[Dennis Fan, a senior assistant solicitor general for the state,] also briefly knocked many of the claims Trump made, noting that they’re not required to find just one underwriter to provide the entire bond, but instead can combine multiple sureties for the full total.
“Defendants’ argument that obtaining a full bond is purportedly impossible is based on the false premise that they must obtain a single bond from a single surety for the entire judgment amount of $464 million,” Fan wrote. “But appealing parties may bond large judgments by dividing the bond amount among multiple sureties, thereby limiting any individual surety’s risk to a smaller sum, such as $100 or $200 million apiece.”
DISASTER is when your spouse, her hands full, decides to try to open the gate with a karate kick, misses the latch completely, and loses her balance.
CATASTROPHE is when she drops the DQ ice cream cup she was carrying.
APOCALYPSE is when it lands upside down, in the sand.
EMBARRASSMENT is when it turns out you know all four of the horsemen that show up in response to her cursing, but you can’t remember the name of one of them. Was it Fred? John? Hildegaard? Damn, those skulls all look the same when the sky abruptly darkens and giants stride the Earth.
It had been a finely poised game throughout even after the Lakers had lost Davis and his defensive nous, which allowed the Warriors to attack more from inside the paint, racking up points in that area of the court.
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… well, there is no such thing. Candidates are real people with mouths, experience, presented ideologies, and possibly hidden agendas, unmentioned crimes, and all that rot.
But if you want a generalization, far-right pundit Erick Erickson’s speaking a truth you’ll want to hear, in the context of the announced, but not yet accomplished, resignation of Rep Ken Buck (R-CO) from Congress:
[Buck’s] Heritage Action lifetime scorecard is 91%.
The Club For Growth rates him with a lifetime score of 98%.
CPAC gives him a lifetime rating of 97%.
But he is leaving Congress because Ken Buck has failed to dance like a chained monkey with cymbals for a base that wants entertainment instead of wins. The clown chorus of conservatism is vilifying a guy who has consistently voted for the conservative side over 90% of the time.
Those “scores” are only impressive to other, serious conservatives; for liberals, the effect is rather opposite. And the clown chorus of conservatives?
They’re, to be honest, the lost souls produced by a conservative movement that trained the base to not be serious. They are told to vote straight ticket, to win-win-win, to treat politics as a game, rather than a serious business. Primary candidates and their backers toss around ludicrous accusations, lies about themselves or their favored candidate, and pump up their own ego by repeated claims that their far-right extremist adversary is a Republican In Name Only (RINO), implying that the guy with white supremacist inclinations is … a … liberal.
Erickson’s divergence from reality is, as many pundits have pointed out, the adherence of today’s typical Republican to Mr. Trump and the power structure of their fellows in relationship to Mr. Trump. That’s their number one priority, and they’ve been trained for it, from their evangelical or libertarian roots to their shared victimhood to, I rather suspect, the government duplicity implicit in the Pentagon Papers (see their anti-vaccination attitudes).
Erickson wants to drag them back to a reality where the litmus test is not the loyalty to Mr. Trump, and the implicit criticisms of government and liberalism he embodies, but stances on abortion, imposition of other religious values, taxation, regulation, etc.
I do not think Erickson’s going to achieve that goal. The toxic culture which Gingrich, etc, have constructed for conservatives has produced a monster that will have to fall apart, as it seems to be doing, before Erickson can hope to have his conservatives back.
And it’s worth noting his rigidity on the matter, from above:
… who has consistently voted for the conservative side over 90% of the time.
It’s a statement that, if read closely and with no allowances for the sloppy expressions rife in blogging and, indeed, much of this era, entirely embodies an arrogance and a belief that this is all a game with a well-defined endpoint, rather than an enterprise of impressive complexity: governance.
Keep that in mind when reading any pundit, even an amateur such as myself.
In 2015, astronomers discovered a planet 110 light years away called K2-18b, which later analysis estimated to be a super-Earth or mini-Neptune about eight times the mass of our world. Astronomers in 2019 then found evidence for water vapour on the planet. Since K2-18b is thought to be in the habitable zone of its star – the region in which water can exist as a liquid on the surface of a planet – that led to suggestions it might be an ocean world. Prospects were further buoyed by 2023 research finding evidence of dimethyl sulphide, a molecule that, on Earth, is only produced by life, particularly marine phytoplankton.
