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BeautifulMind ♾️
BeautifulMind ♾️ @ BeautifulMind @lemmy.world
Posts
24
Comments
449
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Thanks, that's a useful distinction.

    My thought here is that it shouldn't make a difference if they're honest vs. lying about intent if the point to 14A's equal protection clause is prevention of discrimination- after all, lying about intent is easy to do and hard to test

  • Isn't it? If the 14th can be circumvented by contriving a non-discriminatory-seeming pretext for the purpose, racial discrimination could be de facto legal for states if SCOTUS overlooks it with a nod and a wink by pretending that the pretext isn't a pretext and doesn't produce that outcome on purpose.

    Maybe I'm missing the point, but to me this feels a bit like like arguing that when they said the Civil War was about "states' rights", that it wasn't about slavery.

  • If this argument is allowed, then the entire 14th Amendment can be circumvented using any attribute with high correlation to the targeted class by lying about your intention

    Fixed it for you

  • This Supreme Court case could decide control of Congress in 2024

    Let no one forget that there is a scenario in which Congress decides who will be president. If neither major party's presidential candidate receives an outright majority (270) of electoral college votes, the question is thrown to the house, where state delegations vote as a bloc (each state having one vote). In this scenario, the Senate will conduct a similar process to elect a vice-president.

    And oh, boy is there room for fuckery in the process. If the house or senate do not choose a candidate (which has happened), order of succession becomes a factor in the procedures. If the House doesn't produce a president and the Senate doesn't provide a vice-president, Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore of the Senate are first in line for president and vice-president, so there are pathways for either of them to become president.

    (The 'no labels' ticket, if it draws votes from both candidates, could throw the question to congress and if the GOP wins the House even with the narrowest of majorities it will likely win a contingent election by virtue of controlling more state delegations)

  • Just when you thought he couldn't get any more cartoonishly evil

    "Prosecutors describe how he used the credit card of a donor, identified only as “Contributor No. 12,” repeatedly, without the person’s awareness or approval, charging $15,800 to Mr. Santos’s campaign and associated committees. In the following months, prosecutors say, Mr. Santos charged that same donor an additional $44,800, some of which was routed through a Florida company associated with the Devolder Organization. At least $11,000 of that money was transferred directly into Mr. Santos’s bank account, prosecutors said in the indictment."

  • Isn’t a senate rules change a straight 50?

    To do it, you need cloture and that takes 60

  • Eventually you have to stop letting your enemy make the rules, and defend yourself.

    Well, it looks to me like both sides are convinced that unless they punish the other side, the other side will keep on doing what they've been doing. Acting on that belief only provides evidence for the other side for the case that the other will stop at nothing but the other's extinction, that the only rational course of action is yet more offensive action until the other side finally capitulates- ...which seems unlikely to ever happen so long as Palestine remains the accepted battlefield for the proxy war that this conflict is.

    Yes, Hamas commits war crimes by using civilian infra Yes, Israel commits war crimes by bombing it The context of this exchange of atrocities is... the occupation of Gaza, which meets too many of the measures of a genocide. At this point, neither Israel nor Hamas are defending themselves, they're cooperating in the genocide of Palestinians The broader context of that is that Israel:Palestine is a proxy conflict between their respective allies, who are just fine watching Palestine burn

  • Unfortunately changing the rules takes more votes than the Dems have; they're still stuck using the same rules package McConnell left

  • Yeah this isn't just about Tuberville wanting concessions to get the military to stop protecting female service members from state laws against abortion- it's also a fine pretext to hold open a raft of leadership positions to be filled with political appointees by the next GOP administration

  • So if it's a total blockade now, what was it before? (hint: it was also a blockade then, has been since 2007)

    It's saddening to see Israel's military (which is not Israel) attack civilians and civilian infrastructure in retaliation for Hamas (which is not Palestine) having attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure- this is all a shit-show of punishing the innocent to get the other side to back down and it will never end.

