SSCReader
3mo ago
The events in Rotherham could never have happened to a society that hadn't had its ability to hate stripped from it. Hate is an essential part of society's immune system, and while it must be controlled, it should never be discarded<
This is untrue. There was plenty of hate for Pakistani muslims in the 80s and 90s when this started. So that cannot be the whole story. The first reason it wasn't stopped and why white prostitution gangs still operate in the same way is that no-one really cares about the victims. Underclass girls who drink and do drugs and are from broken homes or in care are seen as a problem, as scum. I've heard the cops say it, in towns just down the road from Rotherham. Their own families barely care for them let alone anyone else.
That is the true and ongoing failure here. Condemned by conservatives for loose morals and sin and condemned by liberals for being chavvy and ill educated and low class.
They will continue to be victimised by one group or another for these reasons. Its Russian gangs in London, Sectarian ones in Northern Ireland, but the victims remain the same.
A lack of hate is not the issue by far. There is more than enough of that. It's not enough compassion. Not enough love.
Child prostitution is popular because there are always men who will pay for it. Always. Lock up the offenders of course, but just like with drug dealers, a new one will be along in a minute. You have to want to protect the victims not just punish the guilty. You have to want to see them not as a problem but as broken girls from broken homes who need help and treatment. But they aren't easy to work with or help so even the most compassionate of social workers or police officers becomes a jaded burned out cynic soon enough. I've seen it happen in my days working in social care. So then the cops treat the girls as prostitutes and drug addicts not as vulnerable children. No humans involved as the saying goes.
That is the almost insumountable problem. Anyone who wants to help is set against an almost unending torrent of misery and exposed to the sordid underbelly of human desire. Not many come out of it with their compassion intact. But that is what is needed, not more hate.
SSCReader
3mo ago
At no point in any novel I've read pre 1980 is any woman ever described as physically strong. Not in Dickens, not in Howard,
Certainly in Howard. Valeria is described as being strong (while still being feminine). Maybe the original Red Sonja (who inspired the later Red Sonja in Conan comics) might count.
"She was tall, full-bosomed, and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance." - This is the start of the description of Valeria. He does say she is unusual in her strength though.
"Then with a yell and a rush someone was at his side and he heard the quick splintering of mail beneath the madly flailing strokes of a saber that flashed like silver lightning before his clearing sight. It was Red Sonya who had come to his aid, and her onslaught was no less terrible than that of a she-panther. Her strokes followed each other too quickly for the eye to follow; her blade was a blur of white fire, and men went down like ripe grain before the reaper." - She is splintering mail with sword strokes and reaping men like grain, which takes some level of strength.
"With a croaking cry Tshoruk ran at her, scimitar lifted. Before he could strike, she crashed down the barrel of the empty pistol on his head, felling him like an ox. From the other side Rhupen slashed at her with a curved Turkish dagger. Dropping the pistol, she closed with the young Oriental. Moving like someone in a dream, she bore him irresistibly backward, one hand gripping his wrist, the other his throat. Throttling him slowly, she inexorably crashed his head again and again against the stones of the wall, until his eyes rolled up and set. Then she threw him from her like a sack of loose salt." - Red Sonja again rescuing the main character - overpowered a man, throttled him, then throws his body away, like a sack.
SSCReader
6mo ago
a fact first disclosed after Biden’s debate flop against President-elect Donald Trump, when staff admitted the then-Democratic nominee had difficulty functioning outside a six-hour window that closed around 4 p.m. daily.
It depends, if he was cognizant enough to make decisions in those 6 hours then yes largely the day to day decisions were being made by the President. With age related cognitive decline and/or dementia, the decline is very rarely (in my experience working in adult social care) linear. Some people become unable to make certain decisions and not others, some are entirely lucid for large predictable periods of time (time of day related usually).
Biden is very stubborn and I am told that he was the one who was pushing for the death penalty commutations hard and had to be dissuaded from commuting them all as staffers felt the most publicity negative few should be excluded. Also there was apparently a lot of opposition to him wanting to pardon Hunter, so clearly he has some level of awareness and enough energy to still be pushing his own agenda at times. But that can't tell us how many things this applies to and indeed increased stubbornness could be a symptom of decline, becoming stuck in positions other people might reason their way out of.
