In the modern era, surely, the state election commissions would only disqualify a candidate under the 14th Amendment if he had been convicted of insurrection or rebellion under 18 U.S. Code § 2383. It wouldn’t suffice to have a bunch of his political opponents shouting loudly that he was “guilty, open-and-shut, dead-to-rights” of insurrection, which is all we have so far.

The decisions by state election officials to disqualify (or not) would be subject to judicial review requested by one side or the other. Trump would surely argue that a Reconstruction-era amendment intended to keep Confederacy renegades from holding office in the reconstituted United States didn’t apply to cheap-ass little insurrections like his. My bet is that the Supreme Court would be unwilling to meddle in the political process, especially close to Election Day and would quash 14A disqualifications of candidates who had not bombarded Fort Sumter.

Trump running as third party and tearing apart the GOP is the Democrats wet dream. 🙂

In case you’re interested, here’s a cognitive neuroscientist’s critique of Boaler’s interpretation of neuroscience research:

http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/march-13th-2019

That post starts with:

“On February 28th Stanford Professor Jo Boaler and one of her students, Tanya Lamar, published an article that we think is a fine example of how not to draw educational conclusions from neuroscientific data.”

See my Comment 13 above. I do not think we can rule out effects because of physics. Biology is complicated and we should follow the scientific method and settle this to everyone’s satisfaction through experiments, not by a priori claims about theoretical impossibility.

The amount of energy carried by an individual visible-light photon is ridiculously small. How can less than ten photons (and maybe just one photon) move a 150 pound body 50 feet in one minute? Physically impossible, right? Not if those photons reach a human retina and get amplified into a signal that makes the human take a walk.
https://www.science.org/content/article/human-eye-can-detect-single-photon

Everything made in America from the 50’s still works! No “planned obsolescence” with engineering in those days. I’m being facetious, but just barely.

Smoking! My dad’s side, sans-smoking, my mom’s side, chimneys. And my maternal grandparents didn’t go outside to smoke, so the house smelled horrible. Egad! I still remember the awful stench of the smoker’s home. Growing up, I had a couple friends whose houses were also infused with their parents’ smoking.

Another sign of progress, smoking has greatly diminished, and those that do smoke, go outside nowadays (either by law or general politeness).

First, if Russia says that pig breeding farms were hit, I seriously doubt that they were pig farms. Maybe once upon a time, but not now.

Second, you may have missed that in the last nine days, Russians have destroyed 180,000 metric tons of grain in Ukraine (today, Reuters).

If Trump is the nominee, don’t worry folks, the kids will vote in large numbers. Especially if Dems are able to tag him with “he ended abortion access for millions.” “He causes suffering.” “He thinks global warming is a hoax.” The abortion issue is especially important and won’t be lessening anytime soon…esp. not by 2024.

Trump’s recent unhinged speeches are an indictment in themselves and create their own commercials for Dems who should rightly portray him as the authoritarian asshole that he is. Same goes for DeSantis.

As always, if Trump gets the nomination, it’s a “slamdunk,” for the Dems, yet only the Dems can fuck it up.

Great point. Now I know why that cartoon has bothered me, so thanks for that.

Canada has gotten far closer to the NATO budget directives than most of the other member countries have. That old Trump taunt doesn’t hold any water any more. Canada is in the thick of it, contributing arms and training. In fact, 2 weeks ago Canada pledged to double its NATO-mandated deployment in Latvia to try to secure the vulnerable Baltic region against any Russian aggression.

As for ‘free-riding’, and calling Canadians ‘leftists’, you betray that rather nasty streak of arrogance, ignorance and jingoism that forced me leave the US 18 years ago. Saying the US will ‘just take’ our water (because we ‘won’t defend ourselves’ ) through the doctrine of Might Makes Right is precisely the one that Vladimir Putin followed in attacking Ukraine. I can see why Americans on the right side of the political spectrum are so enamoured with him.

As for the IPCC, they have had to revise their thinking, due to the fact that what they warned about 10 years ago has come 10 years earlier than was predicted. Their most recent report states:

“Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people (high confidence). Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected (high confidence).”

Climate Change 2023 – Synthesis Report
Summary for Policymakers

Many of the refugees making their way Northward from Africa and the Middle East are doing so because of famine and drought, so if you don’t think countries aren’t already dying, you are ignoring reports from throughout the globe as well as the IPCC.