The Frankish Reich

In a (futile) attempt to bring some sanity to the discussion ... ... for a long time reports have said that at least some of the boxes and boxes Trump shipped to Mar-a-Lago contained classified documents. I don't know how this ever could have happened other than someone (Trump; his cronies) ignoring the law. If anyone here has ever worked with classified docs, you'll know the drill. Locked safe. Sign in and out documents. End of the day inventory to make sure that everything that was taken out was put back. Courier cards for people moving documents from one location to another. Etc, etc., etc. It's actually a royal pain in the ass, but everyone -- EVERYONE -- knows the drill. Sometimes people leave out classified in their offices and go to lunch, forgetting about them. That triggers an investigation. Sometimes your security clearance will get revoked, which is a nice way of saying you lose your job. Again ... moving classified out of the White House to a private residence is unheard of. Does. Not. Happen. Period. Unless you are just flouting the law. Hence, the search. (Hillary email people: yes, that was a problem, and yes, there may have been classified shared over that unsecured network. If so, same offense. Same offense, but ... that's not as brazen as literally SHIPPING BOXES WITH CLASSIFIED DOCS TO YOUR PRIVATE RESIDENCE. You just can't ignore it. In the end, the FBI didn't)

Remember that old, ridiculed Obama line: "You didn't build that!" Well, in the case of much of the farmland of the Netherlands, that is absolutely true. This is the best short summary I've found: https://alltrades.substack.com/p/wonders-of-our-world-4-the-delta And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder The Netherlands is frequently associated with polders, as its engineers became noted for developing techniques to drain wetlands and make them usable for agriculture and other development. This is illustrated by the saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands".[2] The Dutch have a long history of reclamation of marshes and fenland, resulting in some 3,000 polders[3] nationwide. By 1961, about half of the country's land, 18,000 square kilometres (6,800 sq mi), was reclaimed from the sea. The Dutch government quite literally created much of the farmland these "get the government off our backs" farmers are working. It was "reclaimed" from the sea by a vast system of dikes and drainage. So shouldn't the Dutch people as a whole have some voice in how that land they created (through taxes and borrowing) be used? I'm not taking sides here. I don't know enough about the issue to say whether more or less land should be devoted to farmland, or whether there should be limits on fertilizer usage, etc. This is for the Dutch people to decide about their own man-made (much of it) land. But it does strike me as more than a bit hypocritical for the farmers whose very existence depends on government projects over the centuries (intensifying in the last 60 years or so) to be claiming that the government is the problem.

As usual, things went south real fast in this thread. But to take it back to the start: I find it interesting to see what causes the Russian state funds (and the amount of funding is probably pretty small) in its attempts to sow discord and to weaken the United States as a strategic adversary. Read the list and think for a bit. Then think about all of your favorite “new media” Twitter gods and how they fit in.

So … I take it you do not support any federal legislation outlawing or regulating abortion? Because that’s not what I’m seeing from most “pro-life activists.”

I never, ever would have expected this. In KANSAS! More proof for the theory that Roe v. Wade gave legislators -- and even voters -- the cover to oppose the right to abortion in principle. Now it's not just a principle. It's real. And people are saying "leave us and our bodies alone."

