…all due respect [DOT 15/12/22]

…it might sound like a high bar…or even an unrealistic one…but at least in principle we can theoretically discuss things we don’t agree about with the people who don’t agree with us

When discussing hot-button issues, it’s easy to score points with the respective bases on the left and right by vilifying the other side. What’s more challenging is standing up for your beliefs while still respecting, and even empathizing with, those who disagree.

Anyone sincerely interested in bridging our great political divide should consider modifying how they discuss the most contentious topics. A good first step would be avoiding some of the most accusatory and divisive language — the conversation-stoppers.

…that part sort of stands to reason…at least definitionally…since stopping the conversation wouldn’t ordinarily be the point of a discussion

People who oppose abortion generally share an honest belief that human life begins at conception and is entitled to legal protections. Language that opponents should avoid: calling them patriarchal Bible-thumpers trying to control someone else’s body or claiming that they care more about lumps of tissue than the lives of women.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/12/language-bridge-partisan-divide/

…it also offers pointers on “guns”, “gender issues” & “trump supporters”…while conceding that “some of the claims in the above examples may well apply to segments of extremists”…but…what about when the middle of the road asshole on one side is…bound tight by logic that’s moved beyond pretzeled into some sort of n^th-dimensional topography that can bore wormholes through a mental landscape?

…leaving out the biblical element…based on the likes of this “imaginitive analysis”…I’d argue stronger terms are applicable for the kind of dime-store sophistry employed to try & argue that allowing abortion “creates not just new social incentives that disfavor commitment and paternal obligation but also a kind of moral and spiritual alienation between the sexes”…boy, howdy…for a son of a bitch with a name that might as well be (R) doubt-that…I’d say it looks like no help is required in the achievement of moral & spiritual alienation…I won’t inflict the rest of his “argument” on you…this is the third of a triptych of his views on the subject & I wouldn’t want the spiritual burden of feeling responsible for anyone reading this smashing the doubtlessly-expensive device they were reading it on out of sheer annoyance…but…to give you a fair idea of how high the asshole is on his own supply when it comes to blithe avowals about a topic he lacks the physiology to truly appreciate beyond the superficial level…these are the sorts of claims he flatters himself to have rhetorically dispatched

[…] the general reality that, while many other developed countries have somewhat more restrictive abortion laws than the most liberal U.S. states, almost none ‌‌have the sweeping bans pursued by the pro-life movement
[…] the specific evidence that the use of abortion can be associated with better socioeconomic outcomes for individual women

…& all he had to do was spout the sort of crap that positively screams I-started-with-my-conclusion-&-worked-backwards

[…] the pro-life cause’s very utopianism, its goal of a society for which no definite model yet exists, can be an analytic asset, while the practiced realism of the pro-choice side can double as excuse making for the unhappy aspects of the status quo. If you sit fully inside the dominant paradigms of our society, then abortion seems like it must be good for the economy — the woman who gets an abortion has more time and money for her own education, the unborn child might have been poor and costly to the welfare state, and so on.

…pro-life…utopianism…mr bigger-picture here claims to be looking at sweeping abstract concerns with the shape of society’s evolution from the perspective of history…with, presumably, a straight face & a steady pay-check

What you might see from this perspective is a world where economic growth has decelerated under the rule of social liberalism, and various forms of stagnation have set in. A world clearly shadowed by the effects of family breakdown and social atomization, with loneliness and despair stalking young and old alike. A rich world whose chief economic problem over the next few generations is population aging, population decline, childless cities and empty hinterlands and a vast inverted demographic pyramid on the shoulders of the young.

…what…you might very well ask…in the absolute fuck does that figment of your fevered imagination have to do with either the actual future people have to live in or the agency afforded to a real-life actual woman who discovers that she’s pregnant?

