State of the Discussion

The ambition is two hours and forty minutes non-stop btw/ LA and SF, which I understand would make it the fasted high speed train in the world. Hold my triple IPA Euroweenies. The skeptical prediction is four hours and forty minutes once you take into account slower speeds and shared track usage in the metros at the start and finish that are now contemplated. In the abstract I think having more transportation alternatives are great, but particularly if you think self-driving cars are coming quicker than rail lines can be built/updated, then most people will probably find driving on the interstate cheaper and more convenient.

Just because inter-city passenger rail in the United States might not have made sense like it did in Europe, doesn't mean that we should have totally ignored intra-city transit. Like the gigantic sprawling cities create a lot of miserable driving experiences and road rage. Even with dispersed work destinations rather than everybody going downtown or to a few industrial areas for work, having everybody have to drive everywhere causes problems.

I think that's a lot of it. Could we have done this better and greater vision? 100%. But it's hard to imagine a country this big and low density turning out the way a geographically small, high density country does. There's also the decrease in cost of short haul passenger flights over the last decades. Crappy for climate change but sensible enough from a consumer cost and efficiency perspective.

The sheer amount of people who have confidently predicted that Trump will not do exactly what he has repeated said he would do, and still have jobs after he has done that thing, is amazing. You truly cannot fail at your actual One Job in quite a lot of high-paying jobs that exist almost entirely to make predictions.

For everyone saying 'But he didn't do it the first time he was in office', yeah, and there were literally books written about how a bunch of people constantly had to stop him from doing those disastrous/illegal/horrific things.

And I'm not talking just about the market. I'm talking about _everything_.

Everything Trump is doing now he tried to do the first term, _except_ some of the stuff that Heritage Foundation lined up with Project 2025 when they realized that Trump was an idiot and was willing to do almost anything people asked him to do in the right way. Other than that stuff, which hadn't been properly written down yet, and some of the Elon-specific stuff, there is absolutely nothing now that he didn't _attempt_ to do back then.

Which means we should probably start taking serious the stuff he tried to do back then but hasn't tried yet. Like ordering the military to shoot protestors. (Don't worry, he's going to have them shoot at their knees.) Or suspending the election or all the dozens of ways he plotted to stay in office before finally settling on the convoluted plan of 'Attempt to pretend there is confusion about electoral votes to throw the election to the House, while declaring martial law and attempt to frame antifa for the disorder in Washington'. (People _really_ do not understand just how lucky we got that the left and antifa and everyone realized that trying to counterprotest what Trump was doing Jan 6th was a trap, and didn't show up at all.)

The Trump administration attempted to be utterly lawless and extreme fascistic last time they were in power, and _literally a bunch of random Republican politicians_ in the Cabinet and around him in other ways saved the day and stopped him. It's why he fired so many, it's why half of them wrote books afterward. Career political Republicans talking about 'Yeah, Trump was constantly trying to do illegal things and under no circumstances should be president'. Ant one of which should be a career-ending scandal in politics if the media would just pay attention to it.

And yet somehow...we are all constantly very surprised when he attempts the same thing this time, and this time, the people to stop him aren't there.

There's also a bit of a crime problem that nobody wants to talk about.

Ride on Bart? Maybe you have to deal with unpleasantness. The worst thing you have to deal with in your car is a bad DJ.

Actually, let me clarify: When I say 'Can be challenged in court', what I mean is 'This has to be proven in court'.

Khalil doesn't have to affirmatively challenge it and force them to go to court, there already will be a hearing, in court, to verify this determination made by the Secretary of State.

Often those hearings are so pro-forma that they barely happen, because (idiotically) people in them have no right to a court-appointed lawyer(1), so often barely understand what is going on. But they do exist, and Khalil does have a lawyer.

1) Please note there are organizations who will represent these people for free, at least enough to present some options to them, but the fascists that are ICE (and the police used to be this way before Miranda), will not bother to _inform_ anyone of their rights.

“serious adverse foreign policy consequences” could be defined as “pissing off an ally we want to maintain good relations with” in my opinion.

So here's the actual rule:

An alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible.

But there's an exception that applies

An alien, not described in clause (ii), shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States under clause (i) because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien’s admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.

So, to explain that: There's two different thresholds there that are similar. The first is much easier to reach, and can be done automatically across an entire group of people, and is probably meant to apply when 'People from X being in the country' or whatever could hypothetically present some foreign policy consequence. This is a very low bar that just requires a vague 'belief'.

This also can apply to specific people and things they do specifically, but _only_ when there are no 1st amendment issues. It doesn't say the words 1st amendment explicitly, but that's what 'beliefs, statements, or associations' would be. It's actually hard to think of a good example of this. Like...you could deport Superman under it, I guess, assuming he was otherwise legal. It's pretty easy to believe that his existence would have foreign policy implications.

But, there's an exception when there are 1st amendment issues, which would be here, because the issue is his speech and association. That requires the Secretary of State to determine that it would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.

The phrase 'would compromise' (not 'believe', but 'would' actually compromise) is important. What he does has to actually do it, or be demonstrated that it will, not that someone vaguely believes it can.

