The KHIT Blog: Presidential candidacy eligibility: Cutting to the chase

Friday, December 29, 2023

Presidential candidacy eligibility: Cutting to the chase

Donald Trump won the presidency with fewer votes than his opponent?
"We’re a republic, not a democracy."
State Republican parties in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and other states gerrymandered themselves into supermajorities?
"We’re a republic, not a democracy."
Forty-one senators block laws favored by 59? A single senator blocks promotions across the Defense Department?
"We’re a republic, not a democracy."
Florida voters restored voting rights to felons, only to see the reform disregarded by the state legislature?
"We’re a republic, not a democracy."
States rule that Trump is an insurrectionist under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment, barring him from their ballots?
"Let the people decide!"
There’s not much use in pointing out hypocrisy in the Trump era. Trump and his core supporters are governed only by the Cartman principle—“I do what I want!”—and to that principle, they are always faithful …

How should people who are serious about democratic principles respond to this avalanche of bad faith? Democratic ideals don’t cease to be true just because they can be exploited by dishonest actors. Yet democracy also cannot become an optional principle that authoritarians can use when it suits them and then discard without consequences when it becomes an obstacle to their goals. Democratic systems have constitutions and constitutional remedies precisely to protect themselves against those who toggle in this way between breaking inconvenient rules and demanding the benefit of favorable ones.

A key provision of the suddenly famous Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment is that it applies only to those who previously swore an oath of office. It’s not a general punishment for revolts against legal authority. It is a highly targeted penalty applied to those who—like Trump—try to play the system both ways, swearing to execute the laws and then rebelling against the laws they swore to enforce…

… [R]emember that old joke about the man who murdered both of his parents and then asked for mercy as an orphan? It needs to be replaced by a new joke about the ex-president who trashed democracy when he had the power, and then pleaded for the protection of democracy so he could have one more chance to trash democracy again. —David Frum

David goes on to remind us that Donald Trump argued vehemently—ad nauseum—that Barack Obama was constitutionally ineligible to run for President because he was "born in Kenya," and that, likewise, Ted Cruz was also POTUS-ineligible given that he'd been born in Canada. And most recently, in 2020, Trump repeatedly sought to have millions of Covid-aftermath mail-in votes invalidated (on equally spurious, unsuccessful grounds).

SCOTUS faces a real political pickle with this one. Although, Trump's "blanket immunity" appellate assertions also loom consequentially large.

UPDATE: THE DAILY DONALD DESPERATION

Lordy Mercy. Just for grins, scroll back through the prior three posts. I guess we're going to see this incoherent bleating multiple times per day until next November.

UPDATE: LAWRENCE LESSIG WEIGHS IN

Donald Trump is an astoundingly dangerous candidate for president. He is a pathological liar, with clear authoritarian instincts. Were he elected to a second term, the damage he would do to the institutions of our republic is profound. His reelection would be worse than any political event in the history of America — save the decision of South Carolina to launch the Civil War.

That fact has motivated many decent lawyers and law professors to scramble for ways to ensure that Trump is not elected. On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court gave these lawyers new hope by declaring that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars Donald Trump from the Colorado ballot. That decision will certainly reach the United States Supreme Court as quickly as any. And if that court is to preserve its integrity, it must, unanimously, reject the Colorado Supreme Court’s judgment. Because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump…

In a nation overpopulated with bloviating Barstool ConLaw "experts," Lessig has major legit chops.

RANDOM ERRATUM

The Power of Photoshop Compels Me...

CODA

Harks to this post.

__________

No comments:

Brave New Health

Commonwell Health Alliance

Another important read (pdf)

I love this kind of stuff. It sustains and humbles me. "As politicians, advertisers, salesmen, and propagandists for various political, economic, moral, religious, psychic, environmental, dietary, and artistic doctrinaire positions know only too well, fallible human minds are easily tricked, by clever verbiage... Common language—or at least, the English language—has an almost universal tendency to disguise epistemological statements by putting them into a grammatical form which suggests to the unwary an ontological statement. A major source of error in current probability theory arises from an unthinking failure to perceive this."

Quotes

"An economist is a person who sees something that works in practice and tries to figure out whether it will work in theory."

- J.D. Kleinke, medical economist
___

"The only person who enjoys change is a baby with a wet diaper."

"Every misspent dollar in our health care system is part of somebody's paycheck.

- Brent James, M.D., M.Stat

“We could do healthcare, at markedly higher quality, for everyone in this country, without rationing or denying anybody the care that they need, without having the government dictate how doctors practice or whether hospitals could expand, at half the cost we do it now.”

- Health Care Futurist Joe Flower

Most of the sciences, unlike parts of medical science, are not concerned with the impossible. There is not complementary and alternative physics, or chemistry, or biochemistry, or engineering. These disciplines compare their ideas against reality, and, if the ideas are found wanting, abandoned."

