State of the Discussion

My understanding is the courts keep right on going since most of their staff are exempt to critical. DoJ attorneys will be on the job as well.

Going to war with their students is possibly the stupidest thing Columbia could possibly do.

There are a bunch of students on campus including students who are thin-skinned enough to think that Columbia is at war with them by taking the side of the building occupiers.

"The kids who just want to be 3 minutes tardy to class and then go back to the dorm to have AI write their assignments." Those kids.

I remind people, the government has no ability to demand a private organization punish people for violating the law. That would be utterly insane, on top of violating freedom of association.

Oh, is that the case? Man, I sure hope that a precedent wasn't set earlier! It might result in absolutely *ZERO* sympathy!

This used to be something that a lot of people here worried about, how public universities would have codes of conduct that stopped this sort of thing, and it was pointed out that public universities are not really ‘the government’, they are organizations that happen to owned by the government but have to have the same sort of rules as any sort of housing and workplaces and education, general rules about harassment and safety and things.

"Guys, why are you insisting on using the same rules we insisted on when we won the argument last time?"

The beatings will continue until morale improves. Going to war with their students is possibly the stupidest thing Columbia could possibly do.

Incidentally, weird how no one seems to be talking about the implications of the Federal Government forcing a private university to punish students, because the Federal Government objected to the speech of those students.

I remind people, the government has no ability to demand a private organization punish people for violating the law. That would be utterly insane, on top of violating freedom of association.

We can sidestep the question here of to what extent Columbia _could_ punish speech, a thing that gets blurry at private universities, because we all agree they can punish actual crimes like vandalism and trespass. Hell, I think it's reasonable to punish those things even if there is no criminal convictions.

But I also I think we can all agree that they can _choose not to_ punish those things, and the government has no right to interfere, including no right to extort them with government money until they do. If the government wishes to punish students for that, they can (and did) charge them with crimes.

This is on top of the fact that the government is clearly doing this because of the content of the _speech_ and openly admits as much, claiming the problem is antisemitism. And I'm just going sidestep the whole discussion as to if it actually was antisemitism was by pointing out that the Federal government has _absolutely no power_ to punish antisemitic speech, and in fact is constitutionally barred from doing so, just like it is barred from punishing all speech. And it certainly doesn't have the power to extort private entities into punishing it!

This used to be something that a lot of people here worried about, how public universities would have codes of conduct that stopped this sort of thing, and it was pointed out that public universities are not really 'the government', they are organizations that happen to owned by the government but have to have the same sort of rules as any sort of housing and workplaces and education, general rules about harassment and safety and things.

And a lot of people here objected to that logic.

1. Newsom is a better governor than he gets credit for but this podcast is not endearing him to anyone likely to vote in Democratic Party primaries. But for the podcast, I would have considered him a strong contender.

2. I think the candidate will be a governor, almost certainly male.

Pritzker, Beshear, and Walz are probably looking at running

Yoy
u can’t negotiate with Trump times 1 trillion. Columbia University tried to negotiate with Trump regarding the 400 million in cancelled grants. Trump is demanding complete capitulation

I was talking about Kash's tweet, Dave. And then talking about how everybody responded to it with "WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE LIST".

If you wanted to talk about how Kash's accomplishments ain't all that and are overshadowed by his failures, might I suggest you read my comment again? Maybe?

I like how you, and presumably everyone you read, phrased 'Director at Customs and Border Protection being arrested for FEMA fraud'. This has absolutely nothing to do with fraud _in_ the government, and is just someone _defrauding_ the government who happens to also work for the government. But people are happy yo imply otherwise.

And before you say 'They're not implying that', I will point out a trivial search on my part found there were three others literally charged with the same thing this week, announced at the same time, including one that did literally the same thing of defrauding FEMA for temporary living expenses for a house that was not destroyed:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/three-defendants-face-federal-charges-bilking-and-attempting-defraud-fema-fraudulent

Yet for some mysterious reason, it's this one person that is getting all the press. It's the only one _you_ even know about, because you are hooked directly into right-wing pipelines. And that's because she works for the government, and people can imply this is something to do with finding fraud in the government, despite the fact it is not.

Background info: This comic is from March of 1915.

