Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo 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
3mo ago
The black population of the Union states was negligible in the late 1800s, but it was there that the U.S.'s great agricultural and industrial innovations were born and took root. The "Great Migration" of southern agricultural black laborers north to the booming industrial cities occurred after the great gilded age of American lassiez-faire capitalism, and well into the urban progressive movement (which itself smoothly transitioned, after flirtations with fascism and communism, into the FDR welfarist coalition that dominated the mid-20th century, and whose institutional bones we're still building).
Today the USA is much richer than other peer countries in Europe etc. because it has and has had for a long time significantly lower taxes and a much weaker redistributive welfare state compared to places like Sweden and the UK
This is a very doubtful proposition. The U.S. is several times larger than the other major industrial powers in the world (Germany, UK, France, Japan), significantly more diversified in resources, and - these are the big doozy - didn't get bombed flat or invaded during WWII, and didn't lose an entire generation of elite young men in WWI. Instead, WWI put America in the position of having the allies mortgage their empires to us in exchange for food, war materiel, and ultimately intervention (WWI debts to the US weren't fully cleared in the UK until I think 2003?), and then the physical destruction of Eurasia in WWII put us in a massive comparative industrial advantage.
One perfectly valid question to ask is why did the USA not follow in the same footsteps as Europe when it came to implementing a very high tax and spend redistributive economy...
We tried to. It led to the stagnation of the 70's and early 80's. We then elected Reagan (as the Brits elected Thatcher) to try and shake the system loose, to varying degrees of success.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
The problem appears to be wider than that - from the same article:
Race, color, or national origin discrimination claims made up 3,329 of all complaints received in FY 2022, according to the civil rights office’s annual report, which was released last week. That’s up from 2,399 the year prior. Disability-related complaints comprised 6,467 of the total compared to 4,870 in FY 2021.
At the same time, age discrimination claims, which made up 666 complaints in the most recent report, were down from 1,149 the prior year. The office notes the majority of these claims were also filed by a single person in both years.
Supah_Schmendrick
6mo ago
I hate the discourse around inflation - when people say "inflation is down" they are talking about a decrease in the rate of change, not a decrease of an absolute number. This is unlike many other things we talk about in economic life; when the unemployment rate goes down, more people have jobs; when there is a decrease in the mortgage rate, houses cost less, etc. This condition people to think that an economic indicator "going down" means that things are getting better.
This is not the case with inflation. When inflation "goes down," it does not mean that prices are actually decreasing back to the levels that existed prior to the inflation. Deflation is a separate phenomenon that almost never actually happens (and maybe shouldn't be allowed to happen - I'm not smart enough to parse the monetary theory of it all). When inflation "goes down," it means "you're still paying way more for stuff than you were a year ago, but at least the prices aren't skyrocketing up quite as fast anymore; you have some time to rebudget and get used to these new, permanently higher prices."
That statement isn't actually a "good sign" for the economy; at best it means "things aren't actively getting worse." Unless there is some significant increase in productivity to drive prices back down, people are still having to pay more for goods and services than they did previously; their money is worth less and they are poorer now than they were previously. The damage has already been done.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo 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
A decade ago he was literally a standard neocon with occasional libertarian sympathies.
Not really - he turned against the Iraq war pretty quickly after he visited the country and saw what was actually going on:
Outside of the heavily fortified—and relatively safe—U.S.-controlled "Green Zone" that surrounds Saddam's former main palaces in Baghdad, you can spend days without hearing English or seeing an American flag. Almost nowhere is there the faintest whiff of American cultural influence. People light up in elevators and carry Kalashnikovs to the dinner table. Gunfire and explosions are background noise. It is a place with almost no Western-style rules. It's not a bit like Denver.
You'd think it would be. According to the Pentagon, there are more than a 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. The country seems to have swallowed them. We drove from the Kuwaiti border to downtown Baghdad and back again and didn't see one on the way—more than 700 miles on major roads without catching a glimpse of a single American in uniform.
If the goal is to control the country, there are not enough American forces in Iraq. If the goal is to rebuild it, there could never be enough. The U.S. military simply doesn't have the manpower. As it is, the Pentagon could not fight even a small war without the considerable help of civilian contractors. In Bosnia during the peacekeeping mission, there was at times one contractor for every soldier. That was nearly a decade ago. The military has grown smaller since and even more dependent on contractors. On the battlefield, contractors cook soldiers' food, deliver their mail, provide their housing, and take care of their equipment. (DynCorp maintains virtually all U.S. military aircraft in the Middle East.) In Iraq, they are sometimes nearly indistinguishable from soldiers.
It wasn't until I was flat on my back that the strangest part of the night sunk in: No one outside our immediate compound had seemed to notice the firefight. The gunfire had gone on for 15 minutes. The noise had been tremendous and unmistakable. Yet nobody—not U.S. soldiers, not cops from the Iraqi police station 150 yards away, not representatives of the famously benevolent "international community," whoever they might be—had come by to ask what happened, who did it, or if anyone was hurt. There were no authorities to call. No one cared. We were totally alone.
Not as alone as the rest of the people in the neighborhood, however. We were on a residential street. Iraqi families lived on both sides of us. What did they think? Hundreds of rounds had been fired—hundreds of needle-tipped, copper-jacketed missiles whipping through the neighborhood at half a mile a second. What happened to them all? Where did the bullets go? Into parked cars and generators and water tanks. Into people's living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms, and sometimes into human flesh.
It must have been terrifying to live nearby, or to live anywhere in Baghdad. You couldn't blame the coalition forces exactly. They weren't doing most of the shooting. But they didn't seem to be doing much about it, either. On the street where I was staying, they weren't doing anything. And how could they? All the foreign troops in Iraq hadn't been able to keep the country's main airport safe enough to use. A single block in Baghdad wasn't going to get their attention. By necessity, it was left to civilian contractors, or whoever else had the time, energy, and firearms to police their own tiny sections of Iraq.
He was a quite good magazine journalist for a while. Of course his piece about getting invited to go on a peacemaking trip to Liberia with Al Sharpton, Cornel West, and a bunch of other African-American clergy, is the best.
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
11mo ago
If they wanted to say "this is a tragic but inevitable consequence of our society's failures with respect to public safety and mental health" they could do that without also adding "Neely was human garbage, I'm glad he's dead, and we should do this more often." The fact that they did add that is evidence that yes, 'kill the undesirables' is within their range of acceptable policy.
Most homeless people aren't violent, and don't have law-enforcement records as long as your arm. Most homeless people - even the drug-addicted ones - don't get in your face and scream at you about how they're not afraid to die today, and not afraid to go to jail (insinuating that they're willing to commit acts which would either result in their death or long-term imprisonment - i.e. violent ones). Most homeless people are not schizophrenic street criminals with 40+ arrests, including multiple serious batteries and at least one attempted kidnapping. Most homeless people are just trying to get back on their feet and avoid the shame of being seen in a destitute condition. I have no problem with them, nor do I think that most Mottizens have any problem with them. So no, there's no connecting this to "homeless people" or "undesirables" writ large.
What proportion of the Motte's posters does this sentiment encompass? Couldn't say - I expect most motte posters are smart enough to figure out that if you are directly asked "Do you support exterminating the homeless" the correct answer is "no" even if they privately feel different. But it's clearly a sentiment that they are happy to express in adjacent conversations and which garners largely positive internet points on this forum.
It is a goddamn travesty that in American big cities, public spaces - including sensitive ones like public transit - have been abandoned to people who think it's their birthright to scream at, threaten, assault, batter, or otherwise harass ordinary people. Sometimes these people are obviously suffering from some species of mental defect; sometimes they are just cruel, entitled, and aggressive. Securing the public peace is literally the first responsibility of an organized state, and any state that can't or won't even do that is really no state at all. Moreover, if the state can- or will not do anything, people are justified in attempting to reclaim public areas, including by force if necessary. There is no affirmative obligation to suffer otherwise criminal harassment by others.
People who abuse public spaces in aggressive ways should be punished - not because they're inherently evil or "undesirable" (though they may also harbor genetic tendencies towards, e.g. psychosis that we would not affirmatively select for if we had the option) but because of their actions. Their punishment should not necessarily be death (i.e. no, don't just shoot annoying people on the subway), but I'm not going to categorically say that someone screaming threats shouldn't get cold-cocked (let alone someone who's assaulted or battered a stranger unprovoked), and when people get into physical fights, sometimes death results.
In such cases the death may be sad to the deceased's family and loved-ones, but it was not honorable. It was largely the result of their own bad actions, and (absent serious extenuating circumstances) was inflicted in defense of the public peace and welfare. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It shouldn't be that hard to not scream in random strangers' faces and threaten them day after day after goddamn day. It's generally sad that their life was wasted on such shitty, harmful behavior, but on the whole society is improved for their absence.
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).
Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm? Beautiful schools, libraries, railroad stations, hospitals, parks, museums, even apartment buildings?
Many fewer people than otherwise, because:
(1) ownership of land and the ability to build beautiful things in places where the internet will notice is stupendously expensive (if the construction is private), or locked behind layers of bureaucracy, procedure, and stultifying local politics that few people have the stomach for (if the construction is public).
(2) Many of these things (e.g. libraries, museums) have been rendered culturally obsolete as sites of mass access by the internet.
(3) Most of these other things (railroad stations, parks, apartment buildings) are not worth building beautifully because public administration is unwilling and/or unable to patrol and enforce order in public spaces, and the populace does not recognize public order as a goal worth pursuing and personally-enacting. If everything is just going to be defaced and graffiti'ed and have drug addicts sleeping and shitting on it, what's the point?
(4) Substitution of mass industrial production for individual skills has rendered the construction methods and skills necessary for classical ornamentation styles either extremely expensive or generally unknown.
[edits for format and readability]
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Mexicans staying in Mexico are obviously not the ones immigrating, are they?