Bill Russell was just a few years before my sports crazy kid time. I knew him mostly as a broadcaster, and I loved him in that role. Later I learned about him as a civil rights activist who was a true leader on and off the court. Giants truly walked the earth in those days. I didn't realize how great they were. This tribute from Kareem is worth a read: https://kareem.substack.com/p/the-bill-russell-i-knew-for-60-years?fbclid=IwAR0wXLqq-P3-JmUg1pOmfkK0h7Z_pk4A808oFK5hfBiXQyYDgjS3D618qtE Really. Even if you don't like Kareem. He's a very good writer, and a man (and basketball player) I think I misunderstood for a long time. A complicated, intelligent, three-dimensional man. Just like Russell. Just a quick glimpse of the article: I first met Bill Russell in 1961, when I was a 14-year-old freshman at Power Memorial High School. I had just arrived at the school gym for team practice only to find the Boston Celtics practicing instead. I was surprised to see a professional team in our gym, especially the NBA champions for the last three seasons in a row. As I found out later, because our gym was only twelve blocks from Madison Square Garden and near to several hotels, we were convenient for teams to practice. As I wandered into the gym, I saw, sitting casually on the bleacher bench reading The New York Times, Bill Russell. The Secretary of Defense himself. My personal hero. I also saw my coach, Jack Donahue, chatting with the Celtics coach, Red Auerbach. Being naturally shy and unnaturally polite, I decided to head downstairs to the locker room and wait patiently until they were done. Maybe I could find a copy of the Times to read too. “Lew, c’mere,” Coach Donahue called to me. I gulped. Me? I shuffled over to Coach Donahue, who introduced me to Coach Auerbach. Coach Auerbach gestured at Bill Russell. “Hey, Bill, c’mere. I want you to meet this kid.” Bill Russell dipped down his newspaper and looked me over with a frown. Then he snorted. “I’m not getting up just to meet some kid.” I shrank to about six inches tall. I just wanted to run straight home. Auerbach chuckled. “Don’t let him get to you, kid. Sometimes he can be a real sourpuss.” He grabbed my wrist and walked me over to Russell. “Bill, be nice. This is the kid who just might be the next you.” Bill looked at me again, this time taking a little longer. I was already 7’, two inches taller than him. I stuck out my hand. “How do you do, Mr. Russell. Pleasure to meet you.” He didn’t smile, but his demeanor had softened, just a little. He shook my hand. “Yeah, yeah, kid.” That’s how I met my childhood hero.

American agriculture has been a tremendously profitable industry for a long time. Long gone are the 1980s days of Farm Aid. And government aid during COVID was a huge boon for farmers: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/u-s-farmers-won-t-see-profits-like-2020-for-decade-usda-says#xj4y7vzkg And this one is just downright stunning - take a look at the hockey stick graph of increasing subsidies: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/L312041A027NBEA Yes, we may certainly expect farmers to whine when Uncle Sam takes a tiny portion of the feedbag away. Agriculture in the USA is one of the most insanely subsidized industries in the world, from price supports (a depression/WWII era invention that proves there is nothing harder to eliminate than a government program), to below-market prices for irrigation water (the California Central Valley would have been out of the farming business decades ago if it had to compete on the open market for scarce water resources), to special tax treatment for a whole host of agricultural uses. In the "I knew a guy" category: - Price supports: a knew a lobbyist for the Hawaiian cane sugar industry. This industry would have completely died around 1970 but for special protections Congress gave it -- the guy was rightfully proud of his achievements in making that happen. Why the special protections? Well, like everything else, a stable sugar supply was treated as a national security concern. - Special tax treatment: a know a guy who keeps a tiny (I think the minimum number is eight) herd of bison on his ranchland in Colorado. I tried to wrap my head around this, since he says he makes no money off them. The purpose: tax incentives. I knew a guy who's uncle made more money taking his dairy farm out of production in Michigan than he did actually keeping dairy cows. And on and on... I don't mind farmers bellyachin about hard times. It's part of the trade. But when it comes time to talkin about getting the govment off their backs, well lets remember that they owe a lot of their success to that same government. Shocking revelation: the Dems subsidize people who vote for them. Let's forgive that student debt! The Repubs subsidize people who vote for them. Let's help the struggling Great American Family Farm!

Thanks. I did a little more digging, so here’s what i found: - there’s a sound basis for concluding that exposure to burn pits may cause various ailments down the line, although how far down the line (the bill takes it from 5 years to 10 years) is really unknown. - the bill creates a presumption that burn pit exposure caused a whole array of ailments. In other words it’s sufficient to show (1) you were exposed; (2) you’ve got the ailment. This eliminates the difficult task of showing causation. is this fair? Well, on balance … probably. We do know there’s a lot of fraud in VA disability claims, so this is a classic “we are willing to accept paying out on some (many?) bogus or poorly substantiated claims in order to make sure we don’t deny some (many) valid ones.” But it’s not like it’s a foregone conclusion that anyone who ever opposed the bill is evil. So on balance … two cheers for Jon Stewart here.

