Also I think most people aren't being super serious about saying he's dead or imminently dying, it's less wishcasting than it is a joke about wishcasting.
Election law and policy, liberalism and democracy, and occasional pugs.
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Also I think most people aren't being super serious about saying he's dead or imminently dying, it's less wishcasting than it is a joke about wishcasting.
Refusing to say anything implies they know they'll either have to say, or it will soon come out, otherwise. I'd still bet not because it would have quickly leaked if it was something major. But it's odd, even for them, to let the speculation run so rampant while they keep radio silence.
I think he's been on a big decline over the long term but in just in a general old age sort of way and not any major, acute diagnosis. A minor health issue is possible, it'd be my bet, but the thing that cuts against it is they could just say that (lie or not), and there has been no leak saying it
So you do end up in this scenario where they are basically acting as if he's still there, still working toward the fuehrer as they do, sucking up to what he'd want, and Vance wouldn't have the room to go full-blown purge and installing his cronies and ripping all the gold chintz out of the Oval.
They'd be Beria asking the doctors if he'll make it. More seriously I do think they would do it if he was literally unconscious, but nothing short of that. And so long as there was any chance of him speaking again, they'd only act with an eye to not getting purged if that happens.
Millions of people rallied to the streets on the specific message that he's trying to be a king, a dictator, that he's destroying the Constitution and is thus anti-American. And polls show that's not some niche, fringe belief. It wasn't for some triangulated policy normal-times policy agenda.
If there's any such coherent thing as "Blueskyism," it's total loathing for Trump. That's the only near-universal political opinion on here. And no matter how you slice it, Mr. Polls, hating Trump, who is underwater by double digits, is vastly more popular than anything else the Democratic Party.
It's hardly a graphic or titillating scene, either. I mean, it's excruciating but it's not pornographic.
Oh yeah, could be. I didn't follow anything off-screen about the cast but I believe that. And that scene is definitely crucial to establishing how she puts up the facade of a loving wife but actually treats him like dirt when others aren't there to see.
She has her own understandable motives but Skyler is one of the least sympathetic characters. She's awful from the start, goes on to do more selfish things, and is smart enough (unlike Marie) to be at least somewhat self-aware about it. Often she *chooses* to be terrible.
It's literally emasculating! He's being treated as a failure as a father, as a provider, and sexually as a husband. Heisenberg becomes a kind of toxic masculinity outlet for that which is part of why he finds it so addicting (the parallel between that and literal drug addiction is not subtle).
Hank is definitely rather sexist and that's one of his blind spots, he at least thinks about what's going on internally with both Walt and Junior, but he's blithely unconcerned and makes assumptions about both Skyler and Marie as if they're just simple feminine stereotypes, "what women want."
Ah, yes, I forgot it was that instead of the other way. But Hank definitely takes it to heart that as his sister-in-law he kind of takes on that role. Perhaps it's a bit more of a patriarchal assumption, but it's true he's not really attentive and makes blind assumptions about what she really wants.
Oh yeah, it's not conscious. Hank always thinks he's being the good guy and isn't self-reflective enough to consider why Walter doesn't see it that way, thus he's constantly confused by his reactions.
Walter is absolutely the villain / anti-hero of the whole thing and by the end that's not subtle at all.
Flip side of that is Hank acts the tough guy but he's really the more sentimental family man. Which is why he also steps into the father role for Junior, thinking he's being benevolent, and that further enrages Walter who sees in it the ultimate emasculating insult.
The thinly veiled subtext of that being a weak pushover isn't good enough for his sister, which is why he's so constantly eager to interfere in their relationship and make Walter man up as it were. Unaware of what a monster it will unleash when he does.
Right. Hank is the unvarnished patronizing version of it, almost outright bullying. Even as he's ostensibly chummy he really looks down on him, and doesn't hide it, because he thinks he's a weak pushover.
To be sure, there are lots of way to read the complex psychological nuances of him which is why it's such compelling drama and great TV.
That's why they claim to respect him but their actions don't really match, they are instead selfish and take his superficial meekness for granted, which in turn fuels his resentment.
Fair, but it's not that he snaps at people, he keeps that in check. But we do see subtle flashes of his contempt and resentment toward Skyler and the others, times when the mask slips and others do perceive it even if on a subconscious level. Their professed respect for him always rings a bit hollow
Also why he's never able to walk away when he has the chance. He doesn't want to go back to his old repressed self having achieved financial security for his family, his ostensible motive. Once he's let it out, had the taste of it, he's addicted to being Heisenberg.