…I don’t fucking know…but I’m about as certain as I can be that ross not only doesn’t know…he wouldn’t know where to start if his life fucking depended on it…which even the most trivial levels of empathy ought to be enough to make clear is a fundamental aspect of pregnancy that probably offers a better starting point for considering the matter than anything he might pull out of his ass while miraculously leaving his head firmly ensconced…so…sometimes you might want to end the debate…maybe even call someone an ass-backwards morass of cognitive dissonance…or just…not engage…but like someone mentioned the other day…they’re just getting started

Many conservatives celebrated Dobbs as a long overdue recognition that the right to abortion had no constitutional stature. Many liberals mourned the loss of a fundamental right and worried that other unenumerated rights — like the rights to contraception and same-sex marriage — were now also endangered.
[…]
And yet, as nettlesome as unenumerated rights may be, they undoubtedly exist in our constitutional order. Somewhat ironically, the Constitution itself establishes the existence of rights not named in the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment states that the “enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Ninth Amendment also captures a deeper insight: It would have taken impossible foresight for the framers to list every conceivable right the people would regard as fundamental. As Chief Justice John Marshall said in 1819, the nature of a constitution was that it was designed for the ages and therefore could not “partake of the prolixity of a legal code.” Time has richly vindicated that view. The court has recognized the rights to travel, to vote and to marry as fundamental rights that have the same stature as enumerated ones. While unenumerated, all these rights seem indispensable today.

…yet…somehow it’s still an overton window that stretches to that doubt-that pablum getting column inches in the most mainstream of media

A thornier question is why many unenumerated rights are protected under the due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th amendments. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the federal government from depriving individuals “of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The 14th applies the same prohibition to state governments. Neither clause addresses “substantive” rights. To the contrary, they speak of a “process” — think of notice or an opportunity to be heard by an impartial decision-maker — that must be followed before the government takes away something of material importance from an individual.
[…]
The court’s protection of unenumerated rights under the due process clauses is all the more puzzling because another constitutional provision seems directly on point. The privileges or immunities clause of the 14th Amendment asserts that “no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” That clause would seem like the most obvious source of unenumerated rights, as privileges and immunities are clearly substantive in nature.
[…]
When the court puts pressure on a particular part of the Constitution, it is squeezing a balloon. The pressure can push the air out or over. In this instance, unenumerated rights did not get squeezed out of the Constitution but over to another provision, namely the due process clause. Directly after The Slaughterhouse Cases, the court began to interpret the idea that liberty could not be taken away without due process to mean that the government couldn’t take liberties away unreasonably — and hence substantive due process was born.

Today, the high court has protected most unenumerated rights under the due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th amendments. At different points in the 20th century, substantive due process has fallen in or out of favor with the court — with other parts of the Constitution sometimes picking up the slack — but it has, on the whole, remained the workhorse of unwritten rights.

[…if you’d rather…& you can see over the paywall…”These rights — and their powerful, often-taken-for-granted role in day-to-day American life — are the focus of this issue of The Washington Post Magazine.”]

Before Dobbs, it was unclear whether the backward- or forward-looking vision of substantive due process would prevail. Glucksberg had never been overruled, but subsequent cases had cast doubt on it. In the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas, the court recognized the substantive due process right to same-sex sexual intimacy. In a furious dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the majority for “having failed to establish that the right to homosexual sodomy is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’ ” In a similarly harsh dissent to the same-sex marriage decision in 2015, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. complained “that the majority’s position requires it to effectively overrule Glucksberg.”

The Dobbs court resoundingly reinvigorated Glucksberg’s backward-looking approach. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did not mention how Lawrence or Obergefell might have undermined Glucksberg. Instead, he simply observed that abortion was not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” For the majority, that determination was conclusive.

Alito insisted that the Dobbs decision did not implicate other rights. However, that stance ignores how judging actually works. Given that the court has embraced this backward-looking approach, any right not “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history” is now ripe for reconsideration. Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in Dobbs rendered this explicit in calling for the reconsideration of other substantive due process cases. He called out Obergefell, Lawrence and Griswold by name.
[…]
If the Supreme Court continues down its current path, there will be two consequences. The first will be that many individuals from historically marginalized groups will lose protections they once thought were now beyond debate. The second will be that the court will lose an important tool to update the Constitution. While the first is obviously critical, it’s the second that may ultimately be more destructive.
[…]
In the end, the court’s future handling of unwritten rights may force a reckoning. If it seeks to withdraw all rights save those that existed in 1791 or 1868 (when the two due process clauses were ratified), then it will increasingly find itself out of step with present-day America. The ultimate stakes here are not just about a particular right, or even about unenumerated rights generally. They are about whether the Constitution will continue to draw the fealty of a nation that has changed dramatically over the past several centuries — and whether this founding document, or perhaps even America itself, can truly last for the ages.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/interactive/2022/substantive-due-process-dobbs/

