Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
Except your example also demonstrates that "let them do it on their own" is BS. The Azeris had Iranian, Turkish, and Israeli backing...the Armenians "fought on their own" and got stomped. Little countries will always cozy up to big countries, and whoever doesn't have a patron had best find one quick or risk domination by their mobbed-up neighbors.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
California's Vice Governor has written the Secretary of State (and released the letter as a press-release) as follows:
Dear Secretary Weber,
Based on the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling in Anderson v. Griswold (2023 CO 63), I urge you to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot.
I am prompted by the Colorado Supreme Court's recent ruling that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state’s ballot as a Presidential Candidate due to his role in inciting an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy.
Specifically, the Colorado Supreme Court held in Anderson v. Griswold (2023 CO 63) that Trump’s insurrection disqualifies him under section three of the Fourteenth Amendment to stand for presidential re-election. Because the candidate is ineligible, the court ruled, it would be a “wrongful act” for the Colorado Secretary of State to list him as a candidate on that state’s presidential primary ballot. Furthermore, Colorado’s Supreme Court cites conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch to make their case, saying the following, “As then-Judge Gorsuch recognized in Hassan, it is ‘a state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process' that 'permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.’”
California must stand on the right side of history. California is obligated to determine if Trump is ineligible for the California ballot for the same reasons described in Anderson. The Colorado decision can be the basis for a similar decision here in our state. The constitution is clear: you must be 35 years old and not be an insurrectionist.
There will be the inevitable political punditry about a decision to remove Trump from the ballot, but this is not a matter of political gamesmanship. This is a dire matter that puts at stake the sanctity of our constitution and our democracy.
Time is of the essence as your announcement of the certified list of candidates for the March 5, 2024, primary election is coming up next week, on December 28, 2023.
Thank you for all your work to make our state’s elections a shining example across the country and world and for your time and consideration on this urgent matter.
Best,
Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis (RET.) Lieutenant Governor
This seems clearly poised to grade the road for CA to follow CO's lead. And while this is initially just for the primary election, this is clearly laying the groundwork for removal of Trump (as the presumptive nominee) from the November ballot as well. It also sets CA on track for potential nullification of any actions taken by Trump in the event the 2024 election returns him to office.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
The stated reason for being removed from the primary ballot is that CO does not believe Trump is eligible to hold the office of POTUS. If the GOP nominates Trump, notwithstanding CO's lack of participation, for President, the same logic mandates that CO refuse to list Trump in the November election as GOP nominee. This isn't just about the primary, and claiming otherwise without further argument/support is either ignorant or malicious.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
The thing that makes this a national story is that Mr. Ballard, through the fictionalized version of his life that is "Sound of Freedom," one of the major cultural figures held up as virtuous and good by Team Red. Thus, it is imperative in the kulturkampf that Team Blue knock him off his pedestal or prove him to be bad in some way, lest Team Red be able to convince people that Reds can be virtuous, or that it is virtuous to be Red. That's what's driving amplification of this story in higher-profile news networks/through non-Red social media networks. Obviously Reds, Mormons, and Utahns have their own reasons to care about this - their idol has feet of clay / adultery is something they care about, etc.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
To be fair, Israel has a history of trouncing the Arab powers in conventional conflicts - it would be counterintuitive to conclude from that that they are incapable of defending their position against Arab states.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
I can't speak for OP. But I want to disbar and blacklist those who would persecute a business for trying to actually abide by immigration law.
I want the cops to go back to enforcing public order on the streets instead of hassling people for praying.
I want the authorities to go after the mobs instead of those defending themselves from the mob.
I want the schools to be more concerned with keeping order than making sure the people being disciplined have the right mix of skin tones, and more concerned with literacy and numeracy than decolonization, deconstruction, sexuality, or whatever the latest fad gripping the nation's sociology departments might be.
I want more people actually doing things, and fewer people administering, regulating, guiding, advising, and managing them.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
that there is no evidence of democrats having tried anything like changing the actual vote totals or storming the capitol building
(1) Lying to create "Russia-gate," including lying to FISA courts in order to ensure that Trump campaign officials' phones were being tapped.
(2) Impeaching Trump over his attempt to investigate what we now know was actual quid-pro-quo corruption in which Ukranian oligarchs paid Joe Biden's son to have Joe Biden leverage U.S. foreign policy to prevent their prosecution.
(3) Rioting outside the White House including setting the next-door church on fire.
(4) Organizing 51 intelligence officials to falsely claim that the Hunter Biden laptop - which the FBI had possessed for over a year previously and knew to be genuine - "bore all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation" in a successful attempt to interfere in the 2020 election.
(5) Organizing social media censorship of stories connected to the Hunter Biden laptop.
and, actually most importantly for the 2020 election:
(6) funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars in ostensible "COVID-relief funds" through private donors to election officials in Democratic-controlled swing-counties, who then proceeded to use almost none of the funds for COVID-relief purposes, and instead used it to hire Democratic activists to run partisan get-out-the-vote operations, and in some cases effectively privatize the actual conduct of the elections themselves:
"Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties."