Heisenberg isn't a new personality he develops from scratch in response to circumstances and events, it's who he always was underneath and had repressed until he stops repressing it. The monster within was always there, so to speak.
That's why when he snaps, the underlying egotistical self-regard and contempt for others comes out with a vengeance.
It's a kind of passive-aggressive thing, he doesn't advocate for himself not because he's modest or non-confrontational, that's the mask he wears, but because he's too arrogant and thinks he shouldn't have to, and then seethes with resentment until it bubbles over. It's kind of Coriolanus-esque.
Faded over time in the same sense as has been quipped about going bankrupt, slowly and then all at once.
Exactly. That's why the Medal of Honor is the only case where a higher-ranked will salute a lower-ranked. Because it represents the highest ultimate authority, the sovereign people of the United States who are represented by their civilian Congress, not the presidency or military chain of command.
That's also why the Congressional Gold Medal (which does go back to the early days) isn't for wear, it's only for display. It's all tied up in the traditional symbolism of civic republican modesty in a way people were once conscious of but faded over time.
Historically, US was so averse to European-style medals we didn't even do military ones (Purple Heart was a "badge" under Washington and not revived until the 20th C.), and then for a long time only the Medal of Honor (Civil War). We got over that but the aversion to civilian ones persisted longer.
For things the Kennedys made up as new traditions, I'll give them the Air Force One livery, and the Rose Garden, and for that matter the Kennedy Center (noting a Trump trend here?) but the Medal of Freedom is tacky un-republican trash. The office is not our fount of honour and shouldn't play at it.
Also, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is *not* our "highest civilian honor." The much older Congressional Gold Medal is, because Congress as a body properly outranks the President. Thus why the military Medal of Honor is presented "in the name of the United States Congress" and not just POTUS.
The backstory of the Medal of Freedom is JFK was annoyed Europeans had fancy (non-military) medals to hand out, which we didn't do in America, so he made up his own. Presidents have been tossing it at random senior politicians and pop culture figures and whoever else tickles their fancy ever since.
No, it was always cheap nonsense. That's not a new thing just for Trump.
This medal is so meaningless and given out to political hacks so often, I would have assumed Rudy already had one.
Update: yup. Sometimes weird stuff just happens.
They make a desert and call it peace.
Exactly.
I hate it! I'm not more generally a determinist! But on the narrower question of why do socio-economic-political stases get disrupted, nine times out of ten it's some leap made on faster and bigger and more disintermediated communications (and transportation, but comms is bigger) possible.
And then one or a few generations later it finds an equilibrium and culture adapts and it gets normalized and then it's like ha, you can you believe they used to smash printing presses, or look at this ridiculous mid-century propaganda, how quaint.
Printing press, Reformation. Papers and pamphlets, the age of revolutions. Radio and cinema, fascism and totalitarianism. TV, performative entertainment politics. Internet, radicalization. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. It's always the comms tech disruption.
That we're on Wiley E. Coyote time remains an apt metaphor.
Yeah it's been pretty consistently riding at about the 80th to 90th percentile on my "how bad is it going to be" expectations.
For sure. And we're way too far along that already, and there are massive looming threats to the mid-terms. Which makes it all the more crucial to know where the weak points are and (relatively) aren't. But that can get obfuscated in a consolidat*ing* regime as opposed to a consolidat*ed* one.
It remains really hard to draw a distinction between "oh they're lawless so they'll just do whatever they want anyway" and "no that flies in the face of the basic structural reality of how things work and what they can actually do even in being lawless." Being lawless doesn't give you magic powers.
I blame the legal realists, honestly. At least in part. There are absolutely techniques of constitutional interpretation that aren't limited to what's explicit in the text! But they're not just totally indeterminate "do whatever you want" either! There are right answers!
NEW: my office has received disturbing whistleblower reports that the Trump administration plans to separate 700 children from their families, lawyers, and support systems. Disappearing vulnerable children beyond the reach of American law and oversight is beyond depravity.
This should be a bigger story. A government official had the YouTube channel of a private citizen shut down bc he didn’t like what that citizen was saying. This administration’s version of free speech is a joke.
