Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
I have an idea:
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Win the presidency and both houses of congress.
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Eliminate the filibuster.
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Repeal the Civil Service Reform Acts.
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Repeal the Administrative Procedure Act.
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???
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Unleash total executive power over federal agencies and regulations. Very legal, very cool.
Why wouldn’t this work?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
You don't think judge Merchan would be more willing to impose a prison sentence after Trump loses the election?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Adopting the strict constructionist reading of the constitution and statutory law used in this decision would render the vast majority of the federal government illegitimate.
That doesn't mean it's wrong.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
I remember reading this book review of Hillbilly Elegy on /r/slatestarcodex years back. Hard to believe this guy is now the favorite to be vice president of the United States out of nowhere. From the review, Vance sounds like a smug liberal; rural Americans just seem to suck on a deeply personal level. I’m also seeing on Twitter that he had some choice words for Trump back in the day. I can imagine that Washington changes people.
There is exactly one question that matters for any Trump running mate. Will he count the votes on January 6, 2029?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Multiple shooters?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Not at short range, but this was a pretty far shot. The bullet would be going much slower than muzzle velocity when it hits.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Security for the sitting president is insane. I remember being stuck on a freeway onramp for 15 minutes while they completely cleared the road for the presidential motorcade. This level of security is incredibly expensive and disruptive. It's very difficult to secure all sightlines to a public area.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
You need decent cognitive skills to draw blood on such a well-guarded target. The takes calling the shooter a retard are, well, retarded. We've seen what it looks like when mentally ill people try to assassinate Trump. It's pathetic.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
You don't want to print "Donald Trump shot" unless you know that Donald Trump was in fact shot. The known facts are exactly what was printed. The reader can make the inference just as well as the editor.
So like, if you believe Trump really is this massive threat to democracy, why wouldn't a patriotic American try to shoot him? A few possible reasons:
- Someone else just as bad or worse would step up.
Unlikely tbh. Nobody else commands the same personal loyalty from the Republican base. The party would likely devolve into squabbling like the Alexandrian empire.
- Assassinations are always bad for deontological reasons.
Also highly questionable. Would it have been a bad idea to shoot Hitler in 1933? Stalin in 1924?
This seems to be a highly counterintuitive conclusion, but is it? If someone is a threat, you eliminate them. Is the solution more explicit probabilistic thinking? If Trump has a 90% chance of ending American democracy, then maybe the right move is to shoot him. If he only has a 10% chance, maybe deontological considerations dominate?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Kamala is the only person with democratic legitimacy to replace Biden. Everybody knows that the one job of the vice president is to take over if the president dies or quits. Everyone who voted for Biden had that understanding.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Spending this amount of money on incarceration is a policy choice. It could very easily be brought down to $35 a day, if not lower.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
The governor is out of the country on business, and the president is asleep at the wheel. Apparently, utility companies just won’t prep for emergencies or stage equipment without executive officers breathing down their neck.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Has Biden or the White House made a statement on the hurricane? A major metropolitan area is completely shut down. No power, spotty cell service. I guess the gulf coast having hurricanes is all “part of the plan”, so nobody cares.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Trump has plot armor. I cannot believe how goddamn lucky the guy is. "'This Will Be The End Of Trump’s Campaign,’ Says Increasingly Nervous Man For Seventh Time", was published eight and a half years ago. Just when it seemed like the walls were finally closing in, he gets bailed-out by a double whammy of the Supreme Court's immunity ruling and his opponent publicly going senile. Losing in 2020 might actually end up in his benefit, because now he gets to control the Republican Party for 12 years instead of just 8.
I keep seeing ads from Democrats that lead with the idea of "protecting democracy". Are they trying to convince independents and Republicans, or are they trying to convince themselves? A Trump victory (especially if he wins the popular vote) would be a democratic ratification of Jan 6. It would be a rejection of the charges against Trump. If Trump wins 2024 bigger than ever before, the entire big-D Democrat philosophy collapses in on itself in a tapestry of self-reference paradoxes. A Trump victory is not only figuratively unthinkable, but literally unthinkable.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
I don't think I've ever actually mailed a physical letter in my entire life. I'm sure it's not too hard, but one can imagine 80IQ or low-motivation people screwing it up.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Mister President, you can't sleep here. This is the rest room.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Liberals read. Conservatives watch tv. All of Scott's excuses make perfect sense if the only information one gets from the political sphere is text. I suppose he had good reasons to doubt the credibility of all those people who said Biden was senile, I remember many of them claiming that Hillary was about to keel over in 2016 too.
What he apparently didn't do was watch the clips.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
I can’t imagine him capstoning his career by stepping over a black woman.
It is her turn after all.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Biden's political instincts are stronger than many give him credit for.
This was the main reason I was hesitant to call him senile. Closing the border was a smart move. It neutralizes one of Trump's strongest arguments for moderates. It could be that his aging brain can't handle the bandwidth of spoken conversation. Maybe we need to put Biden in a Stephen Hawking chair for his own good. We could even give him his old voice back via AI.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
Fundamentally, the idea is that Congress does not have authority to regulate the constitutional exercises of the presidential office. The constitution is above any statute, so any statute which infringes upon the president’s ability to do his job is unconstitutional by that very fact (when applied to the president).
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
This rests under the assumption that the power of Congress, "to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces," trumps (heh) the president’s role as “commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States.” The opinion spends ample time dispelling the notion that congress can regulate the president’s article 2 powers. Why do you assume that regulations on what kind of orders the president can issue acting in his constitutionally mandated role as commander in chief are constitutional? You say this has been litigated, but where? Who would have article 3 standing?
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
I had that idea too, but it didn't seem to make any sense. No one would think the big swing in odds on June 27 occurred before the debate, but it is conceivable that one would think that it happened as a result of the debate reactions, not the debate itself. Indeed, this thread seems to be about the distinction between the debate itself, and the reaction to the debate.
Quantumfreakonomics
4mo ago
No? I'm pretty sure it dumped after the, "if... we finally beat Medicare," line.
Cancel culture is BACK baby.
Just today we had a perfectly normal Walmart-American harassed and fired after exercising her constitutionally-protected right to post a shitty hot take on her own Facebook page. Of course, it's not enough for human resources to quietly take her out back. She had to be publicly defenestrated.
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