zeke5123
1yr ago
It seems to me that a strong candidate is one that wins by 20%; not someone who loses.
DeSantis was very strong during covid. Trump was weak (wouldn’t even fire Fauci). This whole “DeSantis is weak” thing seems astroturfed.
With all of that said, the Republican primary may be brutal. Even if DeSantis wins, Trump will decry the result and could make the general untenable.
If DeSantis loses, does he have a viable path in 2028? Romney went from runner up to nominee in 2012 but who knows.
If you’re RD, do you sit out the 2024 and go for it in 2028? Win or lose this is Trump’s last campaign. If Trump wins, his VP may be popular. If Trump loses, you have a relatively easy lane if you don’t make big mistakes over the next few years.
Honestly, best case for the Republican Party is Trump having a health scare, quitting the race, and throwing support behind RD.
Showing a young executive like RD next to a frail Biden will be quite the contrast and I doubt Biden will be Reagan like with quips about not taking advantage of his opponent’s youth and inexperience.
zeke5123
7mo ago
It seems terrible in that allegations are enough to demonetize someone who earns income from the internet meaning their ability to fully defend themselves (legally and in court of public opinion) is curtailed.
I hope Dame Caroline is accused of something, loses her income streams as a result, cannot defined herself, and goes to prison for something of which she is innocent.
Edit: I don’t know if Brand is innocent, guilty, or somewhere in between. I do know that what Dame is doing is wrong.
zeke5123
8mo ago
I’m sure that’s what the educators say and believe but it doesn’t follow that is good for the kids. The whole debate is who is in the best position to make an intelligent decision: the kid, the educator, or the parent.
The kid is young, dumb and subject to peer pressure with limited long term thinking.
The educator has little skin in the game.
The parent has a ton of skin in the game and likely can be a bit more long term thinking.
zeke5123
11mo ago
How do you know he doesn’t have a knife? What if you are an older woman? The dude already punched out a 60+ year old woman. A single punch especially to an older woman could be fatal.
The guy was acting in a very threatening way. He made comments clearly indicating imminent and dangerous violence. He apparently took off his jacket a little before (thereby putting himself in a better situation to carry through on his threat)
zeke5123
1yr ago
I think respecting that is akin to respecting an anorexic person belief that they are fat. It is doing the kid zero benefit to lie about reality to them.
I do think this is why trans is more popular amongst women.
zeke5123
1yr ago
Seems to me there is a difference between “looking for an excuse” and creating the situation. That is, if you instigate a fight and then use deadly force you’re fucked. If on the other hand you wander around a BLM riot wearing a MAGA hat you (unless the city issued some stay at home order) had every legal right to be there and if someone physically attacks you in a way that puts your life in danger can use deadly force.
The second isn’t advisable (optics are bad and you could easily die yourself). But I do think there is a legal difference.
zeke5123
1yr ago
This reminds me of Iger’s recent complaints about Trump. Iger basically said “Disney exercised its first amendment rights over an issue and DeSantis attacked it.” Iger is probably right on the specifics, but there is a big problem in what Iger said.
Investors didn’t give Disney a bunch of money to make political statements about issues far from Disney’s core business. While Delaware courts have wisely limited their review of what is ultra vires, as a pragmatic issue what Disney did was in fact ultra vires. That means in a real sense Disney executives used other people’s money to say things Disney executives wanted to say. Indeed it didn’t seem to occur to Iger that making political statements unrelated to core Disney business was morally dubious. The fish doesn’t understand water.
But there is a word for what Disney did — stealing. Principal-agent problem is a more fancy specific term but that essentially theft is what P-A problem is.
zeke5123
1yr ago
Your sarcasm aside, the story is that Joe Biden and his family effectuated a pay to play scheme. Not good. dismissing it as dick pics is one of the lowest cheapest ways to distract from the meat. You latch on to the sensational to avoid having to discuss the substance.
But my whole post (and Sliders) wasn’t about Biden directly. It was the FBI and the IC interfering in an U.S. presidential election to help one major candidate. That is a major scandal far worse than Iran Contra.
zeke5123
9mo ago
If you read the substack, what is funny is some people are claiming the Republican leaning pollsters are deliberately trying to change the outcome due to polling whereas the democrat leaning pollsters just make honest mistakes.
It is funny how each partisan group genuinely believes that all of their guys are just stupid but all of the other guys are just evil.
zeke5123
10mo ago
The implication (cue Dennis) is that whites aren’t good or are inferior. We have race swaps and are told “that is good” but it is always whites being replaced. Indeed, if non whites are replaced there is a hue and cry.
Selfishly, I don’t like the implication because eventually that leads to really terrible outcomes for people that look like me.
zeke5123
1yr ago
What annoys me about people who get queasy about proposals like the Texas one is the seeming belief that right now there isn’t massive state influence in education. Because of things like Title IX, one side has legally stacked the deck. These moves are an attempt to balance the scales (allow for mixing metaphors).
