TheVat

The interpretations that allow owning military assault weapons are hardly "literal" or based on the original purpose of allowing state militias. Your last sentence is obvious, and many here have pointed out how slavery led to later Constitutional reform. FWiW, many founders did not see slavery as moral, but lacked the political clout to expressly forbid it to Southern colonies who would have refused to come into the uneasy Union. Hindsight is 20/20. Nor is Dodd v Jackson's ignoring two cornerstones of unenumerated rights and equal protection in any sense an "original" interpretation where Roe is concerned. Roe was settled law for fifty years because of its strong Constitutional grounding in century old amendments. I think you have missed several posts here that clarified the situation with a newly radical RW and conservative Catholic SCOTUS. I feel like this discussion was already done in previous pages, so won't revisit.

I love the smell of red herring in the morning. Smells like breakfast in Trondheim. The concept of pluralistic secular society isn't that esoteric: when moral positions vary between different sects and faiths, the secular society tries to stay neutral and let each sect make choices, with a few guardrails in place so we don't have human sacrifice or infanticide or institutionalized pedophilia. If your sect doesn't believe in abortions, you are free to not have one. The point of secularism is that the sects that oppose abortion, or gay marriage, or cross-dressing your dog or whatever, are not allowed to force their beliefs on others even if they comprise a majority. Alexis de Tocqueville in his influential writings on America noted that the tyranny of a majority, if directed at an unpopular minority, could be very dangerous to freedom and a secular society. Our founders were very aware of this danger, especially in regards to the potential to return to a theocracy, and wrote a Constitution to discourage such a regression.

It's worth noting that a ban on abortion actually violates some religious beliefs and practices, and therefore could be met with a Constitutional pleading in high courts. https://www.brandeis.edu/jewish-experience/social-justice/2022/june/abortion-judaism-joffe.html

Due to heavily gerrymandered districting in about half the US states, a minority view of abortion is now becoming the law there. Simply chiding us "vote better!" is not going to fix this. Real solutions will be complex and difficult and require electoral reform and, before that holy grail is found, underground networks to help pregnant women trapped by various circumstances in states that have gone medieval.

When I lived in Omaha, where STRATCOM is headquartered, there was no point in worrying. At one time, Omaha was the number one in priority as Russian target. Most conversations were along the lines of "well, if there's ww3 we'd all be incinerated.". The whole Prepper basement thing would just get you snickered at there. (So now we live close to Ellsworth AFB, which is probably also in the Top Ten, target-wise. Dammit.) I think Shoes is correct that any attack on Russia would be very dangerous. One reason I'm more open to supporting some sort of moderate coup in Russia (Vlad would look nice on a gibbet) is that the present situation leads to them holding the whole world hostage because of their evident openness to nuke options. Longterm that seems intolerable and insane.

About halfway down this lengthy recap of all the findings by the Jan. 6 special committee (addressing seven points of malfeasance), point #4 is about efforts of Trump and his staff to convince state lawmakers and election officials to alter the election results. I find these actions to be the most fertile grounds for prosecution by the DOJ and various states. https://www.lawfareblog.com/evaluating-jan-6-committees-evidence In her opening statement, Vice Chair Cheney asserted that Trump, Giuliani, and Eastman each had a direct role in pressuring state and local election officials to change outcomes in the 2020 election. “Each of these efforts to overturn the election is independently serious [and] each deserves attention both by Congress and by our Department of Justice,” Cheney said. Cheney reminded the audience that while Trump was calling election officials (and often stoking public threats against them), he had already been repeatedly informed by his own campaign staff and the Justice Department that his claims of election fraud were baseless.... I would think the only defense Trump would have here would be one predicated on his own emotional incapacity to hear true reports of his loss of the election. And a defense of incompetency is probably not a good one for a president, especially one with Trump's narcissism. And such a defense would hurt his political future, perhaps deal a decisive blow to his chances in the GOP primary, as well as undermine his future endorsement of other candidates.

