MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
No bio...
User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
7d ago
Doug Ford is a conservative who leads the main right-wing party in the Ontario provincial Parliament, so I would very surprised if he wasn't a Reagan fan.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
7d ago
Last time Zelensky behaved much better, he even brought suit.
What exactly is the US national interest in a foreign leader's dress sense? To people who don't have Trump Hagiography Syndrome, there seems to be a pattern where Trump deploys tough negotiation tactics most successfully where the goal is to get people to flatter him personally, not to advance US national interests.
He was able to negotiate peace between India and Pakistan,
Lolwut
he managed peace between Israel and Hamas,
A ceasefire, not peace. There have been lots of those. Trump's one lasted less time than most.
he managed peace between Armenia–Azerbaijan,
The complete military defeat of Armenia by Azerbaijan (backed by Turkey) predates Trump's second inauguration. He turned up to take credit for the surrender negotiations.
he even turned Modi and Xi Jinping against Putin with his latest oil embargo.
Has he? The oil markets haven't moved.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
7d ago
The point is that President Obama didn't create the new tax, Congress did.
There is an arguable case that Congress exceeded its authority under article 1 by regulating the absence of intrastate commerce, thereby usurping authority that properly belongs to the states.
There is a completely unarguable case that if Obama had enacted Obamacare by executive order, he would have been exceeding his article 2 authority, thereby usurping authority that properly belongs to Congress.
Trump imposing tariffs is arguably a case in the second category - the Trump tariffs are squarely within the article 1 authority of Congress, and uncontroversially illegal unless Trump is working within authority delegated by Congress. The tariff litigation has two strands:
- a statutory interpretation issue about whether Congress has delegated sufficiently broad powers to Trump that he can do this legally (the Major Questions Doctrine is a canon of statutory interpretation which says that statutes that delegate major questions to the executive should be interpreted narrowly)
- a constitutional question about whether Congress can constitutionally delegate broad authority to raise taxes.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
8d ago
The government is not a charity, and empirically people don't donate to the government for altruistic reasons. So if the government is being funded by "voluntary" "donations" then the way to bet is that either the donations are not really voluntary and the constitutional requirements for raising taxes have been circumvented (as with the Nvidia and AMD deals) or the voluntary payments are not really donations and something has been sold non-transparently, probably at a loss.
Paying the troops with voluntary donations is a special case of badness - the fact that the Executive needs to go to Congress (and to do so regularly - the Constitution specifically prohibits long-term appropriations for the army) to pay the troops was intended as a key check on Executive power.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
8d ago
That substack is a bad take on it - the best version of the theory I have seen is spread across multiple posts on lawfaremedia.org. But the underlying story is absolutely serious, and as far as I can see it is true. The three-bullet version of the story is
- Trump is trying to replace the Congress-driven budget process established by the Constitution with a White House-driven budget process.
- Johnson is helping him, and Senate Republicans are not trying to stop him
- So far he is succeeding
The slightly longer version is:
- Trump has, on numerous occasions, refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Congressional Republicans have not complained. As well as using his partisan majorities in both houses of Congress to pass recissions under the Impoundment Control Act (which can't be filibustered), Trump has used a dubiously-legal pocket recission to cut spending without a Congressional vote. SCOTUS has helped this along by setting up procedural barriers to anyone suing over this.
- Despite the Republican trifecta, Congress did not pass a budget in FY 2025, and does not appear to be trying to pass a budget in FY 2026. Notably, Johnson has shut the House down rather than trying to make progress on any of the outstanding appropriations bills.
- Rather than moving a mini-CR to pay the troops (Enough Democrats have said they support this that it would pass both houses of Congress), Trump has paid the troops with a combination of private donations and funds illegally transferred from the military R&D budget. The White House ballroom is another example of using private donations to pay for what should be Congressionally-approved government spending.
- On the revenue side, Trump has raised a helluvalot of revenue with dubiously-legal tariffs. He also did a deal with Nvidia and AMD where they pay what is in effect a 15% export tax in exchange for Trump waiving controls on advanced chip exports to China. Export taxes are unconstitutional. There has been no attempt to incorporate any of this revenue into a budget passed by Congress.
- An obvious combination of this type of "deal" and funding specific programs with private donations is to set up a parallel budget where money is raised and spent outside the official Congressional budget process, all backed by more or less soft threats of government coercion. Trump hasn't done this yet, but it is a logical continuation of things he has done.
- Trump has also claimed in social media posts that he can spend the tariff revenue without Congressional approval.
The claim that Trump and Johnson are trying to change the US budget process to one where (at least as regards discretionary spending - the only changes to entitlement spending have been done in regular order through the OBBBA) Congress does not meaningfully exercise the power of the purse seems to me to be straightforwardly true.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
8d ago
There was a prominent local lawyer for years in my town who would always accept the Democratic nomination for a position if the party couldn't dig up another candidate, he never won and my great aunt used to joke that "the poor guy couldn't get elected dog catcher," but he was always willing to be on the ballot, that's probably what a replacement level candidate looks like.