Now balancing has all sorts of problem. Ideally you remove the initial thumb but these politicians can’t do that. So either they concede or try to balance.
zeke5123
1yr ago
It strikes me that it may or may not be bullshit. But the idea that DeSantis in 2023 spends one minute thinking about Rebekah Jones is laughable let alone that he concocted a scheme to “get at her” by arresting her son on trumped up charges. Even if the democrats are correct that DeSantis is a fascist (ironic given that with respect to the most authoritarian imposition on freedom in the last seventy years DeSantis was on the freedom side), they also must acknowledge the guy is competent. It would be really incompetent to go after a not even E lister in Rebekah Jones.
The Occam Razor is that after a school shooting police are wary of the next shooting and so are over active. But that doesn’t let Jones be a #resistance leader.
zeke5123
1yr ago
Can we talk about how dumb that rule is? The whole point of a SOL is that certain things when passed need not be litigated years later on the idea that evidence may be stale / people deserve certainty.
There isn’t really a credible reason to tie the SOL to the location of the individual.
Not saying that makes the law invalid. Just dumb.
zeke5123
1yr ago
The question isn’t what sentencing guidelines say. The question is what does the average person get. For example, certain protestors without authorization got into private areas for senators to protest Kavanaugh. Were those persons even arrested let alone stuck with 41 months? The context of these statutes do suggest some degree of violence.
Moreover the elements of the crime require that it be unauthorized. Yet here the defendant is thanking the police for letting them in and was escorted by 9 police officers when there was no one else around; these police officers even tried to unlock doors for him. This is at least a mitigating factor.
He should’ve gotten jail time but 3.5 years seems excessive given that other protestors probably received zero jail time and the context muddies the water.
zeke5123
1yr ago
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Marriage isn’t about the man or the woman; it is about the kids. The entire feminist framework is anti-kids because it shifts the framework from the kids to the woman (ie noticeably absent in your example about women exchanging sex for meat is the existence of kids).
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Sadly, stigma around single motherhood has reduced. While causality is difficult to fully untangle, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that kids have a mother and father at home is a net benefit. Moreover, that arrangement breeds purpose for the parents which helps build community.
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And that is something the entire discussion seems to miss. Community. It is funny irony because I think most progressives support communitarianism in principle but put forth ideas destructive to communities whereas most on the American right support policies that are in form individualistic but often go towards community building.
zeke5123
4mo ago
Care to wager? SCOTUS need only say “the law is not self executing; congress passed a law saying what insurrection is, Trump wasn’t found guilty, therefore he is eligible.”
That is of course the prudential thing to do. The Baude argument is and remains silly.
zeke5123
7mo ago
If you don’t punish the most obvious bribery scandal at the national level in probably a century, then you clearly invite more bribery. All of the other things are more important in the short term, but for the long term health of the government you must punish obvious bribery.
Also, it isn’t clear it won’t go anywhere. If the inquiry can show (1) that Joe Biden personally benefited, (2) that State Dept didn’t want to fire the prosecutor (which seems like it was already proven) and (3) there were payments to Joe Biden shortly afterwards, then (4) Democrats would be forced with either trying to rally behind an obviously corrupt unpopular president or dumping said president for someone who might not be as tainted.
The real question is can the inquiry provided enough hard evidence to make the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Right now the Republicans have enough evidence that most people believe Biden is a crook. The question is whether this inquiry will turn that belief into knowledge. If so, then even democrats will vote to convict (or more likely Democrats like Obama will pull a Barry Goldwater)
zeke5123
9mo ago
I find that entirely repugnant. It is one thing to do community service by say picking up garbage. That seems hard to argue it isn’t community service. But forcing people to basically engage in political action is to me beyond the pale and the lawyer should face discipline.
zeke5123
1yr ago
This is like the reverse Chinese robber fallacy. People often care about heinous crimes. Black people are more likely to commit heinous crimes in the US and when it comes to rape are very much more likely to rape victims outside of their race (even after accounting for population sizes).
Picking someone that looks like Horton was very likely to happen if it was random. Suggesting therefore that there was something racist or intentional about selecting Horton confuses something that has racial valiance with racism.
zeke5123
1yr ago
While I suspected for a long time, the Trump fisa documents and the Twitter files laid bare that deep state actors broke norms and in some cases the law to “get Trump.” It is really a stretch to believe the deep state was willing to cross certain lines but not others?
Moreover, it is clear there was an unholy alliance between media, NGOs, and the government to facilitate these transgressions.
So we have a new election scheme supplemented heavily ran by last second NGOs that the media stated was 100% above board.
Then we had some weird shit on election night that still hasn’t been fully explained (eg the water main break that wasn’t).
Is any of this proof? Of course not. Should the election have been overturned? Of course not. But given these facts, how many people would be truly surprised if solid evidence turned up? I wouldn’t.
zeke5123
1yr ago
Further that is an evergreen objection to any investigative journalism of a candidate.
It also falls flat when Twitter didn’t curtail the publishing of Trump’s tax returns.
zeke5123
3mo ago
DeSantis proved to be a very effective governor. I suspect that if you really wanted to roll back the admin state, he’s your man.
zeke5123
6mo ago
Therapy culture is very blue coded. Therapy culture seemingly embraces fragility as a virtue.
Refugees is basically the NGO way to enable large scale immigration.
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