MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
As in so many cases, the fact that the Pope does not have the ambition to rule the US is part of why one might wish for him to do it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1hr ago
The phones are not agents.
No, but the people who write the code that runs on the phones are.
Tinder is designed to do specific things. Those things appear to be antisocial.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2hr ago
I have trouble taking the USAID crying seriously. If people really, truly cared about the pullback in aid they would do what they could to fill the gap.
Musk deliberately implemented the cuts in a way which made that almost impossible in the short term. None of the named individual victims identified by Kristof could have been saved by someone taking over funding - they all died because of the chaotic way in which USAID was shut down. If you remember Musk's bragging at the time, the point wasn't just to cut spending - it was to feed the agency into a woodchipper and create psychological distress in the staff. That had consequences, which were intended, and the people who did it are responsible for what they did. (Clearly the number of people who died specifically as a result of Musk's intentional cruelty is much lower than the big numbers being slung around, but Musk continues to insist that it is zero and threaten legal action against people who disagree). I will enjoy the schadenfreude if the screwworms get him. I will not enjoy the schadenfreude if (as is more likely) all they get is a bunch of normie Texas ranchers who voted for the Face-Eating Leopard Party.
The Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis et al have a standard of living most of us can only dream of. Are they sacrificing their luxuries to save these people they are crying about? No.
The Clinton Foundation is sufficiently notorious that one might suspect bad faith. It wasn't their own personal money, but Bill Clinton spent most of his time since leaving office fundraising and organising charitable work, either through the Clinton Foundation or through his partnership with George HW Bush. The most visible programme the Clinton foundation ran was providing AIDS drugs to kids in Africa - so the Clintons were doing precisely the thing you blithely assume they were not doing.
The Obama's and Pelosi's considerable charitable donations (hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in both cases) are also a matter of public record that I was able to find with 30 seconds googling. Obama focussed on US domestic poverty and providing scholarships for poor kids. (Like most ex-Presidents, Obama moves far more dollars by fundraising than he can donate himself - but that is just being effective in your charitable work). Paul Pelosi focussed on the usual arts and elite universities bougie philanthropy bullshit.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
10hr ago
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
10hr ago
I think Joh Bjelke-Petersen (Premier of Queensland 1968-87) was a national populist in that mold, and he was from Protestant (Danish) stock. But I agree that the Anglosphere was historically (but sadly no longer) mostly immune to it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
10hr ago
In the event of a truly accidental American the IRS never finds out. You’re an Italian businessman, you’ve never applied for a US passport, your parents travel insurance paid for your birth (or they skipped town and never paid), you travel to the US solely on your Italian passport if you ever do so and are welcomed as a foreigner. If Customs sees your ‘place of birth’ as the US, they won’t care, and in the very unlikely event they do, the businessman tells them his parents were diplomats or soldiers or UN. They will not ask for proof. The IRS isn’t going to track down hospital records in Philadelphia from 50 years ago to deduce that there might be an American somewhere in the world who didn’t pay taxes.
Boris Johnson got into trouble at JFK for travelling to the US on a British passport listing a US place of birth. (US citizens are legally required to arrive and depart the US on their US passports), and the IRS attempted to collect capital gains tax on the sale of his London home. (It isn't clear if he paid or not). And the tax treaty between the US and the UK requires banks to freak out if they see a British passport with a US place of birth as part of customer due diligence. So I don't think being an accidental American is as safe as that.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
Although MadMonzer is right here
What is the world coming to? Roberts decides a case when the option to punt is available, The_Nybbler agrees with me on the Motte, and Germany exit the World Cup early on penalties. If we are far enough off the old timeline, perhaps England have a chance to win the thing.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
I don't think Thomas is a partisan hack. He has a clear and intellectually coherent theory of what the Constitution in his head says, and rules accordingly. It's just that the Constitution that was agreed at Philadelphia, ratified by the States, and rededicated to the proposition that all men are created equal by the blood of the Union dead in which the Reconstruction Amendments are written, says something else.
Alito, on the other hand...
Goresuch, I am genuinely surprised by on this one.
