ForestBoard

Just as a general comment regarding this situation, it would be nice if regional admin was more flexible in terms of inter-regional communication settings. Something like a simple toggle switch that could be flipped to open/close RMB posting between specific regions, rather than blanket permissions across all embassy regions, would go a long way, in my opinion.

Having been in another region which received a fair amount of spam from one of the GCRs via embassy posting, I consider it a major impediment to on-site relations with those regions. But the only arrow in your quiver is to sever communications between all of your embassies. Which is not ideal, as different regions can have very different cultures, calling for very different moderation settings.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

With all due acknowledgment of the depth of your annoyance, get some perspective. We're roughly a decade from a major climate tipping point, and the social media postings of a retired reality show host should not constitute news. Trump's most dangerous effect is this lowering of the bar, which means that good people end up thinking the Democrats winning is important. As Biden's private jet leaves another climate conference that did nothing, the Democrats environmental policy has all the sincerity of a pride flag on a corporate website in June. They represent the interests of people who probably still won't do anything when their Californian micro-vineyards are literally on fire. This party political shenanigans is fun and all, but aren't there other things we should be doing?

If Trump were nothing but a retired reality show host, I would agree with you. Would that we could relegate him in history to that pathetic position.

Sadly, he is a former President of the United States, who managed to do what even the Confederacy in the Civil War did not - he managed to get an armed attack to take place inside the United States capital building. He is not just a talking head - he is an extraordinarily influential individual of extreme maliciousness and evil, with literally millions of supporters who fanatically worship him like a cult leader, who have a repeated and demonstrated willingness to use brutal violence to forward his aims. He has just called for the elimination and casting aside of the only safeguard that kept him from succeeding before, and he has armed and angry followers who will take that as marching orders. As much as it makes me sick, I literally watched the January 6th attack on our capital from my living room window. I saw the armored police convoys streaming into the city across the Potomac, had my living area and workplace infested with his insurrectionist supporters, and have armed guards on my streets because of the violence he deliberately brought.

One may not love the Democrats, but it absolutely is critical that they win. They MUST win. The Republican party at this point is not simply the greater of two evils - it is a death machine, and if they are fully in power, they aren't just going to ignore the climate crisis - they are going to do everything they can to accelerate it, because they can turn a profit. Does Biden fly in a private jet? Yes, he's President of the United States. Nearly every head of state does. He is somebody who is famous for having spent the decades of his long political career commuting via mass transit, even when entitled to much more. Does his party represent what the Earth needs? No, but with them in the driver's seat there is time and ability to focus on getting there. With the other side driving, there is not even room to try and save the planet, because the people on the planet will be too busy trying to save themselves from what is raining on them from above.

Difinbelk wrote:

Could you link the original post? This feels like a really, really good thing to have a source on so that I can’t be “is your source ‘trust me bro’?”’d with it.

WashPo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/04/trump-constitution-republicans/

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/politics/trump-constitution-truth-social/index.html

NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/us/politics/trump-constitution-republicans.html

Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/05/trump-terminate-constitution-00072230

(The original post was on his so-called Truth Social account - a site to which I will not drive traffic for love or money.)

Since we are on the topic of news sources i thought i would expose my biases.

Main sources:
Financial times
Reuters
BBC
ground news
The national
Tldr news yt (plus sister channels)
A different bias yt
Caspianreport yt
China uncensored yt
America uncovered yt
Loawhy86 yt
Serpentza yt

Perspective sources:
Many yt channels do not represent my personal beliefs but i do listen to what the other side says.

https://youtube.com/@Ruiseal

Siornor wrote:

Here's my main sources:

The Forest RMB
Word of Mouth

Hermit much?

Quote .nuke. if you are a nuclear power i just wanna know who are nuclear powers

I got my custom prefix ❤️‍🔥🤸

Fock wrote:

Why the flying pigs would somebody destroy an embassy with one of the Pacifics? What kind of nonsense is this?

Because they keep spamming the RMB. That's why.

Canaltia wrote:

... the electoral college and that stuff can lead to someone winning without a majority of the citizen's vote. That's a crime to the ideals of democracy, but I'm afraid that's not on the books.

The US has never been a true democracy... so, while I understand the frustration at times, it is unfair to compare the Electoral College to a democratic system.

