Open Thread January 7 2025

I could already see on Monday that term limits were going to become a hot topic again this year. Judge Hellerstein, who has been conspicuous in several previous cases involving the God-Emperor and his cronies, is a proven no-fear-or-favor tiger. He is 92, and, had some kind of term limits been in place, we would not have him. On the other hand two terms (or even one term) is more than enough for the God-Emperor. Yet, had a two-term limit on the presidency been in effect rather than just a custom in the 1930s, we would not have had the liberal consensus which kept not just us but the world more liberal up through 2024. I can’t prove this – no one can – there’s never been a dedicated study, and there are simply too many people in our history who have held office for anyone to hold that much information in one brain at one time – but I am strongly inclined to believe that for every elected crackpot from whom term limits would save us, there is an elected official whose inability to be re-elected would harm us. This is not like the electoral college argument, where one can review all the presidential elections (62 of them if my math is correct, but there would be fewer in which the electoral college overrode the popular vote.) The only one I can be confident of without more research where the electoral college was both different from and better than the popular vote was in the election of John Quincy Adams, and that really is not a good enough record to defend the College on. Instead, there would be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of races to review, and that’s not even counting appointed judges and justices. On principle, I’m not comfortable with term limits for elected officials because they limit the power of the people. Appointed judges and justices are different – the power limits there is that of elected executives, not that of the people, so it is more democratic. But still, there’s Judge Hellerstein, who clearly has a better understanding of the Constitution, and other law, than most people half his age – and the courage to uphold it. And those are qualities which we desperately need right now.

Yesterday, Malcolm Nance hosted a video on Substack with a couple of other guys. It’s a bit rough to listen to because, in the first place, Malcolm has a lot of hearing loss from his military service (possible also from CIA service) and tends to over-talk the others. Jacob is I guess Danish, and his English is excellent, but with an accent. Dean, the third guy, is Canadian; he doesn’t talk much but what he has to say about Canada and airspace is fierce. Also, their discussion about what would happen if the current US stooges actually attempted to occupy Greenland – well, it’s so absurd they can barely stop laughing. But it will, if you can overcome all of that, give you a pretty good idea of what would really happen if we attempted to invade Greenland. And, honestly, if it could happen without making Greenland and/or Denmark and/or NATO hating the sane ones among us – I wish they would try. I was lucky enough to catch it live, and a recording was not immediately available, but some hours later it popped up. If y’all can call attention to Greenland among friends and family, please do.

As if I didn’t have enough to piss me off, now there’s this. Which happened in the seat of the county I grew up in. Grrrr. I’m beyond being shocked by hate, but it still makes me angry, especially so close to home. At least they fired the SOB – but I didn’t see anything about preventing him from working in law enforcement elsewhere.

This is a podcast from The Conversation – or, I should say, it is the first episode of a six-episode podcast on how an autocrat becomes one. Lately, I’m not accomplishing much of anything – but I am finding that sources which can be listened to are at least letting me get some knitting done. Being from the Conversation, you know it is well researched. But by all means feel free to ignore this.

This is from Instagram (referred by the 19th), so I can’t see all of it either. Trinette knew about it before I did – we talked about it on Sunday. It is tragic indeed, but I honestly don’t know how how to prevent it from happening again, to any female medical professional (and, yes, dammit, she was a professional, regardless what the regime says.) The reason we need to have professionals to deliver babies is that there are parts of a woman’s body she cannot reach herself, and sometimes those parts need to be reached tp deliver a baby safely. A mother who knows exactly what needs to be done still can’t do it herself because of physical limitation. There are some things we could do to help close the childbirth mortality gap – but the current regime not only won’t do them, it also won’t allow anyone else to do them. And that’s the tragedy we need to address.