…by way of context

The Washington Post reported that public records obtained by the newspaper do not indicate why Paxton’s office made the request to the Texas department of public safety (DPS). The head of the driver’s license division told colleagues in June to compile the “total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months”.
[…]
Texas Republicans for years have been at the forefront of efforts to restrict transgender rights. The request came months after Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered child welfare officials to investigate gender-affirming care as child abuse, a move that Paxton’s office backed in a legal opinion.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/14/texas-attorney-general-sought-data-on-gender-changes-to-state-ids

…you’d think this shit would be harder to get away with…if only because so much of it is an incohate mass of shit to which the instinctive response could easily be that people should know better than to swallow that crap…but…you are what you learn…& they sure as hell don’t want to learn ’em good

Here are just a few of the longstanding problems plaguing American education: a generalized decline in literacy; the faltering international performance of American students; an inability to recruit enough qualified college graduates into the teaching profession; a lack of trained and able substitutes to fill teacher shortages; unequal access to educational resources; inadequate funding for schools; stagnant compensation for teachers; heavier workloads; declining prestige; and deteriorating faculty morale.
[…]
Doris Santoro, a professor of education at Bowdoin, wrote by email in response to my query regarding the morale of public school teachers:

Teachers are not only burnt out and undercompensated, they are also demoralized. They are being asked to do things in the name of teaching that they believe are mis-educational and harmful to students and the profession. What made this work good for them is no longer accessible. That is why we are hearing so many refrains of “I’m not leaving the profession, my profession left me.”

In an August 2022 paper, “Is There a National Teacher Shortage?,” Tuan D. Nguyen and Chanh B. Lam, both of Kansas State University, and Paul Bruno of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign wrote that they

systematically examined news reports, department of education data, and publicly available information on teacher shortages for every state in the U.S. We find there are at least 36,000 vacant positions along with at least 163,000 positions being held by underqualified teachers, both of which are conservative estimates of the extent of teacher shortages nationally.

In an email, Nguyen argued, “The current problem of teacher shortages (I would further break this down into vacancy and under-qualification) is higher than normal.” The data, Nguyen continued, “indicate that shortages are worsening over time, particularly over the last few years. We do see that southern states (e.g., Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida) have very high vacancies and high vacancy rates.”

He pointed out that “the cultural war issues have been prominent in some of these states (e.g., Florida).”
[…]
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of students graduating from college with bachelor’s degrees in education fell from 176,307 in 1970-71 to 104,008 in 2010-11 to 85,058 in 2019-20.

In a study of teachers’ salaries, Sylvia Allegretto, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, found a growing gap between the pay of all college graduates and teacher salaries from 1979 to 2021, with a sharp increase in the differential since 2010. In 1979, the average teacher weekly salary (in 2021 dollars) was $1,052, 22.9 percent less than other college graduates’, at $1,364. By 2010, teachers made $1,352 and other graduates made $1,811. By 2021, teachers made $1,348, 32.9 percent less than what other graduates made, at $2,009.

These gaps play a significant role in determining the quality of teachers, according to a study by Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford; Marc Piopiunik, a senior researcher at the CESifo Network; and Simon Wiederhold, a professor at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, “The Value of Smarter Teachers: International Evidence on Teacher Cognitive Skills and Student Performance.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/14/opinion/teacher-shortage-education.html

…sure…there’s a certain romanticized notion about being an auto-didact

…guess that’s why they have such a problem with libraries

Traditionally, debates over what books are appropriate for school libraries have taken place between a concerned parent and a librarian or administrator, and resulted in a single title or a few books being re-evaluated, and either removed or returned to shelves.

