Gdanning
7mo ago
The Democrat party apparatus does not care in the slightest whether this person represents California
An odd argument re someone who moved to California at age 30, was a labor leader in the state, was a regent of the University of California, worked for Kamala Harris, and moved out of state 2 years ago only to pursue a job opportunity
Gdanning
6mo ago
How about engaging substantively, rather using perjoratives like "shill"?
Gdanning
6mo ago
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust.
Not in the United States. In the United States, it has historically been "racists" who were the perpetrators of various sorts of legal and extralegal repression. Of course, that is because Marxists have never been in power in the US, but that is the nature of historical contingency, and the current relative social acceptance of the two is a historically contingent fact.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore,
It is actually an open question whether CA law applied to Damore. The CA Labor Code does not refer explicitly to political beliefs, but rather to political activiities and actions
- No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office. (b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees. (Enacted by Stats. 1937, Ch. 90.)
- No employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.
The law has been interpreted broadly, but I don't know that it has been applied to criticisms of internal company policy. Note that, in the analogous case of the free speech rights of public employee, the Supreme Court has held that criticism of internal policy is not protected speech. Of course, the federal jurisprudence on public employee free speech is terrible, so it would not surprise me if CA courts go in a different direction.
Gdanning
5mo ago
And yet, strangely, Hamas has not attacked Egypt, which also blockades Gaza. One might infer that the blockade is a rationalization for the attack, rather than an actual cause thereof.
Gdanning
6mo ago
It wasn't just the Davis Administration. All four states that issued explanations of their reasons for secession put the threat to slavery as the primary reason.
Gdanning
6mo ago
So in both cases there is a legitimate claim to right of self determination
Is there? The right to self-determination belongs to "peoples.". You are assuming that both Palestinians and southerners are/were "peoples", but what constitutes a "people" is the most contentious part of the right to self-determination. Not only are you skipping over the hard part, you are ascribing to progressives views (ie, re what constitutes a "people") that they might or might not hold. (And note that African-Americans in the antebellum South would also seem hold a claim to be a "people" under some views of what constitutes a "people.").
Gdanning
5mo ago
they've just been hired as a da/pd.
It seems to me that it might make a huge difference whether he has been hired as a PD or a DA. I can guarantee you that there were more Marxists in the criminal defense bar 40 years ago than there are now.
Gdanning
4mo ago
Biden knew the renter moratorium was unconstitutional. His advisors told him as such. The SCOTUS said this is illegal but since you told us you are ending it we will let you end it in an orderly fashion. He then said “fuck it — I will extend it and hope it will take months or years to overturn what I knew was against the constitutional Order.
None of this is particularly correct. The Supreme Court initially ruled on the moratorium in July of 2021. But that was re the moratorium imposed the previous September, by the Trump Administration. And, as noted in the only opinion issued at that time, the concurrence by Kavanaugh, the argument was not that it was unconstitutional, but that "the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium."
More broadly, this is exactly how Presidents should behave: if they think a particular action is in the best interests of residents of the US, they should take that action, even if there are arguments, even strong ones, that the action might be overturned by the courts. Because unless there is existing binding precedent, the only way to know for sure is to get a final court decision on the merits (or, in this case, a preliminary injunction that is not stayed). That is exactly what Trump did re the "Muslim ban" -- as each iteration was struck down, the admin kept narrowing it until they came up with a version that withstood judicial scrutiny. There is nothing wrong with that.
The only exception is when the argument for legality is frivolous, which this one was not, given that the final vote in the Supreme Court was 6-3.
Gdanning
9mo ago
The song is about shooting rioters.
The music video notwithstanding, the lyrics don't mention rioting at all:
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk; Carjack an old lady at a red light; Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store; Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like; Cuss out a cop, spit in his face; Stomp on the flag and light it up
Gdanning
5mo ago
But Nixon got punished, and vilified. Kissinger, who was a major part of the administration, skated.
Makes sense. Nixon was punished for Watergate and the subsequent coverup. I don't believe that Kissinger was implicated in Watergate at all.
Gdanning
5mo ago
If you want peace in the region, Hamas cannot be allowed to be in charge in Gaza.
I don't know why you assume that current Israeli policy is the one most likely to achieve that goal. Israel could have leveraged the Hamas attack to get other actors to work together toward eliminating Hamas, but that opportunity is waning more and more with every civilian casualty in Gaza. And, even if Hamas is eliminated, the end result will probably be the creation of Hamas 2.0.
And let's not forget that current Israeli policy is at least in part based on what is best for the Netanyahu administration, not what is best for Israel. And many of the elites whom you criticize are very much aware of that.
Gdanning
7mo ago
Here is the problem with advocating censorship of "bad" ideas: If it is permissible make rules about what ideas can be expressed, then someone has to make those rules. And who will that be, people with power, or people without power. Obviously the former.