The phrase 'compelling...government interest' is equally important, and a lot of people just realized that phrasing (Which I bet people recognize) was secretly in there...and not only does it have to be a compelling government interest, which narrows things down, it has to be one about _foreign policy_, which narrows it down even more. It cannot, for example, be a 'compelling government interest' to allow students to attend and freely move about Colombia University, or to allow Colombia to invest money where it wants.

The exception then goes on to state that that 'the Secretary of State must notify on a timely basis the chairmen of the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives and of the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Relations of the Senate of the identity of the alien and the reasons for the determination.'

Moreover, this determination can be challenged in immigration court. (Actually, all this can, but if the determination didn't trigger the exception, all that would accomplish is requiring the State Department to prove it 'believes' something.)

--

...also, kind of important: This rational for deporting Khalil means he not alleged to have commented a crime. And did not violate his immigration status. There's literally no wrongdoing asserted here, just that his (apparently entirely legal) actions have impacted US foreign policy to the extent the US government wishes him removed. Which they can do possibly do, we'll see what the immigration court says, but it's insane they think they can _arrest_ him for 'We have decided that we don't like you and don't want you here anymore'. Tell him, schedule him in front of a court, and then if he refuses to attend the court or then refuses to leave if he court says he has to go, at _that_ point you can arrest him.

But immigration law has always been extremely fascist, and I'm not sure they can't do what they did. I'm just saying it's absurd if they can.

I go back to what I've said before. Intelligence services may, or may not, have resources that would give them insight into the sloppiness of Chinese lab practices, and they might have some insight into whether some mishap occurred in this case. And they may not be able to tell us just what they know or how they know it, for tradecraft reasons. But if they are relying on scientific evidence, like the scientific agencies, I don't see why they are more credible than actual scientific agencies.

Yeah, it sure is amazing how all the people talking about how trans people should compromise over 'sports' do not seem to notice how Republicans will literally take anti-trans bills as far as they can, and in fact openly and explicitly wish to outlaw being trans.

Slade: Colonialism refers to steady encroachment on Palestinian land.

No. That's a good example of the Palestinians saying something and the West spinning it into they'd be cool with two states.

The PLO's charter, written years before the 67 war, had article 22 which spells out all of Israel is a colonial project, and multiple articles which make it clear they mean every inch.

When I listen to Arabic media, they don't make a big deal out of "steady encroachment" because every inch of the land is disputed.

When I listen to podcasts that talks to random Arabs on street, the issue never comes up. Again because every inch of the land is disputed.

When the Palestinian's talk about Israel the colony they mean all of Israel. As insane as it sounds, they're still fighting over whether or not the Jews get a state.

"In that vein, Scott Alexander asks: What Happened To NAEP Scores?"

I have a feeling this is like "life expectancy statistics", which don't calculate "how long are you statistically likely to live" but rather "how many people similar to you died before we did this calculation", which doesn't actually say anything about you personally.

Have you considered the probability that what we knew in 2020 - in the midst of the pandemic - may not have been informed by testable scientific fact so much as fear?

You left out right thinking.

Colonialism refers to steady encroachment on Palestinian land. It's the same as Manifest Destiny.

At the same time, people in 1948 thinking that carving out a new Jewish nation in that area of the world was going to happen peacefully was the height of Great Power folly. Here we are, nearly 80 years later, still living with that.

The biggest problem that the rail-lovers have is that we can't build new tracks at all.

I'd be interested in some high speed rail myself... The ability to go from Frisco to LA in a couple of hours would be pretty sweet. LA to Vegas would be pretty sweet.

But we can't even drop a proof of concept. *EUROPE* is our proof of concept.

And it took them how long to arrive at that analysis? Which tells us we should do what differently next time? And gets China to tell us the truth how exactly.?

Speaking of Covid, German Intelligence has concluded that it's most likely from a lab leak rather than from a wet market.

For five years, the Federal Intelligence Service has assumed that Corona originated in a Chinese laboratory. The BND classifies the laboratory thesis as "likely" and is "80 to 95 percent" sure. Since then, the German government has kept the BND's findings secret that the virus originated in the biolaboratory in Wuhan. This is reported by NZZ, Zeit and SZ.

You're not addressing the criticism part. The Palestinian leaders are idiots and the people who cling to any right of return are fools. To acknowledge that and also state that no one has clean hands over there is my point. By your reasoning the only agency Israel has is, "Look what you made me do."

The bomb is kind of useless if it can never be used. If people think that Israel needs to withdraw from the West Bank and end the blockade of Gaza without any real deal and just endure a certain amount of terrorism, they should say so.

There seems to be a gigantic one way street where only Israel has agency and the Palestinians lack all agency. This one way street can be expanded to cover Jewish-Muslim relations globally, where the entire burden falls on Jews and we have to offer all olive branches while the Muslims get to treat Jews with horrible arrogance.

Libs want to believe the GOP isn’t worthy of winning, or governing. Unfortunately for them, in reality that’s not the GOP’s problem. That’s the Demos’ problem, as we talked about above.

It is the year 2021. Change the nouns.

That's where we are.

As messages go, it's great. The biggest problem is that if you have an organization in charge of a city that has failed to run it, getting rid of a handful of people at the top won't change much.

California's high speed rail problem will not be fixed by changing governors nor some key mayors of some key cities. Even if you did a full replacement of the state House, it wouldn't make it possible to end up with HSR in 2035.

So there's a bit of a downside for people who embrace the message.

But, in the short term, it's a good message.