Question 1 for the DC Circuit to ask Trump’s lawyers on Jan 9:
“Under your theory, counsel, what would stop Joe Biden as the incumbent president from ordering your client taken out and shot today if he says doing so would protect the national security?”
Question 1 for the DC Circuit to ask Trump’s lawyers on Jan 9:
“Under your theory, counsel, what would stop Joe Biden as the incumbent president from ordering your client taken out and shot today if he says doing so would protect the national security?”https://t.co/VYwFXw0Hmn
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) January 4, 2024
It doesn’t get any more clear than that.
Or this.
(Yes, I see that Tamara has linked to this, but I am leaving it in because not everyone reads every thread.) Besides, it’s worth watching twice!
I wish I had more faith in the Supreme Court – I have no faith that they will do the right thing because it’s the right thing. But maybe they will hold themselves in check because they know they are on rocky ground because the public has an issue with the corruption justices on the court, even if the justices themselves do not.
I generally have faith in the American people, but damn, 25% of them apparently believe that the FBI instigated the Jan 6 insurrection. Dog help us. I can only hope that the 25% who are stupid enough and/or foolish enough to believe that will not be voting in November.
What we on planet reality have to deal with➡️ A quarter of Americans believe FBI instigated Jan. 6, Post-UMD poll finds https://t.co/lYOaFQa1Jv
— Andrew Weissmann (weissmann11 on Threads)🌻 (@AWeissmann_) January 4, 2024
On a more positive note, I love that Simon Rosenberg calls these the Hopium Chronicles.
Biden’s 2024 Chances Are Much Stronger Than People Realize
A Positive, Upbeat End to 2023 – Dow in record territory. Inflation running below the Fed target rate. Interest rates coming down next year. GDP growth 4.9% last quarter, looking close to 3% for this one. Best job market since the 1960s. The lowest uninsured rate in history. Crime has fallen across the US this year, rents are coming down too. Consumer sentiment is spiking.
Wage growth, prime age worker participation rate and new business formation are all in historically elevated territory. Best recovery in the G7. US setting records for domestic oil and renewable production. $130b in student debt forgiven.
The good news just keeps coming.
- Democrats are also seeing improvement in national polling.
- A majority of the independent polls taken in recent weeks have Biden tied or ahead. The influential NYT poll, which had Biden trailing Trump two months ago, now has Biden up 47%-45% with likely voters.
- Dems have picked up 3 points in 538’s Congressional Generic tracker in recent months, and Navigator’s recent House battleground tracker polling found Republicans losing ground, and Democrats now with a clear advantage.
- The two most recent large sample Hispanic poll and youth polls found Biden running at or above his 2020 numbers – 57%-33% (+24) with 18-29 year olds in the Harvard/IOP poll, and 58%-31% (+27) in the bi-partisan Univision poll.
- The Economist/YouGov weekly tracker this week found Biden’s approval on the Israel-Hamas war 37%-32% (+5) approve w/18-29 year olds, the best of any age cohort, and 59%-23% (+36) w/Democrats – so no clear, sustained backlash there.
Here are the 16 recent polls showing Biden ahead or tied (via 538):
- 47-45 NYT/Siena (LVs)
- 49-48 Monmouth
- 49-48 NPR/Marist
- 47-46 Quinnipiac
- 42-41 YouGov/Economist 12/2
- 44-42 YouGov/Economist 11/25
- 39-37 YouGov
- 40-36 and 37-35 Leger
- Reuters had Biden +4 in the battleground Presidential states
- 45-45 Clarity
- 44-44 Yahoo/YouGov
- 41-41 Cygnal
- 43-43 Economist/YouGov 12/6 and 12/20
- 43-43 Morning Consult 12/2
It can no longer be said Trump leads in the 2024 election, and in the polling which helped create the “Trump is ahead” take, Biden now leads.
2023 has been a blue wave electoral year for Democrats, a very good year. Now the economy, consumer sentiment and polling are all ending the year on an upbeat, optimistic note. Congratulations everyone. While we have a long way to go in the 2024 election, we are ending 2023 strong, with momentum, in my view in a far better place than Republicans, who are, in just about every imaginable way, an historic shitshow – full stop.
Open thread!
Open Thread: I’m With Them
jonas
Polling on questions like “Who was responsible for Jan. 6?” is never going to yield actual answers because conservatives these days just troll them whenever possible and give an answer they think will pwn libs. 25% don’t believe the FBI was responsible. 25% believe giving that answer will annoy liberals, so yeah, it was totally the FBI and not MAGAt idiots.
TheOtherHank
And, honestly, it would protect national security
schrodingers_cat
@TheOtherHank: Indeed it will. He is the greatest threat to democracy and the rule of law.
schrodingers_cat
OT: From the last thread:
Democracy is in danger in India too. If Modi wins a third term it is curtains for India as we know it.
My old Twitter friend has finally released his documentary series on Modi’s India. It is in Marathi but has English subtitles. I am thinking of watching it and blogging about it. May be even getting him and another friend who wrote a book on the Bharat Jodo Yatra (Join India Journey) and interviewing them. Would anybody here be interested in this?
The series covers the protests against the citizenship law, the farmers protest and the Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Link to the series playlist
Link to the trailer
trollhattan
What, is it Christmas again?
dmsilev
@TheOtherHank: Truth to that.
I’ll compromise and settle on having him dragged off to prison.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: That’s “Holidays”, thank you very much. We’re still fighting the War on Christmas, remember?
Matt McIrvin
And the answer would be “We all know Democrats are wimps, unlike us Real Men who do what needs to be done.”
Alison Rose
This is really cool: Governor Newsom Announces World-Leading Science & Technology Research Center in Los Angeles
Yay, science!
rikyrah
I have faith in the Supreme Court on this matter. And, to be honest, I don’t give a shyt if they’re doing it to cover their own azzes. All we need is 2. I would like for the ridiculous 4 to show their azzes. It should be a 9-0 decision, but, that would be too much like right.
Another Scott
Looking at the full 7 page .pdf:
1) The survey was done by the NORC. They know what they’re doing when it comes to doing surveys, in general.
2) The questions and answers seem to me to be yet another illustration of the 27% Crazification Factor.
25-35% weren’t willing to stick their neck out and give an opinion in the questions in #6.
They need better questions, and questions to show what fraction of surveyed people are actually paying attention.
“Republican Leader in the Senate, Freddy Kruger, has said that he’s working to give every American a free AR-15 rifle for Tax Day. Do you agree or disagree with this giveaway??”
(I think PPP includes questions like that on occasion.)
Cheers,
Scott.
bbleh
@jonas: thank you, yes. 25% of respondents SAY they believe that. And some definitely say it to troll and to annoy, but some also say it out of simple tribal affiliation. “I’m a loyal MAGAt and loyal MAGAts respond by answering …”
I’m beyond sick of news stories based on polls about major candidates or issues. The results don’t reflect what they purport to measure. At this point, the media and pollsters oughta know better. (Actually they may well do, but they still get paid to generate this stuff, so…)
Leto
Oklahoma governor ends child food programs; Cherokee Nation steps up. I know the cruelty is the point, but when will the states respective voters wake the fuck up?
Subsole
@schrodingers_cat:
If you do blog, please link. I would be interested in your take.
bbleh
@Leto: I’d say it’s a large fraction of the respective voters who are cruel, and an even larger fraction (quite possibly a majority) of the respective party primary voters, and if they aren’t quite enough, there’s also the “well, I don’t know, but all that welfare spending is just too much and we’ve got to cut somewhere …” types.
dmsilev
@Alison Rose:
That’s pretty cool, but it’s going to cost $$$ to make that happen. To put it mildly, the sort of infrastructure requirements needed for precision lab spaces and for shops in a mall are somewhat different. And some of the requirements, like really really good temperature and humidity control and low vibrations are incredibly expensive to retrofit in to spaces not designed for them, to the point where it’d almost be cheaper to just knock down the existing building and put up something purpose-built in its place.
Oh, and as is usual, please ignore “subatomic”. Most quantum-computing platforms use atoms or ions, large molecules, or engineered structures consisting of umpteen million atoms.
coin operated
@Leto:
My ex lives there. She remarried…her and her extended family are all dumb as posts.
Josie
That 25% is pretty close to the 27% that we learned were non compos mentis, at least politically. They have always been and will always will be with us, unfortunately, but that percentage is not a winning number. Our job will be to get people out to vote.
ETA: If Democrats run Colin Allred against Ted Cruz, it would be a big help in making that happen, even in Texas.
Leto
@bbleh:
that’s true… 40+ years of “welfare queens” and “welfare spending” messaging and here we are. They’ll tell themselves that they’re the responsible ones, as they feed their kid another round of sawdust. It’s like Texas: republicans have been in total control of the state for the past 27+ years, yet they still say they’re the ones to turn the state around.