Well they didn't call him Teflon Don for nothing. In a legal proceeding, establishing mens rea is the tricky part, and Trump and his ilk are good at weaseling out of their own words. Trump will argue all day (or get lawyers to do the arguing for him) on what "fight" means, or what "will be wild" means in a given context. He will feign naivete on what the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers are about. He will say his remarks about what Pence "deserves" are venting, that they are metaphorical, that any gibbet he saw on the Capitol lawn was taken as purely symbolic.

Not when EV subsidies are yoked to a larger plan to move towards carbon neutrality with green power sources. And coal won't be the bridge fuel, because it produces twice the carbon per watt that NG does. And NG plants are much cheaper to build and operate. Coal is dying of natural economic causes, there's no good news for it, and Manchin does a disservice to his WV constituents by pretending otherwise. But as Stringy noted, he is what you get in WV - the voters live in denial.

At this point, the pique is understandable given how many times he moves the goalposts of compromise. Given the fossil fuel money he's raked in - as @zapatos noted - I like to call him Joe Mansion. Mansion is why I get cranky when the Right rhetoric turns to "the Democrats control Congress so why is Biden so impotent blah blah blah..." Democrats don't control the Senate, because Mansion doesn't really caucus with them. He deserves a lump of coal in his Xmas stocking.

And some women with acute medical episodes where an emergency abortion is needed may die, in states where the ban is total.... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/14/texas-sues-guidance-emergency-abortions Texas sued the federal government on Thursday over new guidance from the Biden administration directing hospitals to provide emergency abortions regardless of state bans on the procedure. Those state bans came into effect in the wake of the US supreme court’s reversal of its landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision. Republican Texas attorney general Ken Paxton in the lawsuit argued the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was trying to “use federal law to transform every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic”. The lawsuit focused on guidance issued on Monday advising that a federal law protecting patients’ access to emergency treatment requires performing abortions when doctors believe a pregnant woman’s life or health is threatened. The guidance came after Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed an executive order on Friday seeking to ease access to services to terminate pregnancies after the supreme court on 24 June overturned the Roe v Wade ruling recognizing a nationwide right of women to obtain abortions. Abortion services ceased in Texas after the state’s highest court on 2 July, at Paxton’s urging, cleared the way for a nearly century-old abortion ban to take effect. HHS said the guidance from its US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services agency did not constitute new policy but merely reminded doctors of their obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. But in the lawsuit filed in Lubbock, the Republican-led state of Texas argued that federal law has never authorized the federal government to compel doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and that the guidance was unlawful.

Hadn't fully realized how "red herring" works as a double entendre. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/politics/john-bolton-donald-trump-jan-6/index.html

My marriage is currently an unholy trinity consisting of husband, wife, and feline she-devil. Where's my chart? I want to READ IT NOW!

Given the current clear danger to democracy posed by the Right, I am not too concerned if Democrats are legitimately pointing out the need for everyone on the Left/Middle to band together. Small niche parties like the Green can hurt Democratic chances in some close contests, and there's nothing wrong with saying so. Is snagging a couple points for your niche group really worth the consequences like another Trumpian president and/or a Republican Congress? FFS we're trying to save the Republic from fascists and theocrats and King Coal? How Green is your country going to be if it's run by Trump, Inc.? You don't sit around polishing your trophies and picking nits from the carpets when the house is on fire.

Anything that raises a middle finger to the religious zealots shoving their beliefs at everyone is good news. It will get ugly, as this state/federal car crash makes its way through the federal courts.

Real craftsmanship. If it gets to where your cutting boards have 3D cats or time tunnels, then you may need to back away from the workbench for a while. Had not heard of paduuk - that's the "frame" pieces?

