sylver_dragon

While folks like Schiff have some pull in the DNC, it’s the delegates at the convention which choose the nominee. Party leaders have spent years ensuring that pledged delegates stay pledged delegates on the first round of voting. And it’s Biden’s team who chose those delegates. So, as long as Biden says he’s staying, he’s got this locked up.

If Biden refuses to step down, there isn’t a lot for the DNC to do. Biden has the nomination locked up with pledged delegates. And I seriously doubt we are going to see a mass defection at the convention. So, short of him waking up dead one of these mornings (always a possibility for an 81 year old man), we’re riding the Biden ship all the way down.

Who knows, maybe Trump will do us all a favor and have a massive coronary in the next few months. Goodness knows his eating habits aren’t the best. But, my money is on the Biden-Trump rematch no one wanted.

You don’t smoke brisket on propane.

Well then, here we go.

Look, look guys, we’re only slightly losing!

Showing “no change” would be a great result, if Biden were already ahead in the polls. But, he’s not. Right now, Democrats seem to be stuck in a Sunk Cost Fallacy. Sure the other option is unknown and scary. But, when the known situation is “you’re fucked”, the “unknown and scary” starts to look less scary.

Also never been a fan of Biden (but voted for him, and will again, if I have to). You’re falling into a Sunk Cost Fallacy. Yes, anyone chosen to replace Biden would be a gamble. But, Biden is a losing horse. The right time to replace him was last year. But, just because we missed that opportunity doesn’t mean we should throw good time after bad. He should be replaced before things get so late it literally cannot be done.

This wasn’t some otherwise strong candidate, who just had a bad day. Biden is already struggling in polling. While the economy hasn’t been fantastic, it’s good enough that he should be crushing Trump. Even in 2016, Clinton was polling ahead of Trump and still managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Biden isn’t winning. He’s maybe tied and maybe losing in current polling. Trump had already proven that he can be convicted in court and not lose support. There’s just not much left to hurt Trump. And Biden doesn’t seem to have anything left to gain support. Things are not going to get better for Biden.

Biden is losing this race. It’s time to follow the rats off the ship, before we’re trying to escape a ship on the bottom of the ocean.

That’s surprising, I would have expected his plans were pretty clear. You don’t genocide a population and then just leave the place empty afterwards.

Russia could do that. But, they are kinda busy trying to keep up with demand from their own forces. And that’s only going to get worse as they run out of mothballed Soviet shitboxes to reactivate.

I suspect Politico fixed it. When I first loaded the page, it had the same image you see in the thumbnail. And that’s was what prompted my comment. Looks like they updated the page and it’s now an appropriate image.

Story about Belgian F-16s.
Picture shows US F-35.
Guess the AI’s came for Politico’s editors first.

That’s going to be one of those things which would need to be demonstrated on a case by case basis. Does being an asshole make him biased in a case on corporate law? Probably not. There could be cases where such a display might be used to question if he should recuse himself, but it’s going to be much harder than “I think a reasonable person could question his impartiality”. Honestly, if my lawyer was planning on that to make or break a case, I’d go find a new lawyer. Really, the interesting part of that code of ethics is the bit around political activities and the limits placed on the court and it’s staff. Though, even those have been severely weakened for lower courts, where the limits are actually enforced.

And, as has been noted about the code, it’s really just a paper tiger.

They are supposed to be non-partisan in their professional capacity. Asking anyone to not engage in politics in their personal life would also likely slam face-first into the First Amendment. US Federal Employees do have limitations on partisan activities, but only while on the clock or when acting as in an official capacity. They also cannot hold elected office at any level of government. While those rules do not apply to the Supreme Court Justices, it does provide a good baseline for expectations.

Supreme Court Justices are still citizens of the US with all of the rights that entails. While they should be held to a much higher standard, while working in an official capacity. Once they get home, if they want to hang out in their chonies and wave a flag which overtly states “I’m a fucking moron who hates people for no reason”, well that is their right, just like any other citizen.

Ultimately, this whole flag kerfluffle seems like more “outrage culture” crap. Sure, I agree it makes Alito look like an asshole. But, anyone calling for criminal prosecution has their head so far up their own ass they are likely to see daylight again. Free speech, is one of those really tough things to support. It’s easy to say, “I have a right to free speech”. The hard thing is saying “and so does that asshole”. But, iot’s important top protect, because eventually, you might the the “asshole” to the people in charge.

The only thing I am not sure about is the upside down flag.

Under the US Flag Code flying the flag upside down is a sign of distress or great danger. It’s worth noting that the US Flag Code is an advisory code, i.e. These are guidelines, not laws. There’s a long history of attempts to codify the Flag Code into law and various levels of government being smacked down by the courts. Ultimately, Alito (or his wife) is well within his rights to fly whatever flag he wants, however he wants. It doesn’t mean he isn’t a terrible person, but even terrible people’s speech is protected.