@coin operated: that must’ve sucked. Glad you’ve moved on.
...now I try to be amused
All the time I think: These people do not fear enough. They assume Dems will never be as ruthless as they are. Part of me wants Dark Brandon to show them they’re wrong.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat:
I would definitely be interested in anything that would help me understand more about India.
RaflW
It’s still a long way to November, but if it turns out that last year’s endless doom from the press is not going to be The Narrative™ this year, then yay.
Perhaps we’re going to tee up a “come from behind” story about Ol’ Joe that, while a bit of bullshit since we’ve all seen the 2023 off-cycle results and the underlying currents of GOP donor-class people knowing TFG has a mega-ton of negatives in the general election, having the press come to this ‘realization’ in the election year would be fine with me.
LFG.
Pittsburgh Mike
All that good news is good, but it almost doesn’t matter.
The 5th Circuit Court’s ruling that women have no right to medical care if they’re pregnant in Texas and something goes wrong is the closest thing to the reintroduction of slavery that I’ve seen in my 60+ years.
We should be running ads 24×7 reminding everyone that this is what Republicans want to do to all women in America, and the only way to stop them is to vote Democratic.
Chief Oshkosh
@TheOtherHank: Actually, the question isn’t worded right. It’s not whether Biden could not be found guilty for having Trump shot. It’s, would it be OK for Biden to personally shoot Trump. Whether that’s done on NYC’s 5th Avenue or elsewhere could also be asked.
Quadrillipede
Given Trump’s unquenchable thirst for revenge upon anyone deemed less than perfectly loyal to his Royal largeness, I could see 5 SC justices ruling that he ain’t no king, either because it’s the factually correct finding, or even just out of self-preservation of their own legal privileges. Doesn’t seem like a smart move to elevate a dictator who would be willing to disrupt the Constitution and erode the court’s own legal authority.
Martin
@dmsilev: Yeah, but 90% of the value of the place is the land around here. We had a similar center being set up about a decade ago which I was involved in – 8-figure center with vibration and EM requirements and it was a real coin flip in terms of costs between renovating an existing space and just buying a new industrial building (some light manufacturing space) and tearing it down.
That said, UC isn’t exactly the most pragmatic when it comes to these things. There’s no reason why this center needed to be downtown. It could have been up in Castaic on cheap land with a travel budget and they almost certainly would have saved a TON of money. But they wanted the visibility.
Shalimar
@schrodingers_cat: Very interested, and if you post a link I would love for a front pager to put it above the fold on an open thread.
topclimber
@Shalimar: Seconded.
lowtechcyclist
That ad…YEAH. The more people who see that, the better.
ETA: Between getting stuff done and some serious napping, I missed the last two threads. Guess I should go back and see what I missed!
Old School
He provided the defense evidence! Will Jack Smith’s reign of terror ever end?!
dmsilev
@Martin: There are real advantages to having your research centers as close in to the main campus as possible. Sure, you can provide a travel budget and set up a shuttle service or whatever, but it’s not really the same thing as being a walk or a short drive away from the main buildings of half a dozen academic departments who are involved in said research center. But yeah, that does mean that the land is more expensive.
Vibrations, thermal stability (my colleagues doing work on precision optics need the rooms to be stable to better than 1 degree, and then the optics sit in enclosed boxes with a second control loop to stabilize things down to a fraction of a degree…), easy availability of lots of power and chilled water, areas with non-magnetic rebar in the concrete, the list goes on and on.
RaflW
@Alison Rose: What I think states like Texas & Florida — and GOP pols who appoint the likes of Chris Rufo and Bill Johnson to university positions — don’t get is that they are positioning their states to be left in the dust.
I know they have ideological reasons to try to damage education, but smart people like Newsom are not going to play along. And as the U.T. system weakens, it doesn’t just screw TX students. It also sends a strong signal to tech employers that they might seriously reconsider where to move/expand/invest.
Tough shit, Texas (and FL, and OH…). Maybe voters will notice and change course. Or maybe the blue states will just continue to pull away from the deplorable places.
Mallard Filmore
@Leto:
Do the tribes have some special legal status that would let the Federal government make deals with or through tem, bypassing the states?
Ksmiami
@Martin: it’s on the west side actually… close to UCLA and west side pavilion was a dying mall anyway
Ksmiami
@Mallard Filmore: yes they do actually.
trollhattan
@Mallard Filmore:
Guessing yes, but does the money come through BIA, directly from UDSA, or Door #3. (Stuff’s complicated.)
RaflW
@Old School: Is his entire legal team just high school kids mad at that one student who writes a term paper longer than the assigned length & gets a 99 on the final so the curve bonus is only +1 for everyone else? Pathetic.
Alison Rose
@dmsilev: From the press release:
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
By ropes tied around his ankles.
Old School
Iowa shooting update:
dmsilev
@Ruckus: I’d be fine with “dragged out of court room by the bailiffs”, but I certainly wouldn’t object if ropes were involved.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
Yes, thank you.
Reuse land and spaces. Buildings are recyclable!
Alison Rose
@dmsilev: Slowly but surely, we learn this community’s kinks.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: It’s just been heartbreaking to watch Modi destroy Indian democracy. Things seemed so promising for India just 20 years ago.
different-church-lady
@Old School: “This is evidence he’s guilty! You shouldn’t even have that!”
Ken
@Old School: Based on their own argument, Judge Chutkan should hold Trump’s lawyers in contempt for bringing up this matter while the case was on hold.
Martin
@dmsilev: We had similar requirements (state of the art TEM/SEM/etc equipment) but UCLA added 10s of millions to the cost of the facility, and you have to consider those opportunity costs. In our case, we could have built half of our law school building with that money. It’s VERY possible UCLA bought that building off of a gift, which a few years ago I would have had the inside line on, in which case, who gives a shit – one of the LA engineering billionaires bought it. Those guys bought a lot of our engineering stuff as well. But you look over and see other disciplines with very modest needs being ignored, and that’s hard to defend.
I mean, UC is an engineering juggernaut, and the state is unquestionably better for it, but it’s also tearing the institution apart to some degree. And these high-cost centers, while really helping the state economically over the longer term, direct resources away from non-STEM programs all across the system – because the institution still needs to invest administrative resources when these kinds of gifts and grants arrive – and that problem keeps getting worse.
Fair Economist
@Martin:
If you want the place accessible to workers with as many possible living situations as possible, you want to be in the Wilshire corridor, and ideally downtown. That lets them attract better people to work there. More and more people don’t want to live in the San Fernando Valley and *still* have a lot car-required commute.
Martin
@Ksmiami: Oh, yeah, it’s a good location (drove past it last week when we went to see the shuttle) but it’s a LOT of money for a public university to be spending for something like this, when there were other opportunities for the state and system.
Ken
Reminds me of the old joke. The new administrator tours the campus, and complains “The engineering department spends too much! Why can’t they be like the math department, who only need pencils, paper, and wastebaskets? Or the philosophy department — they don’t even need the wastebaskets!”
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: As someone has said, please blog and link to it. It sounds interesting. Maybe you could also do a summary here as a front-page post.
Ruckus
@Leto:
Other than cost it is very easy to move to better. So either the cost of living is too high or wages are too low. Or both.
Also depending on where you might move to the cost of living can be far more than in backwater, low income areas. Which of course is one reason that they are better places to live. It is a fixable issue but it will cost a lot and require some political changes to make that happen. I’ve lived in a number of places and traveled for my job and driven across this country a number of times and the south east from the Atlantic ocean to say the New Mexico border, from around North Carolina south seems to me to be lacking something. And yes there are areas/cities in that part of the country that are better off and some areas that would be pretty nice to live in, but they are not the majority of territory. Now it’s been some time since I’ve done all this so a lot could have changed but then a lot has changed in the rest of the country as well. I’m just not sure that the area I’m talking about has changed that much. FL still elected Ron DeStupid.
zhena gogolia
Glynis Johns, RIP
Donald Wildmon, RI???
WaterGirl
@Ken: I hope Judge Chutkan just ignores their filing.
narya
I’m not all that surprised to see both an improvement in polling numbers and an increase in campaigning–I expected that after the new year. I think a lot of the stuff last year was just too soon.
rikyrah
@Leto:
The cruelty is the point.
dmsilev
@Suzanne: The building my labwork is in was put up almost 100 years ago. I describe to people as having “a …complicated history”; it spent the first couple of decades as essentially an empty shell, most of the interior being one big space without walls, intermediate floors, or windows (it was used for for doing R&D on large pieces of high-power electrical gear). After WWII, they put in a full set of floors, cut windows through the walls, put in lab spaces in the basement and subbasement, etc. The particle accelerators (yes, plural) got installed in the 60s and 70s. And then were decommissioned in the 90s. The upstairs spaces (classrooms and offices) got a gut renovation about 5 years ago (the “before” condition was generally described as “shithole” by the occupants), and we’re incrementally refreshing the lab spaces underground as funds allow.