Serious question: I’ve been looking for an objective study linking exposure to these burn pits to various diseases. So far I’m coming up empty. I have no problem with committing money to further research of possible ties, but should we be legislating in a manner that implies that Congress (not science) has established such a link?

True. Nobody is doing decades in prison for "selling a bag of weed." Just doesn't happen. Even most (all?) of the crack-era war on drugs people sentenced to major time were involved in significant trafficking. I'm not going to belittle the consequences of a drug-related conviction on a lot of people - can't qualify for student loans, barred from a lot of jobs, etc, often for the classic "youthful offense." But 20 years in jail for selling a small amount of weed?. No. That's a myth.

Ahh, remember the good old days? Those days when First Son-in-Law was a special envoy negotiating the “Abraham Accords” with Mohammad bin Salman and some minor sheikdoms? Remember how that was the crowning achievement of Trump’s “think outside the box” Middle East peace initiative? It kind of looks a little different from the perspective of 2022, when the Saudis are dumping $2 billion cash into Kushner’s investment fund and Trump is playing (or really is) dumb about the nationalities of 95% of the 9/11 terrorists. Maybe there was more at stake than mere peace in our time. Like $2 billion more.

I don’t think there’s going to be enough to charge Trump over the false electors ruse. He no doubt egged on those who proposed the theory, but he had a sketch legal opinion from Eastman that he can fall back on. The strongest case I see is the intimidation of Georgia election officials — it’s worst moment was the “find me 11,000 votes” call. A problem we have here is the law needs to more clearly delineate the line between Trump the President and Trump the Candidate. A lot of what Trump was doing was in his capacity as Losing Candidate, and in that capacity he shouldn’t have any more right to urge/cajole/threaten election officials than any other candidate has. I do believe there’s a strong case there, but it may be that Georgia DAs (particularly Fulton Co.) are concerned that a charge brought during the course of some hotly contested other races could backfire on the other Democratic candidates.

There was one Q Anon inspired fool who tried to break through an interior security door protecting duly elected lawmakers, who resisted lawful efforts to repel her, who was then shot and killed. By the way, gun lovers: I have a good friend who’s a cop. He tells me that the Capitol Police officer’s shot was textbook perfect. Center torso, aorta blown up, immediate blood pressure drop to zero, threat neutralized.

I agree in principle, but may I mention: - Governor Jimmy Carter - Governor George W. Bush

That’s kind of a functional definition of “intelligence,” isn’t it? The discussion started with someone labeling Tucker Carlson as “Ivy League educated.” I said he isn’t. So … why would that matter? 1. We are in a world in which relying on intelligence testing per se is illegal at worst, considered uncouth at best. So we use proxies for intelligence. One (for now at least) is whether you were admitted to a top college. And it’s a pretty good proxy since the Ivy League schools generally only admit the top 5% of SAT/ACT scorers. (Note: test optional crap may ruin this.) Economist Bryan Caplan puts it this way: Would you rather be admitted to Princeton and have a run of the mill public university education, or would you rather be denied at Princeton and get a superb, world class education at Southeastern Nebraska State College? That is the “signaling” importance of elite education. If I see Harvard on your resume, I immediately think “high IQ.” Better to just ask the candidate to take an IQ test, but I can’t do that. 2. High IQ — general intelligence, or “G” in the trade, is critical for many (most) important jobs in the non-manual labor sector. 3. Completing college is also a signal — a signal that one has the sticktoitiveness that is critical to success in many challenging fields of endeavor. We are at an odd moment in history today: a Gates or Zuckerberg can also signal “I’m really smart, look at my Harvard acceptance, but my ideas are so awesome they can’t wait 4 years.” But that’s a modern anomaly that applies to the .01 percent. 4. Many non college educated people are as smart or smarter than those with college educations, or maybe even smarter than those with elite college degrees. But it’s really hard to find that out until someone has a long, long history of sustained excellence. So we use college degrees, and elite college degrees particularly, as a proxy for an extended test run. i used to say being smart doesn’t correlate with being, say, a good President. I still think this is largely true. But our recent experience with some, umm, “non-smart” Presidents (Bush 43, Trump, Biden) is starting to make me reconsider that opinion. And yes, one of the above has that Ivy League undergrad degree, and one has an Ivy MBA. Hey, I never said it’s a perfect proxy.