That you objectively wouldn't be able to tell the difference is the dumbest possible "we invented the torment nexus" way for us to pass the Turing test and get Asimov's robots taking over the world. And it's always the dumbest possible thing, so...
Not-so-fun but interesting related fact: an older friend of mine was one of the plaintiffs or in the class settlement, I forget the details, on the big sex abuse mega-lawsuit. He put part of his payout to trying to get this extremely unfortunate and poorly aged Boy Scouts statute in DC taken down.
Parent was an eagle scout and had been super into it and eager for us to do it, and we both lost interest and left when we got old enough to say so. Many such cases. That was, like, 90% of my classmates. And this was 25 years ago, before all the more recent implosion. I gather it's pretty dead now.
Yeah, ours was run by a nice guy, our optometrist and a friend's dad. I stop going mostly b/c I just wasn't into it and the last straw was "no I don't want to hike 20 miles around the battlefield at Vicksburg on a hot summer day." Wasn't anything worse than that for me, though o/c it was for some.
eh, I could see deciding to include it because it was related in a way that'd come out (it's why the cops were already there) and you don't want "Rudy in car accident at scene of domestic violence call" (which is basically all the police said) without explaining it wasn't him involved in the DV.
Could be. That the other car was a 19 year-old means it's bit more likely and plausible they were at fault, though. Or some mix of both, who knows.
The police said nothing either way about that and declined to comment about it when asked, according to the article.
Thinking about it, may have been a DV where the woman had been forced out of the car on the shoulder and the abuser had driven off, so she might have been alone on-foot. Either way, not hard to imagine that sort of thing happening, it wouldn't be extraordinarily unusual as a DV scenario.
The cops didn't include the part about Rudy's car having been flagged down at that same DV incident, but neither do they contradict it. Feels unlikely for all the rest of it to line up as it does, but then make up that part.
Putting the two together: you've got Rudy with his crew, a DV in progress in a car pulled over on the shoulder, thus why a woman on foot was flagging down cars on the interstate, cops arrive, Rudy turns around at the next exit and is heading back the other way, crash happens, cops see it. It fits!
Calling my shot: I think Rudy's telling the truth! What the police told the reporter doesn't contradict the statement Rudy put out, and it confirms big parts of it: there was a domestic violence incident on the side of the interstate and the cops who were there for it saw and responded to the crash.
tbh I'm kind of leaning more that way now? I don't actually see any huge discrepancy, other than the police didn't say he had been flagged down at the same DV incident, but don't deny it. Also DV in a car pulled over on the shoulder would explain why on-foot flagging down cars on the interstate.
“Sometimes they said things like ‘let me through, I’m trying to enter the library,’ which I assume they said for the benefit of those viewing the video online from places outside of UCLA, because a viewer of the video familiar with the geography of the campus could readily observe….” /1
And related, media coverage has not been good at conveying that distinction, there has been a ton of "Trump orders such-and-such" when the actual EO is just a bunch of empty bluster even on its own terms.
"Do what I want or I'll yank funding" is a thing he's been doing (and isn't much of a threat for election administration), and he's often been losing even on that b/c precedents are so strong. But none of the EOs have attempted to say to state agencies ok you work for me now, here are your orders.
Agreed, and in particular I think folks underrate how big a hurdle anti-commandeering is in terms of just straight-up ordering states to do anything. That's not a line he's even tried to cross, really, and it's unlikely he will here because it's a much bigger leap with much harder barriers.
My more nuanced serious take would be not that Scouting is inherently fascist, but the superficial resemblances reflect how it really took off and had its heyday in the same era in which similar things became associated with fascism. It would probably look pretty different if it had started in 1950.
I get that and was being a bit tongue in cheek, but it does have its origins in a militaristic sort of early 20th C. milieu and aesthetic, which is is not completely disconnected from similar influences on fascism. The regimentation and uniforms and salutes and all that, a creature of its times.
I bailed out before I got that far, but yeah it's basically just a way to draw a distinction around the older kids who are extra super into it. They make a whole silly deal of the much-touted "secret rituals," like one night at the campout they'll go have a separate bonfire thing with just them.
It's much more gimmicky and less secret than that, but yes it's one of their dumb things.
Also the Boy Scouts have always been kinda fascist, while we're on the topic.
"O’Hanlon was captured at Trump’s first inauguration festivities in DC decked out in his full Eagle Scouts uniform." Highlighting this pic both because it's hilarious and as a grim reminder: the Trump era has been going long enough for teenagers to become cops with prematurely receding hairlines.
