System 7 Ready!

Yes, the VP position can remain vacant indefinitely, or at least until the end of a term when another VP can be elected through the normal process. The only thing that is lost is the tiebreaking vote. Well, and the fact that if the President has a colonoscopy and is put under sedation nobody is available to be acting President. I don’t think the House Speaker is able to take that job for just a few hours like the Vice President can.

Kamala Harris was actually Acting President for 85 minutes in 2021, and probably at least once after that.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/politics/kamala-harris-presidential-power/index.html

(nope, she did it just that once. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_President_of_the_United_States )

It has never happened before, so we don’t really know. What I think would happen is that Vance would just get immediately sworn in as the President on Jan 20 if God exercises His Ultimate Veto on Trump’s second term.

But the Presidential Succession Act only covers vacancies for the Presidency. Once the office of the President is filled again, nothing else happens. It’s not like everyone else “moves up” a slot. Mike Johnson would probably see the VP position as a demotion honestly.

The Office of the VP would remain vacant until President Vance nominates a candidate, and then it must be approved by both houses of Congress in order for the position to be filled.

How is Mint internationally?

All my shit is in the Google ecosystem. I am fairly confident that Gmail is not going away anytime soon. However, I am more afraid that some obscure ToS violation will forcibly disconnect me from their ecosystem, and I will have to scramble to make sure all my contacts have my alternate info. I am doubly screwed, as a Google Fi customer. If we all get suddenly degoogled, I lose a phone number that I have had for over 20 years.

As good a deal that Fi is for me (I normally don’t use bandwidth unless I travel internationally), I may switch soon just to reduce my exposure to Google.

There is another point, at least for Americans. While I know a few people who have emigrated to the US and still maintain ties with their original homeland, I know others who have intentionally given up their privileges back home. While they may still be citizens of their home country, they owe them no obligations.

The US is different, they tax your income no matter where in the world you make it. if you are living in a country with a tax treaty in the US, you can fully deduct all foreign tax payments so you will likely end up owing nothing to the US. But you still have to file. And in return for that you retain the right to vote from the state you last resided in. Furthermore, it is quite hard to give up your US citizenship. It can be very costly, because we will make you pay taxes on assets as if you sold them before they let you leave, including any retirement funds.

Americans living abroad are much more likely to still consider themselves Americans first, because we remind them about it every April 15th.

Right, I think without the Open Internet, we would still be getting fast broadband, but likely tied to your Cable or Telco provider’s network, and things that are currently websites would have to arrange for a presence on each network they want to do business on. And they would probably meter access, just like they do with your electric bill, or your cable company does with a basic tier but then paid access to anything important.

I think we need to differentiate a bit between “no Internet” and “no open Internet”. I have just enough grey hair and health problems to remember what life was like before the Internet really took off: you dialed into your ISP, like Compuserve or AOL, over a land line, and were charged per minute. And those services couldn’t really talk to each other. But back then, computers also ran at 10 MHz and couldn’t fit in your pocket.

So there was even connectivity back then, it was just very limited and each ISP had to provide it’s own information, because they didn’t really talk to each other. The same technological advancements would have happened over the last 50 years. Computers and networking would have gotten faster, cell networks would evolve to handle data and be more efficient, and broadband access to everyone’s home and office would have happened. But if the Internet didn’t happen in the open way it did, with an emphasis on open standards, its entirely possible each major media company would have had its own network to subscribe to, and it would be a lot more expensive.

But would that really be bad? Would social media really have eaten our brains if we paid for it per minute?

Two reasons:

First, in many states the electors are bound by law to support the candidate that wins the popular vote in their state. The penalties may vary, but the intent is clear: to make sure people realize it is against the law in that state.

But the second reason is that each campaign actually picks their own electors for each state ahead of time. So it’s not like the state has one set that will vote either way, and who can be persuaded. All of the states that votes for Harris are sending electors their campaign hand-picked, and likewise for Trump. So each side is sending their own very partisan people, whose political success is tied to their party. Violating that will ruin their political career in that party.

You only really need an account to get DLC, but I suppose it’s necessary these days. If you only have one switch for the family than you can make that account yourself. The kids would not have to have their own online accounts until they want to pay for their own content. (As I recall, Nintendo requires additional verification steps for accounts for under 13s, anyway. I think they require a $1 fee just to “prove” an adult approves the account.).

And one thing I forgot is that if there are DLC/digital copies active on a primary switch, all accounts can use it. So you can install those and anyone can play. Then, if they ever get their own devices and let you log in and download all that content, they will be able to use it, subject to phone-home provisions. Unless they buy their own copies on their own accounts – then they will be able to use the DLC without phoning home.