I don't think Yglesian popularism necessarily involves tactical lying (although all politicians, populist, popularist or otherwise do a lot of it), and I don't think Yglesias personally is engaging in tactical lying about his political views. He definitely hasn't "come out in favour of tactical lying" in the sense of saying that elected Democrats should be saying more things that are not true. He is smart enough to know that enough things are true that you can make almost any argument by selectively emphasising true statements.
The essence of popularism is to talk about your popular policies and not about your unpopular policies. That can involve lying, but it can also involve ignoring awkward questions, whataboutism, agenda manipulation, and all the other not-technically-lying things that are staples of political communication. And, of course, it mostly involves saying true things about your popular policies while using the other set of staples of political communication to get heard. Once you put it this way, it really is just common sense, but common sense which the internal politics of the Democratic Party makes controversial.
The thing Yglesias is mostly pushing back on when he talks about popularism is Ford and Hewlett Foundation funded advocacy groups making Demoratic candidates and electeds say unpopular far-left things as a flex in intra-left factional politics, which (unlike doing unpopular things which are either nonpartisan good ideas or advance a left-wing partisan agenda) is all cost and no benefit.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
The 1970's inflation was caused by central bank over-loosening.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
Milei talks and acts like a libertarian. Markets are justifiably afraid of Trump, who is a populist and not a libertarian, and talks like Peron, acting like Peron.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
The regulatory functions of the Fed (as opposed to the FOMC which sets short-term interest rates) are exactly the type of "executive" power that was at issue in Slaughter. If Congress can't delegate the power to regulate commerce to a removal-protected FTC, they can't delegate the power to regulate bank capital adequacy to a removal-protected Fed.
The FOMC seems more "executive" to me than whatever the US Institute for Peace is doing (which is explicitly not delegated any sovereign power by its founding statute), given that it relies on the power to print legal-tender money. And there is an Appeals Court judgement basically saying "given that we know Humphrey's Executor is dead, USIP counts as 'executive' and its board are removable"
But if all the Fed did was support the FOMC, I think the "The Bank of the United States is a founding-era precedent, so it must be constitutional" would be a reasonable argument
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
Yglesias explicitly does not support the "Palestinian Cause" (which he sees, in my view correctly, as the destruction of the Jewish State and the reversal of the displacement of Palestinians from what is now Israel proper). The activist left are river-to-the-sea Palestinian maximalists, and right now they are saying that this is their most important issue.
He also explicitly opposes, apparently sincerely, the standard leftist positions on public order, market-rate housing, and frankly almost every economic issue except climate where he has expressed an opinion.
The only area where Yglesias explicitly supports leftist goals and only disagrees on tactics is climate. On open borders, he is personally in favour (but acknowledges that this is not an electorally viable position for the Democrats, and favours compromise with the electorate) whereas it is the organised left which tends to hide the ball while de facto supporting open borders through non-enforcement. He probably also agrees with a bunch of unpopular left-wing views on issues around race and sex, but they are mostly issues where the left have won and are playing defence, and therefore the activist left find it hard to give a crap.
The current incarnation of the populist right is fundamentally single-issue on immigration, so from your perspective Yglesias and the far left agree on the things that matter. But that is a function of how you see the issues, not how they do.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Various powers to regulate banks. All of which count as “executive” under Slaughter for the same reason that the FTC’s rule making powers do.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
- Unless you are interested in industrial heritage or Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Glasgow is a day-trip from Edinburgh at best.
- Good idea - the Highlands are beautiful and unique. Personally I think Loch Ness is overrated, and Glen Coe is the best bit of the Highlands. Doing both from Edinburgh or Glasgow gives you about 8 hours of driving time, so doing the loop in 2 days is a bit hard-core. If whisky is the main attraction, you could stop short of Inverness and hit up Aviemore (for Glen Coe and the Cairngorms) and Grantown-on-Spey (for the Speyside distilleries). If you are passing through Inverness (and you will be if you go to Loch Ness) it is worth a brief stop to buy Highland-themed tourist tat. Or if you are in Glasgow at the start of the trip, you could do Glen Coe and Oban. You will need a car in the Highlands unless you are on an organised coach tour.
- If you can spare the time, York and Bath are probably the best tourist spots in England outside London. If you are driving Scotland-Manchester-London, both are manageable detours. If you are taking the train, only York makes sense. But if you have four or less non-relative days in England, I would spend all of them in London (possibly including a day-trip to e.g. Windsor). Once in London, you may want to consider the Wellcome Museum or the Old Operating Theatre as a historical medical museum.