The history is nice, but God I’d really prefer to be in a building with a real freight elevator to name just one thing that is eye-wateringly expensive to retrofit in.
catclub
@dmsilev: I think to protect any underlings he should have trump handcuffed in the oval office. then beat him to death himself with a baseball bat.
Old indeed.
RevRick
@jonas: That may be true, but given how much the rightwing media has fluffed the Ray Epps story, it’s possible that they actually believe this nonsense. After all, most of what they believe is nonsense.
When I encounter these sort of claims on X, I reverse the argument by saying, “So, what you’re telling me is that Trump supporters are so gullible and easily manipulated that some rando can rile them up and get them to commit crimes.” That usually shuts them up.
randy khan
I won’t say I feel confident, but in recent times it’s become apparent that polling is having trouble adjusting for the Dobbs effect, so I’ve had a wait-and-see attitude about it. (Not to mention that even likely voter polling at this point is kind of iffy.) I’m also heartened by the apparent commitment to reproductive rights as a campaign issue, which I think will reap benefits come November up and down the ballot.
dmsilev
@Alison Rose: You’ll note that neither mustard nor mopping was involved.
Martin
@Fair Economist: But from the perspective of the state and the UC system, why does that matter? It’s not like you couldn’t build this center at any of the other 9 campuses and relocate some faculty. Hell, you could build this center and relocate faculty from across the system and build an even stronger center – this is not a campus center, it’s a state one. And yes, UCLA has some great immunology people, but so does UCSF, UCSD, UCI, etc. The state could have built this center at UC Merced, which has 12,000 acres compared to UCLAs 150 – their own power and water, and so on, but it doesn’t do this because, well, they just don’t work this way. So we keep concentrating these high cost centers in the high costs parts of the state rather than investing in the parts of the state which we proclaim to be of equal merit but which don’t get equal investment.
This attitude creates a lot of other academic problems because the UCs compete for everything, driving up costs across the system. In the end this is just another component of the ongoing commercialization of research universities.
catclub
@Fair Economist: Kashmir has effectively been locked down for the past 4 + years.
Martin
@Ken: What’s interesting is how many of the newer UC campuses were designed to deliberately hamstring the growth of engineering, and early on those efforts do, but eventually enough money flows in to overcome those efforts. So they still get dominated by engineering (or medicine), it just requires sinking even more cash into the effort.
Another Scott
@dmsilev: Heh.
Imagine having a similar research building on a historical register…
:-/
IOW, it can always be worse!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Weapon X
@Martin:
How many of those Immunology faculty do you think would want to move to Merced from LA (or SF, etc.)? Do you think the salary disparity between UC Merced faculty and the PIs populating the new center would cause some issues? What about teaching? Would the relocated PIs be expected to teach (and still get the funding required to meet the new Institute’s goals)? That aspect, to me, seems like it would have been a heavy lift.
dmsilev
@Another Scott: That’s happened. Generally there are two options. Either you agree to preserve interior and exterior and basically turn the place into a museum since its infrastructure is not suited for the needs of contemporary work and build something new across the street, or you agree to maintain the exterior in some semblance of its historical configuration and then update the interior as funds and needs dictate.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
I did a major hospital interior renovation project a couple of years ago that included putting in two intraoperative MRI scanners and a bunch of advanced cardiac procedure rooms, as well as some cath labs. The renovation was so much interior space that it was in the hospital’s original tower (over 100 years old) and then four of its subsequent expansions/additions. It was so hard. Old buildings have floor-to-floor heights that are too small, expansion joints in terrible places, they require massive structural reinforcement. One of the many phased additions that we built in formerly housed linear accelerators for cancer treatment, and there was like 36” deep concrete shells within the structure, and the demolition sub had to sawcut it all out, and carry the rubble piece by piece down the patient elevator.
Conversions are hard, and expensive.
