They definitely are but they’re also the group I’d expect to be most likely to honor a lawful court order even if someone in their chain of command didn’t want them to.

One way we’re a bit lucky even today is that it takes time to train high level law enforcement people (so not ICE) and we’re only 6 months into Trump 2 (ugh).

That is even more the case for the high echelons of career (not appointed) law enforcement like FBI and Marshalls.

There are technically mechanisms for courts to enforce their orders, starting with the US Marshalls, but continuing to judges having the power to deputize anyone to go enforce their orders including with force.

For lots of reasons they’re reluctant to do such things. For most of American history they haven’t needed to, because everyone was working cooperatively and respecting institutions even if they disagreed with the outcomes.

So I’m guessing Trump, MAGA, and a lot of Republicans have mistaken the absence of direct enforcement by the courts for the inability to directly enforce.

We’ll see if some judge or justice gets fed up enough with Republican shenanigans and starts with civil and criminal contempt findings with fines and jail time escalating to issuing warrants and calling up Marshalls or deputizing officers…

At some point I do expect things to go “too far” for the remaining pre-MAGA Republicans to keep going along. I could be mistaken.

this is the video that gave me a useful tool for stopping my intrusive thoughts, in case anyone is looking for relief

https://youtu.be/kvtYjdriSpM

(there are tons so I’m sure there might be better ones or ones that work better for other people…)

didn’t i just see any new sandman season announced though?

I feel like we have to be able to separate artists’ bad behavior from our evaluation of the quality of their work.

Maybe there’s a time limit? Maybe they have to be dead so they can’t benefit from their work being sold.

Are there any non problematic artists/creators from 500 years ago who we nevertheless find their work product valuable to society today? What about science? Especially medicine with all the body snatching.

Neil Gaiman is almost certainly a sex pest based on all the women reporting. So I get not wanting to give him money. He hopefully gets it, too.

I like the suggestion of piracy as an approach…

right but if I’m thinking correctly (maybe not) then if it “merely” wasn’t harmful, wouldn’t there be room for variation within the species of toxicity?

perhaps they do have some cards after all

I feel like if evolution is correct (I’m confident it is) then it must be evolutionarily advantageous to have the capacity to kill a herd of elephants with one’s toxin, assuming all animals in the group have that capacity.

Europe, to its credit, has acted on some of the science. Paraquat — the herbicide chemically similar to MPTP — was finally banned in 2007, although only after Sweden took the European Commission to court for ignoring the evidence of its neurotoxicity. Other pesticides with known links to Parkinson’s, such as rotenone and maneb, are no longer approved.

…

Among the chemicals still in use, none has drawn more scrutiny — or survived more court battles — than glyphosate.

glyphosate

IF we can get a very strong Congress that recaptures and then vigorously defends it’s Constitutional powers, AND that goes through the trouble of codifying what used to be political norms before Trump, AND amends the Constitution as needed to put a strong leash on the Executive branch, I think it’s possible we could become that anchor again.

But it took a world war and at least 25 years of concerted effort after to build that role for ourselves. Even though the Republicans have damaged or destroyed it in 3 months, it won’t be rebuilt in 3 months.

Those are rookie numbers we can do better

After WWII there was a halcyon era where nearly every adult in America agreed that nerds had been crucial to our winning. That’s why Operation Paperclip came to be where we stole all the former Axis nerds we could find.

It also led to an unprecedented boom in education spending, research spending, etc., mostly aimed at beating the USSR at technological development. Sputnik goosed that significantly, and the Apollo program briefly did as well, until Americans got bored of Moon landings…

That was probably the first major flashing red warning light most of us ignored: Moon landings… boring!!!

Anyway, educated people started doing things that weren’t directly associated with winning the Cold War, like exposing the dangers of lead in everything, the dangers of smoking, the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons, the dangers of greenhouse gasses, etc.

That threatened the ability of grotesquely wealthy hoarders to hoard even more grotesque levels of wealth.

So they started the project to dismantle education in America.

That project kicked into afterburn once the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended.

And so far, nerds haven’t been successful in regaining their status.

Also the villification of experts as people hell bent on leveraging their expertise to dominate our control non experts.

I recently right that a useful counter to that conspiracy their is to point out that experts should be thought of as tools to be used for different purposes. Like any tool, experts can be misused in a variety of ways, including accidental and purposeful.

those are rookie numbers, we can do better!

I was watching the stream when the splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico and the NASA commentator said the stupid MAGA version of the name.

I just can’t even…

So we gave up 1 mad king 250 years ago only to pick up 2 now?

everything ought to be transferred to Ukraine, but only the European stuff is likely to be in the near term.

that’s one thing Biden really should have done after the election.

maybe that should be an addendum or footnote to the “best days of a boat owner’s life”

I assume this includes changing the past so how about have Bernie win the 2016 Democratic Primary.

Or go back and have SCOTUS say the 2000 Florida recount could continue until the true winner was determined.

Or go back and have Carter win in 1980 by revealing the collusion between the Reagan campaign and Iran (might have to include breaking the OPEC bullshit too).

If none of that, and assuming “free will” can’t be overridden, maybe Freaky Friday the consciousnesses of the 2024 Democratic candidates &. spouses into the bodies of the Republican equivalents. If there’s some limitation based on the biological sex of the participants, put Doug into Trump and Kamala into Melania, they’re a team anyway.

yes