Without a proper assessment on how much of what we see is cognitive vs physical/speech decline it is pretty difficult to know what level of input he is having. I knew geriatrics who struggled to speak coherently but were able to write and type and express their thoughts perfectly well. I also knew some who could speak about say trains or mathematics perfectly coherently but were entirely disconnected from the reality of what year it was, who was who and what was going on. For all except the worst cases you would generally need to spend some reasonable length of time, across different days and times in a back and forth conversation to really be able to diagnose a specific level of decline.
So, I would say the evidence suggests that Biden is for at least some periods of the day the President in more than just name. In reference to the criminal enterprise, I would suggest again that the article itself suggests that many people were kept in the dark by the inner circle and would have had meetings in that 6 hour window. I saw Biden speak for about 30 minutes not long prior to the debate and he seemed a little frail but with it. It is quite possible that limited exposure would mean you wouldn't see much more than that, especially with anyone allied being pre-disposed to rationalize away anything they did see, and to believe any excuses they were given.
Personally I think his inner circle (and himself potentially depending on his awareness) were in fact likely misleading the majority of the Democratic party as well. Because as soon as that fell apart, the internal pressure had him standing down as nominee pretty quickly. Some of that is political expediency of course, but I can't imagine there weren't some people who had they known would have realized the performance wasn't going to be able to kept up long enough, even if not for moral reasons but for pragmatic ones.
SSCReader
6mo ago
To be fair he should do this if you believe that politicians should try to live up to their campaign pledges. This is from 2020:
"Eliminate the death penalty. Over 160 individuals who’ve been sentenced to death in this country since 1973 have later been exonerated. Because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time, Biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole."
Biden has been against the death penalty for some time, but was unable to eliminate it entirely. He should probably do it for all 40, but the 3 he hasn't are obviously problematic from the POV of some of his supporters, so he has compromised somewhat. That part can be critiqued if you like, but he has a democratic mandate to minimize the death penalty.
Whatever you think of it, he was democratically elected with a public stance against the federal death penalty. Elections do have consequences. As they will when Trump takes over and is more zealous about the death penalty. So it goes.
For what it is worth I am reliably informed Biden himself was pushing for this, while many of his advisors thought it would be a bad look for many of those on the list. In the end the compromise was to leave out the three who from a publicity pov were thought to be most problematic.
Also, many of your examples you are just axiomatically assuming they did get the conviction right. It is entirely possible (though not likely!) the wrong person was convicted. Why could a mistake not be made for the murder of a prison guard? Even just glancing over a few I see an example where one perp claims to have brain damage and another was inducted into dealing drugs at the age of 7, first arrested at 9 and was smoking crack before they were a teenager. You really can't see any reason why some people might think that even if they shouldn't be let free that maybe killing them is not helpful? That they might look at that person and think, they had no chance from the get go?
As well, part of the progressive stack argument is that the system will sometimes railroad individuals, and that law officers have been shown to sometimes lie to get convictions. Is your position there is absolutely zero chance one of these people is actually not guilty?
If you are angry about these people not being killed surely you must be aware there are people who are equally angry about the death penalty and would say that yes it is important for these people to be spared the death penalty. Thus it has no real bearing on anything beyond your own personal feelings. Whether you are angry about it or not has no bearing on whether it it is the right or wrong thing to do, or whether your argument is compelling or not.
I want to be clear, I am not against the death penalty myself. I think it is a useful tool when used judiciously. But I can certainly see why many people, Catholic or otherwise are against it in totality. I'm not angry at Trump for supporting more use of the death penalty and I am not angry at Biden for thinking it shouldn't be used. Both are reasonable understandable positions. Why be mad about that?
SSCReader
10mo ago
(With specific respect to the 2020 protest, I did see some discussion of Jackson and Barrett "swapping places" but in the end I think far less attention was paid to that peculiarity than was maybe warranted.)
I am not sure about Barrett, but Jackson has sided with conservatives on reading criminal statues narrowly in a few cases. I am not saying she is conservative by any means, but she does have a very specific jurisprudence that can lean what has been described as libertarian on criminal matters. Now she was a public defender, so it maybe her experiences there with perhaps the over-reach of the prosecutorial state have aligned her somewhat that way. She is also very concerned with the practicalities of rulings. As in, how easy is it for an average person to know what they should or should not be doing with any given statute or law. She thinks the courts should be doing more to clarify and help citizens there.
Obviously you are not likely to agree with a lot of her opinions, but I think she is a far better justice than she has been painted, even with that expectation.
