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TwiceHorn

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Everything posted by TwiceHorn

  1. More evidence that it's always been Calvinball. At the risk of being a superlib, the inability of Congress to create agencies independent of the executive is another one of these problematic things that I would fix in US Constitution II, electric boogaloo.
  2. The one huge tip off on Charlie Kirk in his "debates" is that he never STFU and continued to talk over and interrupt his "opponent." You're right, I think, that debate does not arrive at truth, the winner is not the truthiest, but rather the better rhetorician. It does have value in exposing the "sides" or issues underlying a topic, some of which may be propaganda, which should be exposed in the debate but often isn't. Anyway, Kirk's rhetorical style is a variant of Trump's: keep repeating your side, ignore the other side mostly, flood the zone.
  3. Get a squeeze bulb, some tubing up under your shirt to your collar and spray some blood on them when they protest. Go ahead and call it the blood of the lamb.
  4. About 75% of the CR posters laughed at the free shit army. They're still the free shit army, with some extra hate and racism.
  5. What Kirk espouses was once stated "the soft bigotry of low expectations," which is something of a valid concern with any program that offers an advantage to the disadvantaged. As bullshit as most "bootstraps" arguments are, there are kind of a shitload of freeloaders on programs like SSDI, so that point is at least arguable. But in the context of civil rights, it ignores the fact that blacks in particular, at the time of the Civil Rights Act, weren't merely disadvantaged, they were excluded. And God knows how much longer they would have continued to be excluded. Particularly germane to Kirk and the Civil Rights Act, the first black commercial airline pilot, David Harris, was hired by AA in 1964. What a coinkidink. And he was qualified after being a Captain in the USAF after being rejected from AFROTC twice on racial grounds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Harris So, it was only the military efforts to integrate, which preceded the Civil Rights Act, that produced the first black pilot. So even what might be considered Charlie Kirk's broader point about "DEI" while seeming at least arguable, is still bullshit.
  6. Not to mention, no one said Biden or Byrd wasn't racist. That's something you dredged out of nowhere that is totally irrelevant. You posited that you couldn't call Kirk racist if "half the country" thought he wasn't. Indicating that you can't think for yourself or don't want to. Then, I pointed out that whether an individual is racist is not a matter of popular opinion. I might guess a lot of Germans thought Hitler wasn't anti-Semitic, but that didn't change the fact that he was.
  7. So, I'm not a big gambler, never have been. 30-40 years ago, with dollar blackjack and equally cheap craps and free drinks, Vegas was quite the value proposition. Drinking vast quantities of meeler lite is now off the table for me and all the other expenses and minimums make it not at all a value proposition. It sounds like it's not even worth it for the freak show. Wife just likes games a lot. So, for a quick getaway, we picked Winstar in Thackerville Oklahoma. The rate for the "adjoining" hotel is $500 a fucking night. We stayed in a nearby Best Western for 275. For the record, other than the casino, which is a fairly impressive physical plant, there is jack shit in Thackerville fucking Oklahoma. Enshittification, indeed.
  8. The thing about Houston is that the suburbs are mostly disposable, meaning they get built out in a generation and essentially abandoned to lower classes in a generation. You're starting to see that in some areas of Dallas, mostly outer burbs.
  9. That's just, like, your opinion, man. Also a bizarre equivalence.
  10. Well, now he has more time to be a non-basketball piece of shit. The Senator prognostications are not far off.
  11. Finally figured out exactly what is wrong with Kirk's assertion that the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action created this "diminished expectation" against minority "achievers." That is, the assumption that black or other minorities in positions of authority or skill are not as qualified as their white male peers. Prior to the civil rights act and affirmative action/DEI, there would have been an explicit assumption that a negro could not be an airline pilot, both on the part of the airlines and others who hire pilots and their passengers. So, you never would have seen a black pilot in the first place and if you did people wouldn't be just saying "hmmm," they'd be freaking out. Like the guy in Gangs of New York.
  12. What does this whataboutism have to do with your deferring to half the country in determining whether Charlie Kirk was a racist?
  13. For all the squawking about how Kirk and TPUSA revolutionized (or some shit) the youth vote, in the interview with your Governor GCN, they shifted 13% of the white male under 25 vote. While that is certainly statistically and electorally significant, in the grand scheme, shows that Kirk's popularity and influence in that demo isn't as overwhelming as it has been made to seem. I think the reason olds like him, in addition to just liking everything MAGA, is that they suspect that they're old, out of touch, and wrong, but ol' Chuck gave em a youth voice that countered their suspicion, just like blacks and latinos for Trump assuage the nagging feeling that they're being racists.
