DradisPing
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User ID: 1102
DradisPing
5d ago
Sure, the DOJ wrote a memo suggesting it was a lawful act, but I don't see a good clear line between drone striking a citizen advocating the violent overthrow of the US Government and "assassinating a political rival."
In court the DOJ was arguing that presidential immunity applies whenever the DOJ says the action is legal. That seems a bit hard to square legally and constitutionally, but it does sound like exactly the standard the DOJ wants.
DradisPing
5d ago
So as a bit of preamble, at the moment the left has partisan control of courts in NYC and DC at all levels until the SCOTUS. The appeals courts won't curb any abuses against Trump or Trump supporters. At the same time the left has been running campaigns to attack the SCOTUS as illegitimate and partisan to keep them in line and push for court stacking.
The theory behind broad presidential immunity is that without it any random prosecutor in the US could threaten the POTUS with prosecution after they leave office unless they do what the prosecutor wants. Official immunity isn't a new concept. Courts have given judges and prosecutors broad immunity already. Sr government employees generally only face internal disciplinary actions, and if they are charged they'll face a DC court with a jury made up of government employees.
Can prosecutors always find things to charge them with? Usually yes. There are a lot of broadly written laws that the government uses to go after people who are troublesome. They aren't applied broadly. You need to piss someone off and be enough of an outsider that they think it's safe to go after you.
The argument against broad immunity is usually that the appeals courts will quickly correct any misbehavior. Politically motivated charges are a civil rights act violation so surely the appeals courts will dismiss them quickly.
The appeals courts not doing anything neuters that argument.
So SCOTUS is upset. Correcting every error would get them salami sliced as Trump toadies. One broad ruling would prevent them from having to make dozens of smaller rulings.
DradisPing
5d ago
Blue tribe has been playing down the election because they don't want to think about how the prosecutions are clearly part of the election strategy.
Seeing Biden out on the campaign trail while Trump is forced to be in a courtroom under gag orders would trigger some cognitive dissonance.
DradisPing
10d ago
US culture is anti-aristocratic and egalitarian. UK culture still has a lot of class stratification.
So in the UK upper class people are expected to have posh accents and witty retorts. This is taught in school. Lower classes have things like cockney rhyming slang to make things difficult for outsiders.
In the US traditions of upper class verbal acuity are frowned upon. Politicians and people on TV are expected to speak in a more folksy manner.
Additionally supporting black voices is expected, so they have things like this national debate championship: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fmO-ziHU_D8
DradisPing
10d ago
The James Damore incident was evidence of a culture problem. Google is no longer a place where an autist can openly name a problem.
People good at internal politics muscled their way into the Google AI projects. Everyone else is afraid to criticize them.
After spending megabucks there's internal pressure to launch. So the project goes live with glaring flaws.
DradisPing
11d ago
Competence porn as mentioned in another post. But another part is they introduce interesting characters and locations without diving too deep or the author expecting you to get invested in them.
The Brits have a phrase, “overly personal” for getting too deep in someone else life story. Sometimes I want to enjoy a colorful cast without a therapeutic analysis.
DradisPing
12d ago
I'm in Canada so that's not an option. Weed is just legal.
If I wanted to put in the effort my best bet would probably be one of the "anti aging" clinics that does treatments like HRT that aren't covered provincially. They can charge for appointments so there's more revenue generated by having me as a patient.
DradisPing
12d ago
Most doctors are overqualified for the routine medicine that they often do. I'd expect that less competent doctors would just be given the routine cases like "man who needs his blood pressure medication prescription renewed" or "girl who's boyfriend got syphilis wants antibiotics".
A less competent doctor might be more willing to accept my "I need Adderall to get more done at work" line of thought.
DradisPing
16d ago
I think you'd be a lot better off building a big plastic dome to keep moisture in and trucking in water tanks every so often.
DradisPing
16d ago
Hippie organic farmers are squarely in the target RFK demo. Against big agriculture companies. Against onerous and arbitrary federal agriculture regulations.
One of the big shifts in politics during the Obama and Trump terms is that Democrats went from being suspicious of the CIA and FBI to seeing them as "Our Guys". Republican support has cratered.
RFK is targeting people who never got on board with trusting the intelligence community.
It's very interesting to look back at 90s entertainment. The three letter agencies are often portrayed as shady. Now they are generally only portrayed in an extremely positive light.
DradisPing
16d ago
There was probably some official policy statement released by the Ministry Of Health or whoever's in charge of that in the UK. I'd guess that the politicians demanded that they either cancel it or provide detailed scientific information defending it.
DradisPing
16d ago
The establishment Democrat messaging has been "we need to trust our foreign policy professionals" while Trump and Kennedy are both running more along the lines of "the State Department keeps fucking up and someone needs to yell at them". So it hurts Biden in that way.
It's more of a case of his supporters losing energy and enthusiasm instead of someone thinking of the issue and changing their vote.
DradisPing
16d ago
I'm actually very interested in how SBF's personality and views will change after he's been off all of the stimulants for a while. I know that when he was in jail they knocked his Adderall dose from 40mg/day to 10mg/day and he went to court to demand more while he was on trial.
His legendary lack of empathy was probably at least partly a "too many amphetamines" problem.