I'm actually highly in favor of the Electoral College as it helps prevent tyranny of the majority as this is an inherent weakness of a "majority rules" democracy system. I have always thought the Founding Fathers of the US put a lot of thought into this given most of the original 13 states were formed by those fleeing oppression.

It's December so it's time to make a new term government for the coming year. I decided not to track the elections in separate dispatch this time and jump directly to the results: the new key figures of the government of The Rriknor of Einswenn, the new parliament division, and ultimately the new main factbook, out from the scratch for further development and new sections to add hopefully. I still plan on adding more maps, reshaping the diplomacy factbook, adding more natural sites and wonders, and doing some more minor shenanigans with my lore. Hopefully next year will be more productive in that regard.

So, here we go:

Heyo!

by The Rriknor of Einswenn

Main Government Foreign OfficeEnvironment Army EFES Einsmūsikfest 24

⟳ Refresh

Main Government Foreign Office Environment Army EFES

U N I O NO FF O R E S T

Read factbook

For your brief entertainment.

Forest Virginia wrote:

The US has never been a true democracy... so, while I understand the frustration at times, it is unfair to compare the Electoral College to a democratic system.

I'm actually highly in favor of the Electoral College as it helps prevent tyranny of the majority as this is an inherent weakness of a "majority rules" democracy system. I have always thought the Founding Fathers of the US put a lot of thought into this given most of the original 13 states were formed by those fleeing oppression.

I've never really gotten the whole "America isn't a democracy because Electoral College" takes, especially given how many parliamentary democracies that elect leaders entirely without input from the people exist, oftentimes with very interesting results (see the UK's recent shenanigans for an example). The electoral college is just a special congress elected for the sole purpose of picking a president, rather than one who picks a leader in addition to regular governing. Additionally, the president can't do much beyond what congress explicitly approves, and recent supreme court decisions have made the definition of "explicitly approve" a bit narrower. Congress is entirely chosen by the people and is the most powerful branch of the government.

Heidgaudr wrote:

The EC prevents tyranny by majority by creating a tyranny by minority.

The Founding Fathers aren't above reproach; while they were generally ahead of the curve on a lot of things, many of their ideas don't hold up 250 years later, largely because society and technology have evolved far past anything they could have conceived of. So instead of saying "Well, the Founding Fathers said so, so it must be good and true," we should instead be investigating and evaluating everything they did and deciding whether it's time to move on.

I'm going to push back against us, this is a solution in search of a problem. Change for the sake of change is not good. You need to start with a specific problem and then work backward to find a solution for it. If the end result is changing the constitution then, after you make an effort to prevent unintended negative consequences, go for it. The laws the founding fathers made have stayed the way they are for a reason: they are absolutely critical to the functioning of the government and the freedom of society. Tampering with them isn't something that should be done lightly, and definitely shouldn't be done "because they're old".

Jutsa wrote:

Simply put, there is no serious chance of any constitutional change like the EC

Fun fact, the electoral college is flexible enough that it can trivially emulate any other method of choosing the president, if enough states agree, and in fact, there is an attempt at ensuring a national popular vote for the president which intends to do just that. Look up the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for details.

In other news, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis was just argued before the supreme court. The issue at hand is "Whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment." For a bit of background, a graphic designer in Colorado wanted to expand her business to include designing wedding sites. Of course, that website would count as speech, so the graphic designer, Lorie Smith, wishes to disclude gay weddings because supporting gay marriage is against her religious beliefs. Unlike the national anti-discrimination laws, Colorado's ADA is strong enough to compel Smith to make the website anyway (the federal ones aren't strong to compel speech). Justice Sotomayer pointed out that a ruling for Smith would be the first time the supreme court had ruled that "commercial businesses could refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation," but Chief Justice Roberts pointed out that the court had never allowed the government to compel speech that was contrary to the speaker's belief. Smith appears likely to win, although a lot can happen between now and the ruling becomes official.