- Mark A. Crislip, MD

"Q: How much alcohol is too much?
A: More than your doctor drinks."

- a physician I once heard speak during a CME presentation

“Just because science doesn’t know everything, doesn’t mean you get to fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”

- Dara O’Briain

'[I]t is one small step from using the computer for "helping" doctors to monitoring them, judging them, dictating to them what to do, and withdrawing payment for computer non-compliance. The use of computer data is a multi-edged sword. It can be used for the "good," facilitating diagnosis and treatment and making it more accurate and up-to-date, and for “evil,” invading privacy, inviting security breechs, and making decisions based on the opinions of remote authorities rather than those present at the patient-doctor encounter.'

- Richard Reece, MD

“[T]here ARE statistics which are non-political. Just because The Washington Post/Fox News reports the temperature is 75 degrees doesn’t mean it’s really snowing and sunscreen is a liberal/conservative plot. Even if you earn a living being ideological.”

- Michael L. Millenson

"It is a generally a fairly convincing argument that people shouldn’t have to be subsidized to undertake a change which is in their best interest.

The reconciliation seems to be that EHR is not supposed to make a doctor’s practice more efficient and higher quality. It is supposed to make the system of care more efficient and higher quality, which is not the same thing. Those of you who took calc recall that maximizing the total of variables is not achieved by maximizing any one variable and this is a perfect example of that.

Those of you have served in combat certainly noticed that too — if everyone works as a team the unit takes fewer casualties. If you try to save your own hide, you might, but at the expense of more casualties overall."

- Al Lewis

"There are two ideas to keep in mind about Bayesian reasoning and how we tend to mess it up. The first is that base rates matter, even in the presence of evidence about the case at hand. This is often not intuitively obvious. The second is that intuitive impressions of the diagnosticity of evidence are often exaggerated."

- Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

"Physicians apply advanced scientific knowledge, but they must do so without the favorable conditions that experimental scientists create for themselves. Multitasking is forced on physicians, often in chaotic environments and under severe time and resource constraints."

- Lawrence and Lincoln Weed, "Medicine in Denial"

"It’s time to stop the whining about Obama care and acknowledge we already have universal health care. We just pay for it in the stupidest way possible that ensures problems are that much more disastrous and complicated when they’re finally treated."

- Mark Hoofnagle, MD, PhD

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily."

- Thomas Szasz, MD
___

"Of course, one reason that process metrics* are so popular is that processes are much easier to define and measure than outcomes."

- The Skeptical Scalpel
___

"There is an “illusion of validity” for any random data point, a seductive sense that is colored by what we hope will be true. Mountains of pharmaceutical claims are often made from mere molehills of data."

- Danielle Ofri, MD
___

"Joy empowers people. It is a source of energy that enables people to hope and plan and change their lives for the better. Spend some time around someone who is relentlessly negative and how do you feel–drained, right? More and more research shows that joy is not something that just happens to you, like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. Joy is, instead, a habit to cultivate. Negative thinking and despair are the crabgrass of our souls–weeds that take root and spread, sometimes to all areas of life. Joy, in contrast, is a soul’s rose–hardy when cared for, able to put down roots over time and withstand disease and extremes. Like a rose, however, your joy can become blighted from neglect or harsh conditions. We all need to tend to our joy–to prune away the badness, and to know that, even though it may look like a prickly bare root, if you invest time in a joyous outlook, gorgeous things will bloom, even in the harshest conditions."

- Dr. Jan Gurley
___

"'Solutions' exist only in mathematics."

- Karen Martin
___

"The issue of how to regulate clinical software is, in the long run, indistinguishable from the issue of how to regulate medicine. The only difference is that medicine is practiced in the open, without secrecy, subject to peer review, and under a merit-based state license."

- Adrian Gropper, MD
___

"Economist, rope, tree: some assembly required."

- Source unknown

DISCLAIMER:

I write this blog wholly on my own time and my own dime. The views proffered are expressly my own as a concerned and active citizen/taxpayer (in addition to being the result of my substantive experience in the various IT fields), and in no way reflect any policy views of my former employer, notwithstanding that some of the thinking has indeed obviously been spurred by the implications of the work with which I have been doing for them.

FAIR USE POLICY
I cite a ton of news and web sources spanning the breadth of relevant technical and policy domains, sometimes at substantial length. I believe I remain well within the bounds of "Fair Use," as [1] I am not doing any of this for profit, [2] I always provide attribution and links -- which, [3] far from negatively impacting any copyright holders' commercial interests, might actually increase traffic to and interest in their offerings.

Nonetheless, should I post anything of yours regarding which you have any objection, just let me know and I will remove it forthwith.

The KHIT Blog

Search the KHIT Blog

Friday, December 29, 2023

Presidential candidacy eligibility: Cutting to the chase

No comments:

Post a Comment