Unfortunately, yes. There have been a lot of efforts to shift the energy mix in the EU away from Russian oil and natural gas. But, the effort has been slow and has meant rising costs. Also, by removing Russian production from the supply side, prices will invariably increase. Ukraine does have to balance the damage that can do to foreign support, against their war aims. Personally, I think it’s pretty selfish of the EU and US to ask Ukraine not to strike those resources. It’s essentially the US/EU saying, “more of your people need to die, so we can save money.” It’s a really crappy thing to ask.

War is logistics. If the Russian war machine can be starved of fuel and money, the machine will grind to a halt. It’s just a question of, can Ukraine cause enough damage to Russia’s oil infrastructure fast enough to survive the advantages Russia has in manpower and equipment?

I mean, the US could do that, but it’s kinda pointless. Ukraine would just be buying them with money that the US Government gave them in the aid package. It would mean the US Treasury moving money from the “aid going to Ukraine” column to the “US DoD budget” column. Sure, some of the aid is structured as loans. However, the President has the power to forgive half of those loans by the end of the year and the next President will have the power to forgive the rest of those loans in 2026. Unless the war suddenly ends and Ukraine suddenly finds a shit-ton of money somewhere, those loans are just going to be forgiven. As there is just no way they will ever be paid back.

This might partly be because 18-24 year olds have a history of poor turn-out at the polls in general. For 2020 (The last Presidential Election and a year of historically high turnout), The US Census Bureau has the 18-24 age range of US Citizens voting at a rate of 51.4% (Source, see Table 1, Row 9, Column L). The next lowest is 25-34 year olds at 60.3%. And it just goes up from there.

It’s a bit of a self-feeding cycle. Young people don’t vote, so politicians don’t care about them. Politicians don’t care about young voters, so young people don’t show up at the polls. Sure, if some magical politician could figure out how to get young people to the polls, there’s a lot of untapped potential. But, in reality, that’s balanced against the potential of tuning out older voters, who show up at the polls regularly. Politicians and activists have been doing everything they can to get young people to show up at the polls, since I was young enough to be the target demographic. That was decades ago, and it hasn’t helped much.

Handy Infographic from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO):
.

• Total Federal outlays: $6.1 Trillion
• Federal Social Spending
  • Social Security: $1.3T
  • Medicare: $0.839T
  • Medicaid: $0.616T
  • Income Security Programs: $0.448T
  • Total Social Spending: $3.203T

Math warning:

(3.203T / $6.1T) * 100% = 52.5%  

So, not quite the previous poster’s 55%, but pretty close. There is also an “Other” column which likely includes other social spending and may have gotten us to that number. But, it’s enough of a mixed bag, and way too much work, to try and pick it all out.

While the US could certainly adjust it’s spending in a lot of good ways, the idea that the US spends “nothing” on social programs is provably false. These numbers also get weird and much harder to pin down when we look at State level taxes and spending. Many years ago, I dug into education spending in the US. And while Federal Education spending is a drop in the bucket, the actual number is pretty large, because it’s considered a State responsibility and each State spends large amounts of money on it.

For example, my home State of Virginia budgets $29.9 Billion for “Health and Human Services” this Fiscal Year 2024 and $25.0 Billion for “Education”, those two line items eating up about 62% of the State budget.

Considering that Congress just (fucking finally) handed the President a whole lot of money in “Presidential Drawdown Authority”. I suspect the conversation is going to go a whole lot like:
US DoD: We bought all these former Soviet shit-boxes to prevent them being used by Russia and to build goodwill with Kazakhstan.
US President: Hey, look at all these former Soviet shitboxes the DoD has sitting in inventory. We don’t need these. I’m giving them to Ukraine who can find a use for them.

US Federal Law does NOT require that bills only deal with a single issue. So, a single bill could send aid to Ukraine, outlaw hats and declare Tuesday, “puppy kicking day”. And that would be fully within the US Constitutional method for passing Federal laws. All that matters is that the exact same text is passed in both The House of Representatives and The Senate and is then signed by The President. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff around it (veto process, and filibuster), but the ELI5 version is both houses of Congress pass the same bill and the President signs it and thus it becomes US Federal Law.

There will, of course, be a whole other process around the law being challenged in the Courts. ByteDance will undoubtedly challenge the TikTok ban in Court. And that will take years to fully wind it’s way through the system. And the courts may issue an injunction, preventing the law from being enforced, until the decision is made. Basically saying, “nope Federal Government, you cannot enforce this until we say so”. Personally, I would expect that in this case. So, don’t expect TikTok to leave the US any time soon. Note that, this can be done to part of a law (again, I would expect this) and not the whole law at once. So, this won’t imperil US aid to Ukraine, Israel or Taiwan. It just means that we’re likely to see the bounds of US Federal Government power tested a bit. Does the US Federal Government have the power to unilaterally kick a company out of the US? I’d bet on “yes”, especially with the ties to national security. But, I could easily lose that bet.