Martin
@Weapon X: That’s not the issue. The issue is that ranking matters, and it shouldn’t, so getting faculty from a top 30 institution to a top 100 one is hard. But these are problems that the system and the state can mitigate, and do so for far less money. But again, they don’t operate this way. This refusal to operate as a system also leads to all kinds of costs and frustration for the state residents when it comes to things like admissions. The system could accommodate more students, and do so more predictably for students/parents if they didn’t compete for students in the manner it does. You get centers that could be world class being fragmented across the system. There are disciplines that if concentrated at one campus could thrive (this shows up a lot with language programs). But there’s no strategic planning systemwide. I speak from a lot of experience on that
Yes, it’s a heavy lift, but so is securing a quarter billion dollar center. And what tends to happen here is that they invest so much money in getting the place secured that it never has the resources to really thrive. We saw this with the joint research institutes that built out under Schwarzenegger. It was a neat idea, and involved a LOT of money, but once the initial money ran out, the invested centers just starved.
Will
Secular India waited way too long to get off the USSR bandwagon and cut a lot of the regulations that were strangling investment. Manmohan Singh, or at least advisors close to him, realized they needed to make the move. They waited too long unfortunately and Modi/BJP got elected and then got to ride the wave of job growth/take credit for it. Even if the BJP hasn’t done much further beyond Congress & Allies’ changes, BJP has been good at making it look like they have on the news.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@RevRick: In all fairness to these clowns, the FBI’s record infiltrating groups as instigators to push what might have been peaceful protests into violence is well-known and a matter of record. (I won’t throw in the Wikipedia link to COINTELPRO here; you all can look it up yourself.) So if you really don’t want to believe people you see as your crowd are guilty of armed insurrection, you can plausibly point to the FBI as setting them up. After all, they have a record.
OBLIGATORY!!!
Suzanne
@dmsilev: A lot of those technical buildings that get a historic designation end up becoming “light office” (which is appropriate for most professional services), because the mechanical and electrical loads aren’t too demanding, and the occupant loads aren’t that high.
Weapon X
@Martin:
What do you mean that’s not the issue? Those are the main issues that the faculty on both sides would have, and if they won’t go, there is no Institute. Many of them would be tenured and senior, meaning their contracts might be complicated to say the least (especially if they are employed by the Medical School). They would have to be treated like a poached recruit, which means a lot of concessions and sweeteners to get them to leave their current position.
eclare
@catclub:
Very old school, Louisville Slugger.
Martin
@Suzanne: I was brought in for some advising for our law schools accreditation and in the process they were showing off their interim library space (law school accreditation requires a certain library square footage/student ratio – it’s idiotic) and we were up on the 3rd floor of a light office building where I used to have an office and they mentioned putting in movable shelving to allow them to store the volume of books they needed, and I mentioned in passing, whether they had consulted with the campus engineers whether the building was structurally able to support movable shelving on the 3rd floor, because I was willing to bet there was no fucking way it would – like not remotely close. They were already in the process of moving books and ordering the shelving. A week later that was all on hold and they were figuring out how to trade space with the first floor for the library.
I mean, do the basics, people. That was on the way to some engineer sprinting in at the 11th hour to stop everything, then the institution taking a 7 figure loss on already purchased equipment and an emergency effort to build a library a month before classes began.
Ella in New Mexico
Thinking of some of their recent refusals and rulings that went against his interests—does anyone else here wonder if maybe a couple of them have been realizing how frigging dangerous Trump is and would be to our whole system, including them and the Supreme Court were he to be re-elected?
Forget Alilto and Thomas, what about the newer conservatives and Roberts? They know how craven and capricious he is, how he has absolutley no respect for the separation of powers or the rule of law, much less tradition or protocol.
Maybe enough of them don’t want to have to deal with his dangerous ass anymore.
dmsilev
@Suzanne: The carcass of one of our particle accelerators is still there. Every once in a while, there are proposals to cut it up, take it out, and repurpose the space, but then someone runs the numbers on what it will cost to remove the gear, mitigate the (lead brick) shielding, bring the structure and services up to spec, blah blah blah, and other alternatives are quickly found. Wait five or ten years for memory to fade, and then repeat the exercise…
cain
This one is for Baud:
https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/18yg2zx/what_the_hell_is_this/
Ruckus
@RevRick:
They are SFB supporters.
The gullibility is built in.
It has to be or they would see him as the total waste of protoplasm that he is.
Brachiator
I didn’t pay any attention to the polls when Trump was “leading,” and I’m not paying much attention now. It’s still too early and all the cautions about polls still apply.
But I have no problem if this starts to make people feel better and more enthusiastic.
I’m curious to see the level of committed Trump craziness as the Republican primaries roll out.
Otherwise it’s time to start focusing on getting the vote out and dealing with GOP opposition.
