DelendaEst
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User ID: 1199
DelendaEst
2yr ago
We are from the same place, I saw that on the local reddit as well. Glad my kid is old enough that we don't go there on a regular basis anymore, but I just cannot fathom how the entire community losing something of value for the sake of letting crazy druggies roam around being a problem is just accepted. "Whelp, nothing to be done about it other than just accept things suck now." But there are quite a few things that can be done about it, and it makes me feel like I am taking crazy pills to see people insist otherwise.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
Still, I think it is a more valuable signal than abstaining. I constantly see people who just assume non-voters would break heavily Dem if forced to choose a side, but it is really hard to say for sure what would happen. But votes for 3rd party show up in a countable way, and reduce the total votes of the winner. Reducing them to below 50% even in victory is a good way to send a signal that they didn't win, the other guy just lost.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
It doesn't work that way. You cannot have your VP candidate call his opponents weird and creepy and engage in a coordinated campaign to label the opponent as weird and expect that to have zero effect on the valence of that word, especially on normies who don't get that you mean "people I don't like are weird which is gross, but actually weird people who are fine," a statement which doesn't even make sense on the face of it. And it definitely lights the entire concept of trying to fight bullying against weird kids on fire because impressionable youth won't hear anything except "weird is bad, the Vice President told me so."
I think you are just an asshole who is willing to burn the commons if it means you get to piss off your outgroup. As they say, the cruelty is point.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
But dems made up the couch thing completely out of whole cloth, so the thing they lie about him having done makes him weird. Rs haven't made up anything about Walz yet, and the media wouldn't signal boost it if they had, so he is normal.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I usually see accusations of that phenomenon phrased as "it's (D)ifferent"
DelendaEst
2yr ago
W got 2 nominees in 2 terms, but notably both were in his second term. So his first had zero.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I wanted Haley, and I like JD Vance just fine (much better than I like Trump) FWIW.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I am very happy to see 1 and 2, and very unhappy about number 3.
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I don't have strong feelings about the substance of this either way, but it is very nice to see someone responding to a SC ruling they don't like the way they are supposed to - passing a new law. The court says the law currently doesn't work the way you want it to, so change the law don't just fight about the court. I'd hope this succeeds this even though I don't care about the merits just because I want everyone to respond to SC rulings in this productive manner.
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I think this is good and I have been advocating this plan for years. Every President gets exactly 2 picks, they happen regularly every 2 years. This lowers the luck factor in the court both high and low, makes terms a little shorter which is probably good, and should as a result hopefully lower the tensions around Presidential elections on this front.
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WTF is this supposed to be. Impeachment is the answer to this, just like it is for Presidents and other electeds. This just seems like an attempt to get a set of seemingly neutral rules which can be wielded in an decidedly unneutral manner in order to be able to force the other side's justices out even though you don't have the votes to impeach.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
FWIW I don't like Trump, and I have no idea who I will vote for since it will be a contest of which bag of shit smells least.
But I would vote for Kodos before I voted for Kamala.
Lefties hate Trump for Jan 6, which I cannot gin up enough outrage to really care about. It was one riot in a year full of them, notable only for the fact that it was righties instead of lefties, and they vandalized government buildings instead of destroying the lives of randos. Did Trump encourage them? Hard to say if he meant to, or they colluded, or they overinterpreted him, but either way it was a bad look.
But Kamala set up a bail fund for rioters. In the middle of destructive riots. The ones that did more damage than a Cat 2 hurricane and fucked up random business owners to no purpose whatsoever. Riots which ROUTINELY had been going for multi-night stretches in each location before petering out. But the idea of a single arsonist being forced to miss out on the second night of terror just because he'd been caught in the first night was so hateful to her that she organized a bail fund to make sure they didn't have to miss a single moment of terrorizing the people of the nation she was running to be VP of. Lefties think Trump is a traitor, I think Kamala is. Trump maybe encouraged a riot that didn't even do much. Kamala funded a terrorist insurgency.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
Exactly. The department heads running their departments is completely normal and acceptable and not even worth comment. The only unusual thing is that they are doing so without oversight from their boss. But even in a normal situation where the president is vital and fully engaged I'm not sure how much oversight those department heads are really getting, so this may very well be only a nominal difference.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
Some, but not at the top line. I still think SCJ are more likely to be assassinated than Trump, though I would put it a LOT closer than I did before. This is because part of the reason I had them much more likely to be killed is that they get vastly less security protection. However, if Trump's security protection is going to be incompetent then that lowers its value (though its still worth a lot more than what SCJ get).
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I think it might be a little more difficult than you think for some edge cases, but I broadly agree. I was also pretty obviously talking about policy though, which means doing it "at scale in a way that is legally/bureaucratically acceptable".
I will happily concede that the punisher walking around talking to homeless people and smoking the problematic ones would have a very high rate of success though if that's what you'd like to talk about instead.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
The problem is that both are correct. A good majority of the people who are homeless during their lives are homeless for a reasonably short period of time before they get their shit together. Just giving those people more resources would plausibly help them reduce their time as homeless, reduce how much they suffer during that time by a lot, and be a reasonable use of resources.
However a majority of the homeless at any given time are the problem sort who won't accept the help you give them, will destroy any housing you provide them, and are responsible for basically all of the negative externalities.
