Devin Nunes Leaves the House

Five facts you might want to keep in mind about Devin Nunes' departure from the House of Representatives (to become the CEO of a company that may never really be a thing.)

1) The map of the 22d Congressional district of California, which Nunes represents, is about to be redrawn. It will become less deeply red.

2) Since Nunes is leaving at the end of this year, a special election will be held, before that redraw can be completed. This means that someone will represent that 22d for the final year of its existence in its current form, just long enough to be the incumbent for an effort at re-election within the new district in November.

3) It isn't obvious whether that incumbency in such a circumstance will create much advantage. So, between the redrawing and the special election, it looks as if the new 22d is primed to be a Dem pick-up in November.

4) Nunes has distinguished himself in office chiefly as the filer of meritless defamation lawsuits, one of them against a twitter account purporting to be his Cow. @DevinCow spiked in popularity. Aside from that, he is central casting's idea of a Trump Republican.

5) What is he leaving to do again? To become the CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). The plan in Trump world is for newly-formed TMTG to start trading on Nasdaq quite soon. Hmmm. Isn't there a lot of paperwork involved in going public and getting listed? How are they planning on pulling this off quickly?

Good question.

The plan is to merge with a shell company named Digital World Acquisition Company and inherit DWAC's listing. THAT proposed transaction, though, is under investigation.

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog