Ancient_Anemone
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User ID: 2728
Ancient_Anemone
17d ago
You didn't read the link. Again--congress made it a separate entity from the State Department years after it was established.
Since congress separated it, the president cannot get rid of it. Congress would have to do that.
You seem to not know how our goverment works. That is fine, but this discussion is pointless until you read up. I recommend starting here
Cross department communication has always been an issue. It is also how 9/11 slipped through our intelligence agency's fingers. There were individuals that knew that something was up, but they were disregarded by their superiors, or had difficultly communicating in a clear way cross-departmentally what was going on.
To answer your question, SS thought that building was secured by the local police because that building was the local police's staging ground and HQ. They assumed (very bad decision in hindsight), that the local police's HQ would be locked down by them and it wasn't.
Local police departments make routine errors pretty frequently on a variety of assignments and they made a big one here. That shouldn't be surprising to anyone.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
Ok then make the case, with evidence, of why it was some sort of malicious conspiracy.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
That is irrational when a perfectly good explanation exists for why it was human error. If you think it was something else, the burden of proof rests with you to make that case with evidence.
Until then, its hitchen's razor for me.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
To further support your point, minus the Fentanyl Czar position, the agreement is an identical one to the $1.3B agreement Trudeau had with the Biden administration in December.
Its all smoke and mirrors and red meat for Trump's base.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
You are wrong on both counts and really need to read up a bit on this. It was created by EO, but established as an "independent establishment outside of the State Department by Section 1413 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, Division G of P.L. 105-277. So again, this action is another example of executive branch overstep. If they want to get rid of it, fine, but to it legally through congress. Which they have a majority in both chambers mind you.
Since September of 2020, there have been rules to prevent security clearances being given to anyone who has been a lobbyist or have a financial conflict of interest. This has not been done. Musk owns companies that compete with other companies who have government contracts, whereas now he will have unfettered access to their employees information (SSN, address, tax info, etc) along with complete information on government contracts with those competitors.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
What the Trump administration is trying to do with this executive order is unlikely to hold up in court. Wether anything is actually paused at that point is another story.
Lets say your interpretation of the EO is correct. It is still illegal for him to be making financial decisions, firing people and unilaterally canceling spending explicitly earmarked by congress.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
That is because that building was supposed to be under the care of the local police, it was actually their headquarters.
It was not clear who that person was until shots were fired. And communications were sorted out.
Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity/ineptitude.
Ancient_Anemone
18d ago
Humans make errors. Occam's razor is our friend here--no need to go the conspiratorial route when evidence doesn't exist for it.
You are wrong on #1 and #2: Congressional action is required in order to create new executive branch offices. Presidents cannot do that through executive order per the constitution Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. DOGE was not created by congress and Musk has not been approved by congress. #3 depends, as most funding is earmarked to what organization it goes to.
Specifics matter. If Trump wants to have a new office in the executive branch, he will have to ask congress to create it for him. If he wants Musk to lead it, he will have to get him confirmed, the latter will never happen.
He won't do either one, so it looks like we are headed toward a constitutional crisis.
Ancient_Anemone
19d ago
Congress controls the purse, just like you control your own budget. The treasury cannot block payments unilaterally, just like banks cannot do that to you for the same reasons.
I posted this in last week's thread about a nearly identical topic that is prescient here:
In constitutional law, it is very clear--the executive branch does not have the authority to stop payments. A entity like DOGE isn't even a part of the government and does not have a right to view classified material. Regardless, this is considered impoundment. There are 3 reasons for this:
-
Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” President's do not create law, congress does. Withholding funding is considered "Impoundment" by
-
The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 which was upheld via judicial review by
-
The SCOTUS ruling in Train v. City of New York (1975).
So these actions would go against all 3. The Constitution has not been amended, the law has not been repealed and the supreme court has not seen a case to change that precedent, at least not yet.