You may know Joseph Jackson as "Shoeless" Joe.

Mr. McInnis is probably "Stuffy" McInnis.

Eddie Collins was a successful 2nd Baseman.

John J. Evers is the Evers in "Tinker to Evers to Chance".

Lawrence Doyle was about to enjoy a season in which he would win the Batting Crown.

Henry Zimmerman, affectionately called "Heinie", won the Triple Crown in 1912 and never played baseball again after 1919 where he was accused of fixing games.

Hmm ok, let me try again.

Lying, misrepresentations, distortions, demagoguery, corruptions, etc are bad things in our discourse. And if in some circumstances such things seem unavoidable or necessary, they should never be entirely routinized.

Unfortunately in America things have deteriorated to the point where such things are foundational to the practice of contemporary liberalism. This is a bad thing, certainly for America as a whole, and maybe even for the libs as well.

Therefore, as the liberal Kelsey Piper argues, we should collectively repudiate those libs who have particularly corrupted our politics in the context of the last Presidential election, in the twitter thread mentioned below:

https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733

Kelsey is in particular talking about the President Biden's inner circle who were most responsible in promotion if the distortion that President Biden's mental strength was perfectly acceptable.

And certainly we should be faulting those people but in addition, I think we should also punish in the same way those who promoted the central distortions of the Biden era: inflation, transgenderism, and migrations, pundits and pols both.

In this way we can hope to end the sleazier practices of lib politics and return truth and honest discourse to prevalence in America.

He has tweeted in his own defense:

A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, state, and country.

Musk has said he wants a shutdown, and reporting has shown he is already making plans to use the shutdown to expedite his destruction of key government programs and services.

These damn nitwits are getting outwitted by some of the dumbest people to ever occupy the seats of power of this nation. I contacted my 2 senators and urged them to vote no. FFS.

The whole Epstein thing continues. Kash Patel had a couple of celebratory tweets talking about how the FBI is arresting members of the Tren de Aragua social club and a Director at Customs and Border Protection being arrested for FEMA fraud and the lion's share of the responses were not "good one, nice collar!" but "WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE LIST".

Pam Bondi had a couple of tweets about swearing in a new Assistant Attorney General and praising the K-9 working dogs of law enforcement. The lion's share of the responses were not "good one, nice collar!" but "WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE LIST".

They can't talk about the list. They can't talk about why they can't talk about the list. They can't talk about why they can't talk about why they can't talk about the list.

He even came to Chicago, where he infamously pissed off a bunch of black journalists. Which was probably the whole reason. All I know is he f'ed up traffic on Lower Wacker something good.

When was the last 50 state presidential campaign?

Trump campaigned in New York, New Jersey, and California.

For what that's worth.

I agree 100% that the House is too small.

I came of age when The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum was on HBO twice a day, every day in the late 80s.

Imma let you go first.

The biggest difference I think voters see between Trump and Not Trump is not so much that Trump is selling a revanchist, nationalist, authoritarianism, but that he's selling something, anything, to people who felt like neither party, outside of Trump, was selling much of anything. How bad must things be for people that selling anything, even far right authoritarianism, is better than selling nothing? Bad enough, I'd wager, that a bunch of Not Trump candidates with nothing to sell have little chance of defeating anyone in the Trump mold in 2028, so long as Trump hasn't plunged us into the apocalypse between now and then.

I keep harping on this point, but the Democrats had their own candidate selling things that were not revanchist, were not nationalist, and were not authoritarian, and that could have had a huge impact on people's lives, but the Democrats thoroughly defeated him, to the point that he's now basically exiled, touring the Midwest giving speeches to overflow crowds who want to hear his message of a social democratic change that makes the government work for them, and not for the wealthy.

I know the most popular narrative around here is that the Democrats lost because they went too far left, but do you think people who were offered the choice between a nihilistic billionaire authoritarian who did a half-assed coup attempt and then spent the last 4 years treating becoming president again as an opportunity to get personal revenge, whatever the cost to the American people, and somebody who tells them they should never have to go bankrupt because they or a family member got sick, and that billionaires should pay their fair share of taxes, are going to choose the former because of pronouns in people's email signatures and a half a dozen trans college athletes?