Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, May 31, 2023
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60 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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‘Mad and offensive’ texts shed light on the role played by minstrels in medieval society
I hope they publish it, I’d definitely buy a copy.
I didn’t have this one on my headline bingo card: Firefighting goats could be furloughed due to California employment law
@OzarkHillbilly:
A Hundred Merry Tales, the first English joke book, is also worth a look.
@OzarkHillbilly:
A pay raise from $3730 a month to $14,000 a month is quite a boost.
Schadenfreude alert!
Twitter Is Now Worth Just 33% of Elon Musk’s Purchase Price, Fidelity Says
I watched Shazam Fury of the Gods over the weekend.
I see a trend where the first movie, complete with origin story, of a DC superhero is rather good, then the sequel is rather bad. First with Wonder Woman, now with Shazam.
What’s wrong with it? That would take too long and require spoilers.
Maybe Aquaman will break the jinx.
Oh, well. In any case, the DC universe is supposed to get a reboot.
@CSK: I just like the headline. “The goats are being let go because their employment is unlawful?”
@OzarkHillbilly: @Kathy:
Kinda sorta related to both of your posts (bards and contemporary movies), I watched the Dungeons and Dragons movie last night, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I enjoy DnD occasionally, enough that I was primed to enjoy the material but not nit-pick it. There were some genuinely thrilling action scenes, but it was the humor that really got me.
So many fantasy books and films are just bereft of humor, yet when you read texts from the era that inspired this genre–Canterbury Tales and the like–they are chock full of jokes. I don’t know of anyone who plays DnD or another RPG because they want a verisimilitude portrayal of a “real” fantasy realm. They want to laugh with their friends. The movie really nails that vibe.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, I know. It stumped me, too. How were the goats violating employment law?
@CSK:
It’s not the goats, it’s the goatherders’ overtime pay.
@Michael Cain:
I know, but you have to read the article to clarify that.
@Neil Hudelson:
All I know about D&D is what appeared on Futurama and The Big Bang Theory. A lot of it was humor.
If he is re-elected, Donald Trump plans to revoke the Fourteenth Amendment on “day one.” Does he know he can’t do that? Does he care? Do the MAGAs believe he has the power to do this?
I recall a lot of promises TFG planned to fulfill on Day One, like repealing and replacing Obama care.
@CSK:
Who’s going to stop him?
@CSK: I was thinking of his promise to lock up Hillary. With Obamacare repeal, at least he made some effort in that direction, and at least it was a goal that fell somewhere in the vicinity of normal governance. If he had succeeded in repealing Obamacare (which was never realistically going to happen in full, but he did have a real chance of significantly undermining the law), it would have been a terrible and cruel policy, but it wouldn’t have been an assault on the constitutional order.
@CSK:
He’s leaned nothing and forgotten nothing, and reminds us of it every day.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hahahahaha. Poor goats. And apologies to whatever human being is losing real money on this. But this headline…. Hahaha.
@Stormy Dragon:
He can’t override the Constitution. Yeah, yeah, I know. I think he’s tried this particular stunt a few times and it failed.
@Kylopod:
Well, this is an assault on the Constitution. I sometimes wonder if he knew there was no reason to lock Hillary up, but chanting it was a big hit with the MAGA mobs at his rallies.
@Kathy:
Talleyrand’s quote describes Trump perfectly.
@CSK:
I recall one time he claimed it could be done with a simple executive order, which he never issued.
@CSK:
He’s not supposed to be able to override the constitution, but unless there’s some other party that is going to step up and say “no, you can’t do that” and then make him stop, he still can override the constitution.
@Kathy:
Somebody close to him with half a functioning brain and some basic knowledge must have repeatedly intervened, and did so firmly enough to discourage him. Speaking of which, in the event he’s reelected (I devoutly hope not), who will serve as his advisors and cabinet members? He’s already alienated everyone even remotely qualified. Michael Flynn for Secretary of Defense? Roger Stone for Secretary of State? Sreve Bannon as…anything?
So…. this will certainly turn out well:
India cuts periodic table and evolution from school textbooks — experts are baffled
@CSK:
I should launch a presidential campaign, and promise to resolve the climate crisis, the energy crisis, and lots of other things, by changing the laws of thermodynamics so that energy can be created and transformed but not destroyed.
Infinite energy. No need for batteries. No need for power plants. Zero carbon emissions.
I know it’s impossible, but at least there’s no insurmountable legal impediment.
@Mu Yixiao:
“…certain pollution and climate-related topics…”
Isn’t India one of the three biggest offenders in terms of pollution? No wonder they don’t want to talk about it.
The United States Government has assets of roughly $129T, including property, outstanding loans owed, mineral rights, oil and gas resources, etc. That is balanced by a ~$32T debt. Obviously our assets far outstrip our liabilities.
