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Sir Humphrey 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Sir Humphrey 🇺🇦
@bdquinn
Permanent Secretary of the Department of Bad Takes
May 7 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
To state this clearly, I don't think that the partition plan in 1947-48 in Palestine was some kind of unique injustice to Palestinians compared to all of the border settling and population transfers elsewhere in the world post-WWII. Especially weighed against, post-Holocaust, the clear necessity for a Jewish nation-state where Jews could, as the numerous other nation-states (including the numerous Arab nation-states), at last be allowed their own protection and not just be at the mercy of often hostile majorities.

All manner of countries are
Jun 13, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Yes and no. The California marginal rates aren't particularly useful for showing effective tax liabilities by income range because of how they approach what are in effect exemption credits, as well as other credits. Comparing to modest-taxed Virginia, middle income rates are low. ImageImage Middle class taxes in California aren't especially bad, bottom line.

They absolutely soak the high end, though.
Jun 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The concept of residual executive privilege is such a fundamentally stupid one.

Under the Presidential Records Act, a former president can request that the current president invoke it related to the former president's documents, but that's solely up to the current president. Trying to apply it more broadly, think of the lunacy of a current president not being able to know what his predecessor had done.

The former president struck some hush-hush agreement with a foreign power for a specific policy concession and the current president can't know about
May 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The president either has to unconstitutionally usurp Congress's authority to appropriate money by not spending money and instead honoring debt in lieu of that or he has to break the statutory cap on the debt ceiling to raise the money to fund Congress's obligations. Neither the president nor Congress can default on the debt. The Constitution limits the actions of the federal government in all manner of ways. This is one of the ways it limits those powers.

So, when Congress appropriates money deep into deficit spending but doesn't raise
May 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Indeed. I never fully understood how firebombing Japanese cities with the deliberate intention of killing as many Japanese civilians as possible to force Japan to surrender was morally tolerable but dropping the atomic bombs was just way too much. I'll grant that those who died from radiation sickness died terrible deaths. That wasn't fully understood at the time, as you can see from war plans that called for tactical use of nukes when we were going to invade Japan and our troops would go through irradiated areas.
May 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It's particularly ridiculous because the legislative bill doesn't even do a good job of aiding smaller cities and villages, much less the large ones. It's an abomination that tilts things overwhelmingly toward the low service, low tax, and already over-aided (due to GTAs) towns. This gets to one of the things I've complained about so much in recent politics. Bills that do "something" that sort of/kind of is in the general range of a certain issue get treated like a binary on/off. Then, when they pass, we look at them later and they're a mess.
May 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Strong evidence that this is bullshit: Trump was president during the ongoing War in the Donbas that precedes this and... it never ended.

The thing the Trump cultists like to imagine, what I call "The Magic Donald Theory," is so weird because he failed in almost everything Seriously, Trump achieved close to zero of his stated objectives as president.
Feb 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
So many conspiracy theories today have the same flavor of probably the worst one from my youth: "Why did no Jews die on 9/11?!?!?!"

The actual number was roughly 400, but that didn't matter to the conspiracy theorists and their credulous readers/listeners. The claim was leveled with such confidence that the underlying assertion was true that a lot of people were frequently caught unprepared to rebut it.

It was for that reason that it spread far more than it should have.
Feb 25, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This gets back to what I said earlier. Back when Communism was a bigger present threat, you had a lot of leftie malcontents who embraced Communism and its utter hatred for objective truth.

Now, we have this horseshoe of malcontents, left and right, who do it together. No autocrat could maintain their power if people knew the truth. In democracies, governments are defeated all the time because people aren't happy with what's going on. Autocracies go "Well, what if we delude people with a fantasy?"

The Eastern Bloc did that.
Feb 25, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I think it's important to understand that political ideology isn't a useful way to look at someone like Carlson. He's the same as Lenin. The ends justify the means, no matter what. Truth vs lies? Whatever works.

It's why I always have feared the far left for the same reason. Whenever you have someone who cares so much about what they're trying to achieve that nothing is off limits, you're dealing with someone who is truly evil.

There's a portion of the right that embraced the idea "We have to be like Lenin because our foes are like Lenin."