But recently, the issue has been supercharged by a rapidly growing and increasingly influential constellation of conservative groups. The organizations frequently describe themselves as defending parental rights. Some are new and others are longstanding, but with a recent focus on books. Some work at the district and state level, others have national reach. And over the past two years or so, they have grown vastly more organized, interconnected, well funded — and effective.

The groups have pursued their goals by becoming heavily involved in local and state politics, where Republican efforts have largely outmatched liberal organizations in many states for years. They have created political action committees, funded campaigns, endorsed candidates and packed school boards, helping to fuel a surge in challenges to individual books and to drive changes in the rules governing what books are available to children.

…these people…including the likes of Leigh Wambsganss “executive director” of “Patriot Mobile Action, the political action committee formed by the cellphone company” who claimed (while preaching to the choir on bannon’s show, no less) that the issue boiled down to ““normalizing a lifestyle that is a […] choice.”

“Those kinds of lifestyles,” she added, shouldn’t “be forced down the throats of families who don’t agree.”

…I guess they get their irony-receptors removed at birth…or maybe it’s congenital…I don’t know…that’s getting into a whole nature vs. nurture debate about the inherent capacity for good & evil baked into the human condition…which as it happens can be quite an enlightening conversation to have…in good faith…but…I won’t bore you with a half-baked take on “beyond good & evil” or its relationship with “the golden mean“…on account of how…if you felt like it…you could read about that stuff for yourself…just one of the surfeit of reasons why libraries are neat

Librarians in Texas formed Freadom Fighters, an organization that offers guidance to librarians on handling book challenges. In Florida, parents who oppose book banning formed the Freedom to Read Project, which urges its members to attend board meetings and tracks the work of groups like Florida Citizens Alliance.

“We’re trying to document the censorship movement,” said Stephana Ferrell, one of the founders of Freedom to Read. “They don’t want to use the word ‘ban.’ Instead they remove, relocate, restrict — all these other words that aren’t ‘ban.’ But it’s a ban.”

According to a recent report from the free speech organization PEN America, there are at least 50 groups across the country working to remove books they object to from libraries. Some have seen explosive growth recently: Of the 300 chapters that PEN tracked, 73 percent were formed after 2020.

The growth comes, in part, from the rise of “parental rights” organizations during the pandemic. Formed to fight Covid restrictions in schools, some groups adopted a broader conservative agenda focused on opposing instruction on race, gender and sexuality, and on removing books they regard as inappropriate.

Other groups, like Florida Citizens Alliance, have been around for years. Established in 2013, the alliance has longstanding ties to Gov. Ron DeSantis: Its co-founders, Mr. Flaugh and Pastor Rick Stevens, served on the DeSantis transition committee. The group has worked on a variety of issues over time, partnering with over 100 other groups, including Moms for Liberty and Americans for Prosperity Florida, a local branch of a national group founded by the billionaires Charles and David Koch.

Five years ago, Mr. Flaugh and Pastor Stevens helped draft a bill that gave all county residents, not just parents, the power to challenge a book in a school district. Opponents say it contributed to waves of book challenges. The bill’s supporters, however, say local tax dollars fund the school system, so all residents have a right to influence how that money is spent.
[…]
Some of the new groups have become effective political power brokers. Moms for Liberty was founded in Florida in January 2021; it now has 250 chapters in 42 states, and ties to the state Republican Party and to legacy conservative organizations like the Leadership Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

This summer, Governor DeSantis appeared at Moms for Liberty’s national summit in Tampa, where he denounced “woke gender ideology” in schools and argued that parents have the right to object to “explicit” books in school libraries. The summit also drew other prominent political figures from the right, including Senator Rick Scott of Florida and the Trump administration cabinet members Ben Carson and Betsy DeVos. In her remarks, Ms. DeVos called for dismantling the Department of Education, which she used to run.
[…]
The group endorsed more than 500 school board candidates across the country this year. Candidates they backed won 272 seats, and are now the majority in more than a dozen districts, in states including North and South Carolina, Indiana, New Jersey and Florida, according to the organization. In Berkeley County, S.C., where candidates they supported won six seats, the new board banned teaching “critical race theory” — an analytical framework that has been adopted by conservative activists as a broad term for various teachings about race — and voted to form a committee to evaluate books and remove those with “inappropriate sexual/pornographic content.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/book-bans-libraries.html

…&…much as I’m sorry for bringing any of this up…much less drawing it to your attention without some kind of trigger warning…I dunno…the capacity of these people to more or less literally sacrifice their own children…unborn or otherwise…upon the altar of false equivalence…some days that just hits me like a brick in the face…& apparently today is one of those days…it’s…just nature taking its course?