This is doubly so for Musk, who isn't even an official part of the government. If Trump wants to change this, he can ask congress to pass a law--republicans are a majority in both houses, or they can try to amend the constitution.
But this is unlawful just like the OMB executive order and for the same reasons. Congress has the power of the purse, not the president.
Ancient_Anemone
24d ago
Hmm. Can you remind me of the point being made here? You're trying to differentiate neoliberal as an exonym from woke because people accept the label neoliberal but not woke? If that's the case then suppose nothing at all changes about the population, you still have people who believe and espouse every bit of this cluster's beliefs but refuse to accept any label. These neoliberals were highly related, constantly quoting each other and repeating each other's arguments. When you met someone who was in favor of one of these policies you knew with a 95% chance they'd support all the other policies but they just insisted there was no legitimate way to refer to their memeplex. What would you do then? Until we can square that circle I'm not sure what the point of the comparison is or even what your point is. If woke isn't meaningful then what can I call the highly correlated cluster of beliefs?
The point is that unlike terms such as "woke" or "fascist", "neoliberal" label is more likely to accurately describe the person being mentioned than the first two. This is despite the "neoliberal" label being an exonym, and the reason for this is that it was widely adopted as a term by the people being described by it. This isn't really happening with "woke", especially now.
I think something more descriptive such as "social justice warriors", "DEI proponents" or "applied intersectionality" would be much more apt. It also is more likely to be used by those people to describe themselves.
On the level of criticism of your definition of neoliberal I think you have some sneer phrases baked in. Few like to be associated with the phrase "trickle down" preferring something like supply side policies. "Too big to fail" also has some negative connotations. A neoliberal would say it was a policy failure to let banks become too big to fail but bailouts were still the prudent option given the circumstances, truncating it to that is ignoring important parts of their understanding of the events and their real concern for moral hazard. Neoliberal tends to approximately map to neoclassical economics, basically Adam Smith but with modern economic modeling.
I think this is a very prescient critique and you are correct, "trickle down" and "too big to fail" are indeed sneer terms. Your alternative of "supply side" are not just less loaded, but are also more descriptive in an academic sense. I'm not sure if there is an alternative term outside of the longer summary of that neoliberal position that you described above--but your point stands.
Ancient_Anemone
24d ago
You are just continuing to privilege your own perspective on any given term, above the term's actual history and usage.
The same can be said for you and your argument.
Proponents of "woke" actively adopted it and wore it proudly for decades (though it did not "go viral" until more recently); many still wear it proudly today.
And in my experience, a plurality of people feel that the word "woke" does not describe them accurately. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any polling on this at this time.
If a particular word is getting in the way of you making a substantive point clear, then by all means, taboo it. But very close to nobody is confused by the use of words like woke, fascist, or neoliberal. If those words are being used in a merely pejorative way, the audience generally understands this, whether or not they can articulate it. If I say "Hitler was a Nazi," essentially no one outside of small children and the mentally infirm is seriously confused if I later say "Obama is a Nazi." People will in general understand that the first claim is historical, and the second, rhetorical.
In example above, there have been instances of people calling both Bush and other republicans a nazi in an unironic way. Are you just going to ignore those instances because it does not jive with your argument? What would you call its use in those examples?
But deciding to taboo words should be something you do in the process of clarifying discourse on a particular point of substance. Sweeping declarations distinguishing "woke" and "fascist" from "neoliberal" would be inadvisable linguistic prescriptivism even if you had the facts and history right--and you don't even seem to have that going for you.
I don't think you have established with evidence, that the history of the terms differs from what I proposed. And the fact of the matter is that if you hear a hypothetical person described as "woke", "fascist" or "neoliberal", which is more likely to be an accurate description of the person when one knows little to no information about this hypothetical person? The term with the least amount of baggage. If someone is called a "neoliberal" the shoe probably fits at least to some extent. The same cannot be said for "woke" these days, nor fascist, which almost certainly is not accurate.