Hemingway, "Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections," Ch. 7
Supah_Schmendrick
26d ago
Many thanks!
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
It's not a "logical conclusion" - it's the actual holding of the CO Supreme Court. The relevant language is this (at pgs. 8-9):
We hold as follows:
• The Election Code allows the Electors to challenge President Trump’s status as a qualified candidate based on Section Three. Indeed, the Election Code provides the Electors their only viable means of litigating whether President Trump is disqualified from holding office under Section Three.
• Congress does not need to pass implementing legislation for Section Three’s disqualification provision to attach, and Section Three is, in that sense, self-executing.
• Judicial review of President Trump’s eligibility for office under Section Three is not precluded by the political question doctrine.
• Section Three encompasses the office of the Presidency and someone who has taken an oath as President. On this point, the district court committed reversible error.
• The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting portions of Congress’s January 6 Report into evidence at trial.
• The district court did not err in concluding that the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, constituted an “insurrection.”
• The district court did not err in concluding that President Trump “engaged in” that insurrection through his personal actions.
• President Trump’s speech inciting the crowd that breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not protected by the First Amendment.
The sum of these parts is this: President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three; because he is disqualified, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot.
(bolding added for emphasis)
The chief holding is that, under Colorado's interpretation of federal law, Trump is disqualified from the office of President. The result of that finding under the facts of the case at bar is that Trump is disqualified from the primary ballot. However, the underlying holding is already sufficient for the CO Secretary of State to subsequently keep Trump off the November, 2024 ballot, as well as for the CO state government to claim nullification of any action by a future second Trump administration. It would require a second case affirmatively overturning this case in order for Trump to be placed on the CO presidential ballot in 2024.
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
Being an "international city" sure worked out well for Danzig and Istanbul...
Supah_Schmendrick
2mo ago
Either way, I think states’ rights are a dead issue.
States' rights to what, exactly? Anticommandeering doctrine is alive and well. Wayfair expanded state ability to levy revenue extraterritorially, and gave the dormant commerce clause some whacks. States even won the power to judicially interfere with federal enforcement and regulatory policy in Massachusetts v. EPA
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
So the Pride flag is officially on the same level as the National Anthem now? I thought that was just a dissident right twitter meme about "globohomo" and the "GAE." But good to know, good to know.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Why would the Palestinians agree to less than half of their land?
Because they have lost repeated wars over ownership of the land, and the consequence of losing is not getting what you want. I.e., the same reason why Silesia, Pomerania, and Prussia are no longer parts of Germany, why the western coast of Anatolia and Constantinople are not Greek, and why California is no longer part of Mexico.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
While the labour disruptions remain, a critical mass of unsettled women is unlikely to fuck shit up in the way that a critical mass of unsettled men are.
Not in the same way, but I'd bet you'd see a mass wave of prostitution (and related vices like narcotics) and negative impacts on family life and the social fabric.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Maybe I'm weird, but the knowledge that someone holds me in contempt takes a big chunk out of my aesthetic appreciation of them. Plus, maybe this is my bias talking, but she never looks happy or joyful in any of the photos I've seen of her. People in general are more attractive when they're happy than when they're scowling.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
Millennials aren't doing that, and are if anything sticking firmer with the left side parties with age.
I would be interested to see if this holds when you control for "stage of life" rather than age. I would be very surprised if Millennial homeowners, married Millennials, and Millennials with children weren't significantly more conservative than their generation, more broadly. This is because I would bet heavily that the Churchillian "young liberal -> old conservative" spectrum has at least as much to do with the changing levels of responsibility that people go through as they age into adulthood as it does with the actual passage of time.
Millennials, overeducated and under-worked due to some combo of secular western parental trends, the 08' recession, and the unfortunate conjunction of economic opportunity and extremely high cost-of-living in the major U.S. metropolises, are way behind previous generations in taking on the full responsibilities and social roles of adulthood (self very much included). Less married, fewer kids, less money, fewer assets - it all plays a role.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict.
They've forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north of the country, all without drawing the kind of polarizing international opprobrium that would give Israel a justification for the kind of Gaza-like heavy-handed operations which would be necessary to remove Hezbollah from within easy rocket range of the border.
If, as has been speculated by people like Haviv Rettig Gur, that one of the purposes of Hamas's 10/7 aggression is to ultimately make the feeling of security necessary to maintain a first world standard of living impossible in Israel and drive the Israelis into the sea through emigration/attrition, Hezbollah has achieved about as much as Hamas has done, without any of the downsides.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
In Accessibility law, this is the realm of ADA testers and their lawyers: a very small group of people who promise that they're at least theoretically interested in going to a far larger space of public or semi-public accommodations and making sure that anyone with similar disabilities can access them (and not coincidentally make a lot of money), who individually have hundreds or low thousands of complaints or even lawsuits.