Some of Russia’s most notorious propagandists, largely blocked on Twitter and Facebook, have resurrected on under-moderated social media apps designed for conservatives, according to new research from Stanford University.

A report published Tuesday by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the social media analytics firm Graphika indicates that some of the same people tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency are active on the four major platforms launched in recent years to target those who deem mainstream social media companies too liberal: Gab, Gettr, Parler, and former President Donald Trump’s service, Truth Social.
[…]
However, those propagandists appeared more successful on the conservative apps. Though they don’t have major reach, they have thousands of seemingly authentic followers on each platform, the Stanford and Graphika researchers said. Many of those users follow multiple accounts from the same propagandists. Such sites have become the first place a small but dedicated number of conservatives go for news, and conservative influencers sometimes mine them for content to share on other platforms.
[…]
Graphika’s director of investigations, Tyler Williams, said the IRA-style activity on the conservative platforms reflects the same style previously used. The difference is that the content simply isn’t moderated as much on the conservative platforms.

“The tactics are exactly what we’ve come to expect from these actors since 2016. They use fake personas to imitate, infiltrate and attempt to influence a specific online community,” said Williams.

“These personas then coordinate across multiple platforms to amplify division and exacerbate existing tensions,” he added. “This is precisely the behavior that gets them caught on Facebook and YouTube, but on alt-tech platforms they appear to enjoy relatively free rein.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/russias-ira-thriving-right-wing-apps-gab-truth-social-study-finds

…so…”naturally” enough

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.

[…] on Tuesday, he tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,” possibly harking back to “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Matrix.” But many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.”

Musk mocked the suggestion that the tweet could be interpreted negatively but offered no clarification. Among QAnon promoters, though, the message was clear: Musk was speaking to them.
[…]
“Elon called out Fauci for creating [covid-19], [is] calling out the woke hive mind, is paving the path for 2020 to be nullified and Trump reinstated … and now he’s directly quoting Q,” [One QAnon-amplifying account on Telegram with 118,000 followers, known for spreading a bogus claim that Russian fighters were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine] said. “Elon is an Anon,” the account added, using the term QAnon disciples call themselves.
[…]
Twitter has for years been one of QAnon’s most significant online spaces — an influential battlefield on which Q wanted “digital soldiers” to fight an information war. Before Twitter banned the conspiracy movement, QAnon believers used it not only to spin theories about Q’s secret influence on world events, but also to recruit acolytes to the cause.

Since launching his $44 billion takeover of the company, Musk has become so popular in QAnon circles that some regard him, not Trump, as the savior-like figure they had been waiting on to usher in “the Storm,” a quasi-biblical moment in which the cabal that runs the American government, media, technology industry and education system would be vanquished through public executions.

[…] Musk has become one of the internet’s most prominent trolls, needling his enemies with extreme messages and off-color memes that often dovetail with far-right messaging.

Musk, who has said he is “neither conventionally right nor left,” has chatted and joked on Twitter with prominent right-wing influencers and commentators, sometimes expressing outrage about how they have been treated by the “woke mob.” Musk has said the “woke mind virus” — a vague term generally referring to liberal advocacy, social justice and political correctness — is “pushing civilization towards suicide” so that “humanity will never [reach] Mars.”

[…] like Q, he has often framed current events as titanic spectacles of apocalyptic grandeur. Musk on Monday agreed that the world is facing a “mass awakening event or total collapse of society,” and he tweeted that buying Twitter is a way to combat the “woke mind virus,” which must be “defeated or nothing else matters.”
[…]
Musk’s erratic behavior has sent some advertisers scrambling for the exits, and Tesla’s stock price has plunged nearly 50 percent this year, costing Musk his title as the world’s richest person.