At the bottom end, that seems right. Further up the tree, a replacement level candidate is a good performer at the level below in the same way that a replacement level Major League Baseball player is a star in AAA ball. Given that each party only has 20-30 governors at a time and some of them will be too old, focused on running for re-election as governor, or not interested, I would say an average governor is a replacement-level Presidential candidate, and an average medium or large city mayor is a replacement-level gubernatorial candidate.
She was a way above average candidate in terms of experience, in terms of her ability to rally institutional support and scare off opponents, etc.
True, but she was sub-replacement in terms of her ability to win votes from normal people, which is what wins elections. Hilary's election history looks like: 2000 NY Senate Primary - Party establishment persuades all other serious candidates to pull out. 2000 NY Senate General - 55-43 against a literal replacement-level Republican candidate (Lazio was drafted last-minute after Giuliani was forced out due to a combination of a cancer scare and a bimbo eruption). Gore won NY 60-35 2006 NY Senate Primary - No serious opponent 2006 NY Senate General - 67-31 against a no-name Republican. Spitzer won his gubernatorial race 69-29. 2008 Presidential Primary - Lost to Obama 2016 Presidential Primary - Won 55-43 against the comic relief candidate in what was supposed to be a 2000-style uncontested election. 2016 Presidential General - Lost to Trump
Both the 2008 primary defeat and the 2016 loss to Trump involved unforced errors of the "trying to win something other than the election" variety. Hilary's strategy in 2008 was based around being annointed winner by the media rather than having more delegates at the convention - in particular this meant she didn't bother campaigning in states she couldn't win, allowing Obama to run up the score. In 2016 she was campaigning in California and not the swing states - it isn't clear to me if this is because she was running up the popular vote margin because she thought it would somehow make her inevitable victory more legitimate, or if it is that she was focused on fundraising long after it no longer made sense.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
8d ago
"Level" here refers to the quality or ability level of the candidate. The idea comes from sports analytics - "replacement level" is the level of the player you would be able to recruit relatively quickly to fill a gap in the roster created by e.g. an unexpected injury. What this means in practice varies depending on how leagues are structured, but for example if you are an English Premier League club then "replacement level" is going to be the level of a good Championship player. "Value over replacement" is the holy grail of metrics - how many extra points/games do you win if you have this guy on the team instead of a replacement level player. And a player with negative value over replacement should be fired and replaced with a replacement level alternative, even if you aren't in a position to recruit a good alternative.
I am claiming that a bunch of Democratic establishment candidates, in particular including Hilary Clinton for President in 2016 and Cuomo for NYC Mayor in 2025 are negative value over replacement.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
9d ago
Also the failure to find a replacement level candidate to run against him. The best the anti-Mamdani forces could come up with were a granny-murdering sexual-harassing unpopular ex-Governor, a paid Turkish agent, and a Republican. None of them are people you run if you actually want to win a NYC mayoral election.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
9d ago
Very much agree, and this was the exceptional example I was thinking about when I said "the exception and not the rule" rather than "doesn't happen".
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
He can chill with the grandkids while living in the White House, shutting down large parts of the country for "security" when he turns up to play golf, and hearing "Hail to the Chief" when he rocks up at a public event while Susie Wiles and Steven Miller run the country. Given who Trump is, I think he would find this more fun than chilling with the grandkids as a private citizen.
Some people say this has already happened.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
· Edited 11d ago
I am not an expert, but under the Shogunate the (non-ruling) Emperors normally abdicated after about a decade. The official reason was that the religious duties of the Emperor were so tedious that it was unreasonable to expect someone to do the job for life, the actual reason was presumably to prevent the Emperor becoming a threat to the Shogun. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Emperor officially became a ruling Emperor again (in fact it was a UK-style constitutional monarchy and the elected Prime Minister held more real power than the Emperor) and the abdications stopped.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
· Edited 11d ago
We see this very pattern in our best example of a ruling monarch today, King Salman of Saudi Arabia who has largely abdicated in favor of MBS. Salman recognized the danger of the Saudi throne being passed from aged brother to aged brother, a gerontocracy where crown princes died of old age, and skipped over many heads to get MBS next in line and passed him power to get things moving.
But critically, Salman is still King and MBS is Crown Prince, Prime Minister and de facto regent. That is the point I was making - ruling Kings who are aligned with their heirs hand over power gradually but don't actually abdicate due to old age and infirmity. Voluntary abdication due to old age is a feature of 21st century constitutional monarchs.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
Agreed. There exist true things that can't be said in a criminal trial, but this isn't one of them.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
In the Anglosphere jury system, there is quite a broad set of true things that can't be said - you can't argue that the defendant is the kind of guy who would commit this crime, including by telling the jury his previous criminal history.
In the US there is another broad set of true things which can't be said, namely true things that the police learned by violating the 4th amendment.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
For instance privacy of correspondence is a human right under article 12 of UN declaration of human rights
The right to privacy of correspondence (article 12 UNHDR, article 8 ECHR, 4th amendment US Constitution) is a right against third-party snoopers including the government - not a right against the recipient forwarding the correspondence without permission. (Some countries protect confidential correspondence from unauthorised forwarding in specific, limited circumstances, but it was never the right protected by human rights codes)
Even in that sense, it has largely been lost, but I don't think that is because internet, I think it is because statists said "But muh terrorism" after 9-11 and normies didn't realise what they were giving up.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
Being President is more fun than being a very rich political has-been?