But now, Nicholas Wogan at the NASA Ames Research Center in California and his colleagues have re-analysed the planet using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and they suggest that the likelihood of the planet being a habitable ocean world is low. They say that an abundance of methane and carbon dioxide found by JWST points to the planet being a gas-rich mini-Neptune with no surface, rather than a habitable super-Earth with an ocean and sea floor, because such gases would be broken down by a chemical process called photolysis if it were an ocean or “hycean” world.
The Republicans entered the 118th Congress with a ten vote advantage in the House, 222 to 212 (one Democratic member-elect died prior to the opening of the 118th Congress, and was subsequently replaced by another Democrat). Since then, the Democrats have gained one vote to 213, and the Republicans have lost three votes to 219. Various special elections are in the offing.
And next week it could be 218, as Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) has announced he’s resigning on March 22:
Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a hardline conservative who has clashed with his own party at times, announced on Tuesday that he will leave Congress at the end of next week. [CNN/Politics]
His reason?
Buck criticized dysfunction on Capitol Hill in discussing his decision to leave, telling CNN’s Dana Bash, “It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress and having talked to former members, it’s the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress. But I’m leaving because I think there’s a job to do out there.”
“This place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people,” he said.
Chives. Sort like the stink bomb of politics. But tastier.
The interesting part is that the gap is now only five seats. A few more resignations and we could see, if only briefly, a true Speaker Jeffries (D-NY). Or maybe seat flips, much like that of former Rep. George Santos (R-NY), now replaced by Rep Tom Suozzi (D-NY). in special elections, although there’s not quite enough seats up for grabs at the moment.
See, this is the problem with a Party that, while claiming it’s based on Christian principles, is truly based on libertarian principles of greed, of Gingrichian principles of stopping at nothing for a victory: the guiding impulse of immature people such as Gaetz, Greene, Boebert, Speaker Johnson, and many others come to the fore. What led them to their prestigious positions? Performative morality, behind which any old maneuver is hidden and acceptable. So they keep on riding the horse, expecting a victory, most importantly for themselves, and, as we are seeing in real-time, they are, instead, shredding each other and themselves.
There is a core of Republicans — let’s call them the earnest Republicans — who don’t like the greedy, self-centered types. They want to legislate, to deal with the emergencies and everyday business of the nation in a straightforward manner. Here they have an opportunity to deal a blow to the idiots they dislike, along with Republican Presidential nominee Mr Trump.
How?
By resigning en masse. This would permit the selection of a new Speaker as the majority shifted from Republicans to Democrats, and a Speaker Jeffries would immediately begin work on resolving the government funding issue, and funding military aid for Taiwan, Israel, and Ukraine, all critical American allies. These priorities, currently blocked by Speaker Johnson, are, for the most part, favored by the earnest Republicans. But he would have limited time, as special elections would probably put the Republicans back in the majority soon enough.
And it might be a politically fatal blow to Mr. Trump, beset as he is by legal troubles and his own political miscalculations. By showing their defiance effectively, his desperate attempts at having total control over the Republican Party would be very visibly rebuffed.
All that is required is Republican courage. Unfortunately, that’s in short supply these days.
But this scenario remains a possibility.
And it’s also true there are four special elections coming up, and while they may all be considered safe, a properly conducted campaign in each might bust them loose. But it remains true that three of the four are Republican seats, which means it’s likely only one will be won easily by Democrats.
But still, for those who like their drama, there’s some real potential here, initiated by Rep Buck.
The drama that is the hunt of Robin Vos (R-WI), Speaker of the Wisconsin House of Representatives, continues. according to NBC News:
A group that’s aiming to recall Robin Vos, the speaker of Wisconsin’s state Assembly and a top target of former President Donald Trump, said it has submitted the number of signatures needed to move forward with an effort to oust the Republican leader from office.
Recall Vos said it had gathered more than the nearly 7,000 required signatures from voters in Vos’ district. The filing deadline for the recall effort is Monday.
“I carry with me the voice of more than 10,000 Racine County residents,” the group’s recall petitioner, Matt Snorek, said at a news conference outside the Wisconsin Election Commission shortly before it delivered the signatures. “Together we are challenging the status quo, driven by the numerous ways in which Speaker Robin Vos has failed us.”