Yesterday DeSantis said we are careening towards bankruptcy, even after the Debt Ceiling Agreement.
Again…the US has assets that amount to about 4 times it’s debts.
I’m not arguing for more debt…just saying that maybe let’s be reasonable (don’t lie) about the discussion.
I did not know any of this until I looked it up just now.
Well, Kayleigh McEnany won’t be returning as Trump’s press secretary. She’s Kayleigh “Milktoast” as far as he’s concerned, because he claims she got his poll numbers wrong on Fox–that he has a 34 point lead over DeSantis rather than a 25 point lead as she said. “The RINOs & Globalists can have her. Fox News should use only REAL stars!!!”
As I said, who’s going to work for him?
@Mu Yixiao: Whoa. Indian religious zealots may have bitten off too much this time. I don’t think you want to start messing with the Indian school system. Education is valued very, very highly in India and parents don’t mess around.
@MarkedMan:
From what I can tell in the article, many of these changes have been in place for 2 years as part of emergency COVID rules (to simplify online learning during school closings). So… it’s like the hardliners are using this as an excuse to “sneak” the changes in.
Now we’ll get to see which the Indian population values most: Religious dominance or educational dominance. Either way, it’s not going to be pretty.
@Mu Yixiao:
Why the periodic table?
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, the amount of chaos that you can get from enacting/enforcing laws is amazing, n’est pas?
@CSK: Or you could just assume that the violation had something to do with how goatherds are employed, but you wouldn’t be a very good composition teacher if you went around assuming you knew what the writers meant. I know I warned my students that I was likely to deliberately misread anything they wrote every chance I got.
@Kathy:
Apparently because it’s one of the Western things that threaten Hindu culture.
@CSK: Well yes, but why? Is it because
Or
Or
Or
? Or is it some combination? Voters need to know.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Birthright citizenship.
@Neil Hudelson: Cool, the reviews I read intrigued me, said they didn’t take themselves to serious. I only played DnD once, and to be honest I got bored with it after the 2nd or 3rd round. The other game players eventually killed off my character because I was becoming to powerful. 🙁
@CSK: It was a sort of “GUFFAW!” moment for me. I’m sure it was no accident.
Fun fact: National governments cannot go bankrupt. Because bankruptcy is a civil, court proceeding where the entity involved is dismantled and its assets sold off. Of course, he’s speaking figuratively, so I get it. States can’t go bankrupt either. Both states and national governments can default on loans, though.
Of course, if the National government were to default on a loan because of the debt limit, whose fault would that be?
I recall maybe 10 years back, during the Great Recession, California finances were not looking great, and some chest thumper asserted that CA would be bankrupt within 5 years. This was very dumb, because it can’t be bankrupt. The suggestion was made by David Brin that a bet was in order, but one might ask what’s the operationally defined event that determines the bet? A loan being declared in default? Failure to make one payment?
The guy making the claim disappeared, and I wouldn’t have trusted him to pay up.
But a bet is a great way to focus someone you actually know. As long as you can agree on terms.
@CSK:
Apparently it’s one of John Eastman’s ideas. According to a piece in Axios from 2018:
The relevant clause in the Constitution is: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Now, subject to the jurisdiction of the US, means that the laws and regulations of the country apply to you, and nothing else. This is as close to a universal legal principle as there exists. And this applies to all people who enter a country, regardless of how they entered it. The one exception are diplomats and whoever gets granted diplomatic immunity*.
A legal ruling stating that illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, and people who enter the country on a valid visa of any kind, are not under the jurisdiction of the United States, would have results so fascinating to watch, that global popcorn reserves would be exhausted.
*Usually children and spouses of diplomats, plus support embassy/consulate staff not hired locally. Also visiting government officials, particularly heads of state, and their staff.
I agree that the tone of Honor Among Thieves was well suited to the hobby of tabletop roleplaying. I enjoyed it. I think my favorite bit was all the portal tricks. Some badass combat, too.
If you want to know more of what the hobby is about, I recommend a very, very indy film called The Gamers: Dorkness Rising
This film switches between action in the play world, and action in the normal world, and looks at how these thing interact and play out. It is a reasonable take on how the hobby actually works. It can be pretty inside baseball with some of the jokes, but I think one can mostly follow what’s going on.
@Jay L Gischer:
Can a national or state/province government go broke? That is, get to a state where they have no money, or at least no money anyone else would accept as money.
History points to a clue.