Can you show me where in the Constitution it says that the President must spend the money Congress allocates? He certainly can't allocate more, but simply stopping payments until they decide if they like who gets them seems perfectly reasonable.
It is a combination of the 3:
- Article I, Section 9, Clause 7: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” President's do not create law, congress does. Withholding funding is considered "Impoundment" by
- The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 which was upheld via judicial review by
- The SCOTUS ruling in Train v. City of New York (1975).
This action would go against all 3. The Constitution has not been amended, the law has not been repealed and the supreme court has not seen a case to change that precedent, at least not yet.
Not the case, according to the article you're referring to:
Much of the funding is not disseminated directly to individuals, so that isn't particularly illuminating. For example, federal loans and grants are disbursed from the department of education to the university itself, and then from the university to students.
WIC works the same way, except the funds go from USDA to the states, who then disburse the funds directly to recipients. So unless you have some examples of funds that go directly to individuals, which most funding does not do, the issue remains.
The first executive order that you linked is really pushing the boundaries of executive power. If congress has the power of the purse and has already allocated the funds, the executive branch does not have the authority to block its disbursement.
I expect this to be litigated and a stay put on that order in the next couple of days.
Additionally, I think that in its current form, if it ends up actually affecting everything from food stamps, to federal loans/grants to cancer research, the move could backfire quickly--if it has any teeth.
Ancient_Anemone
25d ago
I appreciate your suggestion and defined neoliberal in this week's culture war thread.
In the spirit of continuing last weeks discussion, and the suggestion by @georgioz to define an exonym like Neoliberalism versus one that is more divisive such as fascism. The term "neoliberal" was first used as a pejorative term by the socialist left to describe US economic policy as far back as the 1930's, however, its was quickly defined in 1951 by Milton Friedman arguably the best known neoliberal, who proudly took the definition and ran with it, which has continued to the current day. This has not stopped it from being used, primarily by the left as a slur--some prose examples are Cornell West calling Ta'Nehisi Coates a neoliberal for his lack of criticism of wall street. To me, there are 5 key features of a neoliberal, they are as follows:
- Emphasis of economics over social policy
- Promotion of free market and trickle down economics
- Encouragement of free international trade through trade agreements
- Support for Subsidies for products, commodities or sectors of the economy deemed valuable or future forward
- Support for bailouts for companies deemed "too big to fail" in order to keep the economic machine running
Some studies have indicated that those describing themselves as neoliberal tend to score higher in areas such as self-efficacy, self-esteem, self-reliance, but have poorer health outcomes. Similar to the term "capitalist" which also was used as a slur by the socialist left for those interested in free trade and private profits, it was adopted to describe those who were unapologetically "pro-business", specifically large business and unfettered economic growth through almost any means possible.
I would argue that neoliberal has more meaning than some of the terms we discussed last week because its proponents have actively adopted it and have proudly worn the label for decades. More importantly, the vast majority of both proponents and detractors would largely agree on its definition, while other terms like woke, fascist, etc are more commonly used as a slur than a self descriptor, thus have had significant "definition creep".
What are your thoughts?
Much the same way I would explain why a particular country ended up owning a particular plot of land some centuries ago. Maybe it was conquest, maybe it was a political marriage, or maybe it was some court intrigue. A fascinating question for those interested in history, no doubt, but little more. It can cast little light on whether or not the theories in question are an accurate description of reality.
Why? The laws in question seem to fit quite well into what various "intersectional" theories would prescribe, and so it seems fair to call them woke.
Is civil rights woke now? It was called civil rights by virtually the entire political spectrum for over 40 years, until now some on the right use the word "woke" to describe it and other measures they feel are beneath the DEI umbrella. "Woke" was not in the prose of anyone in the 1960's.
Have you ever talked to someone who holds an intersectional worldview? Your example immediately brought to mind a quote from the World Economic Forum conference that I covered a while back, where one of the participants says the following: I think the queer struggle, at least in the country that I come from, and the region that I come from, is also connected to the Palestinian struggle it's also connected to a lot of struggles the migrant workers, the women... so it's very important to take it as a whole and not only focus on just one.