As the Democrats demonstrate they are, in general, more civilized than the Republicans, look for the new legislative maps to facilitate a migration of power from the latter to the former. Mr Snorek may be proud to have taken the next step to ejecting Speaker Vos from his position, and thence from the Party, but he’ll swiftly discover that it’s one thing to run your mouth when there are no consequences, and quite another when your legislative lawyers tell you that the actions your mouth is calling for, along with those that seek to replace you, is illegal and you run a real risk of ending up in the pokey.
But that’s the thing about extremists. Whether it’s God, ideologues, or myth, thought and research is neglected in favor of what makes the actors feel good – and that’ll lead you right to the infamous path terminating in black disaster.
Moons can come in all manner of configurations, too. Two of Saturn’s – Janus and Epimetheus – almost share an orbit. But it could get weirder than that. “In principle, you could have crazy things like rings of moons around planets, like Saturn’s rings but moons instead of tiny little particles,” says Sean Raymond at the University of Bordeaux in France. Along with Juna Kollmeier at Carnegie Observatories in California, Raymond has even postulated that, under the right conditions, moons could have their own moons. These are called moonmoons. [“Why we’re finally on the cusp of finding exomoons around other planets,” Jonathan O’Callaghan, NewScientist (2 Mar 2024, paywall)]
Whoever put this poster together did not pay attention to the names. My apologies to Mr. Rush and, in fact, to everyone.
After watching Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) for the umpteenth time, I wondered what negative statement I could make about a flick that is, quite honestly, a very well-made movie of a light-hearted story. After all, what’s not to like about a band of pirates who’ve incurred a divine curse when they bloodily steal a load of Aztec gold originally used to bribe Spanish explorer Cortés? The curse of the gold descends upon them, and, well, there’s little point in detailing the curse. The course of the tale is the attempt of former pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, who was not cursed by the Aztec gods since he had been deposed by his second-in-command, now-Captain Barbarossa, prior to the conquest of the gold, to regain control of the ship in question, the Black Pearl.
But it’s within this framework I find some dissatisfaction. Unlike some recent tales, such as Ghostbusters (1984), no one in this tale even thinks to question the power and judgment of the pantheon, whether it be the heathen Aztec Gods or those of the Christian pantheon; the punishments afflicted, just or not, must merely be suffered and remedied; but there is no appeals to mercy, justice, or questions concerning the legitimacy of the Gods, regardless of origin.
The boundaries are never transgressed as they are in Ghostbusters. Perhaps in the sequels of Pirates the subject arises, but I confess I never much cared for those stories; it was too much about harvesting the audience’s coin, and not enough about saying something of interest.
And so there is my element of unhappiness. I freely confess that an exploration of the topic by the story’s characters might have destroyed an otherwise finely told tale, but, still, there it is. Captain Barbarossa and his crew may have been victimized by the restless Gods, but don’t challenge the very Gods themselves, eh?
No doubt because they bring order to the Universe, some will say. Undoubtedly, quite a cruel order, but you take what you can get from the Gods, eh?
All that said, Pirates is a lovely way to spend a couple of hours if you like cleverness. Recommended.
When it comes to the perks of being the official nominee of a major political party, one of the lesser known advantages are security briefings on events around the world so that the eventual winner of the Presidential Election can hit the ground running. This is not legally mandated, but it is a tradition.
But with Trump’s exceedingly dubious record in handling such secrets, so dubious that he has, in fact, been indicted, will the Biden Administration continue this tradition? Politicoreports:
U.S. intelligence officials are planning to brief Donald Trump on national security matters if he secures the GOP nomination this summer — despite concerns about his handling of classified information.
The decision would be in keeping with a tradition that dates back to 1952, but it would mark the first time an administration has volunteered to share classified information with a candidate who is facing criminal charges related to the mishandling of classified documents.
The problem, however, is that this is an exceedingly dangerous idea. …
For one thing, Trump has spent years carelessly and recklessly sharing sensitive national security information — including with foreign adversaries — for reasons that no one has ever fully explained. It’s happened enough times that I was able to put together a Top 10 list on the subject.