Diocletian faced ruinous inflation in Rome just past the crisis of the 3rd century. The coinage was so devalued by lack of silver content, that nobody wanted it (or close to no one). Being emperor in a difficult time requires a strong army. Roman armies that don’t get paid tend to behead the emperor. So Diocletian paid his troops, and many others, in kind. Cloth, shoes, food, wine, salt, etc. He could also send the army to requisition such things.
It would be really hard, then, for a state to go broke. At least as long as the army or police hold together long enough to take goods from the populace in extreme cases.
Trump plans to issue an executive order banning birthright citizenship.
@Kathy: Agreed. I think.
@Kathy: Making illegal aliens not subject to the laws of the US, and allowing them to go on unchecked killing sprees is bad policy. I guess they would be extralegal aliens at that point, existing outside of the law.
Eastman isn’t just bad at lawyering, but thinking through the implications of his own proposals. One of the problems with Trumpworld is just how bad at their jobs everyone in it is.
A better approach might be to cede/lease/lend the territory that the undocumented immigrant is taking up to their home country while they are occupying it, and pass laws criminalizing various normally criminal actions that reach across the border (those laws may exist already, I have no idea what happens if a Canadian shoots a gun in Canada and kills an American in America).
I expect there will be all sorts of jurisdictional disputes, and people would need to test whether local law enforcement can seize someone on this temporarily foreign territory, but with a narrow enough definition, we could say that they aren’t putting handcuffs on someone in foreign territory, but rather that they are putting handcuffs around foreign territory.
Now when an undocumented immigrant gives birth, the baby never leaves foreign territory and thus never sets foot in America, so is not a citizen. And it allows legal judgments that are so complicated and obtuse that they can be decided on bizarre technical grounds involving land use and border disputes to maintain the fiction of constitutionality.
I think it would get at least 4 votes on the Supreme Court, but potentially the 5 needed.
I’m just gonna drop this here and then go back to work.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s a real spirit-lifter.
more info about the whole “I used GPT to write my legal papers”
Speaking as a lawyer, I…just…can’t….
I suspect that this is a case that will be used for many years in CLE classes.
@Jay L Gischer:
The same people were asserting that CA state bonds would be in default. Clearly, they had not read the state constitution. Unlike the US federal government, where there’s no written guidance about who gets paid first, the CA constitution is clear: first is the state’s obligation to K-12 education, then to bond holders, and everything else comes after that. Paychecks may have stopped. Contractors might not get paid. But the bonds weren’t at risk at all. IIRC, the state controller had to threaten to sue to get the talking heads to shut up.
@grumpy realist:
Maybe ChatGPT is data-mining parallel universes? 😉
On a more serious, but also more ironic, question: can the plaintiff sue his lawyers for malpractice?
@Gustopher:
The consequences of Eastman’s proposal are so vast, I can’t even begin to contemplate them all.
That’s because narcissists don’t care to employ people smarter or more competent than they are. This might not be a big issue for a genius narcissist, but it’s definitely one for the Orange Moron.
@Jay L Gischer:
I think that was before the California Republicans were irrelevant. California is now able to actually set tax rates to be sustainable with spending.
There are lots of problems that California has, but revenue and Republicans are pretty low on the list.
(And a lot of the problems California does have are national problems. Show me a significant city that doesn’t have a housing affordability crisis. A lot of rural areas have a similar crisis but it’s just spread out geographically enough that you don’t see a gathering of homeless people in any one area)
@CSK:
This looks to me like another “why?” situation. I mean, why wonder about that ever? Whether he understood or not, the motivation for chanting it is the same.
@Mu Yixiao: This is really bad. How are people going to blame Evangelicals for this? 🙁
Tara Reade moves to Russia and applies for citizenship.
I would guess she felt her cover was blown or teetering on the brink.
CNN is reporting that the House has passed the bill to suspend debt limit.
314-117
@Mister Bluster:
Mitch is spinning the vote as a victory for the GQP, because they forced Biden to negotiate.
Yeah, Kevin totally pummeled Biden’s fists with his eye.
@Kathy: I’m so confused….they all say Biden has dementia, but now they’re complaining because he outsmarted them? 😛 😛
@Jax:
They’re trying very very hard to pretend he didn’t.
BTW, apparently Benito the Cheeto was caught on tape on the matter of the classified documents he stole from the White House.
@Kathy:..spin
Mitch and his Republican Rangers can say what they want. They will never get my vote.
If for some reason this falls through and my Social Security deposit is not in my bank account on the second Wednesday in June I’ll just tell the electric company and the water utility that the Republican Congress doesn’t have to pay the country’s bills so I should not have to pay mine.
Do you think that they will go for it?
@Kathy: I would jolly hope that the client sues them for legal malpractice!
The two lawyers involved couldn’t even take the time to check Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw to see if the cases quoted were extant and legit. Heck, they couldn’t even be bothered to try a Google search!