I have talked to several people who have an intersectional worldview and have a close friend who would fall squarely into that camp. In my opinion, intersectionality's usefulness varies, and the danger on the left is that it is the only lens some are willing and/or capable of using.
At the end of the day, it is a lens that one can put on and take off, which combined with other lenses, can paint a more complete picture of a situation, or demonstrate the role of identity groups in a social phenomenon. This generally is at the expense of individual experience, however, and one has to be careful that it is not used as weapon to silence others. When it is the only lens used, comments like the one you shared become the norm and every singe social interaction across the globe becomes the oppressed/oppressor narrative, disregarding all other factors.
Pragmatically, the reason why intersectionality has been a rallying cry on the left this century is without it, it is a collection of moderate to small sized special interests when can be easily overruled. In a group, they are formidable and can vie for power through plurality. The right in my opinion, does not have this level of fracturing in its base.
@aqouta mentions the Omnicause, and while it may be another derisive name for the phenomenon we're discussing, it's a handy keyword to search for examples of how the very same people will jump from climate change, to queer acceptance to free Palestine. In other words the critics are entirely right to point to everything from beer to green energy, because woke people themselves believe their cause is about all those things.
The number of people that would identify with that movement, or those that support it but don't identify with it that apply it to everything is a minority, albeit an incredibly vocal one, interestingly, the right magnifies those voices as a rallying cry for their agenda. Climate change in particular is also a dubious one, as it actually has a decent amount of support on the right. There was an 81 member Conservative Climate Caucus in the congressional session that just ended. That is just over 37% of all republicans elected to that chamber. So while I agree that climate change is a progressive goal, it has a sizable amount of support on the right.
I see where you're coming from. Way back when, there was a small cottage industry in academia, writing tomes upon tomes about "neoliberalism", but the darnedest thing was no one could ever point me to a person calling themselves a "neoliberal". This was frustrating, because as an aspiring freethinker, I didn't want to just hear about why an idea was bad from it's critics, I also wanted to hear why it could be good from it's proponents, and make up my own mind.
So I get it, a spooky term for a nebulous concept is a red flag. However, when investigating these things I think it's important to ask why there are no people who want to apply a given term to themselves. In case of "woke" this is because it's just another iteration of a decades-long trend of a particular brand of progressive doing their best to prevent a label sticking to their movement and ideology, so they can avoid criticism. From cultural Marxism to Political Correctness, Critical Theory, DEI, and Social Justice, all the way to the aforementioned Intersectionality, and culminating in Freddie de Boer's, who's hardly a right-winger himself, rant - Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand.
We can again contrast that with "neoliberalism", which started off as a boogeyman, but which ended up being a self-descriptive term, when people got fed up of lefties beating up on a strawman, and founded /r/neoliberal. I don't have sources for this, but I heard the very same thing happened with the term "capitalism" which was Marx' very own nebulous boogeyman, but at some point liberals got fed up with him, and decided to adopt the term as their own.
If "woke" really was a term right-wingers invented out of thin air, that didn't describe anything real, I'd expect it to follow the same trajectory as "neoliberalism" or "capitalism". But the trajectory of abandonment observable in other terms like "cultural Marxism", "DEI", or "Social Justice" shows the term is pointing at something real that certain people do actually believe in, but don't want to answer for. I think this is a fair point, and the de Boer article does illustrate that there is an issue with the every shift leftist coalition. I think your example and exploration of "Neoliberal" is an interesting one, I'd like to explore the other examples and why they have had different outcomes.
- Cultural Marxism - except for more fringe examples, the majority of the people in the movement were not and did not identify as marxist, even if some of the concepts came from critical theory. The average person could not follow the association, and in this case the "marxism" messaging worked against the right. It was specific and the shoe didn't fit well.