As with most things, the ability to identify the groups is hard, and a mechanism to provide services to the first group and harsh discipline to the second is harder and probably illegal. So instead both sides pretend the whole homeless population is one that deserves their preferred solution and I think about All Debates Are Bravery Debates.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
Yeah. "You can think those guys are nuts and everything they think is bs, but just don't say that to them and don't be a dick about it," is what the ask used to be, and I think most people are happy enough to accept that. Now it is, "you must actively affirm our bs and act in all ways as though it were true and having your own opinion will be met with consequences" which is fighting words.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I think its a little bit the system. I think first past the post combined with primaries distorts things towards polorization in a way that RCV and multi member districts would somewhat alleviate. Like most things where there is a large and persistent problem there is a good chance that perverse incentives are the issue and a difference system with different incentives could help.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
A lot of that is path dependant though. 20 years ago you could control costs by keeping with cheap low level accommodations and facilities and declining to build luxury. But now, the luxury is built. What are you gonna do, demolish it to build shitty dorms? You can stop building more luxury and try to bend the curve back down, but you are starting from the new high level, getting back to old low level may be impossible at this point.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
But I don't think PTB blackbag ops are the real threat, I think it is culture warriors who have been convinced that the other side winning is Armageddon and they have to Do Something! Killing Trump would be a big win for those people, but he has massive SS protection at all times, and if the outcome is just Trumps VP takes office its not as big a difference maker as it could be. But the Supremes are much softer targets and would have a big effect if you could kill a coupe and Biden replaces them with lefties. Normally you'd think that Dems would actually balk at taking advantage of such a situation as that would be seen as endorsing assassins, but Dems also think several seats were stolen in one way or another, and Thomas while not a stolen seat is uniquely vile.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I don't think Trump will get assassinated. If I were ranking potential assassination risks my top would be that if Biden is elected and has a Senate majority (even 50/50 with VP as tie breaker) the value of killing a right leaning SCJ would be very high in certain eyes.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
The charitable answer (extremely charitable IMHO, but I'm sure accurate for at least a few of them) is that they do have some non-zero chance of influencing US policy, specifically the amount of aid we give to Israel, the conditions we put upon it, and the tenor of our relations with Israel. If they can change the tenor of relations even slightly from "We got your back" to "Reign it in a bit, our support isn't unconditional" they could see that as a win.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I would also add that Scalia and RGB actually did seem like high Value Over Replacement Justices, much more influential than the other justices of their team on the court, whereas Sotomayor does not seem to be. So I'd say that I think RGB might have even been correct to hold on because of her intrinsic value, but Sotomayor would be more valuable to her team by gaming the retirement to ensure her seat is a permeant Dem possession no matter how elections go.
I'd also say THAT is probably the main argument against overly strategic retirements. If that Chesterton's Fence gets knocked down then the composition of the court gets locked in to whatever it is now unless one party can get a seriously long string of victories to wait the justices out or the justices suffer untimely sudden deaths (RGB was a cancer survivor and might have seen it coming and planned ahead, Scalia's death seemed out of left field). And if the only way the composition changes is untimely justice death that sets up a mighty strong incentive for assassinations.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
But part of the truth of HBD is that there is variation within the races even as there are clear patterns of difference between them. It says that a highly intelligent person is much more likely to be jewish than black, not that there are zero intelligent black people. Convincing people of the truth of HBD means getting them to accept that a 99th percentile black person might only equal a 90th percentile jew means there will be way more jews than blacks at high achieving levels, but also that it means the 99th percentile black is EQUAL to the 90th percentile jew.
Honestly, the only reason a black executive or Harvard grad is assumed lesser than any other person with the same qualifications is because everyone knows affirmative action and other DEI interventions exist. If we didn't have them then we would see vastly fewer black Harvard grads, but the ones we did see would be judged more as Harvard grads than as generic black people because the former trait would not be mediated by the later.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
My first guess is that a lot of this is urban/rural just because of the fact of public transit. When I visit my sister in DC I walk and take the subway, while when I am at home I drive everywhere, just because of the material realities of where I am. So urban populations will, all things being equal, probably have a more active default lifestyle just because of this and thus I would expect they have lower levels of obesity even if both have the same diet and inclination to exercise.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
I could not agree more.
I can think of very few world views I fight more hostile than one which boils down to "Other people have every right to do self destructive hedonism, but no responsibility to reap the obvious consequences. And you have no right to try to stop them, and total responsibility to deal with the consequences for them." It is the ethos of the spoiled child writ large.
DelendaEst
2yr ago
Underlying material conditions are changing way faster than evolution can keep up with though. Even if current settings are fine for a preindustrialized civilization, and evolution in theory would adjust for this in time, it hasn't had time to do that yet.
I think this is probably a lot of it. Having a release valve to give people an option of doing something other than the most disruptive possible thing seems very helpful. If nothing else it means when the cops hassle them they have an option of a place to go where they won't be hassled and of course won't be bothering other people. If there are literally no options available which don't involve bothering normal productive people, then why not set up shop in downtown and shit directly onto the sidewalk. The cops having a middle option of "roust them out of here and into the out of the way encampment not bothering anyone" also means there is something for them to since all of the more serious remedies have been denied them.
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