New Yorker article on what women will be dealing with more now as the Uterus OverLords gain hegemony. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/20/a-texas-teen-agers-abortion-odyssey (written a week or two before June 24, the day of the Dobbs v Jackson ruling)

Yep. It will also help to crack down on ghost guns, which are also assembled by an end user... UPS just gave notice it would stop shipping for retailers that vend ghost gun parts: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3bdk/ups-ghost-gun-rules

Well you may question it. The dimension of time seems to be critical, in this inquiry. If a person is seen as a temporal 4D worm extending through decades, then some segments could be not be accessed by our awareness but we still may have a broader awareness of the worm. Maybe it's not so much a trick of the mind as it's the natural extension of the mind through time. Like if I'm at the beach and parts of my body are buried in sand yet I still sense that I'm a complete body. That will seem more than a trick of tactile and proprioception and so on. But, yes, we could all be deceived on this, all too easily. (Now I must extend the worm of "me" into the kitchen)

Perhaps our self is a bit like the Ship of Theseus. Many parts change, are lost, are replaced, but there's a continuity we call "me."

Very shocking and saddening news from Japan today, a nation with the strictest gun control. The weapon is reported to be handmade. With a population of 125 million, Japan had only 10 gun-related criminal cases last year, resulting in one death and four injuries, according to police. Eight of those cases were gang-related. Tokyo had no gun incidents, injuries or deaths in the same year, although 61 guns were seized.

From Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/boris-johnson-resigns-brexit-conservative-party-failure/661514/ More important, Brexit, the solution to the problem Johnson and his supporters described, was based on a series of lies. The electorate was promised that departure from the EU would lead not only to fewer immigrants but to greater prosperity, more welfare spending, less crowded hospitals. Instead, six years after the vote, Britain is less prosperous and more unequal. Brexit reduced the U.K. GDP by at least 1.5 percent even before it took full effect; the U.K. has the highest inflation rate in the G7; small businesses, especially importers, have been crushed by Brexit-related red tape and supply-chain problems. Though committees have been set up to look for “benefits from Brexit,” few are available. Brexiteers instead crow about the British vaccine campaign or British support for Ukraine, both of which would have been perfectly compatible with EU membership. Of course, Brexit is not why Johnson has now resigned, or why his cabinet melted down, or why his popularity plunged. But it is an essential piece of the backstory. If British politics were a Faulkner novel, Brexit would be the long-ago tragedy that haunts all of the main characters, even if they hadn’t been born when it happened. Why did a story about a jolly drinking session his cabinet held during COVID lockdown do so much damage to Johnson? Partly because he was already suspected of dishonesty about Brexit, and “Partygate” reconfirmed the image of him as a liar. Why did his Conservative colleagues ultimately decide not to remove him as prime minister when they voted last month? Partly because Johnson is so closely associated with Brexit that a rejection of him looked like a rejection of Brexit, the policy that the party still claims as its greatest achievement. Why are Conservative and Labour politicians alike shocked by his admission that he met a former KGB officer, now a wealthy oligarch, at a private party in Italy while he was still foreign secretary, with no other officials present? Partly because the role of Russian money and influence in the Brexit campaign has never been fully explained.

I did follow it some, and recalled the grabby appointee had some sort of name like that (like a surgeon named Dr. Cutter). That Boris openly said what he should have kept to himself seems very like TFG here. Of course, with far more consequences than the TFG reaped, given that you still have a somewhat functional system of taking out the trash over there. Here the dumpster fills up with garbage, then it's set on fire for several years.

The clever OP title...reminded me of a sci-fi novel where they used that expression (where the name of something happens to express a quality of it) in regards to bad architecture. Apparently in architecture a "folly" means a building whose features are primarily ornamental, usually ridiculously extravagant. So when the author describes such a building that everyone agrees was a waste of taxpayers money, she calls it "folly by name, folly by nature."

BoJo always looked to me like a man who just climbed out of bed. I see all his problems with the optics of things as flowing from this original sin.

Maybe. I will deliver my vredict on that soon.