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
Back when ruling monarchs were a thing, abdicating in your old age was the exception and not the rule - remember that the King was anointed by God. If the King and heir were aligned, then the heir gradually took over more responsibility as the King declined. If the King and heir were opposed, then you got Biden-style scenarios where the King's courtiers tried to conceal the decline to prevent authority leaking to the heir and his courtiers.
[Old age abdication was common for Japanese Emperors, but they were never ruling monarchs]
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
The establishment candidates didn't think that, which is why they kept attacking each other rather than attacking Trump or Cruz. Establishment commentators were aware of (and aghast at) the prospect of Trump making the last two from about January 2016 but they were expecting it to be at the expense of Cruz - as, presumably, was Cruz given that he spent most of January going after Trump in a way no other candidate did.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
IIRC people were still predicting at least one competitive pro-establishment candidate right up to the day before Super Tuesday. (Kasich was never competitive, he was just well-positioned to go the distance with a doomed campaign).
The behaviour of the not-Trump candidates in Q1 2016 (which was the decisive period of the primary) was consistent with the theory that they expected the race to shake out as a pro-establishment candidate (Rubio, Christie, or Jeb Bush) against an anti-establishment candidate (Trump or Cruz).
It took a very long time for the so-called liberal elites to understand that conservative Red Tribers in the country saw George W Bush as just as much of a miserable failure as they did, and therefore just how bad things were (and still are) for the pro-establishment right.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
Leviticus and Romans disagree with you, and most of the civilized world is downstream of that.
"Just say no to pederasty" is fundamental to the value proposition of Abrahamic religion.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
A woman is 'one whose social role is to be the bottom in the relationship', as contrasted to men which are the designated tops. This was true up until the early 20th century, though early efforts to limit bottoming to women have existed since roughly 1000 BC (that's what the 'you must only fuck XX chromosome-havers' Abramic law does).
The meaning of the words conventionally translated as "woman" (primarily gyne) in ancient Greece did not include teenage boys. The universe of socially acceptable sexual bottoms did. The Romans were closer to your model, admittedly.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
The US Federal Sentencing Guidelines calculate the sentence for economic crimes fairly robotically based on the total dollar amount lost by all the victims. This means that rich people stealing from other rich people are sentenced more harshly than the subjective seriousness of the crime would suggest, or than they would be in most other jurisdictions (including US state courts).
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
11d ago
Gossip can be good - it allows people to avoid bad actors, and creates incentives for bad actors to improve. It can also be used maliciously.
Empirically, the ability to share gossip efficiently about businesses using sites like Yelp is net positive for humanity. There is a broad consensus in professional workplaces that the ability of employers and employees to share gossip about each other is net-positive for the same reasons, and that the requirement to do so with plausible deniability to avoid being sued is annoying.
Assuming the existence of something like modern dating, my gut feeling is that the same is true when women share gossip efficiently about men they date - both around safety issues (modern dating allows for a lot of dangerous wrongdoing which is de facto impossible for either the law or local elites* to adjudicate, so gossip is the only way for women to protect themselves) and quality issues (people I know who spent time in highly promiscuous social circles agree that the women in those circles spread gossip about men's bedroom performance, and the people who were happy in such social circles thought that the results were net-positive for Yelp-like reasons).
On the other hand, I would assume that the type of woman who uses an app like Tea is strongly negatively selected for being the sort of person whose opinion about men should be ignored, especially by women who actually like dating men. I am 90% certain that the gossip spread on Tea specifically is net-negative.
It all seems to come round to the fact that people marriageable people who want to get married do so, leaving a dating pool which is much lower-trust than the surrounding society. I don't see how you have a modern dating pool which isn't lousy with bad actors, including both the kind you need gossip to protect yourself from and the kind who spread malicious gossip.
I would oppose banning Tea on privacy grounds. In general, I think that laws and social norms are far too protective of the privacy of non-sensitive data (like photos of Tea users) and, almost as a corollary, under-protective of actually sensitive data, and other things being equal I wouldn't punish or shame people for sharing the photos. OTOH I have some sympathy for the idea that people who signal-boost hacked data absent a strong public interest are bad people because they create an incentive for hackers.
* Including things like the trust and safety team on a dating app, or a party host deciding who to drop from an invite list.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
12d ago
Trump is pro-Israel for the usual personal reasons why most of the NY establishment are pro-Israel even if they are not Jews themselves. But the younger generation of MAGA supporters appears to be moving towards a "not my circus, not my monkeys" American First view of the I-P conflict. This is one of the rare occasions when I agree with the very online MAGA right.
Given the way Canadian politics works, this is extremely unlikely. National and provincial political parties are separate institutions and National and provincial politics are effectively separate career tracks.
That Ford has no brief to help Carney is nevertheless a valid point.
More options
Context Copy link