  14. And, on Richards Layton, they are a Delaware law firm, meaning a sizable chunk of their practice is representing one side or another in corporate governance disputes dealing with Delaware's corporate laws. To that end, I believe they drafted and lobbied for revisions to the corporate law that would have ok'ed Elmo's outrageous compensation package. So, I suppose they are pretty inured to representing ratfuckers in their ratfucking. But they're usually lower profile ratfuckers than Candy and Elmo.
  15. In this argument, in which Bozo contends that the legal profession as a whole is in some sort of ethical crisis, I have said explicitly and repeatedly that it is no more in crisis than our government or nation as a whole. I don't so much contend that it isn't as I want to tease out why he says it and what is an "ethical crisis." And, I will continue to point out that a sizable fraction of the legal profession and the lower courts, at least, of the judiciary, are elements of the government that are standing up against authoritarianism. Perhaps the fecklessness of 6 of 9 of the Supreme Court swallows that whole, but I tend not to extend the rank politicization of 6 political appointees to the profession as a whole. Clearly, bozo thinks legal discipline and professional standards enforcement is inadequate. At least some of that stems from misunderstanding of how legal ethics deviate from general ethics. And, to sawbonz point, I think most professional ethics differ from personal morality in that by their nature they are highly situational, whereas an individual who employs situational ethics tends to be regarded as one step removed from unethical.
  16. Being a racist isn't a matter of popular opinion. Especially when "half the country" are pretty avowed racists themselves.
  17. Yep, that place has 124 families and despite being depicted as solidly middle class, the demos spell Papa Whisky Tango. 324 people, 50k median income, 98% white.
  18. Well reputational risk is not really an ethical question is it? And no you don't have a right to counsel in a civil case, a legal obligation doesn't exist at all and any sense of obligation to provide a defense isn't really there other than pro bono work for the indigent. It becomes mostly a matter of money versus reputational risk versus any publicity is good publicity. That starts to look like a bit more like an ethical question, but again a personal rather than professional one. You cited this apparently in support of the ethical crisis yet acknowledge that it isn't an ethical question. You're kind of all over the place here. The only unpunished court fraudster I am aware of here really is Sidney Powell and she was subjected to discipline although failed discipline for reasons mostly unrelated to the gravity of her offense. It would have been really nice and changed the outcome had the trial court found it had been defrauded or otherwise subjected to her unethical conduct. And that usually requires the opponent to move for sanctions, which Elias types seem mostly reluctant to seek.
  19. Why would there be a "white person's slot" but for systematic exclusion of non-whites from the spots in question? For the longest time, there was nothing but "white person's slots."
  20. Not a bad question. First off, I think it depends on how/who in government takes equity. If it's a sovereign wealth fund, that seems more transparent than opaque parts of Commerce or Treasury. And, ownership even without voting rights still implicates some ability to a) influence management unduly (as in big sell off to tank the stock price) and b) conflicts of interest between the administration and corporate governance, e.g. "winners and losers." And those aren't really present in the case of grants, maybe loans. Again, a sovereign wealth fund, independently managed might mitigate this. But, it is currently well-nigh impossible to have an independent agency in these United States.
  21. As is the appointment process as a whole.
  22. The election mechanisms are the hardest part. The Senate should be devalued like Lords. Or maybe just unicameral. But the notion underlying Article III is an independent judiciary, which I think, along with other separation of powers/checks and balances, is a good thing. But the respective powers need to be better delineated.
  23. That might be the only legitimate debate left on the topic. Not that conditions were and are deplorable for minorities because of racism, but whether some prospective curative can actually do anything to remedy the horrendous past. But before you debate on the latter, you must acknowledge the former. I mean really, seriously acknowledge slavery and that we kept fucking with them for another century. Not just "ooh, slavery was bad, but."
  24. Maybe it was pervasive unwholesome thinking! And what exactly did Chuck's comments promote?
  25. What's the latest on Loomer? Also missed the Bagram thing. That's rather interdasting in that there's virtually no scenario that that doesn't require American boots on the ground and in harms way. That's going to be interesting in that we all know Trump has no qualms about war and acts of war, but I think there's a pretty hefty segment of Trump voters to whom that is a single-issue.
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