stuckinbathroom
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User ID: 903
stuckinbathroom
1d ago
The second half of 3 as well as 4 presuppose that “leftists” control hiring, and promotion to leadership positions within the Democratic Party infrastructure. Is that in fact the case?
stuckinbathroom
2d ago
Perhaps OP is getting confused about the changes introduced by the 12th and the 17th Amendments. The 12th (as you said) gave us the modern system whereby electors vote for both president and vice president, superseding Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. The 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of senators by the people of each state, superseding Article I of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by the state legislatures.
Per Article II and also, with minor changes, per the 12th Amendment, in the event that no presidential candidate achieves a majority of votes in the electoral college, the House will choose the president. But at no time did the Senate ever vote for the president.
Bingo. There’s also the additional layer of meaning arising from the fact that the French droit can mean “right” as in “right-wing” or as in “legal right”; and also (as an adjective) “not crooked” or “upright”
stuckinbathroom
7d ago
The English word boor is indeed cognate to the Dutch/Afrikaans boer; both etymologically come from roots meaning “peasant farmer”. The English word villain comes, via the French, from a Latin word with the same meaning.
stuckinbathroom
7d ago
Freddie deboar
It’s DeBoer; he’s (nominally) a Dutch/Afrikaans farmer, not a swine.
stuckinbathroom
7d ago
whether anyone has been gauche enough to articulate the quid-pro-quo or not, it's there.
Well in this case, articulating the quid pro quo would be rather droit, no?
stuckinbathroom
11d ago
The DoE was made in the fires of Congress. Only there can it be unmade.
But seriously though, it’s one thing for the President to fire anyone who serves at his pleasure, to leave the office of a cabinet secretary vacant indefinitely, or even to axe entire orgs that were created under executive authority. However, constitutionally, how can a federal department—or any other entity created by Congress—be legally dismantled, except by legislation to that effect? Seems like a blatant violation of Article 2, Section 2
I am aware that Musk is likely exaggerating for effect—in fact, he might not even be exaggerating, but describing the truth on the ground rather than as a legal fiction: if the DoE exists on paper but has no personnel, no money, no responsibilities, and no authority, then (when restricted to 280 characters) it’s quite fair to say it “doesn’t exist”. But my question is precisely about the legal fiction of the matter, the collective delusion if you will: to truly end the DoE in the eyes of the law, doesn’t Congress need to do something?
stuckinbathroom
15d ago
Let me guess: you just finished watching Evangelion for the first time?
stuckinbathroom
16d ago
One is also reminded of New Zealand PM Robert Muldoon’s famous quip that Kiwi emigration to Australia “raised the IQ of both countries”
stuckinbathroom
17d ago
P Escobar describes the monopolisation of local civil society thus
Not sure I would trust the King of Cocaine on this, but then again I imagine he has significant experience in dealing with various arms of the US federal government
stuckinbathroom
19d ago
Unrelated question: why is this (Bulgarian?) word for dog so different from the Russian/Ukrainian/Belarussian (собака/сабака)?
stuckinbathroom
21d ago
stuckinbathroom
22d ago
Is it deadnaming or misgendering to call a transwoman’s cartilaginous protuberance around the larynx the “Adam’s apple”? Should we call it an “Eve’s apple” instead? Or perhaps we should go with “primordial human’s apple” to be extra safe
stuckinbathroom
22d ago
gestures broadly at everything
in the same way that docker environments run on a virtual machine inside your pc
[pushes up glasses]
Well actually, virtual machines and containers are different things. It is certainly possible to run containers inside a VM, but a VM is not strictly necessary.
(OK, in fairness, I think Docker in particular relies on features of the Linux kernel, namely cgroups and namespaces, so e.g. Docker Desktop on Mac or Windows will indeed spin up a Linux VM)
/pedantry
stuckinbathroom
24d ago
Since OP mentioned Milton Friedman as the defining figure of neoliberalism—a characterization I mostly agree with, mind you—here’s what I think Friedman would have to say about the aforementioned 5 points:
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Basically agree; Friedman did write a bit about social libertarianism here and there (in particular, I remember his opposition to the draft) but his focus was of course on free-market economics—which he saw as necessary but not sufficient for a liberal (in the European sense) political order.