Btw, I am referring to censorship of ideas, not obscenity, not child porn, and not any of the 1000 other things that those who favor censoring ideas they don't like want to conflate therewith.
Gdanning
4mo ago
So it will be interesting to see what happens.
I am skeptical that the First Amendment analysis will survive; the bar is extremely high for incitement to riot.
Gdanning
6mo ago
No, they're not. The US has an interest in preserving the economic stability that would be threatened by a broader conflict in the Middle East which is independent of any interest in protecting Israel per se. Not to mention that, if the claims commonly repeated on here about the terrible effects of higher gas prices on the well-being of US citizens are true, preventing a wider conflict serves the interests of those citizens.
Well, I am not sure it actually matters if a PD or DA is a Marxist. But if he really "cheers whenever someone white suffers," a DA might treat a defendant differently depending on the defendant's race or the race of the victim. Given the enormous discretion DAs have in the criminal justice system, that could be a problem. It would be less of a problem for a PD, because PDs have little power. Either way, if you are truly concerned, you should make a report to your state's bar assn or other atty disciplinary body.
Gdanning
7mo ago
Why does the employer not simply fire the people doing the organizing?
Because it is illegal
Are the people running factory machines inside of Ford and GM (or starbucks, or a hollywood writers room) really that highly skilled?
Autoworkers and screenwriters? Yes. Baristas? Not so much. Which is why unions have historically been more successful in skilled trades than in nonskilled trades; it is difficult for employers to simply fire skilled workers because it is difficult to replace them. More importantly, if it is more expensive to replace them than to give them a raise, well, that answers your question about why employers do not simply fire them.
Gdanning
5mo ago
Alternative explanation: The media faces potential liablity for naming suspects before formal charges are filed.
Gdanning
6mo ago
The holocaust took place when Germans were being killed in the millions and civilians were starving in the hundreds of thousands.
The Wannasee Conference was January of 1942. German armies were still besieging Stalingrad a year later.
Apologists for genocide and other mass atrocities always claim that they are necessary for self-preservation. That doesn't mean anyone has to believe it.
The point is that there is all sorts of protected speech that increases the likelihood of criminal activity. Flashing gang signs, for example, as well as all sorts of advocacy of crime. As well as, possibly, sharing animated pictures of fictional children having sex with adults [edit: I say "possibly" because I don’t know if that actually encourages recipients to share actual child porn]. Heck, even agreeing with another person to commit a crime is generally not itself a crime; more is usually needed.
Nevertheless, attempting to censor those typs of speech is "addressing criminal activity," specifically, it is an attempt to reduce the incidence of crime, which is why social media companies do not allow it, and why many other countries censor or punish that type of speech.
Hence, preventing govt from notifying a social media company about speech which is both protected speech and which increases the risk of crime X does indeed hamper the govt's ability to address crime X. Please note that I am not advocating that the govt should do that. To the contrary, I believe that social media companies should be forbidden from censoring users' speech which is protected from govt censorship. But I am not going to pretend that such a policy would not make crime prevention more difficult.
Gdanning
5mo ago
You might as well not have sex at that point.
I would like to suggest that perhaps you are not quite doing it correctly.
Gdanning
5mo ago
but I can't understand how people can maintain a neutral view on unnecessary surgeries on minors.
The people who advocate for those practices believe that those surgeries very much are necessary. That is not a view that I share, but then I am not transgender and don't have kids who are transgender. So, I might be wrong. I also don't know how much harm is caused by gender reassignment surgery, though I have no doubt that opponents thereof exaggerate the downsides as much as proponents exaggerate the upsides.
Gdanning
6mo ago
The taliban defeated NATO after NATO spent 2 trillion dollars fighting them
Except that the Taliban didn't defeat them, right? The Taliban managed to kill all of 2000 US troops in 20 years, and they succeeded only after US troops left. I don't think the IDF is going to be leaving Israel any time soon.
Gdanning
7mo ago
Obviously not all of these people are democrats
Probably, very few are. Staten Island voted 57-42 for Trump in 2020, and the demographics that tend to vote Democratic do not seem very well represented in those pics.
Gdanning
6mo ago
Ironically, the only black people immigrating to the US are South Indians.
It looks like about 120,000 people per year are granted permanent residence from Jamaica, Haiti, and "other Africa," which seems to be mostly subSaharan Africa. Compared with 50-69K from all of India.
Yes, that was my point. "For your case," not in every case, as you seemed to claim. And, honestly, would you have written if she had had one of the other conditions listed on that web page, such as narcolepsy, or epilepsy, or a heart condition which can cause fainting? Isn't the issue the degree to which her particular condition increases the risks of causing an accident, which at this point we don't know?
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