mpa92643

Absolutely. They can't amend the Constitution through ordinary means. Which is why they've installed a bunch of extreme right-wing Supreme Court justices who can interpret the Constitution however they want to benefit right-wing extremists.

Here's a completely plausible scenario: Donald Trump orders ICE to deport any child born here to non-citizen parents in complete defiance of the court order. The district court judge gets really annoyed and issues criminal contempt rulings against the head of DHS and ICE for disobeying an order of the court. Trump orders DHS and ICE to ignore the court and promises pardons to anyone facing criminal contempt charges.

Because the SCOTUS has ruled "core powers" are "absolutely immune" and the pardon is an explicit power granted to the president with no limitations, he can use the pardon power literally however he wants, including as part of a criminal conspiracy to break the law.

And bam, full blown constitutional crisis because the SCOTUS basically neutered the entire judicial branch and gave the president dictatorial powers.

Strategic tariffs can be useful for lots of reasons. Protecting a culturally important industry, supporting certain values in that industry that aren't respected in other countries, maintaining an industry that is important to national security (e.g., domestic steel production) that would be difficult to ramp up in an emergency if the domestic industry collapses in the face of foreign competition.

The inherent tradeoff is that there will be retaliation by the tariff recipient on some other industry in your country; you basically accept a detriment for one domestic industry to gain a benefit for another.

But blanket tariffs are just stupid. There are lots of industries for which it will never be cheaper to produce locally than in low-wage countries in East or Southeast Asia and that are the kinds of jobs most industrialized nation workers just aren't interested in doing. Companies will simply pass that tariff onto consumers instead of investing massive capital and spending much more on labor to relocate domestically.

People will buy less of everything because it's suddenly way more expensive. Companies will sell less and have to lay people off. Blanket tariffs are effectively a regressive tax increase that directly impacts economic growth.

This may help

https://youtu.be/24ib5pMkprY?t=95

You know what's really insane? Before the ACA was passed, there was no federal requirement for how much insurance companies had to pay out on healthcare costs. The ACA set a minimum of 85%, so no less than 85% of premiums has to actually go toward paying for medical services.

Before that, they could literally just pocket 75 cents for every premium dollar if they wanted to with zero legal repercussions. I guarantee we'd be on our way there if the ACA were never passed.

For-profit health insurance should be illegal. Same thing with for-profit hospitals. I've read stories about doctors whose hospitals were bought by for-profits or VCs and turned into patient mills where they're forced to push unnecessary elective surgeries and provide the bare minimum of care to maximize profits.

A healthy population is good for society and it should be something we invest in. We shouldn't make a business out of someone getting sick, and then another business out of charging then exorbitant amounts of money for getting treatment, and then ANOTHER business to harass them because they can't pay that exorbitant amount.

I saw a comment on YouTube a few weeks ago that I think perfectly captures the mindset of the people who scream about the "woke mind virus".

The comment was something like "I never had a problem trusting a minority surgeon, but now they're all woke DEI hires and I can't trust any of them."

In other words, "I had no problem with minority surgeons when there were almost none of them because I had to accept that there were a handful of 'good ones' that worked hard and earned it. But now that I'm seeing more of them, I know lots of the 'bad ones' are getting in that could only get in because it was handed to them because of their skin color."

In these people's minds, 95% of white people are "good ones" and 95% of minorities are "bad ones". So if any respectable job has more than a few percent of minorities, the only logical conclusion for them is that there are lots of "bad ones" getting jobs they aren't qualified for and didn't earn.

I'm partial to the War of Jenkins' Ear myself

And the writing is SO much better than Voyager.

The technobabble on Voyager drove me crazy because there was no consistency and just constant deus ex machina solutions that popped into a character's head that magically fixed everything.

All it took was realigning or remodulating or polarizing or rerouting the EPS relays or the dilithium matrix or the deflector dish. And one character would always first suggest one technobabble solution so the next character could explain why it won't work and magically be inspired with a new technobabble solution that will work. Once I noticed that pattern, it honestly ruined Voyager for me because it happens constantly.

TNG had their share of technobabble, but it always felt like they tried to stay logically consistent. DS9 kept the technobabble pretty limited because the plot was way more important, and I think it really shines because of that.

Short answer: the Supreme Court

Longer answer: National emergencies are perfectly reasonable to the SCOTUS when declared by a Republican but ridiculous overreach when done by a Democrat and the SCOTUS will use any opportunity to neuter the power of the federal government where a Democrat is in charge.

"So why don't they just try anyway?" you might ask. And the answer there is that the SCOTUS can do more than just say "you can't do that one thing anymore." They can use it as an excuse to block 100 other things that were either flying under the radar or were being challenged one-by-one previously and tied up in appeals.

Biden tried to regulate CO2 through the EPA. The Supreme Court not only said he couldn't do that, but they concocted a brand new standard called the "Major Questions Doctrine" that basically says government agencies aren't allowed to implement any significant new regulations unless Congress explicitly authorizes them. And now all those under-the-radar regulations are falling like dominoes in the district courts with no path for appeal.

Every family gathering with my conservative relatives starting on 1/20, I'm going to complain about prices and ask why Trump hasn't brought them down yet like he said he would on day 1.

Any time gas prices go up, I'll be sure to point it out. Airplane tickets, same thing. Any item that fluctuates in price, I'll be sure to let them know it's clearly Trump's fault it's gotten more expensive. It must be his policies.

When they inevitably bend over backwards to try to explain that it's more complicated than that, I'm going to remind them just how often they complained about Biden being singlehandedly responsible as President for high prices and how easily they said he could bring them down if he just "changed his policies."

I'm sure they'll see no issue with their past positions, but it'll be cathartic for me nonetheless having to listen to them for the last 4 years.

Not me, I am using a clean session in Firefox Focus on a VPN specifically to avoid results tailored to me. I'm very careful about what I search for on Google while logged in.

I'm using Firefox Focus on a VPN, so it's not customized to me.

The top autocomplete for "can my wife" is "can my wife carry my gun" in case you were interested.

"Can my husband" is, in fact, the voting question.