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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • You seem confused on what an executive order is (or you’re not confused and are just saying this in bad faith). It’s not just the president randomly saying I order this to happen like some kind of dictator. It’s the executive laying out his interpretation of specifics on how a law should be implemented, a law already passed by congress. So unless congress has passed a law already, saying congress gives the executive the power to increase the size of the court on a whim, or decide to impose term limits on a whim (and they most certainly have not), then the power still rests with congress. Setting up and regulating the courts is a job expressly delegated to congress in the constitution. An executive order is meaningless here. What law would it derive its authority from? A congressional law might not even be enough for all of this, that’s why part of the plan talks about a constitutional amendment.

    And “No words” ?! How on earth are we supposed to build a concensus to do so something, if in your opinion no one is allowed to even talk about it or express their support until it’s already happened? You make no sense. The sitting president endorsing supreme court reform is a huge step. And Harris is endorsing it too. Now we just need enough members of congress to get on board, and that’s how it could happen. Not talking about it because it can’t happen this second doesn’t make it any more likely to happen. Comments like yours if anything make it less likely, and discourage support for the people trying to actually get it done.

    I’m tired of all these nonsensical, “why doesn’t Biden just become dictator right now” comments. We’re voting against Trump because we don’t want a dictator.







  • On July 23, 2016, ahead of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the 2016 DNC Rules Committee voted overwhelmingly (158–6) to adopt a superdelegate reform package. The new rules were the result of a compromise between the Hillary Clinton and the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns

    Ultimately, the DNC decided to prevent superdelegates from voting on the first ballot, instead of reducing their numbers

    People keep seeming to forget about the super delegate reform Bernie fought for. They are still there now, 15% of all the delegates (a lot of the super delegates being democratic elected officials like members of congress since that automatically gives the status). But they can’t vote in the first ballot any longer. They could only vote in a contested election in subsequent ballots, after all the other pledged delegates are unbound as well.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate

    Even before those reforms, they never really made a difference in any convention, except possibly 1984 when they helped push Mondale from a plurality to a majority by voting for him on the first ballot.

    I’m not personally in favor of them at all, but it’s not nearly as bad as it’s made out to be sometimes. If we go to an open convention though, unless there’s a majority choice on the first ballot, they may play a role on subsequent ballots.


  • Their proposals are in the article

    The IMF, which often requires fiscal prudence among its borrowing countries, recommended a series of options to lower deficits, including reducing some longstanding tax deductions and exemptions that it said were “poorly targeted.” These include tax exemptions for the value of employer-provided healthcare plans and capital gains on the sale of a primary residence, and deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes - breaks that add up to about 1.4% of U.S. GDP per year.

    The U.S. should consider closing the “carried interest” provision under which investment partnership income can be taxed at lower capital gains income rather than normal income, the IMF said. It added that corporate tax rates should be raised and the corporate tax system shifted to a cash flow tax.

    The IMF also recommended raising federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel, which have not been raised since 1993.

    On the expenditure side, the IMF recommended indexing Social Security benefits to the chained consumer price index and subjecting earnings greater than $250,000 a year to payroll taxes.

    So kind of a mix of good and bad. But raising corporate taxes was one thing. A lot more reasonable than I was expecting.





  • You don’t need to be hospitalized to get all the antivirals. In fact, that’s the whole thing paxlovid is supposed to prevent. Anyone with risk factors can take paxlovid, and it’s very effective at preventing severe covid. It should be started as soon as possible, not waiting until someone’s already hospitalized. Even in unvaccinated people, if taken early in the course, is 90% effective at preventing severe disease.

    Remdesivir is the one that’s generally only for hospitalized patients, though even that can be used pre hospital too.

    Anyways point is, if you get covid, and have risk factors for severe covid, call your doctor or urgent care to get paxlovid to take if you can, especially if you’re unvaccinated.

    And yeah between getting diagnosed quickly, getting paxlovid I’m sure, and being immunized, Biden will very likely be fine.

    Edit: yes he started paxlovid https://www.npr.org/2024/07/17/nx-s1-5043814/biden-covid


  • Yes, that’s true. The poll averages themselves haven’t moved much either though. And the reliance on the fundamentals forecast has me nervous, but they definitely do it for a reason. When they developed the models and looked at poll history the pattern they found was the fundamentals had a big influence on what the polls would look like closer to the election and the eventual result. Polls closer to the election are more predictive than the fundamentals. Polls farther away from the election less so. There’s at least some reason to think things have changed enough maybe the fundamentals aren’t as fundamental for this race, but I guess we won’t know until afterward.


  • Exactly, I think because races have been so close lately, and the probabilities are ending up close to 50% often, people sometimes unintentionally conflate them with poll numbers. 53% to 46% would be a massive poll lead. For probabilities though in this situation it’s the same as saying they have even odds of winning. Look at those massive 95% confidence intervals, the race is in a statistical dead heat. It’s kind of remarkable how steady it has been despite all the wild events that have happened.