But he has gained in other ways. On Twitter, he is now picking up an average of 200,000 followers every day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/12/14/qanon-musk-revival-twitter/

…I mean…we all know him to be a man of his word

My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

Elon Musk says he is taking legal action against the holder of a Twitter account that tracks his private jet, arguing it put his son at risk.

The @ElonJet account, which has more than half a million followers, was suspended on Wednesday.

…baby…meet bathwater

Annnnd Twitter has now permanently suspended the personal account of the guy who runs the @ElonJet account. pic.twitter.com/fEoKUUBoHn

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 14, 2022

Its owner Jack Sweeney, 20, used publicly available flight-tracking information to tweet every time Mr Musk’s jet took off and landed.
[…]
Mr Sweeney, a college student in the state of Florida, shared a screenshot with CNN of a message from Twitter saying the social media company had conducted a “careful review” and had decided to permanently ban the account for violating Twitter’s rules.

The student is in charge of dozens of other accounts that track the private flights of wealthy Americans, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

Many of those accounts – including one tracking aircraft associated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and another monitoring celebrity jets – appeared to be suspended on Twitter as well on Wednesday afternoon.
Elon Musk taking legal action over Twitter account that tracks his private jet [BBC]

…I’ll give him credit for one thing, though…I never expected to find hope for current approaches to AI as a direct consequence of his unspeakable bullshit…but it’s a brave new world

Sort this out bro pic.twitter.com/5KjgvvX3xV

— Ellistheginge.eth (@ellistheginge) December 12, 2022

…turns out even a construct lacking meaningful comprehension…an empty-headed thing…displays more evidence of a functional mind than chief-twit-technoking-asshat guy…who’d a thunk it…meanwhile…in other not-the-richest-man news

Multi-billionaire Elon Musk has sold another 22 million shares, worth $3.58bn (£2.9bn), in the electric car maker Tesla.

The shares were sold on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week, according to a filing with a US financial regulator.

It brings the total of Tesla stocks sold by Mr Musk over the past year to almost $40bn.
[…]
He remains Tesla’s biggest shareholder with a 13.4% stake, according to financial market data provider Refinitiv.
[…]
On Wednesday the value of Tesla shares listed on the technology-heavy Nasdaq index in New York closed below $500bn for the first time since 2020.

At the end of last year the company was worth more than $1tn but its value has slumped in recent months.
Elon Musk sells $3.6bn of shares in electric car maker Tesla [BBC]

…makes you think

From Charles Ponzi to Bernie Madoff, a brief history of financial skullduggery [WaPo]

Watchdogs looking to toughen federal enforcement of campaign finance laws will not get any help from the judiciary after an appellate court ruling this week that advocates and some judges warn will lead to more untraceable election spending.
[…]
Judge Neomi Rao, who wrote the original opinion from the three-judge panel that first ruled on the case, reiterated Monday that “prosecutorial discretion is not judicially reviewable.” In a statement joined by three other judges refusing to have the case sent to the full circuit for review, she wrote that “it is emphatically not the province of the courts to consider whether more vigorous enforcement of election laws would be desirable.”

Judge Patricia Millett, who dissented in both cases, lamented that the decision allows a minority of FEC members to kill any case without review merely by using the words “prosecutorial discretion.”

“In a perverse twist, those who are charged with enforcing the laws that protect the electoral building blocks of our democracy are free to operate outside the law,” she wrote Monday, joined by one colleague. “In this way, the panel decision renders the world of dark money in politics an even darker place.”
[…]
The earlier ruling already caused a district court judge in D.C. to reverse himself and rule in favor of the GOP-aligned American Action Network accused of engaging in electioneering while calling itself a nonprofit to avoid disclosing its donors.
[…]
This particular case involved a group called New Models that donated millions of dollars to Republican-aligned super PACs in 2012 without registering as a political committee. As in the Trump and AAN cases, Republican members of the FEC voted not to proceed with an investigation, invoking prosecutorial discretion while also arguing in a long analysis that the case was too murky for successful litigation. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued.