Suzanne
@Martin: I absolutely believe it. A few times in my career, I’ve been part of that team to look at a building and help assess if it’s convertible to whatever the owner or potential owner wants to do. And, like, 90% of the time, it’s cheaper (by a lot) to scrape and start over.
People are often dumb and don’t like to even think about prosaic reasons why their grand scheme might not be feasible.
The other thing that makes me crazy is when people are pissed that the team that designed Existing Building A didn’t overbuild or plan for God-knows-what the next owner wanted to do 30 years later. Damn bro, it’s because all that stuff costs money! They didn’t build the office building to hold a library because that costs money!
Baud
@cain:
Nancy
SMASHSTAB!Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: It would be wonderful if you’d help fill us in.
WaterGirl
@Ella in New Mexico: Yep. I don’t have faith in them to do the right thing because it’s the law or because it’s the right thing to do.
But I do think that their self-interest could possibly align with what’s best for the country, in which case they may do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.
I think if they are smart, they will stay out of the immunity issue if the appeals court sides with Judge Chutkan. Not take cert and let the issue have been resolved there.
cain
@Baud: haha! That was one crazy painting – I thought you’d get a kick out of it – truly a facepalm :D
Baud
@cain:
I need one of me as the Buddha.
The Bauddha!
WaterGirl
@cain: That should come with a trigger warning!
dmsilev
@cain: That strategically-placed flag is doing the world a favor, but that can’t be in compliance with the Flag Code.
Suzanne
@dmsilev: Yeah. I know. There’s a lot of hospitals with abandoned maze-style linear accelerator vaults that are just sitting there, being heated and cooled, and holding nothing but extra carpet tiles and light bulbs! And I’ve drawn up many options for what they could turn into…. and then we do not do it.
cain
@Baud:
Bauddha Bing, Bauddha Boom!
cain
@WaterGirl: haha – sorry WG :D
Martin
@Weapon X: But there’s no effort to build a systemwide center – in the sense that there’s a systemwide effort to build it. As things stand, the center is operated by UCLA. They’ll try and recruit faculty from elsewhere in the system, and those other campuses will work to retain those faculty, and in most cases succeed – because UC doesn’t do these things, each campus does, and each campus doesn’t give a shit if UC or California gets a great center, they care that THEIR CAMPUS does. So as things stand, you can’t get that concentration of talent and effort because there is no systemic effort to do so. The money that probably would have brought those faculty to a centralized center will still get paid in retention offers to prevent a UC employee from relocating to another UC (which happens constantly). Had I not retired I almost certainly would have been involved in some way in trying to derail this whole center and bring elements of it to my campus instead because there is NO campus loyalty to the system or the state. You have taxpayer dollars funding competing groups of administrators, and then funding faculty retention within the same employer, because UC has this ‘let them fight’ attitude with respect to the campuses. And there are some benefits to that in some places, but in a lot of cases it just dilutes talent across the system, prevents viable efforts to attract large national grants because the ability to coordinate across disciplines or campuses is almost nonexistent.
schrodingers_cat
There is so much BS in this quote that I don’t even know where to begin. It is a word salad of lies and half truths.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Has there ever been limits on the number of times a person could run for this office?
Thanks for the links. I am really going to try to watch the series. Any further information would be very useful.
The world seems to be accepting of an authoritarian India. I have not been keeping up with international news, but I thought I read something about press restrictions in India not too long ago.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: There are no term limits for running for Loksabha (House of Representatives). Most offices don’t have term limits.
Quiltingfool
@Suzanne: I can see why conversions to existing structures are difficult; have experienced that on a MUCH smaller scale. Picture this: Old “farm” house built by farmers circa 1950. We (hubby and I) have to rip out half of the house floor due to termite damage.
Here’s some amazing construction techniques: Prop the brick chimney with a wood board and a wood 4×6 which sits on bare earth. “Glue” Sheetrock to the chimney in the kitchen. After you pour concrete footings under the house for the load bearing walls, change your mind about room size and have the joists for said load bearing wall sitting on nothing. All 2x4s and floor joists are oak. 50 year seasoned white oak. I could go on, but you get the point.
Hubby says when figuring costs to remodel an old house, well, it will be much more per sq ft than building brand new. Plus, he says you never know what horrors you find when you start tearing into it.
As for the oak studs and joists, it isn’t all bad. The house walls don’t move when subjected to high winds…but seasoned oak resists nails, screws, etc.