For another, we’re talking about someone who is quite literally being prosecuted, right now, for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House, storing them in a bathroom, on stage in a ballroom, and in his personal office at his glorified country club, defying a subpoena demanding their return, taking steps to obstruct the process, and lying about all of this.
What Benen doesn’t consider, though, is the possibility that this is a trap. Trump gets some key information, and the FBI intercept a communication containing the information … to Vladimir Putin.
Or he’s given false information, and then the CIA’s information monitoring array is sensitized to that information. If a national adversary suddenly is referencing such as information as verified, rather than false, then the jig is up.
So the Biden Administration may take advantage of this tradition to trap Trump, discredit him in the eyes of independents, and leave him in the dust.
I don’t actually credit the Democrats with this much daring, but it’s certainly a possibility.
A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. AI is also part of a huge scale-up of cloud computing. Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are scouring the nation for sites for new data centers, and many lesser-known firms are also on the hunt.
The proliferation of crypto-mining, in which currencies like bitcoin are transacted and minted, is also driving data center growth. It is all putting new pressures on an overtaxed grid — the network of transmission lines and power stations that move electricity around the country. Bottlenecks are mounting, leaving both new generators of energy, particularly clean energy, and large consumers facing growing wait times for hookups.
Bitcoin could face being cutoff from energy completely, which should be of deep concern to anyone with serious scratch in the cryptocurrency. Or, if energy prices soar as they would in a marketplace, miners will go out of business rather than lose money, again leaving Bitcoin out of luck.
Of course, miners could try their hand at generating energy. Libertarian theory holds that someone will find that revolutionary technology which will solve the problem and, coincidentally, save everyone else’s bacon as well.
Maybe it’ll happen.
But this comes along:
Companies are increasingly turning to such off-the-grid experiments as their frustration with the logjam in the nation’s traditional electricity network mounts. Microsoft and Google are among the firms hoping that energy-intensive industrial operations can ultimately be powered by small nuclear plants on-site, with Microsoft even putting AI to work trying to streamline the burdensome process of getting plants approved. Microsoft has also inked a deal to buy power from a company trying to develop zero-emissions fusion power. But going off the grid brings its own big regulatory and land acquisition challenges. The type of nuclear plants envisioned, for example, are not yet even operational in the United States. Fusion power does not yet exist.
Which left me wondering: How long before Microsoft, in association with data miners, propose building a Dyson Sphere? In case my reader is unaware, here’s the definition of a Dyson Sphere:
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet’s resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star’s energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy. [Wikipedia]
Yesterday’s mad fantasy thought experiment is tomorrow’s reality? It’s happened before.
From the University of New Hampshire Survey Center[1]:
Biden, Trump Running Away With Primary Races in Vermont 2/22/2024 …
Less than two weeks away from the primary on Super Tuesday, former President Donald Trump holds a 30 percentage point lead over former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley among likely Republican Primary voters in Vermont.
And, indeed, Biden did end up dominating in Vermont on Super Tuesday. But how about Trump?
As of around 11:05 p.m., in Vermont, with 93% of expected votes reporting, Trump has 46% of the vote and Haley has 50%. The state marked a rare bright spot for Haley on Super Tuesday, where heading into early Wednesday morning, Vermont marked the only state she took. [ABC News]
The Chicago Daily Tribune fails the accuracy test. No Pulitzer for you.
I’m not aware of any incidents which would explain a 35 point swing in a poll over a two week period in the Trump-Haley race. Other polls followed by subsequent overperformances by Trump adversaries, both directly and indirectly, have been documented in primaries and special elections ever since the 2020 Presidential Election, although the Democratic debacle in Virginia in the 2021 elections does function as a counterexample. And then there’s the reports of underattendance at Trump rallies, his erratic behavior, various ongoing court cases and ludicrous claims, and the generally low quality of those politicos attracted to him.
So is Trump’s poll performance misleadingly strong? Tweedledee5 on Daily Kossure thinks so:
And the kicker here? In an alarming recurring pattern, the Super Tuesday polling showed a huge systematic error favoring Trump, while his actual margin over Haley turned out to be much lower across the Super Tuesday states. Bringing that up because it’s raising questions about something weird going on to account for these huge differences between what pollsters seem to be finding, and what actual votes are showing, with the polls showing a consistent and very large systematic error, in form of a high (and very false) level of support for Trump that isn’t actually there when the votes are counted. Similar to the way Democratic candidates (and ballot initiatives) have been way overperforming what the polls seem to say. Of course, NYT/Siena being one of the worst since the 2022 mid-terms—with its bullshit prediction of a huge “red wave” in Nov. 2022 (one of the worst misses by any poll in years, in any election) and downplaying abortion, which turned out to be one of the two top issues for voters then, but it’s not the only one. As we’ll see below.
