Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[THE_WIZARD_]

Mr. Miyagi says you are a neanderthal...AA-son...

[lineygoblue]

You can't use chopsticks when eating sushi?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Never, and I cannot repeat this enough, NEVER order the "sushi" at Wizzie's

[THE_WIZARD_]

I have some special wasabi for you DSL...

[AlabamAlum]

You can't use chopsticks when eating sushi?

Certainly, you can. It's not a necessity, however.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Remember that goofball Andrew Zimmern? Chubby guy that went around eating the grossest stuff in the world? Cast iron stomach? Yeah you don't see him much anymore. They filmed an episode at Wizzie's to try his "world famous" pu pu platter.

Nobody beats the Wiz. Nobody. RIP, Andrew

[Da Geezer]

At the very least, there will be better OPTIONS available than there were in '73. There's more information, better forms of protection and, well, an even better developed Interstate highway system. Anyone that wants an abortion will be able to get one safely, if not entirely legally or conveniently. The biggest change, though, is that the Federal government will have gotten out of the business - which should appeal to BOTH extremes.

True. Prior to 1973, there was no "set up" to provide abortions. Now there is. And the insurance industry pays for abortions as a routine matter. That is important. Inertia is one of the most powerful political facts at all levels. I suspect that those states that want unlimited abortion will quickly pass legislation to that effect. I expect those states that want to limit abortion will "copy" the Mississippi law that has just upheld. One should also remember that Roe allowed abortion prior to fetal viability. I could easily see some states using this standard to set their limits on abortion.

This will make local politicians declare what they believe, and that is a good thing. Passing legislation quickly doesn't seem to me to be a difficult process.

I couldn't find Talent's post where he said that he thought Roberts might write his own dissent. That would be interesting, but, IMO unlikely. Roberts proved in the Obamacare decisions that he actually didn't care what a law said, or what prior case law said. He is all about maintaining the power of the SC. He'll join the progs because he wants to retain a 9-member SC.

Which brings me to what I think is the reason for the leak. Bernie Sanders yesterday said we should pack the court immediately, and do away with the filibuster to make 50 votes achieve the packing. That is really what I think this is about. For all of my life, the Dems could count on the SC to be a super-legislator that imposed prog policies on the country without a vote of the people. In just the last two years has the SC had a viable conservative majority? The Dems will never tolerate a SC that limits itself to cases before it and does not promote prog policy goals. Why now on the leak? Well, Congress will be in recess soon, and they don't have time to pack the court if the final decision is released in June or July. After the election, it may be too late for the progs.

Really, despite all the hand-wringing on TV, this is nothing new. In the 1930's the SC blocked those laws in the New Deal that were clearly unconstitutional, so FDR began talking about packing the court. This turned out to be unpopular, but the outcome of the attempted packing is seldom told. "A switch in time saved nine" is what actually happened, and after the packing matter died down, the SC began affirming the New Deal legislation. Those justices got the message and IMO, this leak is the same kind of deal. Roberts for sure and maybe Kav might view keeping a 9-member SC as more important than limiting abortion. I say again, a constitutional amendment to set the membership of the SC at nine would be a winning issue for the conservatives.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Chief Roberts with a statement and 3 main points

1) Confirmed the document is real
2) Said it does not reflect the final position of the Court (Interesting, depending on how true it is)
3) Said he's ordering an investigation

[Dr. Strangelove]

Really, despite all the hand-wringing on TV, this is nothing new. In the 1930's the SC blocked those laws in the New Deal that were clearly unconstitutional, so FDR began talking about packing the court. This turned out to be unpopular, but the outcome of the attempted packing is seldom told. "A switch in time saved nine" is what actually happened, and after the packing matter died down, the SC began affirming the New Deal legislation. Those justices got the message and IMO, this leak is the same kind of deal. Roberts for sure and maybe Kav might view keeping a 9-member SC as more important than limiting abortion. I say again, a constitutional amendment to set the membership of the SC at nine would be a winning issue for the conservatives.

New Deal legislation was routinely blocked by the "Four Old Men", a faction of the court who almost always voted the same way and were all extremely conservative. They were often successful in peeling off at least one of the more moderate justices.

What changed isn't that FDR put the fear of God into them. They simply all died or retired between 1937 and 1941. The first of these was replaced by Hugo Black, pretty universally regarded as one of the greatest justices of all time by both liberals and conservatives. Scalia loved Hugo Black.