We got a switch when it first came out, that was the only switch we had as a family for a while. It was shared just like any other console. Games like Mario Kart are just as playable on one switch as they are on prior platforms, if you buy more controllers.

Eventually, as the kids got older, we got them switch lites so they could play games on their own. Physical cartridges are definitely sharable, the only catch is that (of course) you can only play one copy at a time and some games have an online/group play component that you can’t experience with one cartridge. So, for instance, Animal Crossing has one island per switch, so if you have two switches in the household you could swap the cart back and forth and both switches can play the game by swapping the cartridge, but characters from one can’t visit the other unless both games are running at the same time. We have bought an embarrassing number of Animal Crossing carts.

Digital copies are tied to a Nintendo account. You can only have one “primary” switch attached to the account. That Switch will be able to run the games on the account without phoning home first. If that account is logged into other switches, they do get access to the games, but only if the non-primary switch has internet access to validate that the game is not being played by any other switch on the account. (I ran into this issue whe I wanted to play the BOTW DLC on a second switch on airplanes; I ultimately had to create a second account to buy it a second time on that switch to prevent it from phoning home).

Digital copies also download the entire game into storage, while physical copies have the game in cartridge ROM and much less is stored locally. Getting a Digital copy of a large game might fill up most of your storage. This is why I still prefer cartridges, especially now that my kids are older and don’t lose them anymore.

How is it affordable? It’s not, we eat a lot of ramen.

Hope this helps!

I call that “God’s ultimate veto”

That assumes there are no shenanigans with those elections. I believe we will have them (edited to clarify: I believe we will have elections as well as election shenanigans.) We’ll just have to see how fair they are.

We will know that is happening if there is ever a real movement to abolish the UN Security Council, or at least the permanent seats that have veto power. Until then, the US will always have that power.

Maybe I can pump another 10x out of my Crypto portfolio and retire early.

Sorry to break it to you, but you can’t.

There are a few remaining checks and balances on other issues, and the Democratic Party might be able to use its minority in Congress to strategically delay certain things. But foreign policy is entirely in the President and Congress’s domain. And while Republicans in Congress sometimes have internal bickering that derails their agenda, I expect Trump and Congress to march lock-step on this one. (Their marching might even be a bit like a goose step, come to think of it.)

They don’t need to arrest him, they just need to say “no” if he asks them to do something blatantly unconstitutional.

So the frightening thing us that everything you have written is possible, if Republicans as a whole prioritize it. Trump can’t do it all himself, but Trump + Congress + a compliant Supreme Court definitely can. There are some remaining checks on the whole process, but they are weak and amount to delay tactics.

The biggest check right now is the Military itself. The Military swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the President. That oath will be tested. The Military brass understands their role in all of this. They understand their use on US soil is extremely limited. A lot of the super-fascist stuff will involve them, and they don’t want to be involved. If Trump fires a bunch of Generals right away, that’s a really bad sign, because it means he is going through the various chains of command and trashing it all until he finds a leader willing to violate that oath for him.

The American Constitution says that Presidents can’t accept gifts from any foreign source, and that has been interpreted in the past as a general prohibition on Presidents operating in any capacity in any private enterprise. Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust.

Not only was Donald Trump allowed to circumvent this during his first term, retaining ownership of his businesses and nominally putting his kids in charge while they pursued foreign deals, but today Trump is waist deep in Crypto, and owns a majority share of a publicly traded company whose ticker is his initials. Foreigners can (and likely do) shovel money into both. Do you think anyone will ask him to divest, like the Constitution requires him to?

The Constitution is useless unless it is enforced. It relies on checks and balances between competing branches, and right now they are broken. The only checks on Presidential power are the military (whose oath is to yhe Constitution, not to any one President) and the individual states (who retain all powers not explicitly given to the Federal government).

The Constitutional text is very broad:

The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

So it looks rather absolute, for Fedral crimes. However, the real situation is complicated. This is just one clause in the Constitution, while the President is supposed to be bound by all of it. So, presumably, he can’t exercise his pardon power in a way that violates something else in the Constitution. If you go deeper into the Federalist papers, it’s quite clear that the Founders held that no man should be his own judge, and a self-pardon effectively does just that.

Here is a good write-up, although I do note it was written before the Supreme Court put their thumb on the scale and said he could do whatever the hell he wanted, as long as he doesn’t get impeached for it:

https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-presidential-pardon-power-explained/

I expect him to do it anyway. It will be challenged, but courts will reject it due to “lack of standing” and sidestep the messy business of having to tell the King he went too far.