- While "Social Justice" and "Social Justice Warrior" has faded in use, I don't think I have heard or read of someone on the left disagreeing with that label. It was specific and had trouble sticking as a slur, similar to the reasons that "pro-life" has never really become one.
- DEI is more descriptive and is a term that has been embraced by the left, very similar to your neoliberal example. In fact, most initiatives at the corporate or government level are called DEI initiatives. Other than the use of "DEI" hire which has been used very effectively, it still means something more specific.
- Capitalism is still used by many on the left as a slur for nearly any economic issue, inequality or unfair practice, whether it is rooted in it in actual free market capitalism or not. I think this is an apt comparison as the meaning used to be pretty defined (other than Marx's usage), until the early 21st century. The only difference is that the majority of media sources, especially legacy media, on the left do not use it as some sort of rallying cry. It is used much more in passing on social media or in person during conversations. The number of times I have heard someone on the left complain nebulously about "blank" issue being capitalism is in the hundreds.
- Libertarian is also a word that has seen significant meaning creep over the same time period and is the one I get most frustrated about. It used to mean someone who was generally: socially liberal, economically conservative, live and let live and had at least some understanding of the NAP (non aggression principle). Now its most common usage seems to be a closet republican, who is too ashamed to call themselves one or to identify as conservative, but thinks that support of major government action to achieve their primarily socially conservative goals is ideal, embraces authoritarianism, and votes straight ticket republican.
Anyway, I digress, but appreciate the dialogue. I think the thing I am coming away with is that if a label is used more by the opposition than the group or initiatives it describes, it is more likely to have its meaning become nebulous over time. Especially if the word/words are short or need some sort of additional explanation of what it is. The more specific the terminology is, or if the term is adopted by those it is being used to describe, it does not seem to happen nearly as much.
Yes, I've been there before too. Like your advice I'm really trying to maximise healthy vegetables within the guidelines (spinach, broccoli, green beans (for cellulose). Daily multivitamins, extra potassium through 'light salt' etc. I've realised I need to stay away from diet soda which just feels like a micronutrient drain after the fact. That is a good call, as certain micronutrients are generally absent on a ketogenic diet. Especially flavonoids which seem to activate a lot of antioxidant and cell protecting mechanisms like NRF2, which is part of the phase II detoxification pathway. Meat products don't have those compounds. One supplement that I have had good effects from is Cyandin-3-Glucoside (C3G), which actually keeps/restores glucose and lipid metabolism It also is an MAO-B inhibitor, so it provides a light amount of stimulation due to inhibiting the rate of breakdown of dopamine.
I completely agree on the soda. I feel pretty poor drinking it, especially if it is before any sort of workout.
And this is the real crux. How to keep it off? I put most of it on during covid so I'm hoping I will re-engage with my more active pre-covid lifestyle. I'll also make an effort to work on reducing sugar intake and portion sizes. But many people have been where I'm going without success..
For me, physical activity is key. When not on keto, I have difficulty with portion size and being active offsets this by a great extent. The healthiest I have been since ending the cyclical keto diet was this past fall, when I trained for a bike race. If you have friends or family that share similar goals, picking a race or just a weekly habit with them can help, at least it has for me. Over time, if I am not held accountable, I let the discipline slip a bit.
Ancient_Anemone
29d ago
Lots of low net carb, high fiber veggies. It did a good job of keeping me regular, which was an issue at times on the diet. Saturated fat>>Monounsaturated fat>>polyunsaturated fat, especially when it comes to ketone production. Its pretty much the opposite advice you'd hear on any other diet, but I truly felt better eating 1/2 to 2/3 pounds of bacon plus broccoli than things like chicken thighs or lean beef cuts. The fattier the better.
I also ended up transitioning to a 5 on 2 off cyclical keto diet for a couple years. Felt great for the majority of time and was the lowest weight I had been in 15 years. Unfortunately, over time I ended up undereating due to lack of hunger and started to not feel well, ending the experiment.