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Agree, but perhaps object to the somewhat-pejorative term “trickle-down economics”
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Agree in principle, though in practice would be against so-called “free trade agreements” that are full of un-free pork-barrel incentives (see also: Friedman’s famous support of a negative income tax in theory, but opposition to the EITC in practice, on the grounds that he wanted to simultaneously get rid of all other federal welfare)
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Mostly disagree, with perhaps some exceptions for national defense and alleviating the worst kinds of poverty (though on the latter point, he favored direct cash transfers). Certainly Friedman would not be in favor of industrial policy.
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This would have Friedman spinning in his grave. The only remotely similar thing that Friedman would support is the government not allowing a massive contraction of the money supply, so as to avoid repeating the mistake of the Great Depression. But this is a far cry from “bailouts for companies”.
I’m not claiming that these 5 points are a bad definition of neoliberalism as it stands today, necessarily. It’s just that the definition of neoliberalism has shifted in a more interventionist and less free-market direction since Friedman’s time, due in large part, I think, to the kinds of personalities that go into academic economics and the attendant wonkish/“soft paternalist” culture that the field has adopted.
stuckinbathroom
24d ago
tbh it’s just pathetic that the Japanese blew their potential goodwill with anti-colonial Southeast Asians as badly as they did. They had every opportunity to back “freedom fighters” a la Reagan inviting mujahideen to the White House; the stars were perfectly aligned for them to portray themselves as stalwart supporters of liberty and self-determination against the evil white oppressors, aaaand … they ended up being even more reviled than the Western colonial powers to this day 🤦♂️
At least the (non-KMT) Taiwanese still generally look back fondly on the Japanese colonial era.
stuckinbathroom
30d ago
Minor nitpick, but
Progressives admire patriotism in non-white countries, even as they scorn it in whites.
I'm not sure progressives think much about patriotism in non-white countries, and I don't think many of them admire Israeli patriotism.
AFAICT progressives oppose Israeli patriotism precisely because they think of Israel as a white (hence settler-colonialist, oppressor) country.
How do we know they were born in the US? They may have lost their birth certificates. Basically what is being proposed here is not grandfathering in current citizens, but either (1) amnesty and automatic free citizenship for everyone who already made it here illegally, plus a pinky promise that we’ll never do this again, or (2) a Gestapo-tier “papers, please” state in which everyone is presumed a noncitizen until he provides proof to the contrary—which is likely impossible for a lot of low functioning, high time preference people.
stuckinbathroom
1mo ago
I’m not sure this is quite so simple—there’s no national register of citizens, and at least half of all US citizens don’t have a passport. What are we going to do about (e.g.) all the hillbilly families in Appalachia who have never voted, never traveled outside the country, never (provably) served on a jury or in the military for generations?
Really? I’ve actually never seen any studies on percent of anchor babies with one US citizen parent vs. percent with none.
In any case, if a child has a US citizen parent, is it even accurate to call him an “anchor baby”? The US citizen parent has unfettered right of abode in the US regardless of the child’s citizenship status (though I suppose the non-citizen parent might not, if they aren’t married to the citizen parent).
Also a Japanese nursery rhyme (TW: exactly what you would expect, dead_dove.gif)
stuckinbathroom
1mo ago
It's beautiful hearing the Battle Hymn of the Republic, seeing soldiers march to it. Same with Glory, Glory Hallelujah.
Uh, isn’t the latter just (part of) the chorus of the former?
stuckinbathroom
1mo ago
Not totally sure what you mean by “get worse” here; you mean both sides will only continue to experience more and more casualties in future, because of their above-replacement TFR resulting in net positive population growth?
My point was, there are (as in any big-tent party) multiple wings/factions within the Democrats. The hardcore idpol progressive leftists—the sort who are alleged to be antisemites who care more about DEI bona fides than competence—are one such wing, but there are at least 2 others: the anti-idpol class-first leftists (roughly corresponding to Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren supporters) and, for lack of a better term, “The Blob”, aka the centrist PMC/technocrat wing who may pay lip service to DEI but remain staunchly pro-Israel (basically Clinton and Biden supporters).
It’s not obvious to me that the idpol-left faction has taken over the Democrats to such an extent that they can purge competent Jews as mentioned above.
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