Is polling more and more difficult because the older generation, favoring Trump, will answer polls, while the younger, Biden-inclined[2] generation isn’t even reached by the pollsters? Which is funny, yes, since following the 2016 shocker, a favorite explanation for poll failures, which weren’t all that large, was that Trump supporters were lying to the pollsters.
Meanwhile, I’ve been saying all along that Biden’s margin of victory will increase, not decrease. Lately, it’s crept into my mind, like that mink into the rodent nest, that he might even pick up another entire State. Obviously, this is contingent on an absence of disasters, and improved messaging on the part of the Biden campaign.
That may be what is needed to kick off the sorely needed Reformation of the Republican Party.
1Rated a 2.6/3 by FiveThirtyEight as I write this.
2 The idea that the younger generations will vote for the oldest candidate in history may strike some as funny, but has an odd tie-in to this post.
A person under religious vows who generally does not leave his or her habitation. An anchorite lives enclosed in a room or cell, usually in very confined conditions. This kind of asceticism preceded organized monasticism. Simeon the Stylite, who lived on top of a pillar, was an anchorite. Julian of Norwich, an English mystic and anchoress, lived in a cell attached to her parish church in Norwich. See Hermit, Hermitess. [The Episcopal Church]
As [Crypt author Alice] Roberts explores the Middle Ages, she tackles the killing of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket, the sinking of the Mary Rose and the practice of walling oneself off inside a church to become an anchorite – in one story, a woman who may well have had syphilis walls herself off in a church in York. In her retelling, Roberts draws on a host of sources: not just the bones themselves, but historical documents, ethnography and anything else that is relevant.
A fascinating reminder that the tension between communalism vs. individualism, the latter of which is often taken to an extreme in American culture, can see human behaviors that are considered outré in one culture be common and significant in another.
The State of the Union speech for 2024 was last night, not blocked by frantic Republican zealots, and, no, I didn’t listen to it. I spaced on it, I confess.
It sounds like I missed a fun time.
A CNN/Politicsreport had at least one point that stood out for me, though:
“When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever,” Biden said in his speech, to some laughs.
He went on: “The issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old our ideas are,” adding later we “can’t lead with ancient ideas.”
Counterfactually, both democracy and theocracy are also very old ideas. I bring them up as exemplars of opposites when it comes to the common weal and efficacy, and by so doing I disqualify Biden’s entire suggestion that old ideas are bad, and by implication new ideas are good.
Rather, all ideas, even that of democracy, should be subjected to intellectually rigorous debates and discussions. The purpose of such claims as [we] can’t lead with ancient ideas is to bypass long discussions, especially those that are influenced by opinions not changeable through rational discussion, such as are inherent to theocracies.
But it remains true that discussion is better than the improper dismissal of ideas for irrelevant reasons, as that can lead to embitterment and violence. Best to discard ideas for specific reasons, such as theocracy being based on ideas about a divinity that may not even exist, as it doesn’t speak to us; or autocracy, another ancient governmental form, being subject to the whims of possible madmen who may claim themselves anointed by the divine, but rule through the power of arms.
Debate engenders inclusion, peacefulness, and prosperity. However, it doesn’t satisfy the needs of pathological specimens who lust for power.
The rightward lean of the Republicans continues with this RINO hunter:
State Sen. Andre Jacque on Monday announced he is running for Congress, setting up a primary race for the northeastern Wisconsin House seat left open by the impending retirement of Rep. Mike Gallagher. …
[Jacque] said one of his first priorities in Congress would be “restraining the administrative state” and suggested he’d also take aim at environmental, social and corporate governance programs, known as ESG. Asked by a listener whether he changed his opposition to vaccine mandates after his serious bout with COVID in 2021, Jacque said he had not and suggested he led the charge to “stop the persecution that we have seen from the left as a result of COVID.”
