipped my own vote over it.
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/11/28/no_really_biden_is_in_trouble_against_trump.html
Finally, Sean Trende wrote this a couple days ago. I have a lot of respect for Sean Trende, and he says Trump is winning. But for me, too much of the reasoning is about polls to completely believe.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/20/2023”
Overall, this was a very good comment, touching on a lot that I don't know enough about to speak definitively on. Nonetheless, I'm still skeptical of a few things.
I'd be very interested to know the mentality of the Saudi royal family regarding its prospective treaty with Israel. And in general, I suspect you're using the word "transactional" in a few places where it's either wrong or doesn't mean what you think it means.
As far as the residents of Saudi Arabia go, I'm sure a strong majority of them have negative thoughts against Israel, because of the settlements and a hundred other things more or less unrelated to the settlements.
But in terms of the Saudi national interest, it's become pretty clear over the years that Saudi Arabia and Israel have very strong mutual interests. They have an interest in being at peace with each other, in favor of economic development, in maintaining good relationships with the United States and in solidarity against Iran.
And in addition to those things, Saudi Arabia is basically a billion square miles of sand on top of a resource curse. Such curse which, Israel uniquely among all nations is in a position to unwind.
How all this adds up in the minds of the Saudis as they do their do-si-do with Israel, like I said before frankly I have no idea. I would actually be very interested to know.
But, it does seem to me to be too dismissive to call the whole thing transactional when are there are very substantial strategic interests in play.
Same for the idea that the US diplomatically flips against Israel.
youtube.com/watch?v=4Sma7qpV1Sc
If that happens it means that these idiots have taken over America and if that happens we've got way bigger problems than anything that happens in Israel.
Finally, just to state my own intentions. I have no particular need or love for settlements and if Israel gave them up tomorrow I wouldn't shed a tear. Though frankly I'm not anticipating that to happen.
"
Well yeah, but my guess is even that is ancillary.
What's more important than that are actual authority and resources which can be brought to be bear on Israel's behalf.
And what's most important of all is the moral authority that Israel has or Israel represents. Though this is a different sort of thing than most people might imagine when they hear about Israel's moral authority.
Ie, "Jews suffered so much in the Holocaust, they deserve their own homeland and whatever, and this was given to them in the Bible and the Balfour Declaration, etc blah blah."
I don't mean to denigrate such things and push comes to shove I probably believe them myself, at least a little bit. But what was talking about above is something different.
For example, one thing which I should have mentioned in reply to North a couple days ago but didn't, the immediate context of the Hamas attack was a last-ditch attempt by Hamas to disrupt an agreement of mutual diplomatic recognition between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
For some time, Israel and Saudi Arabia (plus Jordan and Egypt) have had fairly effective working bilateral or multilateral relationships to address this or that. This latest treaty, though, goes well beyond that. Embassies, ambassadors, trade delegations, foreign direct investment, the whole bit. Haters can fcuk right off.
Even if Hamas successfully delays the ratification of the treaty, this is clearly the direction things are heading, and have been for a decade or so.
The Western Left and its fetish for "ZOMG what about the West Bank and Gaza!?!" haven't stopped it, or even materially slowed it down.
Ie, in the context of _this kind_ of moral authority for Israel, for Saudi Arabia (and others) the association with Israel carries with it the possibility of technology, agriculture, entrepreneurship, energy and the prosperity and development that comes with those things. Or they could go the other way and be in solidarity with Rashida Tlaib and Jeremy Corbyn.
Don't look for Israel to become the next South Africa.
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I don't think Biden has necessarily botched things as much as his political situation has substantially and materially deteriorated from where it was pre-October 7.
Biden's reaction has been sort of meh, and not necessarily important.
But it's pretty clear that Biden is losing votes from the flaky, young-ish Left over the situation.
It's less clear but just as true that he's losing votes among Right/Center/normies as well.
In particular he's losing my vote. Now I was pretty late to the party for the cohort potential Biden voters that I belong to, so I could be the first one to leave, but it's definitely a cohort that Biden needs.
If we're in the same situation now by say March or April, Biden's losing. Even to Trump, let alone anybody else if somehow the GOP nominee isn't Trump.
The silver lining for Biden is the hope that this goes away in a month or so and something else takes it's place, either by some sort of meaningful resolution, or even the lack of meaningful developments which are big enough to capture the US media cycle.
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Well North, even though we haven't made this explicit I don't think necessarily very far apart on at least most of the premises.
If I'm reading you right you're not especially bothered by the Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza. As far as Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank I care about that some but not very much.
Basically you care about Palestinians in the West Banks maybe two or three clicks more than I do. That's an entirely respectable position as far as I'm concerned but I don't think it will necessarily be vindicated.
Specifically, I think there's a blind spot over the plain reality that the diplomatic standing of Israel has vastly improved over this recent period of expanding settlements.