- If you are there for the cliffs more than the castle, the Seven Sisters (between Seaford and Eastbourne) are better than the White Cliffs. See this post.
I can probably offer more specific recommendations if you let me know what your brother is interested in.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
You don't need a Schengen visa for Ireland - despite being an EU member it remains part of the Common Travel Area with the UK. Indians are one of the nationalities that can visit Ireland on a UK visa and vice versa.
That said, I think two weeks to do Scotland and England doesn't leave enough time to make crossing over to Ireland worth it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
First, Austen was Regency era. A generation before the Victorians, and there are some pretty significant differences
Also, critically, before railways. The minor gentry (the class the Bennets belong to) was much less geographically mobile than they would be in a Victorian setting.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Jesus clearly teaches political quietism in the New Testament, and historically most radical Christian "back-to-the-fundamentals" movements are politically quietist (like the Amish). The first modern capital-F Fundamentalists were obviously not politically quietist (the extent of mass government-backed secular education in America c. 1900 made already it a lot harder to be politically quietist if you didn't withdraw completely from the wider society like the Amish do), but there is no discussion of secular politics in The Fundamentals.
Politically active Christianity is, obviously, almost as lindy as politically quietist Christianity. I think this is because Jesus doesn't say why he is preaching political quietism, so it isn't obvious how "don't be a Zealot and render unto Caesar" translates to contexts other than living as a religious minority in a pagan Empire.
How should a country be governed when almost all of its citizens profess Christianity, like most Western countries up until quite recently?
The most common view between the time of Constantine and the present was "Christians should not seek political power unless it is explicitly thrust upon them by Divine authority" - the exception is broad enough to cover the political power of the Church, Divine Right kingship and appointed authority under it, religious visionary leadership like Joan of Arc, and even Cromwell and his major-generals.
"Democracy good" is an idea that largely skips from pagan Athens (and, to a lesser extent, the Roman Republic) to the explicitly anti-clerical French Revolution without touching the intervening Christian millennia. The first country to see itself as both Christian and democratic is Jacksonian America. I don't know enough about the political thought of the medieval and early modern Christian republics (like Venice or the United Provinces) to comment, although I note that American republicanism was established by men whose Christianity was somewhat heterodox (especially Jefferson) and looked more to the Roman Republic than any of the usual Christian examples.
Moscow is 90% White
The Muslim immigrants ruining Europe are mostly white. Mohammad Atta and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were white. And a lot of the white ethnics (both immigrants and indigenous ethnic minorities) in Russia are Muslims in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev mold. Assimilability has more to do with cultural Christianity than it does with skin colour.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
Has that ever happened? I don't know, and I would be interested in what the response was.
[It is worth noting that the reason why diplomatic immunity is so broad is to present this type of thing being arranged as a plausibly deniable way to murder negotiators]
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
At the time of the incident, presumably because the US military did not want to draw more attention than necessary to Gen Wesley Clark's poor decision-making. Later on because it would have looked like a partisan move to embarrass a Democratic politician, to the point where the British would probably have asked Blunt/Jackson to decline the award.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
It's possible that if you'd been properly taught Jonah and other Bible stories as a kid you would have more respect and understanding for them, and maybe less hostility towards God.
To someone who grew up with western secular morality, properly explaining the lesson "God grants and denies mercy capriciously and we should not question his decisions" makes God less sympathetic, not more. The kiddie moral of "Johan was punished for his disobedience but forgiven in the end" is much more palatable to even Victorian sensibilities, let alone today's.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
Goldilocks was extremely popular with small boys of my generation as soon as they were old enough to read - you didn't need to set it as a course book for illustrated copies to fly off the library shelves. I don't think this was motivated by misogyny because Tailypo was equally popular with boys who came across it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
My understanding (see for example this old article) is that Texas has a public comment process that allows random unhinged people to have a disproportionate input into curriculum design.
Given the inaccuracy of African demographic statistics, "something in the ballpark of zero" and "100,000 dead kids across the countries where USAID used to operate" are compatible. The numbers in the millions are not plausible given the lack of a visible macro-demographic effect.
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