SSCReader
1mo ago
The UK of the 1980s was quite modern and interconnected. In another time, the Troubles could have been more traditional uprising instead of very long terrorist campaign.
Well it was already the remnant of a traditional uprising. The partition of Ireland and the Anglo-Irish Treaty was a solution to the Irish War of Independence. It's extremely unlikely the Troubles could have become a more traditional uprising because most of the people who cared were placated enough by the freeing of the Republic (nee Irish Free State) and the peace deal ratified by both Irish and British governments.
The Provos always struggled to recruit enough people to do anything more than they did. The Troubles was essentially the very long death rattle of the Irish War of Independence (and the Irish Civil War between those who supported the Anglo-Irish treaty and those who did not within the new state). It was the end state of a traditional uprising, not the beginning.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Except.... Romney got 37% (lost to Obama), McCain got 32% (lost to Obama) so it starts to look true, but Bush got about 45% (beat Kerry) in 2004 and 47% (beat Gore) in 2000. Clinton got 55% to Doles 35% in 1996, so back to being true and Bush Senior got 34% (lost to Clinton) in 1992 but 53% (beat Dukakis) in 1988.
Partially it's just whoever wins will in general do better with most groups than times when their side loses (because that's how you win!). If you compare to times when Republicans win Trump at 43% in 2024 is a touch below Bush in 2000 and 2004 and less than Bush Senior in 1988.
If you look at 1984 to 1996 it looks like youth support for Republicans is in free fall from 59% (Reagan win) to 53% (Bush Senior win) down to 34% and 35% (losses to Clinton) but they jump right back to 47% and 45% the next two elections (Bush wins). Then drop back down into the 30's (losses to Obama) and then pop right back up for Trump in 2024. It looks mainly to be an artefact of who is winning/losing in general.
I wouldn't pay too much attention or be surprised when youth vote percentages are high when you win and low when you lose. It's just a subset of winning/losing. In the last 50 years Republicans have been as high as 53% (or even 59% if we go back to Reagan in 84!) and as low as 32% for McCain. Trump is still well within those norms I think. Actually his win in 2016 is maybe the odd one out. He won with just 36% of that youth vote. Which in most years would correspond with an overall loss (and he did lose the popular vote of course, not that it is relevant much). 36% again in 2020 with a loss, which is about on trend. Then up to 43% in 2024 with a win.
If anything it is the opposite, if you compare like with like. Trump at 43% and 36% with wins compared to Bush at 45% and 47%, Bush Senior at 53% with a win and Reagan at 59% and 44% with wins. On his loss he is on par with Romney, a touch ahead of McCain and Dole and Bush Senior on their losses.
Or if we average (a very blunt tool!) Trump has 38% across 3 elections which is just ahead of Romney (37%), ahead of McCain (32%), behind Bush's average of 46%, above Dole's 35%, below Bush Senior's average of 43% and below Reagans average of 51%. So pretty much middle of the pack.
So I think we can say Trump did NOT get a significantly higher percentage than most Republicans get. He did do better in 2024 than Romney and McCain when they lost, but that's kind of to be expected! And he didn't do as well as Bush or Bush Senior when they won.
SSCReader
6mo ago
The US does have high life expectancy and low infant mortality though. And most of the issues are caused by obesity not healthcare here in any case. Its not the highest certainly, but that isn't your criteria. Likewise the US does have a fairly robust social safety net, and low crime rates. It also has very little actual poverty. It certainly also has a lot of opportunities for leisure and recreation.
I'm by no means in the top 1% but the US is an excellent place to live.
Just comparing to places I have spent plenty of time in, it's better than the UK, better than France, better than China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Russia. Maybe the Nordics might beat it, maybe, but I didn't spend enough time in Sweden to assess.
SSCReader
6d ago
But this isn't like some parasite was controlling his brain, his mental illnesses, if they existed, were just as intrinsic to who he was as his good qualities. I don't see how this is different from me saying "I'm really a nice guy I'm just suffering from untreated assholeism"
With bi-polar though for example, being on medication can literally turn you into a different person. My exes mother had bipolar and on medication she was a sweet Christian lady who baked cakes and wouldn't hurt a fly. Off it she was a foul mouthed, paranoid who lacked impulse control and used to beat her kids with metal coat hangers.
Which was the "real" her? The difference between a mental illness and just being an asshole, is an asshole can choose to not be so. With a mental illness you can't.
SSCReader
21d ago
I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of any group that you are not a member of.
