https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1513807229991866368?s=20&t=Xe1bVp21qaJnGih5DjDraw
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1513810262092001280?s=20&t=Xe1bVp21qaJnGih5DjDraw
This is what this board is all about!
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1513732324294225920?s=20&t=Xe1bVp21qaJnGih5DjDraw
This is for the anon thats posts about this all the time
https://twitter.com/rossisbossof/status/1513699262382714892?s=20&t=Xe1bVp21qaJnGih5DjDraw
Can you even imagine how psychologically and emotionally damaged twitter employees are, this company seems to have gathered the most deranged snowflakes on the planet
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1513682824150220801?s=20&t=Q8beUb93EPuZAvH85yKKFg
Kekkity, release the memes, its war boys!
kw.@Forculus
Replying to @pmarca
ser did you see thebloomberg article today that said the current thing was a meme for the far right?
5:24 PM · Apr 11, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1513629826749386752?s=20&t=Q8beUb93EPuZAvH85yKKFg
How Green Was Germany’s Folly?
James B. MeigsApril 2022
On February 26, 2022, as Russian tanks rolled somewhat haltingly toward Kiev, Germany was fighting a battle of its own. It was trying to keep the lights on. Since 2000, Germany has spent 500 billion euros on its Energiewende program, a campaign to replace fossil fuels and nuclear power mostly with wind and solar energy. That Saturday was a typical winter day in northern Europe, with temperatures in the thirties and forties and light winds. But as the sun settled toward the west, Germany’s vast phalanxes of wind turbines and solar panels performed exactly as they so often have in the past: poorly. By 5:15 p.m., wind and solar combined were producing less than 7 percent of the electricity the country needed. Coal and natural gas made up most of the balance.
The lion’s share of that coal and gas came from Russia. Which was, to put it politely, a geopolitical inconvenience for the richest, and supposedly most powerful, country in Western Europe.
Energy has always been a motivation for war. During World War II, energy hunger was one of the reasons Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and why Germany tried, and failed, to take Russia’s oil-producing Caucasus region. But energy can also be a motivation for war when one nation has a surplus and its neighbors don’t have enough. An energy-rich country can act with impunity, while countries dependent on imports need to tread delicately. Vladimir Putin knows this. But Germany and the rest of Europe seem to have forgotten.
When Germany launched its Energiewende program, it hoped to become the world leader in developing a zero-carbon economy—a green beacon unto the nations. For years, Germany basked in the praise of climate activists and environmental NGOs. As recently as this past month, the New Yorker asked, “Can Germany show us how to leave coal behind?” (Hint: When a publication puts a question mark at the end of a headline, the answer is almost always “no.”) The country didn’t just build wind and solar farms,it also shut down most of its perfectly good, perfectly safe nuclear reactors.
If you look at a globe, you will see that Germany is closer to the latitude of Anchorage than to that of New York. Winter days are short and gloomy. As for the wind? Let’s just say it comes and goes. So whenever Germany’s renewable sources fall short—which is often—the country turns to reliable sources: coal and gas. And it seems the more “renewable” Germany’s grid becomes, the more it needs those fossil fuels for backup.
Germany is not alone. Most of Europe is in the same leaky boat. (France, which went on a nuclear-plant-building spree in the 1980s, is happily immune to these problems.)
In a post on Bari Weiss’s Common Sense Substack, renewable-energy skeptic Michael Shellenberger lays out the numbers: “In 2016, 30 percent of the natural gas consumed by the European Union came from Russia. In 2018, that figure jumped to 40 percent … and by early 2021, it was nearly 47 percent.” It still wasn’t enough. That’s why Germany was desperate to see the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to bring in even more Russian gas. (Trump tried to stop the pipeline with sanctions; Biden lifted the sanctions early in his administration.)
https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-meigs/germany-russia-energy/
Stop going to universities and get a job!
https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1512097936448053253?s=20&t=Q8beUb93EPuZAvH85yKKFg
Clarence Thomas' Vote on Trump Documents Had Nothing to do With His Wife | Opinion
On 4/12/22 at 7:00 AM EDT
JOHN YOO , PROFESSOR OF LAW, UC BERKELEY
Part 1 of 2
Liberals have their knives out again for Justice Clarence Thomas. Enraged by the free-thinking black jurist leading the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, they have ginned up yet another false controversy to attack him. Liberals are calling for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from important cases, resign or else face impeachment.
The claim this time is that Justice Thomas improperly voted on a January 19, 2022, case. That suit was brought by former president Donald Trump to block the disclosure of his communications with top staff and lawyers at the time of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. According to critics, Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the case because his wife, Virginia Thomas, had sent text messages urging Trump appointees to challenge the election results.
It is true that Mrs. Thomas held very strong views about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. In the early days after the November vote, she texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, saying "Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators" were "being arrested and detained for ballot fraud" and insisting the White House should "not concede." Mrs. Thomas sent these texts—which were turned over to the January 6 committee, which apparently leaked them—two months before the riot at the Capitol. (For what it is worth, I disagree with Mrs. Thomas's view that President Biden won the 2020 election via ballot fraud; for more, see my recently posted scholarly article on the constitutional authority of the vice president to resolve disputes of electors.)
