I mean, he could, but wouldn’t he need Congress to confirm his appointments? They’d just do what they did while Obama was in office and block any motion for a vote, especially since the Democratic party doesn’t hold a filibuster-proof, 60-member Senate majority. Although, Obama had that and still blew it, the price of believing one can still engage in good faith negotiations with bad faith actors, I’m afraid.

They’re already declaring their intentions to not negotiate with Harris in good faith, should she win the election, and to block all Presidential appointments. Hopefully she will go ahead and do it anyway. SCOTUS does get the final say in what does and does not constitute an “Official Act”, but they don’t have any enforcement mechanism. All they can do is send a strongly-worded letter, asking her to stop, but they can’t force her to stop.

Not surprising. The Israeli government also bans services like 23AndMe or Ancestry.com from operating in their borders unless a doctor seems it medically necessary. DNA is a store of information, just like a book.

Yeah. Every city in America will have a skid row. Ever seen the movie “District 9”? They kinda want that for America’s homeless and immigrants

Exactly. This is a conservative-majority SCOTUS saying, “We decided long ago what we were going to do about this issue and many others. Nothing you can say will change our course. This conversation is over.”

The problem is the Federalism. Individual States have legislatures of their own, with, AFAICT, unchecked power to pass whatever laws they want within their borders. Congress, when it works, can only pass laws that regulate commerce between States, ensure citizens can move freely between States, collect taxes from those States, and other things.

But again, when a State with a conservative legislature has control, they can enact parts of Project 2025, but only within their borders. They can’t force other States to follow suit unless they want SCOTUS involved.

Eyeball every single purchase the Israeli government makes. If they start buying Zyklon B or any of its precursors, and building showers in these camps, then we know. I guess when they said “Never again” after WW2 they meant “Never again, to us.”

In the States where child marriage is not legalized, it’s treated as an informally arranged marriage. Basically, one guy promises his daughter to another guy in exchange for something and they wait until the girl is 18 or in some cases 17 or 16 before getting anything on paper.

We literally created the Electoral College as DEI for slave states. It went hand-in-hand with the infamous “3/5ths Compromise” that allowed slavers to cast ballots in the names of their slaves, so slavers could cast as many votes as they had slaves.

Exactly. Conservatives hold as their highest values, conformity, compliance, cohesion, authority, sanctity, and tradition. They love adhering to their established norms and standards rather than challenging them. They defer to those whom they view to be in a position of authority. They have lines they do not want crossed, things they hold sacred. To be called “weird” is to be called as existing outside the norm.

Religion has done something very clever, too. Christianity in particular has, through some means, found a way to divorce actions from character, as opposed to viewing one’s actions as a reflection of their character. They see good and evil as things that someone is instead of what someone does.

You ever notice how suburban white Karens clutch their pearls when called racist? Well, consider what I just said about their view of evil. Now, make “racism” == “evil”. By calling one racist, you have effectively called them evil, and they most certainly do not view themselves as having an evil character.

Or how, when doing evil deeds, they don’t see themselves as being evil despite their actions? Or when someone does a good deed, they accuse that person of being evil?

It’s just intriguing how they’ve pulled off this alchemy.

It’s funny. I have a blog post from Ken Arneson who talks about “The Right to be an Asshole” and here’s how he defines an asshole:

An asshole is a selfish person whose selfishness causes foreseeable indirect collateral damage to the people around them.

He goes on:

Assholes take risks that provide upside to themselves, but transfer the downsides of those risks to other people.

But the true test case for the limits of freedom is the asshole. Philosophically speaking, assholes walk the line between intentions and consequences. Assholes form the boundary between freedom and control.

Assholes don’t intend to do direct harm. They just don’t think about, and/or care about, and/or believe, and/or comprehend, that their actions can or will have negative consequences for other people beyond their direct intentions.

He goes on to recount the tale of COVID Patient 31 from Seoul, South Korea. Shortly after receiving her diagnosis, she decided to seek comfort at church. Hundreds of deaths and thousands of infections were traced back to her through contact tracing. So, now we come to intentions vs. consequences. Patient 31 wasn’t intending to make anyone sick or die, she was merely seeking comfort through faith. Any reasonable non-asshole could have told her and probably did tell her, that attending church while infected would cause others to be infected and possibly die. How should this asshole be judged? If we judge her by her intentions, then she’s as much a victim as anyone. But if we judge her by her consequences, then she’s a mass murderer.

So the question we have to ask as a free society is: What the fuck do we do about assholes?

Assholes have a very clever trick that allows them to keep being assholes.

If you try to stop them from being an asshole, they will declare you to be an asshole who, although perhaps intending to prevent some bad thing from happening, causes harm by denying some very fine people, who have no intention of harming anyone, their freedom. So who’s the real asshole here, anyway?

Shame that that is literally the best and likely the only recourse we have. Seems like these are huge gaping loopholes we should have closed decades ago.

I don’t think that’s true. The “left” as I understand it, is a largely heterogenous, loosely united coalition of all kinds of different factions beset by a mountain of conflicting interests and decades of infighting. Some factions are united by choice, and others are there because they would have died out once the USA became consumed by the dominant two-party system we currently languish under.

The Right isn’t like this, or at least it’s not as bad. Despite having just as many if not more factions with just as many if not more differences and conflicting interests, they value loyalty and in-group cohesion, which keeps them coming together every 4 years to form a surprisingly unified front. It also helps that they all fucking hate anyone even slightly left of center and most will vote for a Republican they despise over a Democrat they kinda sorta like on a personal level.

Consider your average Democratic Senator/Representative. They lean left on many things and have the backing of party leadership. To win their election, they need two things, votes and funding. They know that there are many things their voter base is passionate about, such as healthcare reform, police reform, campaign finance reform, housing and income inequality, and so on. They know their voter base has no hope of ever getting these things from Republicans, but unfortunately they are things that the donor class tends to despise. When faced with the challenge of appealing to all the different factions of the left while staying within the good graces of the wealthy donor class, the Democrat will pivot away from “policy” and focus more on “process”. Generally uncontroversial things like bipartisanship, decorum, and compromise. They don’t really take stances on wedge issues unless they run in a solid blue district where they can take that stance and not break up the coalition or lose donor support.

Hell, the Chicago PD had a blacksite modeled after CIA blacksites, called Homan Square. More than 7,000 people were detained there, and only 68 of them were ever allowed access to an attorney.

Honestly if we could get space elevators figured out, the best place to put solar panels would be in the upper atmosphere. Tethered to the ground by massive columns that feed the energy they collect to massive capacitors on the ground?

This. Part of the reason we are in this mess now is that Obama won. The fact that we dare put a black man in the WHITE House, for not 4 but 8 years, broke their tiny little racist brains. They dogged him for every little thing they could, spent 8 years blocking, obstructing, bad faith arguing, and outright refusing to collaborate with a black man.

Like, who do they think they can replace him with, huh? They got a dark horse waiting in the wings? Or are they cooking up the perfect President in a secret cloning lab somewhere?

I want everything SiegedSec found. I intend to copy it and store it for safekeeping.

Free as in beer, I think. A phrase you never hear in the French Quarter is “Last Call!”

Why bother with that? I say go full Robin Hood, steal the restricted books and give them away to the youth. Or, if you’ve got the resources, run a black market library. It would be kinda like a speakeasy, with a password and a doorman and shit. Call it a “readeasy”? Since you’re not supposed to talk in a library and all that.