Jacque also pointed to his state-level races against Republicans he described as not conservative enough. He claimed his email used to be “wiRINOhunter” — using the acronym for Republican In Name Only. [milwaukee journal sentinel]
Doesn’t learn from experience with regards to COVID, and calls himself a RINO hunter, because he’s convinced purity and zealotry triumphs over humility and thoughtfulness.
And it’s a red district, meaning he has little reason to modify positions and to, well, think a bit.
This is the near future of the Republican Party. Lara Trump, candidate to be chair of the Republican National Committee, has proclaimed there will be purity tests for the Republicans. The Party will continue to shrink and lose influence.
I hope it’s confined only to expulsions, meaning I’m worried about intra-party violence with this crowd.
[Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA)]: Because of that, we want to stop him from actually delivering the state of the union.
That being a couple of deliverables, including a proposed budget, which have yet to be delivered. Notably, the House would reject them if delivered, no doubt with a vitriolic turn of phrase as well. Such is the quality of Republican members of Congress these days.
But Rep Scott Perry (R-PA) was notably more blunt on the matter a week or so ago:
Conservative Rep. Scott Perry suggested that House Republicans rescind President Joe Biden’s State of the Union invitation for March 7 over immigration and border policies.
“We need to use every single point of leverage,” Perry said on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria.” “He comes at the invitation of Congress, and Republicans are in control of the House. There’s no reason that we need to invite him to get more propaganda.”
Perry, the former head of the House Freedom Caucus, claimed allowing Biden to deliver the address would merely allow the president to “actually blame the American people for the crisis he’s caused.” [Politico]
Here’s the thing: this speech is coming, whether it’s delivered in the Capitol to a joint session, or in the White House – or Scranton, PA.
But the actions of Congressional Republicans can make Biden’s “propaganda,” which I read as Facts Republicans don’t like, as even more bright than usual by retracting the invitation. Right now it’s just a normal State of the Union (SOTU) speech, but a speech in Scranton, or in Atlanta, or in Tallahassee, billed as the SOTU speech, with a carefully controlled audience, would draw not only even more media attention, but the public’s attention as well.
It doesn’t matter what Rep Perry thinks of Biden’s report on the state of the union; his own extremist positions, from which he judges Biden’s words as “propaganda,” is really quite irrelevant. But the actions of his colleagues in being petty?
Comments Off on The Smaller Issue May Be The Bigger Issue
A couple of issues came to resolution today, both of which may be preludes to important events. But which is bigger?
The resolution attracting attention is that of the reversal of the Colorado Supreme Court’s affirmation that Mr. Trump should be excluded from the primary ballot. CNN, for example, put it in big letters:
And I suppose I’d have to admit that it is historic. Then again, Mr. Trump’s inferior behavior and outre campaign and governing tactics do tend to result in new legal questions. Historic is a marker on the trail, not a judgment on history.
But it’s certainly not one thing: the fix was not in. The fix may be in at the level of Congress, but not at SCOTUS. Sure, some folks will mumble it is, determined to be bitter. But the most important fact of the matter?
It’s an unanimous decision on the most important point.
The liberal wing agreed with the conservative wing on this one. That, to me, says that it’s not controversial, it may even be obvious in hindsight.
And Mr Trump didn’t buy himself a win.
The way I read the various interpretations, not being a lawyer myself, might be best summarized by KeithDB on Daily Kos:
The Supreme Court reverses the Colorado Supreme Court holding that states may NOT disqualify individuals for federal office. States may do so for state offices, but not federal offices. To disqualify federal candidates Congress must pass some sort of enabling legislation pursuant to Section 5 of the 14th Amendment.
There’s no opinion on the question of whether an insurrection occurred, and if it’s Mr. Trump’s responsibility. This is an important omission, in my opinion. In fact, the longer I look at summaries, the more I wonder how many folks will remember this decision in five years. It was a wild swing at a pitch out of the strike zone.
So what else happened today? And I’m not referencing Nikki Haley’s victory in the Washington, DC, GOP primary, which is thought to be an expected outlier.
No, this is something closer to home. In fact, it’s right in the heart of Mr. Trump:
Now this is interesting. In my experience, CFOs know where most, even all the bodies are buried, how the books are cooked, and who likes what cookies. They know how to tear financial records apart to find their secrets.