That is, with the help of the United States (and whether we like it or not a lot of credit has to go to the Trump Administration and Jared Kushner), Israel is at peace with most of its neighbors in the region. And the ones it's not at (diplomatic) peace with are the problem children for the whole world, not just Israel.
The commonplace theory from say 2000 to 2010 that the underlying cause of conflict in the Middle East is Israel and especially settlements is pretty much shown to be plain wrong.
So in this world where Israel is perfectly capable of getting along with its neighbors and even its adversaries, I don't think it's likely that Israel will go to hell in a handbasket over the West Bank. It's much easier to simply conclude that the problem is the Palestinians, which IMO it is.
And somehow if, presumably the US or the US in coalition with other nations, tried to make Israel a pariah nation a la South Africa, it might not work even then.
South Africa then (and now) very much wants to be part of the Anglosphere, of the Commonwealth, of the first world. It definitely wants to be at peace with the black nations in Africa as well, but it feels deep kinship with Australia, the UK, Canada, etc and being cut off from them hurts a lot.
Israel, though a small country, is already the center of its own world. It is already a leader, or the leader of most of the things it cares about.
The countries who think they are in a position to sanction Israel, though much bigger, are much worse off demographically and financially. As it will become more clear soon enough, trying to sanction Israel will only accelerate the cultural decline and further downward spiral of those countries at least as much as it would impact Israel.
Circling back and very much related to that, to the extent I do care about Israeli human rights abuses in the West Bank (which I do think are widespread and bad), it is because of the adverse knock-on effects of Palestinian activism in the United States and other countries outside the Middle East. And to some extent we could, probably should, pressure Israel to improve its human rights record in the West Bank.
But for me at least, it's quite obvious that it's much more topical, much more useful, much more in our American interest to put the hammer down on the protestors here in America than anything having to do with what happens in the West Bank.
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Uh no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)
I was reading UK newspapers fairly regularly at the time and I can tell you this was a medium-to-big cause celebre at the time.
As far as Tony Blair goes, I don't know what that's supposed to prove since at least by conventional wisdom Tony Blair was politically successful because he successfully repudiated the explicitly socialist tendencies of the prior Labour party. And in fact your link would tend to support that conventional wisdom.
Even there, I'm not sure exactly how relevant Tony Blair was. My understanding is that UK partisan politics is heavily concerned with socialism and immigration. I'm not sure if criminal justice issues are as important as they are here, especially over a decent interval, say 60-80 years.
And beyond all that it still has to be said, again apparently since you seemed to have missed it the first time, that Chip's argument is trying to explain a variable with a constant, which in general doesn't fly.
Ie, in America we have now basically the same cohort of cities that we did 1950 or whatever time. So right wing boogeyman fears about the vices of the big city can't really explain why crime went up during this interval but went down in some other interval.
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It's really not, though. Nobody is doing Israel any special favors in trading with them. Other nations trade with Israel because they think it is in their best interest. Israel pays 100 cents on the dollar for whatever they buy, and they are the best alternative in the market for whatever they sell.
The whole peer nation thing doesn't make any sense. Frankly I can't think of who Israel peer nations are, maybe Switzerland, Singapore and Liechtenstein.
In any event, Israel is not dependent on the good graces of anybody except the USA, especially the EU nations who tend to get the most pissed off. And even there, it is probably less dependent on the USA now than at any other time in its history.
Suffice to say, the people who want to put the hammer down on Israel over the settlements have shown a lot less leverage over Israel than they have talked.
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That could be, but I'm thinking back to the Tony Blair era in the UK, and at that time the urban legend (or rural legend if you prefer) was the countryside was full of bandits and highwaymen, and the decent people had no way to defend themselves.
And even if you thought that the part about the highwaymen and bandits was fiction, the part about the decent people being unable to defend themselves was true.
Which means, at least in this case, that Chip's idea of being irrationally motivated by the depravity of the big city is not true.
Of course, the essential wrongness of Chip's theory is not limited to that.
We have, more or less, the same cities we've always had. And we've also had, over a reasonably long enough time frame, good crime statistics, at least to the point of being able to see macro scale trends. Short-term crime stats can be ad hoc, controversial and subject to manipulation, but over years and decades you can see clear enough what's going on.
And in this context, it's clear that the problem is the libs. Not just for the DA's they elect, but much more for the nearly explicit empowerment of crime and criminals.
It was true back in the day, from the Warren Court until the days of Giuliani and Broken Windows, and it's true now, from Ferguson till now.
And if the libs have a point to say that whatever has happened since Ferguson, we haven't regressed all the way back to the pre-Giuliani era. You also have to say that the lib cultural empowerment of crime is worse now than then, because back then it was really more about criminal justice policy and court decisions.
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Maybe yes maybe no, but in any case it's barking up the wrong tree. Being a lib, especially a criminal justice lib, is much worse than the particular policies the lib advocates for, or the DA candidates he supports. Those are merely one facet of the problem.