I did gain a lot of the weight I lost over the following year.
Its certainly a good amount of grift and clout chasing IMO.
Many of the substances he is taking are on the cutting edge of science, as in, there are very few studies to go off of, and even fewer ones based on human models, in vivo or in vitro.
He also has/is taking supplements with opposing mechanisms of action. For instance, in the past he was taking rapamycin (sirolimus) which is an mTOR inhibitor, but was also taking creatine, which induces mTOR...
The diet, exercise and sleep are all good choices, but from there things get quite a bit murkier. I do think at some point taking too many experimental treatments is going to backfire, metformin only improving lifespan in type 2 diabetes being another. It actually blunts adaptations to exercise, which may not impact him much while he is relatively young, but may do so more as time goes on.
Ancient_Anemone
29d ago
I think this is exactly what occurred. Musk has really stepped up his troll game as of late and appears to look for every opportunity to edgelord.
What is interesting to me is that he also seems to be slowly chipping away at his plausible deniability in this domain. He has liked/retweeted some antisemetic tweets over the last several months and it has come out that he is a paid subscriber to a South African white nationalist who has advocated that things were better during apartheid.
I think all of this will end poorly for him and wonder if some of this behavior is due to his well known, extratherapeutic use of ketamine and suspected bipolar disorder.
I had to think about this hypothetical person for a moment. Although arguably a tender-minded leftist who is also libertarian is as far as 70.53 degrees off from the woke by basic trigonometry, this is only true if you presume each axis is of equal importance. In practice the left-right axis is far more salient than the others, which will diminish this person's ideological separation from the woke crowd enough that they'd likely fit in pretty well. Currently wokeness isn't a fringe movement - it's captured a large degree of public support, and has enough power to have (for example) made it standard procedure for us to have to fill in the "What pronouns does your child use?" blank in the doctor's office at Small Town Red Tribe USA. In practice this hypothetical person is likely to support the woke package, they'll just balk at some of the details, such as shutting down people's right to speak. Ultimately going to say "No, I don't really think of this person as woke," but it's more because I think it's OK for Canadians to get mad when you call them American, and because despite my anti-wokeness, I'm also rather woke-adjacent. If I were a Trump/Musk/Whatever supporter on the other side of the map, I'd still dislike and oppose the hell out of this person (and probably me as well).
I appreciate this response. The reason why I asked is because that hypothetical person is more or less me. I've been a libertarian most of my adult life, but have found myself drifting leftward the last 8 or so years, as the culture war has picked up. Accelerating this has been overt social conservatives, like Dave Smith have been masquerading as libertarian (something about Hoppeian sunset towns does not sit will with me and is at odds with libertarianism, you know?). I think having equality and similar results between racial groups is a good ideal, but believe that meritocracy is important and do not agree with many of the means to achieve this put forward by progressives. It seemingly does not matter, as I now am considered woke by some family members, despite them not being able to define "woke" in a coherent way. I think you are correct, it does seem in today's zeitgeist, social alignment seems to be more important than economic alignment.
I think the woke make a good case against fairness and in favor of racism, in just the same way that the real live National Socialists of the 1940s made a very good case against the principles of German fascism. Looking from one to the other, I can't help but think maybe none of those principles matter, or all of them matter, and really most people are too quick to think they know things when Socrates has been telling us all along he's the wisest because he knows nothing.
What specific mechanism do you think the "woke" make in favor of racism specifically? Is it their lack of ability to actually solve for their main issue, or is it something else? What has been proposed by people like Ibram X. Kendi is genuine racism itself, and does not even shy away from calling it as such. For example, the only antidote to racism is racism, the only antidote to discrimination is yet more discrimination...
I don't disagree with your assessment that there is some incompetence in SS. When you think about how many events they provide security to (it's way more than the president/presidential candidates), thousands of events per year, it does put things into perspective.
A determined lone actor is hard to detect until it is too late. It requires constant vigilance.
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