The alleged conflict of interest is that Justice Thomas voted in the January 19 case even though his wife was supposedly involved in the conspiracy to overthrow the election at issue in the lawsuit. According to MoveOn, which has circulated one of many petitions calling for Justice Thomas's resignation, "It has become clear that [the Justice's] wife…was actively urging the White House to overturn election results both leading up to January 6 and after the deadly insurrection." It charges: "Thomas' failure to recuse himself warrants immediate investigation and heightened alarm. And it's only the latest in a long history of conflicts of interest in the service of a right-wing agenda and mixing his powerful role with his conservative political activism." Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has called for Thomas to be impeached, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared with her customary understatement: "If your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards."
There are several reasons these claims fail. First, and most important, there is nothing wrong with Mrs. Thomas espousing her views on the 2020 election, even if those views are wayward and extreme. We are long past the day, if it ever existed, when we could assume that spouses shared the same views on political issues. We are also long past the day when spouses were not permitted to have independent careers. Mrs. Thomas is a longtime conservative activist and organizer. That's her career, not her husband's.
Second, even if it were somehow wrong for Mrs. Thomas to voice her thoughts on the 2020 election to Mark Meadows or others, the January 19 case involving President Trump simply had nothing to do with her. The former president's claim of executive privilege in the case could only extend to his own communications with top government aides and advisers. Mrs. Thomas held no office in government, and had no legal relationship with the White House. Therefore, her texts were not at issue in the case.
Third, there is no evidence that Justice Thomas knew his wife was sending the texts, or shared her views at all. But even if he did, it still would have had no bearing on the resolution of the January 19 executive privilege case, which again involved communications of the president himself.
Finally, Justice Thomas could hold good reasons for his vote that have nothing to do with his wife and her views. Critics have made much of his vote in the case without explaining the issues at stake. The Court was being asked to temporarily halt the release of Trump White House documents to the January 6 committee to give the Justices time to consider the privilege issue with the benefit of full briefing and argument. Even if Justice Thomas' colleagues had agreed to keep the status quo intact, rather than allowing the January 6 committee to begin rummaging through the White House's records, they could still have decided that Congress' need for the information outweighed any need for confidentiality…
https://www.newsweek.com/clarence-thomas-vote-trump-documents-had-nothing-do-his-wife-opinion-1696881
Part 2 of 2
Clarence Thomas' Vote on Trump Documents Had Nothing to do With His Wife |
But putting the procedural complexities of the case aside, there are powerful, principled reasons supporting the view that the Court should respect executive privilege and block the January 6 committee's inquiry into White House records. Article II of the Constitution declares that the president "may require the Opinion" from his principal officers "upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective offices." Ever since President George Washington refused to share documents with the House about the Jay Treaty, the executive branch has asserted the need to keep documents and information that reflect presidential decision making and deliberation confidential. In Nixon v. United States, the Supreme Court recognized that the president must enjoy an executive privilege in order to receive the full and frank advice of top officials, which would allow him to effectively discharge his constitutional duties. As the courts have recognized, executive privilege includes not just the communications of current presidents, but those of past presidents as well.
To date, the Supreme Court has only recognized an exception to this privilege when a criminal defendant's own constitutional right to information conflicts with the president's right to confidentiality. In those cases the Court sought to balance the two competing rights by intruding narrowly on the claim of executive privilege. It has never squarely upheld the right of Congress, rather than of the courts, to override a president's claim of executive privilege. The lower court in the January 19 case held otherwise, which by itself would have presented sufficient grounds for the Supreme Court to hear the case.
The lower court in the January 19 case weighed in on an equally important issue worthy of Supreme Court review. In regard to the January 6 investigation, President Joe Biden has attempted to waive any claim of privilege enjoyed by Trump and his top advisers. The privilege belongs only to the incumbent president, the Biden administration asserts, with barely a nod to the threat to the internal deliberations of all future presidencies (and Biden's), or to the Supreme Court's finding that the privilege extends to former as well as incumbent presidents.
The lower court agreed that an incumbent president had the right to waive the executive privilege of any past president. This position ignores that executive privilege exists not for the personal benefit of a president as an individual but for the benefit of the republic. As the Carter administration argued in a 1977 case dealing with President Nixon's presidential papers, "Unless he can give his advisers some assurance of confidentiality, a President could not expect to receive the full and frank submissions of facts and opinions upon which effective discharge of his duties depends."
The types of privileges that exist elsewhere in the law—such as those between attorneys and clients, doctors and patients, spouses, and priests and parishioners—do not disappear simply because we hire a new lawyer or physician. To allow current presidents to waive their predecessors' right to confidentiality could spark a race to the bottom where every president, out of political revenge, decides to reveal the most sensitive documents from the past administration. The privilege must extend beyond a single president's tenure lest all future presidents find their top advisers unwilling to provide the full and candid advice necessary for effective policymaking.
Perhaps the Supreme Court would agree that past presidents have a right to executive privilege. Perhaps it would agree that current presidents cannot waive that right willy-nilly. All that Justice Thomas did on January 19 was to vote that these constitutional issues were important enough—and they are—for the Supreme Court to decide. In that respect, Justice Thomas sought to resolve a case or controversy under federal law, the core function of the federal judiciary. Voting for the Court to hear a case involving a conflict between the central authorities of the branches of the government has everything to do with his fulfilling his judicial duty—and nothing to do with his wife.
https://www.newsweek.com/clarence-thomas-vote-trump-documents-had-nothing-do-his-wife-opinion-1696881