A much bigger deal is lib advocacy for crime itself, typically in the most noxious racial terms as well. To be more precise or pedantic or whatever, you could say it's strong advocacy against accountability for crime.
But no matter what you call it, it's a big and it's real. And it is clearly has a lot of causal power for the increase in crime starting with the Ferguson, Missouri, aftermath, continuing through the George Floyd/BLM stuff. And we'll probably see another episode of it with the Hamas/Palestine thing, unless somehow the issue just goes away in a relatively quick period of time (which certainly could happen).
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A lot of libs and establishmentarians think this, here and internationally. I'm not sure about this myself, but for now at least I'm not buying it, and I think the people who do believe this are substantially overrating their own leverage in the situation.
I suspect in Israel things look a lot different. I know they look different here, as a generic non-Establishment American.
When you look at the history of Israel as a nation-state, it looks to me that they are stronger now than they have ever been: diplomatically, militarily, economically, demographically.
Libs say, "OMG what about the West Bank??!!?" but I'm not sure where the traction for that is supposed to come. In particular, it's not clear to me why Israel is supposed to care about demonstrations in the UK (or elsewhere) when Israel is a thriving country and the UK isn't.
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Actually this is not true, at least by stereotype. It is true in the United States, but here we have widespread incidence of private gun ownership, especially rural gun ownership.
In places without private gun ownership, eg the UK, rural areas are thought to be very very vulnerable to crime.
Well Jaybird can be a bit roundabout at times, so I won't try to speak for him, but for me I'll say the most socially valuable thing a lib in America can change isn't so much to vote Republican as _be_ Republican.
As a practical matter, the best expression of being Republican is vote Republican and be publically associated with voting Republican. But that's not necessarily a comprehensive thing. A lot of times, eg, now, we're not really voting for anybody or close to it. But the _intention_ to support Repubicans, now, is the raw material which creates the possibility of solidarity for America and Americans, long before anybody walks into a voting booth.
As conservatives and Republicans, we carry with us the possibility of good will among each other that your team doesn't have.
On “Spare the Rod and Spoil the President”
The charges and the criminal liabilities in the indictment don't really matter very much imo. What does matter is when and how every news cycle is an occasion for "Trump is pathetic" for Trump supporters instead of "ohh that zany Trump" which is the way it is now.
So maybe it's just hopium but I do think this is going to happen. The way it's played out, the prosecutors don't seem to be particularly vindictive, and the Trump excuses don't seem to be particularly principled.
On “What I’m Looking for in a 2024 Candidate”
This is one of the odder cycles I've seen. There's so much of it that seems really weird or inexplicable to me, especially on the GOP side.
If I had to guess, I still don't think Trump is going to win the nomination. But if he does, I'm probably voting for Biden in the general.
On “Shake Shack, Suspect Specie, and Sane Stewardship of the State”
O rly? You hear any Executive Branch people who sound like DavidTC on this thread? I don't. All that stuff comes from Twitter and the comment section of the League.
They know perfectly well enough that whatever is on offer from the Republicans is miles better than the 14th Amendment or the trillion dollar coin or some other brainstorm. Push comes to shove you think they're supposed to shut up because they have to stay tight with President Biden, and he has to stay tight with Mehdi Hasan?
It could be, but maybe not. It's at least as likely they'll think the whole thing is a teachable moment where they get to square away some libs as to a fact or two in the real world.
And, even if you are right, it probably wouldn't make any difference. GOP has enough leverage to make their play as it is.
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This is stupid. The Committe for a Responsible Federal Budget, and people like them, are advocacy groups.
If the members of the opposition party of the legislature aren't fighting over spending levels, it's not like they're going to have more leverage working with anybody else.
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Oh, and as far as breaking ranks goes, I'd be looking at your side before ours.
You think when Janet Yellen figures out that work requirements and spending caps are the holdup to a debt limit deal, you think she's
going to be like "Yep, I'm gonna get started building that coin right away Mr President."
No, she's gonna say, "Take the deal, Mr President, while it's there and before I go on television to tell you again to take the deal."
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They weren't, that's exactly what I'm telling you.
Read the dispatches from the NYT, WaPo or the like if you don't believe me.
If Biden and the White House handled the debt ceiling the same way they handled the Chips Act, specifically as it pertains to relations with Congress and Congressional Republicans, we'd be in a much much different place now.
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Philip,
The more insignificant or more inconsequential you want to characterize the Republican asks as being, the easier it is for President Biden to give them.
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Of course it wasn't the only thing Biden could do, that's the whole point.
There was nothing preventing BIden from talking to Republicans, individually or in groups, to figure out what it would take to get some of them to raise the debt limit.
But the libnasties on Twitter said, "Clean lift or nothing!" and talked Biden into that. And so here we are.
The upshot of this is, Biden is (and the Demos) are going to have to sign off on work requirements for TANF and the like. And nobody is going to believe them when and if they say they can't.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.