Weapon X
@Martin: Of course there is no campus loyalty. Each campus has its own metrics to satisfy, and if you had the kind of system you are talking about, one under-performing unit would splatter shit on all of the other ones. Nobody would go for it, in part because they all have big egos and will assume that only the other campuses would be splattering them with shit and not the other way around. When I looked at the posted blurb, my first thought was that it will be run under the medical school/research institute model, like Scripps, meaning soft money. The soft money model is simple, but mixing it with a campus like UC Merced might get tricky. If one were going to recruit talent to Merced for that kind of endeavor, the buy-in from the UC faculty side, both the faculty that are going to populate the Research Park, and those at the home institution that would be populated (plus the city, which is not large), would have had to be gotten prior to the serious planning stage. It would basically be putting another Salk or Scripps Institute in between Fresno and Modesto. Think about that.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: The world especially western countries have more clout than they imagine. BJP and its voters care a lot about how India is perceived in the world.
Bill Arnold
@cain:
Snopes has an article on that (from the reddit comments):
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/painting-of-trump-crucified/
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: That’s what that commenter does.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: His style and nym did seem vaguely familiar.
Geminid
@Quiltingfool: Predrilling is never a bad idea for screws if you’re not in a hurry, but you really have to predrill old oak. And count on using a lot of drill bits too.
Ken
@Quiltingfool: Ah, such fond memories. Not of remodeling, of course — of watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE SEE IN HIM? WHAT? WHAT? I will be asking that question to the end of my days.
thruppence
Maybe have them ask: “Under your theory, counsel, what would stop Joe Biden as the incumbent president from ordering six members of the Supreme Court taken out and shot today if he says doing so would protect the national security?”. I mean, under this theory, he could take Trump out too, but why stop there? Maybe Joe Stalin is not our best model.
trnc
Don’t hold your breath. Whatever percentage actually believes that, you can bet your ass that 95% of them will vote.
evodevo
@Quiltingfool: Yep…dealing with seasoned oak is a bitch…drilling and deck screws or lag screws is the only way…you can spend all day trying to nail into that stuff, believe me…
EthylEster
I don’t know if this has been posted before by someone else. I am not a big fan of David French but this is excellent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/the-case-for-disqualifying-trump-is-strong.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU0.XVr_.PCobMMQoRBRE&smid=url-share
TriassicSands
Late arrival.
The answer is simple. There is nothing in the Constitution that gives Biden the right to shoot a bloated, orange monster. If it doesn’t say explicitly that “Joseph Biden as president of the United States has the right to shoot Donald J. Trump in order to protect the national security” then he can’t do that.
Whereas it states explicitly that Donald J. Trump may do anything he feels he needs to in order to secure his own “re-election.”
Oh, wait. It doesn’t say that, does it? In fact, there isn’t anything about the president’s responsibility to ensure elections are, well, anything. So much for textualism. And we can’t infer anything, can we, no matter what we think the Constitution implies. So sayeth the textualists.
Historical Note: I’m pretty sure if Madison had known that Trump would someday be president, he (Madison) would have done a complete re-write of the Constitution.
wjca
Quite. So put it next to the UC campus in Merced. Or even Davis. Lower cost of living for the professors, researchers, etc., too. So the ones who really care about the subject should have no problem relocating. Especially with no need the change employer, lose seniority, etc.
wjca
It’s a dead thread, but I gotta say:
Way easier to just add a line saying nobody born in Queens is eligible to be President.
Paul in KY
@coin operated: My cousin worked as a long haul trucker for a couple of years. Drove all over the CONUS. Said without a doubt that OK was the crappiest state, with the nastiest people (in general), that he ever experienced.
Paul in KY
@Pittsburgh Mike: We most definitely have to hang that shit around their neck. Flogging that hard in the area that is covered by that odious decision might get us TX!
Paul in KY
@…now I try to be amused: How about: ‘Under your theory, counsel, what would stop the current incumbent President from having certain Supreme Court Justices taken out and executed, if he determined them to be a threat to National Security?’
Paul in KY
@RaflW: I was that kid, at times. Buwahahahahaha!!!
Paul in KY
@catclub: That’s how it was generally done in old days (King or nobleman very close to King) would personally off the very high ranking person, to ensure it was correctly assigned to them as the instigator of the deed.
Paul in KY
@Quiltingfool: At least they used quality hardwood.
Paul in KY
@zhena gogolia: He gets to be the all-encompassing asshole that they wish they could be.
Paul in KY
@thruppence: You beat me to it!
The Lodger
@Ken: Who wants to earthquake-proof a law school anyway?