That's just the Sarmat missile. It only takes one ICBM. I assure you that enough of their nuclear triad is functional to devastate the stability of human civilization across the entire planet.
Anxiety and concern are not the same thing. If you're only able to motivate yourself through stress and fear, do you. But many people don't find anxiety to be a useful motivator. In fact, for many people, it has the opposite effect.
And this isn't an Ars Technica writer. This is actually reprinted from The Converation, which is a platform that solicits academics to author articles intended for a broader audience than, say, academic journals. She's an associate professor and licensed psychologist with a PhD.
More than past generations at their age. 18-29 year olds still vote less than any other age group. About 25% of Gen Z voted in 2022. While they're slightly more likely to vote than other age cohorts at the same age, youth voting is still dismal in the United States.
That's definitely true, and valuable to keep in mind. That said, it's a stall game for arguably the most powerful position in the world, and disenfranchisement is quite literally the whole point. Michiganders might protest en masse or whatever, but unless it somehow produces certified election results before Dec. 14, I'm not sure it will matter as much as it should. Politicians are surprisingly good at hiding, especially with the whole party apparatus helping and the presidency on the line.
I appreciate you providing these links. And to be clear, I've read them each time you post them. They're edifying.
What I think you might be overlooking is this: what if I don't do that mandatory duty in the timeframe stipulated? OK, so I broke the statute and related state constitution mandate. I may receive a mild punishment. Plus, now the board can demand the information. What if I don't heed the demand? Well then you might bring a lawsuit. What if I hire an attorney with the express intention of stalling, and part of what the lawyer does is moves the case before a sympathetic judge?
Even without a sympathetic judge, the lawsuit may take months. Remember, a fair legal hearing is part of "your" rules that you need to play by. Whoops. We missed the deadline, but we will see how the court case plays out sometime in 2025. What if the judge fast tracks it, I'm held to account, and I simply refuse to produce the results and choose to serve time? National scandal. Armed militias in Michigan activate. Still doesn't matter, because we miss the deadline. What happens after the deadline is missed become immaterial to the federal election, i.e., meaningless details to the larger plan. Maybe I serve some time like so many of Trump's collaborators. Maybe not. Remember, this is an attempted coup. Laws are to be used to leverage the attempt when it's useful and ignored when it's not. It's a bit like revolution: if it's successful, the former laws no longer apply anyway. It's a gambit.
The problem you have here is the same problem Democrats have had for almost a decade. You keep saying "but there are rules," and I keep telling you, "what if I don't give a fuck about your rules unless they serve my goal of overthrowing your rules?" You're left screaming about how it's not fair. Meanwhile, it installs Trump as president, so who cares how the case plays out? The damage is irrevocably done.
Meeting the federal deadline for state-level certification in almost every state is considered a ministerial duty. That means that it would only involve civil or administrative penalties, i.e., a light slap on the wrist at best. For criminal conduct, it would need to be elevated to obstruction of federal elections. This would be a federal crime and therefore pardonable.
Thanks for the link, but the plan The Nation outlined doesn't require fake electors or fraudulent documents. The only potential misdeed here is simply a failure to meet a federal deadline. It's related to the previous attempt insofar as it's an attempt to undermine American democracy, but this current plan is much more sound, involves much less legal culpability on the part of anyone involved, and generally appears to be constitutionally valid. Which is to say, the Republicans learned. The Democrats did not.
The bottom line is, overthrowing democracy is either a meaningless administrative infraction or a federal crime that will be pardoned. See the problem?
The VP certifies the results received by the deadline. That wouldn't change anything here, and she would be obligated to declare Trump the winner. Like Pence, the VP can't decide not to certify legitimate results submitted to congress by the deadline. The point here is that select blue states won't make the deadline through republican stalling, SCOTUS won't "interfere" in the election by adjudication, so the VP is required to only consider the full electors submitted by the deadline. And it would be perfectly valid at the federal level. The state actors might be committing a crime by stalling, but Trump will pardon them, so they really have little risk.
Realistically, even without "shall," most states carry the legal obligation in state statutes not the state constitution. The problem is that the crime is minor or will almost certainly be pardoned immediately by Trump. So even if it's "illegal," oh well. The governor refuses to certify, thereby breaking the law, Johnson still holds the deadline, the number of EC votes is lowered, Trump is declared the winner, and then the governors are pardoned and are in the good graces of the incoming POTUS.
Just to be clear, that makes everything valid and constitutional at the federal level for this plan. I don't think you're grasping how fully fucked we might be.
The vehicles with a higher automated driving rating than Tesla use a more diverse range of sensory inputs. While it may not make fully autonomous driving, it very clearly would have made Tesla closer to it based on the fact that cars that use things like lidar in addition to cameras surpassed Tesla's rating many years ago.
To be fair, there's regularly dozens of translations and interpretations of anything from one language to another. It's not like these texts were originally written in English.
I mean look at the variation of interpretations of the US constitution in American history. And that is in English and much more recent.
"Implying" is how laws work. You rarely have laws that spell out each and every specific and individual example. The spirit and the letter of the law for edge cases is worked out in specific cases. For the same reason no one is going to convincingly argue they don't have access to their home because the door is locked if they have keys, having keys to locked gun storage is considered access. Primary access in fact. Having keys to a lock is considered prima facie "access" and is borne out in settled case law. It's so obvious that it isn't even argued otherwise except in extreme circumstances.
Just remember that getting rid of the filibuster means for both parties.