Forget groups, I’m not entirely convinced that anyone can know the internal experience of anyone else.
We just had a whole discussion about how one man thought no men would be willingly be kicked in the balls to have a child. And was immediately corrected several times over by multiple other men. So clearly even for men, for a fairly universal experience of being kicked in the balls our individual internal experiences vary massively.
SSCReader
3mo ago
I think it's fair to say that the right-wing culture which is suspicious of academia and other "not real work" kind of jobs is their own fault. But there are other factors here which aren't their fault.
Setting aside the word fault. If you have a culture that is suspicious of academia and other not real work, then it is likely the people in those positions are going to react and to be suspicious of you in return. I don't think it is either sides fault. Its the chicken or the egg. I think it is the outcome of the structural and systemic differences in value sets between tribes. Blues mock Reds for being dumb hicks and Reds mock Blues for being effete intellectuals. The result is any space that leans slightly one way or the other is going to cascade. Whether anyone is deliberately planning it or not.
90% of farmers are Republicans and that is ok. It is ok for your values and preferences to determine that some areas will be dominated by one tribe or the other. At scale individual choices are overtaken by systemic differences. There likely isn't any way to have a 50/50 split in academia for Reds and Blues short of changing what Reds want and hence what Reds are. Likewise with farming and Blues.
SSCReader
6mo ago
So.. a Delaware judge has once again unilaterally decided to void Elon Musk's $50 billion pay package.
The one thing I will mention is that companies historically preferred Delaware's Chancery court because there was no chance of a jury trial (most states allow either side to demand and get a jury). The fact it would be a unilateral decision was the selling point, as that is thought to be much lower variance than a jury. I.e. you can predict what each judge is likely to decide based upon case law and their previous decisions. Even if their decisions are not what you want, the fact they are more predictable than a jury trial is valuable.
So this really should only be a problem if this is not consistently followed. But given expert lawyers in Delaware were predicting the outcome prior to the original trial probably indicates that Tesla should have been able to predict this and take steps accordingly (structure the deal differently, have more independence between the people putting together the deal and Musk etc.).
Texas I think does allow jury trials for their Business court, so whether that is going to be better may be a gamble.
SSCReader
7mo ago
We had fewer mail in ballots and the split between Republicans and Democrats was smaller than in 2020 for those ballots. Because they take longer to count (and PA can't start preparing them before the election), those are the ballots that come in late to the count. In 2020 that meant it was always going to get better for Biden as the night went on. Harris does not have that same split to rely on. If she is not up on "on the day" voters there are not enough mail in ballots to save her (unless a lot of registered Republicans got mail in ballots then switched to her from Trump, which seems..unlikely). Down over 600,000 compared to 2020 and the split was less than 2-1 in favor of registered Democrats, compared to more than 3-1 in 2020.
It may be that Trump shifting gears in his PA rallies and telling his supporters to vote however they can including mail in ballots might have been enough. Of course if he had said that in 2020, the split might not have been as big as it was in the first place. Potentially exonerating those PA Republicans who opened up mail-in voting in 2019 just prior to Covid. Without Trump encouraging his supporters not to use the mail-in ballots, it might be their plan to boost rural elderly turn out is finally successful, just 4 years down the line.
Also while Harris is running ahead in some counties, she is running below Biden in 2020. Unless Philly has huge turnout (and it didn't seem THAT busy to me), you'd rather be in Trump's shoes than hers right now.
SSCReader
1mo ago
Well, i am from Northern Ireland and its not quite that simple. We're not Scottish Protestants any more, we've been there for hundreds of years. Half my family is of Scottish descent, but the other half is from Ulster even before the Plantation happened.
I'm both Irish snd Scottish by ancestry. And thats very common, after all the Plantation of Ulster happened in the 1600's. Thats longer than the United States has even existed as a country. Plenty of time for inter marriage between settlers and natives who converted to Protestantism to create entirely separate ethnic family trees. Its why its Ulster Scots, not just Scots.
SSCReader
1mo ago
I'm a neo-liberal capitalist with a twist actually. And it was very nice of you with the gas station worker, bit that illustrates my point. You built a relationship with her over time then she could ask you for a favor.
You can't speedrun the relationship.
Danish Miss Teen America (?) takes your order sure. Try asking a French waiter a stupid question though. Norms are different in different places at different time for different people. You have to learn to navigate the ones in front of you. Not the ones you wish there were.