Really?
Feb 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
He has this entirely backward. The malcontents on the left and right who oppose Ukraine and, oftentimes, openly support Russia do so out of not much but knee-jerk contrarianism and rage against "elites" and "the establishment."

Supporting Ukraine is about maintaining order. I view supporting Ukraine in its fight to ward off a war of annexation as being as simple a matter of internarional law as prosecuting someone for murder is with criminal law. It's not even a question.
Feb 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Indeed it's entirely Putin's fault.

For those saying "Just have talks with him!", we were having talks before he started the war. He was the one who decided to call them off and start the invasion, which it is clear he was planning to do for years. "But he said he only did it reluctantly!"

Yeah, bullshit. No one, not even Hitler, publicly basks in their bloodlust. Hitler in 1939, for example, tried to make it seem like his invasion of Poland was a reluctant last resort.

Once he conquered most of Poland, he gave a speech
Feb 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I want to point out that this sort of talk is pretty hollow.

Trump doesn't actually give a damn about these areas, nor does he know how to solve their feelings of persistent decline. Ohio barely budged on manufacturing employment during his presidency and trended down pre-COVID Image He knows how to whine a lot. Actually solving the things he whines about? No. Doesn't have a clue. They're difficult problems and he claims he has easy answers that'll solve it all in a jiffy, but it's all a lie. He never did anything for those areas. @bungarsargon should note it
Nov 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm one of those people who falls into a weird category. I'm a Zionist (I truly am), I reject the notion that Israel as it exists today is an apartheid state, but I'm very worried it's headed there. Israeli politics continue to get more and more and more extreme. I don't comment much on this because I know it's a very emotional topic for a large number of people. I don't think I'm going to convince anyone of anything on this, so I normally avoid it.
Nov 3, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
This is the single most overrated policy idea that exists on the right. There are three states around or near us with flat income taxes: Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. There is absolutely zero evidence this gives them an advantage economically over Wisconsin. Why? (1/4) Does it really matter if a state income tax is graduated by a few percentage points vs flat from creating incentives or disincentives for the typical worker? No, because it's part of a structure that includes the far more graduated federal income tax. (2/4)
Oct 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Just out of curiosity, with all of the excuse making for Herschel Walker, Trump, etc, why should we ever take GOP assertions about personal character and conventional morality mattering seriously ever again?

@baseballcrank and @EWErickson are invited to answer. And, if your answer is "the ends justify the means", I don't ever want to hear lecturing on that front ever again, either.
Jul 4, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I've gone through both jingoistic and intensely critical phases about U.S. history. They're right in about a 25%/75% balance, respectively.

Our glorious moments are among the greatest in the history of all of humanity. Our worst moments? They're atrocious. I have a pinned tweet about this country being, for better or worse, an empire. We are. I view that as a neutral term. It depends what you do with that power and influence.

On a massive historical balance, taking into account great deeds and massive evils, it nets out to the
Jul 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"Legal under any" is one of those things that makes me, as someone who is circumstantially pro-choice (don't like it one bit, but within reasonable confines I don't see it as a state issue), uneasy.

It's a pure reaction to political excess.

"This is how you got Trump!" but with abortion. Americans just kind of naturally rebel. It's in our nature. The push on abortion laws in GOP legislatures is too extreme right now and it's leading to what is honestly, speaking candidly, a position I find just about as nuts.
Jun 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Bitcoin's various rationales are at cross-purposes and its advocates never want to admit that or, alternatively, claim that others just simply don't understand it.

If they can ever explain how currencies are both supposed to go up exponentially and be useful currencies, I'd love to hear it.

"This goes up faster than even speculative stocks so, but it also an effective and useful alternative currency."

These are not compatible statements.
Jun 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is an act of aggression against Midwestern fashion. Kevin seeks to eliminate the cultural distinctiveness of the frumpy Midwesterner.
Sep 30, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I read compelling arguments both ways on the constitutionality of the debt ceiling under the 14th Amendment provision on the debt of the United States. I'm open to the idea that Congress can't constitutionally vote for taxes and spending that cause deficits and then not honor the resulting debt. As to whether the courts would agree, I have no idea. The debt ceiling does, on paper, address the "authorized by law" clause related to public debt, but it creates an inconsistency when borrowing is required to finance debt service.