Joe Namath is a good one. I was too young to pay attention to the SB victory, but I did catch a lot of him in the early 70s. When he was on, he could make some remarkable throws. But even accounting for his era and the huge differences between then and now in the passing game, he had a pretty mediocre career overall. Joe Ferguson retired with a better passer rating, and their careers overlapped significantly.

Stupid, yes. But really: when it comes to QBs, the Bills got lucky after years of being similarly stupid.

Yes. I’m sure this is just like how Hillary had secret Parkinson’s because her 70 year old body stumbled into a car in 2016. (She seems in fine old lady shape 6 years later). This is also just like how Trump had secret Parkinson’s because his 74 year old body needed two hands to drink a glass of water in 2020, not to mention how he could barely navigate a 4% grade walking ramp that same year. (He seems to be in fine old man shape 2 years later).

Was rank choice voting for NYC Mayor perfect? No. There were a lot of problems, not the least of which was what seemed like an eternity before the ultimate winner was announced. But in my opinion, it resulted in the election of a far more sensible, centrist candidate - Adams - who appeals to a larger (and yes, more diverse in the true sense of the word) segment on New Yorkers than what we got the last couple times around (DeBlasio x2) with traditional voting. Could Adams have made it with the old voting system? No. So anything that forces candidates to appeal to the great middle - where, after all, most of the voters live - is worth considering.

My thinking is not that the 3rd party will win anything. It’s that the third party - if it’s a centrist party, and if it’s not bound by the weird coalitions that we now have in America (the “if I want lower taxes I have to accept restrictions on abortion rights as part of the deal” thing) - might be the nudge toward the center that both parties need. Ross Perot was a clown. But without the Perot threat, would Bill Clinton have governed as an old-fashioned Mondale style Democrat instead of the more centrist policies he adopted.

I agree. The more I think about it, the more I believe that we DID see a third party emerge -- the Trump Party. It's Patrick Buchanan's old fusion of nostalgia, nationalism, and Trumanesque economic/trade policy. The problem is it took over an existing party, the Republicans, within a period of just a couple years. What used to be the Republican Party vanished from the face of America, or retreated into places like Utah (Romney).

Usually "elite" means "the socially superior part of society"; "the choice part, the cream"; "a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise power and influence." 38% of the population over 25 are college grads. I get references to "Ivy League Elites" or something like that. But really ... nearly 4 in 10 Americans are now "elite?" And besides, why shouldn't these "elites" exercise more influence? I'm all for a meritocracy. Putting dumb people in charge is dumb.

Latest evidence: https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/governors/2022-primaries/maryland-goes-maga Maryland was lucky to have a generally sensible Republican governor to balance a solidly Democratic (often of the “progressive” ilk) legislature. Well, no more. The Republicans just decided to go into the general election backing a fool. If I lived in Maryland I’m not sure what I’d do. Other than leave Maryland, that is. At least for a while it looked like former Obama Labor Secretary Tom Perez was going to win the Dem primary. The word “socialist” is thrown around a lot, but he pretty much fits the bill. Maybe now they’ll escape that fate as some other candidates did ok. Bigger picture: the parties are so extreme now that if I want some kind of brake on taxing and spending, I’ve gotta be willing to accept a heavy dose of election denialism too. Third parties don’t work in America, in that they don’t win elections. But sometimes they push the existing parties more toward the middle. I’m something of a radical centrist at this stage of my life. There is no party I would feel at home in. Is there any movement at all to recapture the voters in my part of the political spectrum? Because if you start looking at issue polling, that’s where most of us live.

Yeah, I just read … what?

The point was “good guy with a gun saves the day” story was ignored - I say IGNORED - by the mainstream media. So the rational response is: yes, I agree, the tweet I embedded here was wrong about that. And then and only then do we get to the “what it all means” analysis Social media makes us stupid. correction: reliance on social media to obtain our news makes us stupid.