  • I’d rather keep my tax money than it go to them

    Ahh, the classic 'we shouldn't reward bad behavior' line that completely ignores that treating tax money like Santa Candy (to be withheld from the bad little boys and girls) just costs everybody more tax dollars when it means foregoing spending on preventive measures that help avoid expensive problems.

    It's not rewarding teen pregnancy, it's preventing it

    Also,

    I’d rather keep my tax money

    You don't get to keep it either way.

  • As it stands the GOP seem unlikely to be able to elect a speaker. Speakers provide a list of people to become temporary speaker in case of emergency, so upon McCarthy's ouster rep. Patrick McHenry became speaker pro tempore. Speakers pro tempore have only the authority to gavel sessions in and out, and to conduct votes for a new speaker.

    Basically McHenry's first act with the gavel was to order Pelosi out of her offices. What an asshole

  • If they do and don't elect a Republican to replace him, and if they expel Santos and his replacement in the special election isn't a republican, there goes the GOP majority

    Odds of the house GOP giving up their majority/control are exceedingly low. If there's one thing they'll prioritize, it's keeping their own power

  • I kind of wish it was at least normative to groom your successor and bow out if you're a ground-breaking leader as you advance in age

    I especially wish that was the sort of thing had been the case with (for example) RBG because let's face it, it really hurt us for her seat to go to ACB

  • Well, there's this, and this to say you're right. Had the minimum wage tracked in line with production, it would be ~$26 today. If it had tracked in line with inflation, it would probably be closer to $21.45.

    That it's been flatlined for so long means people working for minimum wage have been getting steady pay cuts for 50 years.

    It also happens that this is one of the reasons social security is straining financially- they were able to predict the demographic bulge of the baby boomers well enough, but they weren't able to predict that wages would be constrained in the way they have been- and wages are the basis for Social Security's funding.

  • Well,

    These sources disagree among themselves if the right number is $21.45 or $26 or $20, they seem to base their analysis on productivity or inflation

    Yeah, these numbers sound like a lot in some places, but those places where it 'sounds like a lot' tend to be really fucking poorer than necessary. It would hurt them not at all to have the minimum keep up with where it was in 1968 instead of being the output of both major parties in congress agreeing to fuck the working poor

  • will raise the salinity of the ocean

    If care isn't taken to avoid concentrating brine going back in just one spot, sure that could create localized problems. Buuut, you realize that the oceans constantly lose water to evaporation and their salinity is more or less stable, right? Every bit of rain or snow that falls on land (most of which returns to the ocean eventually) is water the ocean can be without and still not too salty for life.

    Speaking of salinity, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (which in normal conditions, is the deep/cold return current from the gulf stream -> North Atlantic) is running into a big damned problem because Greenland is melting and all that fresh water pouring off of it is disrupting the return flow of cold water to the tropics. That's why the Gulf Stream has been so hot- it's not getting return feed from its radiator in the North Atlantic, and meanwhile the North Atlantic is getting colder because it's not cycling water back south, and that prevents hot Gulf Stream water from getting there.

    Edit: I recently learned that concentrated brine regions in the oceans (called brine pools) are a thing. There are massive salt deposits (as much as 8km thick) under the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico today, the legacy of a time when the gulf was closed off from the oceans- when it refilled, the salt layer was covered over. Today, the deposition on top of it is heavy enough that subsidence within it squeezes the softer salt around, occasionally exposing that salt to the ocean water.

  • you can go to the bulk section

    Yeah. I got a bunch of resealable/airtight bulk containers and will probably never buy spices in those little 2oz shaker-jars again. My pantry is a small store by itself now, it feels better to get like a pound of a spice for $7 than it does to buy 2 ounces at a time for $7- and all those trips I don't have to make to get a spice I just ran out of is totally worth it- my restocking trip is... from kitchen to pantry, takes seconds.