Regardless of what happens, the ruling probably won't matter much, especially outside of Colorado. Additionally, a similar case appeared once before when a Colorado baker refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. However, that case wound up with the court ruling in favor of the baker while punting the main question into the future, because the prosecution decided attacking the baker's religion directly during trial was a good idea.

further reading: https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/12/conservative-justices-seem-poised-to-side-with-web-designer-who-opposes-same-sex-marriage/

Nazi Flower Power wrote:

I think the court made the wrong call on that case with the wedding cake, and it's just an example of how Christians in positions of authority in the US have been abusing their power.

No, the court really didn't. The case was thrown out because of prosecutorial misconduct after the Colorado Civil Rights organization decided to compare the baker's religious beliefs to those supporting slavery or the holocaust. That is, to quote Justice Kennedy, "inappropriate for a Commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law," and an unconstitutional violation of the baker's right to free exercise of religion.

If it makes you feel any better, the baker's stuck in court again after doing something very similar to what got him in trouble the first time, and looking at the facts of the case I don't think the supreme court's gonna save him this time.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

That Colarado case was discussed by the UK supreme court in a similar cake-based controversy in Northern Ireland where a baker had declined to make a cake with the words "support gay marriage" on it. It wasn't a request for a wedding cake because at that time same sex marriage wasn't possible in Northern Ireland. The UK court ruled that this wasn't discrimination because the baker would have made a cake with different words on it for the gay customer, and would not have made a cake with those words if asked to do so by a straight customer. Any discrimination was against the words and not the customer, with words having no legal protection.

That seems pretty straightforward. The Colarado case is more complicated because the request for a wedding cake was refused without a design being considered - it was simply the case that the baker would make a wedding cake for a straight couple but not for a gay couple. I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like it would be a violation of European human rights law which makes it clear that a service can't be withheld on the basis that the customer has a protected characteristic. It sounds as if dealing with the same issue using the First Amendment and Colarado laws on freedom of religion is quite a bit more complicated.

To put it simply, some variation of that interpretation of the law is probably what will win. The issue here isn't how inherently complicated things are, but rather that it's a novel area of constitutional law. The issue is a pretty trivial violation of Colorado law, but the main thing is whether or not that law is constitutional. As for freedom of religion, that really shouldn't have been an issue at all, see above for details.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

On your point about needing a good reason to go tampering with the laws left by the founding fathers, isn't it the case that tampering is happening all the time? Aside from the fact that the constitution has 26 amendments, the authors of the First Amendment would have had no idea what a website is and in all probability never considered the notion of same sex marriage. It's not as if cases are actually settled by deciding how they would have viewed a roughly analogous situation involving a pamphlet, newspaper or something they would have understood. I was genuinely surprised when I learned that the First Amendment is a single sentence and that the rest of it is precedent and case law that's built up over time. Surely the role of the original writers is pretty minimal by now. US courts might not be handling laws that are rewritten from scratch every few decades like their European counterparts, but I suspect the key provisions are often equally recent.

Well, laws being ambiguous or in conflict with each other is a good reason to modify them. The first amendment doesn't need to worry about websites or pamphlets or any of that because of how it's written. By only saying that some abstract concept ("speech") can't be abridged they can just let the courts sort out what it actually means. The legislature can just let the other two branches sort out what it actually means, and manually tweak things if the wrong conclusion is jumped to. The founders don't have to worry about websites, because the law is written generally enough to apply to them anyway, and the courts are smart enough to figure that out. Also, the burden on the courts in terms of revisiting precedent is rarely an issue. Large shifts in precedent, either in the form of supreme court rulings or a legislature changing the rules happen all the time.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

Similarly I'm a little confused by the Second Amendment, because on the whole people who cite it when buying weapons don't go on to form a well regulated militia, and the modern US in not organised in such a way that a militia is necessary to its security. The Amendment seems so clearly a product of its now irrelevant historical context.

If it makes more sense, "well-regulated" should be read something like "well-prepared" or "well-organized", and "militia" should be read as "All adult white male US citizens" (stricken out sections have been repealed by the 14th amendment). Additionally, over the past couple of decades, both the public and the courts have shifted their understanding of the amendment as preserving the individual right to bear arms. That, along with a few other factors has created a flat-out stupid situation here in the US. Existing gun control is largely ineffective; most proposed gun control measures focus on the wrong things, are likely unconstitutional, unpopular enough to be hard to pass, and likely to be ineffective should they ever pass; and the changes needed to avoid the issue entirely aren't fairing much better.