And this guy, Allen Weisselberg, has been caught with his hand in the financial cookie jar:
Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg admitted on Monday to testifying falsely to the New York attorney general about his knowledge of the size of Donald Trump’s apartment triplex and how the value of that apartment was inflated on Trump’s financial statements for years based on the incorrect square footage.
Weisselberg was charged with five counts of perjury, but under a deal with prosecutors, he agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts relating to testimony he gave during a 2020 deposition with the attorney general’s office. Weisselberg admitted to testifying falsely at the attorney general’s civil fraud trial against Trump last fall, though that is not among the charges to which he pleaded guilty.
And I suspect that the number of crimes to which Mr. Weisselberg may admit knowledge could be well-nigh endless. This is a big red flag for both federal and state prosecutors, waving lusciously in the air: this way to Mr. Trump’s heart!
This may move slowly, of course, as financial crimes are not speedily researched and digested naturally, but Mr. Weisselberg confession has to be making Mr. Trump’s skin crawl.
This leaves me uneasy – or someone just ran away with my foot. FromAL-Monitor:
The United Arab Emirates’ International Holding Company announced on Tuesday it appointed an AI-powered observer to its board, becoming the latest company to include an AI entity in its leadership and furthering the Gulf state’s ambitions in the sector.
The Abu Dhabi-based investment company, also known as IHC, said it appointed an “AI Board Observer” known as “Aiden Insight.” The observer will perform data analysis, risk assessment, compliance monitoring and other tasks in support of the company. Aiden will attend IHC board meetings as an observer but will not have voting privileges. Aiden is powered by the Emirati AI firm G42 in collaboration with US tech giant Microsoft, IHC said in a statement.
This is from behind a paywall, and as I have chosen not to pay, that’s all I got.
So what is going on here? A member of the board? Unless someone’s withholding information, no AI exhibits self-interest or self-awareness – and so no conscious thought by this board member. A stunt? A necessary legalism? Wikipedia has nothing on it; on the other hand, other Arab news outlets do mention it.
This is all so weird. I rather doubt I’m really this far out of touch, but maybe so.
Republican “worry” over the Federal deficit has been the project of decade upon decade upon decade, with little to show for it except Republicans exacerbating the deficit while “tax and spend liberals” clean up the Republicans’ toxic scat, whether it be bad laws or bigger deficits.
This all came to mind while reading Professor’s latest missive. This was the trigger:
As soon as Mike Johnson (R-LA) became House speaker, he called for a “debt commission” to address the growing budget deficit. This struck fear into the hearts of those eager to protect Social Security and Medicare, because when Johnson chaired the far-right Republican Study Committee in 2020, it called for cutting those popular programs by raising the age of eligibility, lowering cost-of-living adjustments, and reducing benefits for retirees whose annual income is higher than $85,000. Lawmakers don’t want to take on such unpopular proposals, so setting up a commission might be a [Republican] workaround.
And what strikes me is that while these proposals are worthy of discussion – personally, my opinion is that age of eligibility has to be on the table, as life expectancy has been advancing, COLA changes, at least downwards, should be out of the question, and setting an upper income limit will foster restiveness in retirees who “invested” in Social Security and are not getting anticipated benefits – there are easier, equally viable approaches to the problem. And, of course, this commission may be a Trojan horse for drastic changes to, or even expungement of, such social net programs.
So, as the post’s title says, what would responsible politicians be doing in Johnson’s position, if they were honestly convinced the deficit and debt should be reduced, would simply note that reducing taxes did nothing for the economy, and do the following:
Raise taxes.
Close tax loopholes.
Don’t go nuts with spending without concomitant raising of taxes.
Businesses do like taxes, in moderation. The Kansas taxation debacle proved that. And neither deficit nor debt need be immediately eliminated, so taxes need not be too high.
And then there’s the alternative. Stipulating to the abolition of these social net programs, then what might happen? Drawing a parallel, there is currently a homeless encampment in Minneapolis that went up in flames a couple of days ago.
So how about this: an encampment of elderly people? Homeless because of the loss of all income, even Social Security? They won’t even need it going up in flames in order to horrify independents.
And it’ll be just like the times before Social Security.