The bipartisan requirement has stymied high-profile, politically contentious cases since the FEC was formed in 1974. But in recent years, Republican appointees have expressed general opposition to campaign finance regulations and blocked enforcement in cases involving both parties.

A Republican former commissioner who helped block the New Models case said in a 2018 radio interview that fewer restrictions on campaign spending were “a good thing for democracy” that helped “more people to become involved in politics” without “being harassed by people who disagree with them.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/12/15/fec-challenges-prosecutorial-discretion/

…can a person overdose on hypocrisy?

Elon is going to force users to share their private location data while banning the account that reposted publicly available flight data. This is a massive change and the FTC absolutely needs to get involved. pic.twitter.com/0QPvVKwi0w

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) December 14, 2022

…even if they are sufficiently adept at the business of cognitive dissonance to love memes

pic.twitter.com/JcLMee61wj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2022

pic.twitter.com/C943aHZwA1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2022

A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme.
[…]
Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution.^[8] Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme’s reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.^[9]

A field of study called memetics^[10] arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that academic study can examine memes empirically. However, developments in neuroimaging may make empirical study possible.^[11] Some commentators in the social sciences question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units, and are especially critical of the biological nature of the theory’s underpinnings.^[12] Others have argued that this use of the term is the result of a misunderstanding of the original proposal.^[13]

The word meme itself is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins, originating from his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.^[14] Dawkins’s own position is somewhat ambiguous. He welcomed N. K. Humphrey‘s suggestion that “memes should be considered as living structures, not just metaphorically”^[14] and proposed to regard memes as “physically residing in the brain.”^[15] Although Dawkins said his original intentions had been simpler, he approved Humphrey’s opinion and he endorsed Susan Blackmore‘s 1999 project to give a scientific theory of memes, complete with predictions and empirical support.^[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

…but…fear…as an existential threat…a “mind virus” that might…presumably against his will & overcoming any ideological immunity conferred by his status as a (comparatively) rich & wildly over-entitled white techbro dude…complete with an equal-opportunity based affirmative-action approach to broad-spectrum bigotry compatible with such “intellectual dark web” luminaries as die-hard white supremacists…inflict upon him the actual meaning of the term “woke”

He wrote books, op-eds, gave interviews on radio & TV It seems like people would have a bunch of other quotes.

That also seems like a LOT of talking. How did he come up with so much stuff to say?

Well, he didn't actually have to do that.

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) December 15, 2022

He said a lot more stuff. The point is, that this speech basically became one of King's go-to speeches. He used it ALL the time. More than "I Have a Dream." More than "Mountaintop".

He wouldn't do it EXACTLY the same every time.

Over the years, the speech became MORE WOKE

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) December 15, 2022

"We must see that it is a national problem. And no section of our country can boast of clean hands in the area." He called it "The Black man's burden and America's shame."

But in his 1966 version, he changed it a little bit.

Elon would have banned Woke MLK from Twitter! pic.twitter.com/x6wtnEjCu1

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) December 15, 2022

He even recorded it at the AME convention in 1964 But there's a really good reason why no one ever quotes MOST USED speeches

The idea of "staying woke" was not "revolutionary"at the time – especially to Black people. No, I'm not THAT old but Here's what the @nytimes said in 1962 pic.twitter.com/dwpTPXsumY

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) December 15, 2022

Stay woke.

— Michael Harriot (@michaelharriot) December 15, 2022

…the alternative risks winding up being like elon…& honestly…all the money in the world can’t make up for that…as he’s so ably demonstrating on the daily…that may very well be a fate worse than death?

The incident and the audience members’ explanations represent a shifting tide for Musk, who has reached a new level of notoriety since he took over Twitter while vocally supporting conservative causes.

Musk barely spoke onstage, but he did quote from an early 2000s Chappelle skit, saying, “I’m rich, bitch!” Musk could also be heard saying: “Times like this, I think we’re in a simulation. Like, how can this be real?”
Chappelle audience members explain why they booed Elon Musk [NBC]

…kinda brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “are these guys for real?”