DradisPing
20d ago
One of the major complaints against the progressive elites is that they are shielded from the consequences of their ideology. Victor Davis Hanson writes about it often.
For instance, the 9th circuit is in San Fransisco. However the employees that matter can afford homes in safe areas and don't have to park on the street. So it's easy for them to write off things like car break ins as no big deal. They see the situation as overprivileged whiners complaining, not failures of their policies.
People at Stanford view air conditioning as a decadent luxury, because it never gets hot. People in Fresno swelter in the heat due to high energy prices supported by those Stanford profs.
Trump support is a hard sell because Trump is in many ways a reaction to California style policies. Widespread acknowledgement of failure would need to precede Trump support.
But many of the key early Trump supporters were from California. Steven Miller, Mike Cernovich. I could find a lot more but I've spent enough time on this.
DradisPing
25d ago
Even before it wasn't quite the same. Eurovision contestants are typically born and raised in that country. Sure they've often done some travelling but they have lifelong links.
College football players often didn't have any link to the college or state before they got the scholarship.
DradisPing
25d ago
You might want to check out "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy" which is a remaster of the various GTA3 games. They did AI upsampling so there are some odd errors like a big nut above a hardware store turning into a donut.
Saints Row 2 - 4 are less serious GTA knock offs. Also check out the Just Cause series, skip the first.
DradisPing
26d ago
Stalin and Mao are definitely the wrong examples. However he's not acting like a normal democratic leader. Openly launching multiple criminal trials against a political opponent leading up to an election is something even Putin hasn't done.
DradisPing
27d ago
The Muslim Ban was rejected by courts twice, and only a watered down version passed on the third attempt.
I think you're missing key info on the legal fight here. You're presuming the courts are some neutral arbiter here, but there was major forum shopping. All three versions were before the same judge in Hawaii who issued injunctions blocking all three. The judge was a personal friend of Obama an Obama flew out and had lunch with him after he was assigned the case. The 9th wasn't going to overturn so it was blocked until it got to the SCOTUS.
Immigration hawks noticed this and decided that they could forum shop too. So the lawsuits against Biden's policies were all filed in Red friendly districts.
Which goes back to a key point of the bill you left out. All lawsuits would need to be filed in the notoriously politically corrupt DC courts. Future Republican Presidents would likely be blocked from ever using the Border Emergency Authority. All new asylum requirements would be watered down as too strict.
DradisPing
29d ago
The culprit is overprofessionalization. Writters are now expected to go to film school then try to break into Hollywood.
Back when things were less competitive it was common for writers to serve in the military, travel around the US or overseas, and read a lot of random books.
Now they do professional schooling and then spend years dealing with obnoxious people in LA.
This is especially noticable in sci fi genre writting. The writers of new Star Wars and Star Trek have seen all the space battle movies but don't have any relatives with military experience and haven't watch many war documentaries. So all the commanding officers come off as a mix of incompetent and unbeliveable.
Writing engaging characters requires a broad mix of lived experience and reading.
Of course studio executives are similarly isolated from big chunks of human experience. They spent their lives viciously clawing their way to the top.
DradisPing
29d ago
If you want more influence from me, you need to explain what it is you are trying to accomplish.
Now, to be fair, I don't see myself as likely to be convinced in any case
EDIT: Why is this getting downvoted so much?
Here's the situation. You're making demands without being in a position to demand anything. They don't care about your influence, and you aren't really offering it.
You're just standing there and screaming that you will define the null hypothesis and they are obligated to debate you according to your rules.
Have a look at this article, and notice the bit on "floating signifiers" https://status451.com/2017/07/11/radical-book-club-the-decentralized-left/
If you want to have any hope of advancing your argument, you do need to work out some of these details. Some other extremists, like anarcho-capitalists for example, I find to be actually quite good at working out these details.
AnCaps aren't anyone's example of a successful movement.
DradisPing
29d ago
"Jews" tends to be a proxy for big city businessmen with no connection to the community. A lot of scams and white collar crimes take time to prosecute. Someone from the city can swoop in, do negative things, and be gone before they be stopped or prosecuted. Small town lawyers find themselves having to move against a legal entity that was dissolved before they could make their case.
DradisPing
29d ago
Another point is that the girlfriend likely moved to Minnesota to be with him and doesn't have a strong local support network. If she had a mother, sisters, and best friends since childhood in the city it would be less of an issue.
DradisPing
30d ago
Looking at the calendar there were no games Sunday - Friday last week. So they could have induced then or flown her out to Denver. Looks like people didn't think Gobert was critical enough to do either.
I'm not a big sports fan but I'd guess that NBA players have missed games for much less important reasons.
DradisPing
1mo ago
This is the platonic form of the argument: https://imgur.com/a/QPHPxrJ
There were some great twitter threads on the subject that I'm currently unable to find.
But essentially, women view the question as an opportunity to shame & put down men. Men take the question literally.
So when women state their answer men assume that they are lacking in bear facts and try to explain them.
The semiconductor factories can be seen as a point against invasion. They are very easy to destroy, either purposefully or accidentally.
It'd make sense for Taiwan to blow them up itself. Would China have the stomach for an extended occupation and suppression if they weren't getting any value out of it?
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