Monday, August 08, 2022

Look Closely

 


19 comments:

  1. NYT: Footprints Discovery Suggests Ancient Tracks May Cover the West [Click] “The set of 88 prints is about 12,000 years old, scientists say, and was found in the military’s Utah Test and Training Range.”

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  2. WaPo: A challenge for antiabortion states; Doctors reluctant to work there [Click] “Recruiters say OB/GYNs are turning down offers, a warning for conservative-dominated states already experiencing shortages”

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    1. In scanning the news, I noticed a story about a physican or group of physicians saying legislators advocating total or near-total abortion bans should be charged with practicing medicine without a license. Can't find it right now, but that could be very interesting.

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    2. Well, it is complicated. Because the Constitution actually prohibits agents of government interfering with "natural persons" whose behavior is presumed good, legislators have relied on the commerce clause, which permits regulation to promote commerce, protect interests (e.g. monopolies) and collect taxes/fees, to exercise control indirectly by granting licenses, imposing standards of performance on individuals and groups that provide goods and services for money. As happened with the barbers during the pandemic, medical professionals are being threatened with license revocation, if they fail to comply with legislative directives.
      At the same time SCOTUS has recently ruled that the EPA does not have authority to restrict emissions because Congress has not given authority based on health and welfare concerns. And that is true. Up until now, whatever the public imagines, agency regulations were designed to benefit the regulated. So, of course, the commercial entities did not object.
      It is my understanding that the regulations restricting reproductive care providers were initially spawned by established doctors and facilities (hospitals) which perceived the clinics as unfair competition for an already shrinking market. (When I had my last child in 1969, the obstetrician was already complaining about how business had fallen off). I imagine the doctors welcomed the support of the antiabortionists, especially as long as necessary "procedures" were not affected.
      Then there is the legal fact that immature humans are property and ipso facto subject to state "protection" until the state determines that a human is to be terminated (via "capital punishment"). So, in a sense, the authoritarian position that the state is superior and entitled to make life and death decisions (reflected in the legal designation of suicide as a crime), despite the assertion that the people govern, raises a fundamental issue. The irony is that the authoritarians do not want to do or take responsibility for anything. They just want to coerce and control.

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  3. Beautiful morning here; sun up, pretty clouds, best visibility we have had in a long time (better part of a hundred miles, I figure), and I think I can see some rain falling from the clouds over the mountains in the distance.

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  4. First defendant to be sentenced in murder of Ahmaud Arberry gets life plus ten years. [Click] Hmmm.... does that mean that after he dies, his body resides in the prison graveyard for ten years?

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    1. While the judiciary imposes sentences, the executive carries them out and in the interest of promoting good behavior, the prison system holds out parole. There is no parole in the federal system.
      For some reason, the defense attorneys were arguing for federal prisons because the Georgia ones are so awful. Perhaps this sentence was meant to insure they would not get out. Dumb and mean is a bad combination.
      There are a lot of people who have reason not to want to hear about this trio again.

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    2. Alan, I believe I heard that the sentences are concurrent.

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    1. ^ Re: the classified documents (12-15 boxes worth) DT is said to have taken to Mar-a-Lago when he left office.

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    2. He complained about them breaking into his safe while they were at it. And it wasn't a search, but an "assault." Yeah, sure. Hope they got some good stuff.

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    3. No matter what they got, if it was stolen property that's good enough.

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    4. The Atlantic: The Mar-A-Lago Raid Proves the U.S. Isn’t a Banana Republic [Click] “Could his downfall really be about something as mundane as proper handling of sensitive documents? Justice in the U.S. is still blind, despite his protestation, but that doesn’t mean it lacks a sense of humor.” Yes, something so mundane would work. And they could yet send him up the river for tax evasion—that worked for Capone. And there is that little matter of ballot box stuffing in Georgia. Among other odds and ends.

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    5. If someone (or some group) gets a civil judgement against Trump or Trump Inc. and he or they claim not to have the money, then the claimant(s) can get a lien on properties and auction them. I remember a dispute that one of the big utilities (gas or telephone, I don't recall) in California had with someone, lost, and ignored. The guy got a lien on one of the company's big buildings (an office building, I think) and scheduled an auction, to be held on the front steps of the building. The day before the auction the utility company discovered the money and paid it to the lienholder.

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  6. Replies
    1. So, if they are looking for things small enough to fit in a safe, they could be quite small-- cell phones (with interesting speed dial lists?) or single sheets of paper, for instance. In addition to 12-15 boxes [bankers boxes I suppose] of documents. Hmmm... how big a safe might he have? When Marjorie Merriweather Post had it built, she might have had a capacious safe built in for her jewelry etc. Big enough to walk into? Maybe, maybe not.

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    2. Most of it was in the basement...and the FBI already knew that. They wanted to make sure there weren't any classified documents being hidden in the safe. But keeping or destroying classified (or any!) documents that were supposed to be archived is a BIG deal. As Heather Cox Richardson says, "You don't want to piss off the archivists."

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