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.

As a first time offender, he may not be getting a jail sentence regardless. Even if he did, though, he could just file an appeal and in the time it would take to hear it, he would be President and whatever sentence would be immediately put on hold l.

You work for the government, not for whatever yoyo happens to be President at any given time. You wouldn’t necessarily leave a private sector job if the CEO changed.

OTOH, this administration has been making a point of wanting to make government so small they can drown it in the bathtub. Unless you work in one of the very few Project 2025 priorities, they will probably eliminate your job eventually. So keep a keen eye out for alternatives.

Last time, I don’t think Trump was expecting to win. He ended up needing to scrape together a cabinet, and a bunch of those officials were old-school Republicans who chafed at all the crazy stuff he wanted to do.

This time, the Heritage Foundation is preparing him, and the new Senate will rubber-stamp all his appointments. He will pick people who intend to “dismantle the administrative state”. Grover Norquist famously wanted to make Government so small he could drown it in fhe bathtub. He might get his wish.

Packing the court requires legislation, in which he needs Congress to send him a bill, and between the Republican House and the Filibuster in the Senate that was never happening.

It looks like turnout is way down compared to last election. Trump is pulling about the same amount he did last time ( maybe a few million down, but there are still results to get). Harris is currently down 15M from where Biden was.

Trump’s support is no larger than it was last time. Harris’ supporters just didn’t show up

It’s quite apparent that the plan in 2020 was to organize these fake electors, who did everything the process called for except actually be certified by the states, and send their phony credentials into Congress so Pence could recognize them. When Pence didn’t go along, their plan pivoted to creating enough chaos at the Capitol to stop the certification altogether. Both plans failed because Pence wouldn’t go along.

This time, they can’t plan on anyone in the Executive Branch to go along. So their plan must be either to make the House dysfunctional so it cannot act to certify, or pressure states to ignore their laws and certify for Trump.

I am constantly amazed how far Trumpiats will go to maintain power – and how their voters reward them for it.

Hmm, we learned in 2022 that the House can’t do anything until a Speaker is installed. And the new Congress is seated a few days before the EC votes are counted. What if Kamala wins the election, but the House declines to elect a Speaker? Can they even convene to count the votes? I hope so, since the VP president over the counting of votes, not the Speaker.

Still, a Kamala win will be a lot more bullet-proof it it comes with a Democratic House and Senate, too. Then there is far less that Mike can do to fuck it up.

Have you been there? It’s huge. A book lover could spend hours there.

Maybe, but it’s still the case that slowing down will impart less energy to the collision. Let up on the brake before impact if you want, but you should have been braking once you first saw the deer in the road.

Sometimes those fuckers just jump out at you at the last minute. They’re not smart. But if you click the link, this one was right in the middle of the road, with that “Deer in the headlights” look. There was plenty of time to slow down before impact.

Using your credentials is not hacking, but once he was canned he no longer had authorization to access those systems. Legally, there is probably no distinction between gaining access by actual hacking vs. using credentials that are no longer authorized.

So yes, their IT processes are deficient, but that doesn’t let the guy off the hook or mitigate his punishment.

Drivers in rural areas are taught to hit the brakes and maintain their lane.

Which the Tesla didn’t do. It plowed full speed into the deer, which arguably made the collision much much worse than it could have been. I doubt the thing was programmed to maintain speed into a deer. The more likely alternative is that the FSD couldn’t tell there was a deer there in the first place.

If I were hiring for a forklift operator, and someone was a good candidate who came with experience but their prior employer didn’t certify him properly, I would pay for the certification. $300 seems like noise compared with the general cost of onboarding a new employee. But it’s been a while since I worked in Manufacturing/Operations, and when I did the managers at that place were competent, so maybe my standards are too high.

In that case, OP should just be honest about the status of his certification. If other employers hire from WalMart often, they know their practices. The new employer may even want to pay for the classes, if they know the candidate has done the job before and is likely to pass. But I don’t know how much it costs and whether a company would normally pay for that.

Yes. In fact, in the US, it can be a crime for a doctor to aid someone in distress, if that person is a pregnant woman and helping them might harm the baby they are carrying.

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Or is it simply cheaper to manufacture while being sold for the same price?

Yes, it’s mainly that. Most vendors don’t make their own power adaptors anyway, since there are strict requirements for power adaptors that are plugged into AC wall sockets in each country. The stuff inside the large brick is likely sourced from somewhere else, who has all those certifications worldwide. Note that it also uses standard AC power cable plugs. That large brick can be shipped worldwide by simply changing the AC cable it ships with.

The small GaN Brick is also outsourced, but since it is smaller it is probably more expensive to build. However, the AC plug is integrated into it, which means the seller has to stock physically separate units for each plug type if they want to ship worldwide.

As far as the price is concerned, this one shop is selling them all at around the same price, but I bet the MSRP on the Lenovo one is much higher, because of the brand. The parts inside the Lenovo one are probably cheaper.

I am not allowed to carry these certifications outside Wal-Mart to use.

Says who? Will Walmart use a memory gun to erase your knowledge about which lever does what? If you find another job that uses those skills, they will do whatever they need to paperwork-wise to make you eligible.

Put it all down. Don’t use the word “certification” if it makes you feel better, but list all those things somewhere. Some people put a section with “relevant skills” at the end, you can list all the machinery you know how to use.

The article noted that the agents can’t use their personal devices while on duty but of course they can while they are off duty. It mentioned that one of the guards took a jog while off duty, but that jog was from the hotel the President was staying at.