Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Mike]

Jones is among the lowest levels of human being. He deserves every bad thing that happens to him.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I agree. Lets declare war on Nebraska.

fricken Nebraskans

I know you love me. So please stop with the act.

XOXOXO

[Dr. Strangelove]

Update for people who might care about this

Nicholas Sandmann won settlements from the Washington Post and NBC but he lost his defamation suits against these 5 media companies today.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Here is me yawning...

[Mike]

Update for people who might care about this

Nicholas Sandmann won settlements from the Washington Post and NBC but he lost his defamation suits against these 5 media companies today.

He still cashed some big ass checks from WaPo and NBC.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Fair enough.....this has been a clinic on the application of Constitutional amendments as these apply to concerns in my initial post on the subject of how states tally votes and then determine electors to the Electoral College. It appears the argument advanced here, to wit, the Feds don't have the power to define how states determine their electors, is a strong one.

IMO, what is emerging from various investigations of the matter is that Trump and his backers formulated plans to have certain states submit a list of "alternate electors" to the Electoral College. In the simplest terms, the goal was to tip the EC vote in favor of Trump or at the least present the basis for a state's "alternate" electors to object to the outcome of the vote of the EC . That was just one phase of Trump's attempts to invalidate Biden's win. There were others, the Pence affair being one of them.

Based on that, my view is that this sort of funny business should be prevented and I can't say I know of a good way to do this from a federal level that is constitutional. I am aware that over the years several bills have come before congress that have attempted to do that, i.e., change the process by which the states elect EC Electors and how EC decides the winner of the Presidential and VIce Preseidential contests.

In researching this post, I did find this. https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewconte...ntext=articles

What a reading of the link discloses to me is that the relationship between state and federal authority to regulate a presidential election is complex to say the least. It also describes court rulings that have addressed this question and have a bearing on it. It also, IMO, seems to explain that Congress is within its right to pass legislation (although restricted to a degree) that regulates the state's process of selecting electors. Currently, however, and to my knowledge, there are no such laws passed by Congress that do that even though, as I mentioned above, there have been proposals to do so.

[iam416]

First, that's a law review article. Without getting too far into it, law review articles are usually somewhat esoteric and sometimes the wilder the opinion the more likely it is to get published. Just to put things in perspective -- I'VE been published in a law review article.

Second, and most importantly, that article is about the Supreme Court case that held that institutions in the State aside from just the legislature could pick electors (whether the Elections Clause or Presidential Elections clause). The Court held that referenda or popular amendments were acceptable under either clause. Their reasoning was that the fundamental purpose of the Elections Clauses was to allow States to run elections as they see fit and referenda/popular amendments are now part of that toolkit (and they weren't in exisistence or prominent in 1789).

The decision said absolutely NOTHING about Federal/State balance. It reiterated, though, that States decide. That particular article wants a stricter reading of the Constitution and posits that the holding will do away with the independent legislature doctrine. As it turns out, that was a very wrong prediction.

Look, Buchanan -- if you wanna read the NYT all day about how the Rs are going to steal the 2024 election that's cool. My wife is utterly convinced this will happen. And if you're utterly convinced it will happen then you tend to ignore whatever Constitutional roadblocks are in your way in a "ends justify means" approach. But, ask yourself this -- what was the NYT and The Media and the Ds calling Georgia elections laws? What was The Chairman calling them? Why did MLB move the all-star game from Atlanta? And then ask yourself what the actual reality and played out reality (2022 primaries) in Georgia? Or, more generally, ask yourself how many "emergencies" have been posited to, e.g., keep cruise ships docked well after the initial Covid fears. If you wanna keep on thinking that THIS time there's a wolf out there, that's fine. But, heh, not me.

So, work yourself into a state of panic if you wish. But consider the realities. And, finally, the bill that Congress is likely to pass re EC reform would address the bulk of your concerns.

[lineygoblue]

The City of Detroit pays BLM for its 'peaceful protests'.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2022/07/26/detroit-offers-pay-black-lives-matter-protesters/10156828002/

Tom - sometimes, I wonder how you live in that area and stay sane.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Hey, talent, I'm an innocent, and mostly uninformed bystander just trying to understand the lengths that Trump and his people went to in attempting to subvert the presidential voting process. I don't think you would deny that shit was a real wolf, right? Their plans were thwarted because reasonable voices inside that clown show pointed out, well, such plans were very likely unconstitutional. I think I have that much right.

So, this line in the opening paragraph of the document piqued my interest.

"This Essay contends that AIRC is a dramatic expansion of precedent based on sweeping reasoning that reshapes Elections Clause doctrine in largely unrecognized ways across a range of other fields. This Essay offers a critical analysis of the “new” Elections Clause and its Article II analogue, the Presidential Electors Clause, as they remain in the wake of this tumultuous ruling..... and goes on ......

The ruling also largely settles the issue of delegations under those provisions. It clarifies that, although the Elections Clause confers power to craft rules governing congressional elections specifically on the “Legislature” of each state, this power may be delegated to executive or administrative entities. It leaves undisturbed the Court’s previous holding that the Elections Clause authorizes federal preemption of state laws concerning congressional elections, independent of the Supremacy Clause, without triggering a presumption against preemption.

I'm in over my head now and don't mind being schooled but this says to me that the feds can premempt state laws concerning congressional elections and, I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that extends to presidential elections. In your post you do point out that this "prediction" was entirely wrong. Understood.

......and on another point you make: I am not at all searching for bogey men portrayed as such by the liberal NYTs, such bogey men involving themselves in the 2024 election. BTW, I'm an avid reader of NRO but still seek a balance in my understanding of political issues, particularly this one. I understand that there are "constitutional roadblcks" that stopped the Trump clowns from pulling off their shit of invalidating the EC vote cold. Those roadblocks will still be there in 2024.