There is a SCOTUS case coming on this. Last month the Supreme Court elected to take up an appeal from a 1st Circuit case questioning whether a self-appointed ADA "tester" has standing to sue for damages in federal court if they never intend to actually visit the place they're "testing":
The plaintiff, Deborah Laufer, has brought 600 lawsuits against hotels around the United States. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, hotels are required to make information about their accessibility to people with disabilities available on reservation portals. In this case, Laufer – who has physical disabilities and vision impairments – went to federal court in Maine, where she alleged that a website for an inn that Acheson Hotels operates in that state did not contain enough information about the inn’s accommodations for people with disabilities.
The district court threw out her lawsuit. It agreed with Acheson Hotels that Laufer did not have standing because she had no plans to visit the hotel and therefore was not injured by the lack of information on the website. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit reinstated Laufer’s lawsuit.
That prompted Acheson Hotels to come to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in. The company pointed to a division among the courts of appeals on whether cases like Laufer’s can move forward; indeed, Acheson Hotels noted, courts have reached different conclusions about whether Laufer can bring these kinds of cases. And the issue has “immense practical importance,” the company stressed, describing a “cottage industry” “in which uninjured plaintiffs lob ADA lawsuits of questionable merit, while using the threat of attorney’s fees to extract settlement payments.”
Laufer agreed that review was warranted, although she urged the justices to uphold the lower court’s ruling. The justices will likely hear argument in the case in the fall, with a decision to follow sometime in 2024.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Most sharecroppers were white.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
This is literally the plot of Shakespeare's Coriolanus - "discriminated-against military leader defects to erstwhile-enemies" is so common as to be a trope throughout history.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Any attempts to use more police enforcement and harsher punishments and whatever will just make the problems worse, for you as well as for the people you're talking about. We've seen that through decades of 'tough on crime' policies.
Do we know this? I thought the general consensus was that "tough on crime" policies like NYC's vaunted "broken windows" efforts, while expensive and not as world-shaking as initially billed, did drastically cut down on street crime and enable the revitalization of the city. I thought that the general consensus was that the harsh policies adopted in the 80's and 90's were a major factor in the plunging murder rate in the U.S., which only started upticking again after the recent racial brouhahas (Ferguson, Minneapolis, etc.) put the kibosh on aggressive policing of the poor and disproportionately black communities where most serious crime crawls up out of.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
This is not a new phenomenon. The Black September massacre of the 1972 Israeli Olympic delegation in Munich was supported and facilitated by German anti-fascist radical leftist groups, and the airplane hijacking that resulted in the Entebbe raid a decade later was also a joint effort between the PFLP and German leftists.
Literally the kids of Nazis, who were so obsessed with being anti-Nazi and repudiating the sins of their parents that...they wound up separating Jews from non-Jews to figure out who to shoot. The contemporary far left has a pattern of these kinds of contradictions.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
The course of political, social, and technological change is very hard to predict
And yet for much of human history it was very easy to predict - functionally zero for the vast majority of people. A Roman from 100 AD might be surprised that the brightest minds of 1600 were in misty Brittania or burned-over Germania, but he wouldn't be surprised at the way the vast majority of European people ate, lived, and farmed up 'til the Columbian exchange. The Mongols would have been instantly cognizable to anyone who saw the Hunnic incursions (or the Scythians, Pechenegs, Avars, Bolghars, Magyars or any other number of mounted steppe confederacies crashing into Europe from the east). Medieval black death? Meet the plague of Justinian. Most of the major political developments in pre-modern Europe had classical counterparts (if they weren't directly aping classical models - the Catholic church's parish system is a carryover from Roman secular organization), and the technology levels waffled around, with changes here and there but few true revolutions in material conditions.
Things have only really started going crazy in the last few hundred years, and yet even then people keep being eerily prescient about major technological and social developments (or maybe there was just something in the Star Trek writers' room's water).
vastly poorer, shittier, more corrupt, more violent countries don't have the problems that the above article notes exist in the Los Angeles metro.
Because they're not rich enough to (1) afford ubiquitous personal car transportation, (2) isolate themselves from the effects of luxury beliefs like "we should prioritize the feelings and welfare of criminals over having orderly public places"
Los Angeles is the second city of the richest country on earth. The median income in Los Angeles is $70,000 a year.
Right, rich enough to afford personal cars for most people, and luxury beliefs allying the guilty-feeling, effeminized elites and the underclasses.
Correct. If Germans don't think about the consequences of electing a radical party to control the Reichstag, and the Nazis get control of the country and start annexing and invading the neighbors, the result is that other countries declare war on the entire country of Germany and not just on the individuals controlling policy. This is because the basic assumption of the modern nation-state system is that the nation is the sovereign unit, and has the right, ability, and duty to ensure it is governed in the manner it prefers.
If the Palestinians can't even ensure their representatives to the rest of the world match their preferences, then it's hard to call them a "nation" in any meaningful sense.
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