If you find yourself talking to a Republican, ask them why they cling to their anti-tax tenets in the face of the Federal debt and deficit. Point out that the Laffer Curve is a bust.
a muscle that is controlled by the action of an antagonist with which it is paired
a chemical substance capable of combining with a specific receptor on a cell and initiating the same reaction or activity typically produced by the binding endogenous substance dopaminergic agonists [Merriam-Webster]
Previous studies have found that chimpanzees may engage in agonistic teasing, or harassment, to reinforce their hierarchical positions. But when the right balance of enjoyment and aggression is struck, teasing can also be a form of play and amusement, says Isabelle Laumer at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany.
When life imitates comedy, eh? Of what does this remind you?
On the one hand, Republicans maintain that they support the continued use of IVF, calling it both pro-family and pro-life. But on the other hand, many in the GOP agree with the central premise of the ruling that found that frozen embryos are children with equal rights, a contradictory position that now has them on the defensive on an issue that is supported by over 80% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans.
“That’s really at the crux of the ethics of it,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told reporters on Tuesday. “How do our laws recognize the dignity of human life but also understand that the procedure that it enables is a life-creating procedure?” [HuffPo]
For me, it’s this:
They’re inching their feet down the runway, aren’t they? Every potential for human life must not only be recognized, but fulfilled as well. Which, in turn, suggests the entities that are suspending IVF in Alabama for legal reasons may be violating future law by not fulfilling every request for a viable embryo.
Yes, it’s a foray into the ridiculous.
This, of course, is if we, as a society, attempt to read the mind & moral code & intentions of a creature that, frankly, may not exist. This is the elephant in the room that is stepping on us.
Think that’s a joke? Try taking it seriously, instead. The statement that all life is sacred, which I’ll be the first to grant has certain practical benefits for society, comes from a religious tenet for which there is little to no objective proof that a possibly non-existent divinity endorses.
Rather than being dragged around by the dog’s nipped tail, it would benefit us greatly to recognize a core truth of our society: We, as a secular society, define the rules. No, we’re not Judeo-Christian, no matter how much some of us – not them, dammit, but some of us, and please stop being so fucking divisive – yell it, so we need not be subject to the rules of the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, or any other arbitrary religion’s rules.
Say it with me: We Define The Rules Of Our Society. Then think about that.
What does it imply? I’m sure it was on the minds of the Founding Fathers, and lead to the Establishment Clause, and I suspect if I had a better memory I could quote letter and verse from the TheFederalist Papers. The implications of living in a society where causative chains are rife is of such a magnitude I don’t even know how to summarize the summary.
So let’s constrain this discussion to how it applies to IVF. Are embryos really human? They neither think, talk, nor often even survive to transform into fetuses, and thence to humans. It’s worth even asking if infants are human?
And I bring this up not to be thorough, but to make a point: if we decide an infant is not human, that doesn’t endanger infants. We have plenty of laws to protect them, don’t we?
And if we don’t, we can make them. <- THIS IS A POINT. PAY ATTENTION.
If we make the rules, rather than guess what they might be, then we can say that Infants and Humans are protected by law, and Embryos and Fetuses are not. Or we can say they’re partially protected, such as to say that, absent congenital fatal defect, only a contributor of genetic material may order its destruction. Or only the one who’ll be on the hook to carry it to term.
Or whatever, after sober, reasonable, and secular discussion, seems to benefit society, individually and as a whole, the most.
And not the damn silliness of a buffoon in black robes donning a metaphorical God-mask to declare what he thinks his God would say, if he’d only open his damn mouth and say it.
Ironically, Senator Rubio (R-FL) touches on the core of the problem we face when melding legal systems, which are basically fantastical creatures, with the ugly realities of biological reproduction:
“No one has IVF to destroy life, they have IVF to create life,” he added. “Unfortunately, you have to create multiple embryos, and some of those are not used, then you’re now in a quandary.”
Yes, so long as we try to drag a possibly non-existent divinity into the question, we won’t have happy answers. We need to take on this responsibility for ourselves: Will abortion damage society? Will destroying embryos damage society? Etc. I’m not here to answer these questions in this post; I’m here to say these are the bulls in the china shop that we keep ignoring in favor of the potentially non-existent’s rules, and we’d better start working on lassoing them, or they’re going to destroy the china shop.