I do think however and to my understanding of these that there are exploitable loopholes in some of the state's processes of designating electors to the EC. I mentioned those in an earlier post (i.e., putting political and ideological motivated officials into state level elected positions that oversee the presidential voting process and the designation of electors to the EC). This is especially true of "faithless electors" (not possible in all states). These have appeared when the EC convenes in the past, have mostly voted for 3rd party candidates and have had no direct impact on the R v. D presidential race the winner of that race the EC is designed to determine. So it seems all is well, right?

If that were the case, why has Congress since very ealry in the history of US presidential elections entertained multiple proposals to change the process defined in the constitution for the election of the president and vice President?

[Dr. Strangelove]

The problem with the "independent state legislature" doctrine isn't really about choosing electors. Some states have laws requiring the electors to be awarded to the popular vote winner but not all of them do. Technically in those places the legislature is free to award those electors to whomever they want right now. No new philosophy needs to be adopted -- that's the way it's always been.

The real problem is that the "independent state legislatures" theory posits that state legislatures have total and unchallengeable control over the execution and management of federal elections and even if they blatantly violate the state or federal Constitution, no Governor or Court can do anything about it. I guess if the doctrine took hold those laws requiring electors go to the popular vote winner would be unconstitutional though.

[Dr. Strangelove]

It's going to be funny if after all the shameless attempts to redefine the popular definition of "recession", and all the mockery the Admin is getting for that, the GDP number tomorrow ends up being positive and the whole argument is rendered moot.

[Mike]

I believe "recession-adjacent" is the proper nomenclature.

[Hannibal]

Alex Jones harassed Sandy Hook parents for years, calling them liars and crisis actors and every stupid conspiracy bullshit item he could think off. He egged on psychos and shitheads to encourage them to believe these parents were part of a conspiracy to steal their guns. Your boy, Paul Joseph Watson, warned Jones and Infowars that this stuff had gone way too far and was clearly not true, but Jones kept it going for years because it got him listeners and morons to buy his phony medicines, which raked in something like $125 Million over the last four years. He's now trying to hide that wealth in LLCs and whatnot so he can plead poverty when it comes to damages.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-po...at-shit-crazy/

This Sandy Hook stuff is killing us,” Watson wrote to Jones on December 17, 2015, according to court documents filed this week. “It’s promoted by the most bat shit crazy people like [Jeff] Rense and [James] Fetzer who all hate us anyway. Plus it makes us look really bad to align with people who harass the parents of dead kids. It’s going to hurt us with Drudge and bringing bigger names into the show. Plus the event happened three years ago. Why even risk our reputation for it?”

After he was finally sued for defamation because he simply wouldn't stop smearing these people, he dragged his heels for more than two years, refusing to turn over documents and evidence requested during discovery. That led to two different judges, one in Connecticut and one in Texas, finding him guilty by default judgment. Decisions of that type are pretty rare. You have to really, really piss off a judge usually.

He has no one but himself to blame. He's a contemptible piece of shit.

So promoting fake news that damages people means that you can be sued? When does CNN get sued for all of the lies that they spread that led to BLM riots? For that matter, when does BLM get sued for all of the violence that they have formented? How many acts of violence can be attributed to things that Alex Jones has said? Zero? (that didn't prevent him from getting banned from youtube after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting though). His crime is causing "emotional distress". How many acts of violence can be directly attributed to lies told by BLM and the mainstream media? Quite a few -- and it amounts to at least a little bit more than "emotional distress". This is what I mean when I say that one side is bringing a knife to a gunfight. If the Right ever adopts this strategy you guys are going to transform into free speech absolutists overnight.

[Hannibal]

What Jones did was intentional and with malice, inflict duress and mental harm without cause or basis in fact, upon grieving parents of murdered children for financial gain. Much like yelling fire in a crowded theatre, I doubt that's protected speech. Hanni has some strange heroes.

Reminds me of when all of the mainstream media networks imposed massive harm upon the country by spreading fake news about a Russia Conspiracy hoax and lies about people like Michael Brown and Jacob Blake. But it's OK when you guys do it, amirite?

Don't listen to that wacky guy who thinks that they are adding chemicals to the water to turn the frogs gay. Listen to the perfectly rational people on CNN who told you that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian election interference conspiracy.

[Hannibal]

Of course the Alt Right media is also full of phonies and performative hacks because, let's face it, the competition is a lot tougher in mainstream media. So you've got losers like Benny Johnson, who got fired repeatedly for plagiarism in the mainstream media, finally making it big in Alt Right circles because, well, they have very low standards. Tucker Carlson was just another bowtie-wearing Beltway momma's boy until he found his current angle parroting anti coastal elitist slop and pretending like he gives a fuck about Iowa.

Just because Tucker grew up in that circle doesn't mean that he doesn't understand or even empathize with what goes on outside that circle. He doesn't claim to have blue collar origins, but he doesn't view those people as serfs to be ordered around and controlled. Perhaps he is one of the few members of his clique who actually recognizes that if the country collapses, his gated communities aren't going to keep him safe forever. Or maybe that's just not the country that he wants to live in. Perhaps he is just wise enough to recognize that he has fortunate geneology. Or perhaps, from a purely 100% cynical standpoint, he doesn't care about the cattle, but he recognizes that they produce more milk if you keep them happy. I don't know -- I'm not in his brain. His evolution from LIbertarian to Alt Right is a natural progression -- a major chunk of the movement are frustrated Libertarians.

Whatever the case, there are quite a few grifters on the right, but he is not one of them. It's easy to tell the difference if you watch people for a while. One of the things that grifters don''t do is take risks or express original ideas. Tucker does both, and he doesn't punch Right.