SSCReader
3mo ago
The frustration I think everyone's feeling with this discussion is that while what you're saying is true in a certain way and for certain sample of people, it applies to almost no one here.
Because most people here are not actually Red Tribe conservatives. We're mostly Blue Tribers and Blue Tribe dissidents (or Grey Tribe). Hlynka's conservatism was closer to the Red Tribe people I know in person than to most of the conservatives we have here I think, (particularly in being hostile to HBD), but he was pretty unusual compared to the median Motte poster.
SSCReader
5mo ago
Well that is because it hasn't yet. We'll get back to 1980's levels in about 15-20 years still.
"It confirms that 99% of ozone-depleting gases have been phased out. Projections from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) suggest the Antarctic ozone layer will recover to 1980 levels by around 2066, with recovery in the rest of the world between 2040 and 2045"
and
"A hole that opens annually in the ozone layer over Earth's southern pole was relatively small in 2024 compared to other years. Scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) project the ozone layer could fully recover by 2066"
It's just slow steady progress at the layer being restored a little every year is not really news beyond niche publications.
SSCReader
5mo ago
Just to point out BG3 is a bad example. The RPG setting it is based on: the Forgotten Realms is explicitly designed to be much more diverse than Europe at the same rough time frame would be, which is called out in universe in the setting, outside of BG3 itself.
"There was a time when any fool could have told you where the folk of this land or that came from, but now we sail or ride so far and often that we’re all from everywhere. Even the most isolated villages hold folk who hail from they know not where. Yet you can still tell something of where someone hails from by their hair and build and skin and manner, though any traveler knows not to assume too much from a quick glance. Remember that, and hearken"
This is from a Doylist perspective so that DnD players who want to play a Chultan halfling shaman or a Kozakuran samurai or whatever on the Sword Coast (the Europe equivalent and most popular part of the setting) don't have to have convoluted back stories to justify it. From a Watsonian perspective the historical presence of portals from the Realms to different areas of Earth plus being a high magic setting with fairly easy access to teleportation, flying ships and even spacecraft to visit different worlds is a justification. Bits of the planet were also exchanged with nations on an entirely (but not really, it's complicated) world which led to random cultures popping up elsewhere as well.
On top of all that Baldur's Gate and environs is called out explicitly as being the most multi-cultural place on a very multi-cultural world due to being the biggest and most cosmopolitan city (no matter what Waterdhavians might say). And had absorbed several huge waves of refugees from various nations in the prior several hundred years.
"Baldurians took great pride in the inclusiveness of their city. It was a place anyone could call home, or start a new life within, regardless of race, creed or personal history."
Something like The Witcher or similar may be a better example.
As for the rationale? It's simple (which doesn't mean correct of course!) games and books and movies are made to entertain people as they are at the time they are created. A deliberate choice can be made to portray historical (or pseudo-historical) situations with more modern demographics to make it more palatable or relatable or attractive to a modern audience. My wife greatly prefers shows or games which have (or allow to be created) a black woman character, In RPGs I am almost always a white man with red hair. Even outside of any social engineering one might want to do, having the broadest set of characters is probably the way to go unless you are appealing specifically to the accuracy of your historical setting as a specific selling point.
My wife loves Bridgerton, she is aware it is not historically accurate but it allows her to watch and enjoy people like her in pretty dresses dealing with English high society in a way that really never happened. Then she buys Bridgerton themed coffee creamer (which is quite good actually), and so on and wants to attend a fancy tea party in costume, so buys corsets and lace and learns to sew. It creates an aspirational fantasy of a sort.
SSCReader
6mo ago
The problem is for example, me going for a colonoscopy, I contacted my insurance company to ask how much would be covered. They said if my doctor coded it as preventative (i.e. I was just being screened due to my age) it would be essentially entirely covered, however if it was because the doctor was trying to find a diagnosis it would be 50% co-pay. So I asked well how much would that be, and they said depends on your doctor and their facility but somewhere between 3 and 10,000 dollars, perhaps more.
Now the problem is I was having symptoms, which is why my GP referred me to a GE (the only GE I can get into see inside 3 months in the area as it happens) in the first place. So I ask the GE how they are going to code it and he says, no idea, you'll have to ask the front desk staff who do my billing. So I ask them and they say, depends on what the doctor puts in his notes. If he mentions pre-existing symptoms we'll code it as exploratory. So I ask how much that will cost and they say, we have no idea, so I ask how much does it usually cost OOP on average and they mumble around a lot and eventually say 2-4000 dollars.
