Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Thursday, June 5, 2025

MAGA hiding inconvenient truth; Partisan chaos in gun safety law; 2024 election subversion?

Politico writes about MAGA elites hiding inconvenient truth, something that is not surprising: 

Trump administration officials delayed and redacted a government forecast because it predicts an increase in the nation’s trade deficit in farm goods later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter. The numbers run counter to President Donald Trump’s messaging that his economic policies, including tariffs, will reduce U.S. trade imbalances. The politically inconvenient data prompted administration officials to block publication of the written analysis normally attached to the report because they disliked what it said about the deficit.

“The report was hung up in internal clearance process and was not finalized in time for its typical deadline,” said USDA spokesperson Alec Varsamis in a statement. “Given this report is not statutory as with many other reports USDA does, the Department is undergoing a review of all of its non-statutory reports, including this one, to determine next steps.”

The published report, released Monday, June 3 but dated May 29. It includes numbers that are unchanged from how they would’ve read in the unredacted report, which is how we know about the redactions.

What might “next steps” be? Getting rid of formal analysis and reporting entirely and replacing that with stuff that MAGA thugs just make up.

There it is, hiding inconvenient truth from the American people, trying to deceive them. djt and MAGA elites have turned the federal government into a machine that whitewashes inconvenient facts and truths. And, they did it in less that 6 months. We can expect this to be the new normal.
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In a 2022 gun regulation case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the USSC made up something one might call the history and traditions test. It requires gun safety laws to have 18th- or 19th-century analogs to survive 2nd Amendment constitutional challenges. In essence, the Bruen decision forces judges to act as historians rather than arbiters of public safety based on objective criteria such as passing a background check. Not surprisingly, chaos reigns supreme. Judges are not historians, they are judges.

Bruen exemplifies the Federalist Society’s and MAGA’s influence in reshaping judicial priorities. They have replaced replace pragmatic governance with subjective, radical ideological dogma. By requiring courts to litigate history rather than evaluate contemporary harm and social safety, the decision entrenches a form of legal authoritarianism where archaic norms override collective security.

Slate writes about the chaos, pointing out how highly politicized gun safety regulations now are. Courts face irreconcilable splits on age restrictions, felon disarmament, and assault weapon bans. Republican-appointed judges side with gun rights plaintiffs 48% of the time vs. 14% for Democratic appointees. Over 30% of post-Bruen Second Amendment cases resulted in laws being invalidated, including domestic violence restrictions and bans on firearms in post offices. 
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In an obscure case, Access Newswire reports that a New York state judge is allowing discovery to proceed in a lawsuit that challenges the results of the 2024 election:
NEW CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / May 29, 2025 / A seminal case questioning the accuracy of the 2024 Presidential and Senate election results in Rockland County, New York, is moving forward. In open court last Thursday, Judge Rachel Tanguay of the New York Supreme Court, ruled that discovery must proceed, pushing the lawsuit brought by SMART Legislation into the evidence-gathering stage. The lawsuit seeks a full hand recount of the Presidential and U.S. Senate races in Rockland County.

SMART Legislation, the action arm of SMART Elections, is the lead plaintiff in the case. Both organizations are dedicated to ensuring fair and accurate elections.

"There is clear evidence that the senate results are incorrect, and there are statistical indications that the presidential results are highly unlikely," stated Lulu Friesdat, Founder and Executive Director of SMART Legislation. "If the results are incorrect, it is a violation of the constitutional rights of each person who voted in the 2024 Rockland County general election. The best way to determine if the results are correct is to examine the paper ballots in a full public, transparent hand recount of all presidential and senate ballots in Rockland County. We believe it's vitally important, especially in the current environment, to be absolutely confident about the results of the election."
Additionally, a statistician determined that the 2024 presidential election results were statistically highly unlikely in four of the five towns in Rockland County when compared with 2020 results.
Max Bonamente, Ph.D., Professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the author of the textbook, "Statistics and Analysis of Scientific Data," says in an upcoming paper on the Rockland data, "These data would require extreme sociological or political causes for their explanation, and would benefit from further assurances as to their fidelity."


Once again, we see an obscure report of 2024 election irregularity backed by statistical analysis. AP News also reported about this lawsuit. One can only wonder if the 2024 election wasn't rigged on a large scale. Since no one bothered to file dozens of lawsuits like djt did after the 2020 election, we will probably never know.


Q: Is it unreasonable to want to see at least as much effort put into challenging the results of the 2024 elections and there was put into challenging the 2020 elections? If so, why?