No, but their brothers, sons, cousins, fathers, or uncles are, and they are benefitting from the nearly $60 billion in remittances sent home annually by those expats - roughly 4% of Mexico's entire GDP.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Here's Biden's 2023 follow-on 'whole of government' "Equity" EO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/equity/
It's chock-a-block with the government's plans to:
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stuff every agency full of DEI commissars ("requir[ing] agencies to designate senior leaders accountable for implementing the equity mandate")
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giving those commissars increased control and oversight over the agency's policymaking and enforcement decisions ("instruct[ing] agencies to consider bolstering the capacity of their civil rights offices");
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directing the agencies to slant everything they do through DEI analysis ("direct[ing] agencies to produce Equity Action Plans annually and report to the public on their progress");
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ensuring that resources will be allocated to the DEI commissars to carry out this new institutionalized and systemic racism/sexism/heterophobia ("direct[ing] the White House Office of Management and Budget to support agencies’ Equity Action Plans");
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increasing the amount of racial, sexual, and gendered discrimination and graft in federal contracting ("formaliz[ing] the President’s goal of increasing the share of federal contracting dollars awarded to small disadvantaged business by 50 percent by 2025"); and
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carefully pruning the collection and dissemination of federally-collected data and statistics so that these progressive DEI shibboleths can't be challenged ("focusing [agency OCR] efforts on emerging threats like algorithmic discrimination in automated technology" and "further promot[ing] data equity and transparency").
Supah_Schmendrick
19d ago
If Ethan Crumbley had run over 4 people with the family car, would the parents have been prosecuted for leaving the keys on the counter?
Civilly, quite possibly! (Caveat, I'm not a Michigan lawyer so this isn't legal advice, but my Westlaw subscription includes Michigan cases and I'm bored). Michigan recognizes the tort of negligent entrustment, and there are several cases in which parents are found liable for permitting incompetent minors to drive. Dortman v. Lester (1968) 380 Mich. 80; Zokas v. Friend (1984) 134 Mich.App. 437
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
If the south kept resisting then a simple policy of "take the children of whites from them at age 6 and indoctrinate them in the memes of the north, only sending them back after the age of 18" would clear away the problem in a single generation
Ah yes, and this is why the implementation of the Residential Schools resulted in the complete erasure of Indian/First Nations groups, which today are mere memories with no relevance or political salience at all.
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
9mo ago
"when professors speak and write as citizens of the campus community and officers of an educational institution."
Hoist them on their own petards. Pass laws banning advocating for race-segregated graduations, student groups, "affinity" groups, or programs. When faculty complain, whoops, that's intramural speech seeking to racially-discriminate in violation of the Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment; no "free speech" protection there.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Those terms are meta-exclusionary. They only exclude people who try to exclude others.
No they don't. Someone can be a "racist" for having the wrong skin tone and singing along to the wrong song, or refusing to give up a rented CityBike. Moreover, as is increasingly popular on the left, there's a categorical denial that anyone who isn't white can be "racist" at all - thus "racist" itself is a term being used to exclude others.
Similarly with "sexist" and "homophobe." The most common use-case is attacking someone who holds disfavored object-level beliefs regarding, e.g., sexual morality or family formation.
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
8mo ago
I think you'd have to be basically Buddha to stop doing that. Every snap emotional impression - every "eww" or "woah!" - is a miniature moral judgment; deeming something good/beautiful/impressive or bad/repulsive/piddling.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Reuters reports that “Violence by armed gangs has fallen 'drastically' since the emergence of a vigilante justice movement that has seen at least 160 suspected criminals killed in the last month, a report by local human rights research group CARDH said on Sunday . . . CARDH said 'almost no' kidnappings had been recorded in the last month and counted 43 gang-linked murders, down from 146 in the first three weeks of April.”
Between this and Bukele's crackdown, forceful anti-crime methods are having a bit of a moment in the western hemisphere. I'm happy to hear that they are working a bit - Lord knows the poor Haitians have suffered a lot.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Nevertheless, the issue is settled that the law is valid. Everyone now understands that it can and will be used that way and it is futile to even attempt to argue that it is unconstitutional.
Absolutely not. Courts at the trial level routinely vary in their analysis/implementation of various statutes. The issue is not legally "settled," and if this charging practice becomes more widespread I would expect plenty of constitutional arguments from defendants.
What might be settled is a pattern and policy in certain prosecutorial offices of charging disfavored speech as "intimidation" under this particular theory.
What certainly is settled is an increased willingness in PMC strongholds to weaponize lawfare and prosecutorial discretion to target conservative activists. Insofar as the process is the punishment, this has been successful. Forum-shopping trial courts has also brought trial-level successes. It remains to be seen how any of this does on appeal, (IIRC).
Supah_Schmendrick
3mo ago
And yet there were approximately a million serfs in France when the Revolution kicked off in 1789.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
I constantly wonder what it is about the dumb people looking alike that makes it politically salient.
It's not about intelligence, it's about violating one of the basic tenets of our civil religion - that making a comparison between "black" and "white" which imputes negative characteristics to "black" is bad and wrong, because easily pattern-matched to bad, unenlightened white southerners and colonialists from the 19th Century.
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.
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":
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