So I get the colonoscopy because I am feeling pretty bad, and I get diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, they code it as exploratory and I end up having to pay about 4 and half grand out of pocket (most of which as it happened went to the facility and the anesthetist and the lab that analyzed the removed polyps and tissue, it appears). Now luckily I can afford that, because I am a responsible person with a decent paying job. But I asked my doctor what would have been different if it was just a routine screening and he said nothing at all. He would still have checked polyps in the lab, he would still have done everything he did, except I wouldn't have had to pay more than 50 bucks. And of course he is recommending I get a colonoscopy every 6 months because I am at elevated risk of bowel cancer. Now my GE doctor says he does 5 or 6 colonoscopies a day. It is essentially the main thing he does, and my insurance company is the biggest in the state. There has to be a better way than telling me, well it can be somewhere between zero and unknown but probably between zero and 10K, for a procedure which is pretty well defined.
SSCReader
9mo ago
In this case Trump talked about firing workers who strike. Which is a pretty big issue for a union. And the union leader was very vocally unhappy about that. Without that he probably gets the endorsement, given the Union leader spoke at the RNC and the majority of members liking Trump.
SSCReader
9mo ago
It is, But given my ex-position and contacts I can confirm that Boris et al, really did not want to. Not that Boris is principled, just that he thought it was going to make him look bad, due to the financial hit. We even have access to many of his messages as part of the various probes into parties at Number Ten at the like, if you don't (understandably!) want to take some internet strangers word for it.
I am not saying that Boris and the Conservatives had a particularly ideological commitment against lockdowns, and mandates, particularly, just that most of the reports commissioned showed very little gain for considerable cost.
SSCReader
10mo ago
Like, seriously? "The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?"
If you read the rest of her comments she says "“I’m interested in your view that the context doesn’t change the First Amendment principles,” Jackson said. “I understood our First Amendment jurisprudence to require heightened scrutiny of government restrictions of speech, but not necessarily a total prohibition when you’re talking about a compelling interest of the government to ensure, for example, that the public has accurate information in the context of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”"
So she is obviously aware that the Constitution limits government power, but she is talking about there not being a total prohibition when there is a compelling interest.
Now you may of course disagree with the fact whether Covid or whatever is such a compelling interest, but I think positing that one question, means she is an idiot, about not understanding what the Constitution does is just cherry picking. The rest of her questioning clearly shows she does know that.
Her question shouldn't paraphrased as
"The Constitution limits government power, but sometimes we don't like that. What are we supposed to do when the Constitution limits government power in ways we don't like?"
but rather as
"The Constitution limits government power, but that limit is not all encompassing. In your view what should the government do when and if it does have such a compelling interest?"
Remembering her question here is in the context of a hypothetical about a viral social media stunt that is causing suicides among teenagers. So she is asking even if people are dying is your position that the government cannot encourage the media companies to suppress these posts. Is that not a compelling interest? And the advocate understands where she is going because he answers, no, the government can use positive speech to condemn the posts but it cannot ask the companies to take them down. So they both understand that government power is limited by the Constitution, what they are going back and forth about is what counts as a compelling interest and where those limits end.
Again, you may think she is wrong about where those limits are, but it is clear she isn't a moron who doesn't understand that the Constitution is there to put limits on government action. She clearly understands that.
SSCReader
11mo ago
USSS members should be 6’5” terrifying meat shields with guns.
Nah, you want someone calm under pressure first, relatively innocuous, so around 6 feet or so. Good with guns and probably combat experience. That will make most of your good candidates men, but you don't want 10 Jack Reacher's. For a start they need to be able to fit inside vehicles with the principal and some to be able to blend into your crowds if needed. 25-35 and if you have a female principal you will also want some female officers, as your principal is likely to try and keep men out of the bathroom with her at least in a lot of cases. The Secret Service is going to have to guard women at some point, so at least a few of them should be women as well. The female close protective officers I met were certainly...butcher than average, but they could still put on a dress for a garden party or ambassadorial function. Not all of your security should stand out.
I wonder if this puts a damper on trying to replace Biden. Trump was already favored to win, and running against someone surviving an assassination attempt adds an even more uphill struggle.
Who is going to want to jump in? For most Democratic politicians in contention now, letting Biden run and lose, so they can run against a new contender in 28, has got to look like a better proposition personally than the nasty fight to replace Biden, then going against a hero bumped Trump.
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