I haven't followed it, but I'll take it being the same car in question either way.
Rudy is the Chekov's gun of American politics
oh god that's gotta be it, how could the writers not
One is from yesterday and one from today.
And the states employ an order of magnitude more people and administer the vast majority of services relative to the federal government. Like, it's not just the name United States. We really are a federation of highly autonomous sub-national units that handle most of the actual governing.
Who knows what really happened in this extremely eyebrow-raising story, but even if it was in the approximate ballpark of what this says, imagine flagging down a car for help and Rudy Giuliani gets out.
There are some exceptions, but in general the federal levers, especially the executive branch acting alone, for being able to make the states do something or punish them if they don't are very weak and in some ways nonexistent. The anti-commandeering doctrine, for example, is pretty much absolute.
It makes a big difference legally. That's why he's been losing so much on that tactic. Very strong and clear precedent (including the one they used against Obamacare!) about that. Can't be "coercive," must be directly and clearly authorized by Congress, and can't be unrelated to the issue at hand.
That it's in the name of his "head of security" (who wasn't with him?) and we know he's broke and presumably doesn't have a typical kind of comms staffer or assistants, it could be that's a weird bit of amateurism from somebody not used to drafting such statements. Maybe. Whole thing's bizarre.
For context, the federally funded share of election administration is only about 4%. It's not an existential threat, in fact it's a pretty empty one even if he got away with cutting states off from it.
We'll see what it says but I bet the EO doesn't even purport to directly order states to do anything. It'll be another "do what I want or I'll yank funding." Which would get litigated but even if they take that fiscal hit, it wouldn't shut them down. Federal funding is a pretty small slice of it.
I know "they probably wouldn't go that far" is both cold comfort and not very reliable, but still there are things they are less likely to plausibly do, and that hypothetical and all the hoops you'd have to jump through to even get that far is way out there in a way Anderson wasn't.
As wrong as they were (all nine, not just the six) and as absurd as their reasoning was, the genuinely novel question of keeping a candidate off the ballot under 14AS3 was way less insane than the total lack of any legal power or theory for the president to rewrite state election laws at will.
Definitely only a Trump golf course would have a giant car dealership American flag like the ones he planted on the White House lawn.
A sunny labor day weekend in DC in the high 70s, definitely the kind of weather to bundle up in a thick black windbreaker.
curiouser and curiouser
Not far off! Good guesstimate.
The number of polling places is slightly under that, the average number of voters they each have is a bit higher, but not by much. It's about 100,000.
I'm not saying they're having him shamble his decrepit ass to the car while keeping the press pool at a photos-of-Bigfoot distance only to just quickly circle around and sneak him back through another entrance, but I'm also not confident that's *not* what they're doing.
Heh, yeah you're arguing with a nutter in that thread. There are pros and cons between optical scan hand-marked and BMDs and DRE w/ VVPAT, but that's about eking out micro-fractions a point more reliability. They all record every vote individually on paper, which can be and is thoroughly audited.
That is essentially Hoppe (among others).
this is why they are trying so hard to meme authoritarianism into existence--because they don't have the actual bureaucratic infrastructure to do it the old way
Having dealt with a fair number, county clerks and SoS staffers etc., they don't take their responsibilities lightly. They know the stakes, have experienced threats and worse. Of all our crumbling American institutions, the actual running of elections will be the last thing to break, not the first.
It seems relatively simple and small-scale when you go to your local school gym and see a dozen poll workers and maybe a hundred voters. But America is big! Like, really big. Nationwide we're talking close to a million poll workers and election administrators. That's a lot of people to stop.
This is a real danger but to jamelle's point in this thread, folks often don't appreciate the scale of American elections: how many polling places, election workers, and decentralized redundancies, and how little of it is under any federal control. It far outstrips federal manpower in its vastness.
trump can issue as many executive orders as he wants, perhaps coverage should reflect the fact that a lot of these have the legal force of a child's wishlist for santa
I get liking the pithy sentiment but that was definitely somebody who only watched the movie and didn't read the book.
Addressing federal judges like you're a sarcastic, surly teenager.
Just don't come in August, honestly. There's a reason why that's when everyone leaves. It's also peak tourism because that's when lots of other people take their vacations from elsewhere. But the rest of the year it's reasonably pleasant and even June/July aren't that bad.