This lets me bring up Justice McReynolds again because he was the oldest and longest serving of the Four Old Men. He was an awful human being, loathed by everyone who worked with him, even including the three other guys who voted along side him. He was lazy, mean-spirited, and aggressively anti-Semitic.

James Clark McReynolds - Wikipedia

[Dr. Strangelove]

Also did my patriotic duty here by voting for the least Trumpy Republicans on the ballot. Let's go, Dolan!!

[iam416]

Mrs. Talent also voted in the R primary for exactly that reason.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Some Ukraine news:

The Russians aren't doing anything today in Ukraine other than some limited bombardment - mostly artillery. There's been no noticeable troop movements or evidence of renewed offensives. Lack of Russian air offensives defies presumed capabilities. Ukraine still has a functional air defense and deep strikes into Ukraine risks shoot-downs and the political blow-back of captured Russian pilots. Note that Putin has ordered air strikes on Mariupol, close to Russian airbases in Russian territory.

This begs the question, why? Analysts are looking at two reasons:

(1) Putin is planning a bigger offensive after May 9th - Victory Day over the German's in WWII celebration. Mitigating against this option is that if Putin were going to do it, he'd be positioning forces on the boarder to do so. Intel sources aren't seeing that.

(2) Putin does not want a wider war fearing NATO involvement. No hard evidence but his force's unwillingness to more aggressively seek out and destroy western convoys carrying weapons is hard to explain but for this reason.

While bombardments have been brutal, the degree of infrastructure damage has been small compared to what you'd expect in an invasion like this. The thinking is that Putin doesn't want to destroy rail lines and other facilities that support gas/oil transport and electricity production. He still may hold hopes of taking Ukraine back into Russia and wants to preserve that infrastructure instead of rebuild it.

Russia's presumed capability to conduct cyberattacks against western nations supplying aid to Ukraine aren't being undertaken - or they are being thwarted and we're not hearing about that. Such attacks would be highly escalatory and Putin may be avoiding cyberattacks not to provoke retaliation in kind form the west and a widening of the war beyond Ukraine.

Nuclear rhetoric from the Kremlin and especially as a part of the propaganda being fed to Russian citizens inside Russia isn't backed up by typical activities involving Russian nuclear assets that experts in this intel field would expect. Again, Putin appears to be acting rationally wrt nukes. Saber relating notwithstanding.

All in all, Putin's actions seem rational. He is hard to predict and prefers a level of ambiguity to everything he says and does. The weight of the evidence supports that Putin is planning a long, grinding war the objective of which is to seize control of the crescent area I've described previously. That objective will be undertaken with political activity intended to replace Ukrainian administrative functions and symbols with Russian ones enforced by brutal suppression of objections to that by civilians. This presents a tough decision for the west. Allow it or engage the Russians militarily to drive them out of Ukraine. I prefer the later.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Jeff- In the last half hour a lot of reporters saying some big explosions around Lviv.

[Da Geezer]

New Deal legislation was routinely blocked by the "Four Old Men", a faction of the court who almost always voted the same way and were all extremely conservative. They were often successful in peeling off at least one of the more moderate justices.

What changed isn't that FDR put the fear of God into them. They simply all died or retired between 1937 and 1941. The first of these was replaced by Hugo Black, pretty universally regarded as one of the greatest justices of all time by both liberals and conservatives. Scalia loved Hugo Black.

This lets me bring up Justice McReynolds again because he was the oldest and longest serving of the Four Old Men. He was an awful human being, loathed by everyone who worked with him, even including the three other guys who voted along side him. He was lazy, mean-spirited, and aggressively anti-Semitic.

James Clark McReynolds - Wikipedia

Not exactly, but here is what Wikipedia says

"The switch in time that saved nine" is the phrase, originally a quip by humorist Cal Tinney,^[1] about what was perceived in 1937 as the sudden jurisprudential shift by Associate Justice Owen Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1937 case West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish.^[2] Conventional historical accounts portrayed the Court's majority opinion as a strategic political move to protect the Court's integrity and independence from President Franklin Roosevelt's court-reform bill (also known as the "court-packing plan"), but later historical evidence gives weight to Roberts' decision being made much earlier, before the bill's introduction.

[Dr. Strangelove]

lol, leave it to GatewayPundit (crash's preferred news source) to come up with dumbest of all explanations for "The Leak"

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