EW Wilder

Musk's desire to have "influence" over his "robot army" marks his leap from mere Bond villain right into Emperor Palpatine territory.

The irony of SCOTUS anointing an imperial president in Trump v. USA is that the quickest, easiest way to get them to reverse course is electing a leftist president willing to abuse executive orders in the same way Trump has.

Suddenly a unitary executive won't seem so good an idea.

I guess I don't understand what the disaffected MAGA people thought they were getting with Donald Trump. It was never a movement, always just a conflagration puffing up one man's ego.

There's a difference between a coherent political philosophy and a set of opinions with which you happen to agree.

Funny how all those who claim to worry about the fate of Western civilization seem to be just fine with the direct assault on academic freedom, which is, by all accounts, at the very heart of Western civilization.

You see gerrymandering, but I see a bunch of politicians muttering to each other in private "This job would be great if it weren't for all the voters."

I think we'll have the GOP plan to replace the ACA with something better right about when we all get cold fusion reactors in our back yards.

So Musk is up for a trillion dollar pay package based on the idea that his car company, which sells an outdated and shoddily built product to a stagnant market, will miraculously pivot to selling an "army" (his words) of humanoid robots.

What could possibly go wrong?

Both kinds of music!

The death of Dick Cheney serves as a reminder of the fact that he opened the door to the whole "unitary executive" rot that Trump is now using to derail democracy.

So I guess "viewpoint diversity" includes both Catholic and Protestant Christian nationalism, then?

Overheard on the couch:

His side: "Remember when we were all satisfied with just Coca-Cola and jellied ham?"

Her side: "No."

His side: "I blame feminism."

So I guess all it takes now to be "radicalleft" is wanting to maintain a health insurance program designed by a right wing think tank and first implemented by a Republican governor?

Just remember: the lack of SNAP benefits due to a government shutdown is not an emergency, but declining crime rates is.

The skunk starts, halts, now
north, south, mounts the curb and jumps:
full autumn's first dawn.

He thinks he's Gatsby, but he's really a two bit Tom Buchanan. Bit really, Tom Buchanan wouldn't even give this nouveau riche the time of day--and Tom was the worst person in the book!

And, I might add, "promote the general Welfare" (sic) is right there in the preamble to the Constitution.

We could argue about whether or not that includes feeding people, but it's hard to see how starving people promotes said welfare, generally.

Trump and his acolytes rely on ad hominem attacks because they know they can't win on the issues.

A basic education in formal argumentation has become a radical act.

Unpopular opinion: the fact that we actually believe that the internet is some accurate reflection of human understanding is a large part of why we've become so fucking stupid.

The "academic" work AI produces reminds me of that kid who BSed his way through high school English by using a vague assortment of big words to mask the fact that he never read the assigned work--and then who gets mad at his college comp teacher for calling him on it.

😂

Overheard in the classroom:

Student: "So are you going to show us how to do it?"

Teacher: "The Time Warp? No."

Student: "But you know how to do it, right?"

Teacher: "I'm Gen X. We may deny it, but all of us know how to do The Time Warp."

Hey, Bari Weiss:

Pushing out real journalists isn't going to make anyone come back to the CBS Evening News.

Sincerely,

Reasonable Humans

Do not tell me that everything on social media is inaccurate!

I guess we all have to applaud Trump for going around the world, solving problems he himself caused.

Great leadership, that.

Don't tell 'em "ting tang walla walla bing bang" is just '50s slang for "hot wet butts."

I think Hawthorne had a few things to say about this.

If I did aquaculture shrimp, I'd call my operation The Prawnderosa.

Kind of makes you wonder if he shorted stock in the company that makes Tylenol--but then, that assumes Trump is a rational man.

He's right, and this is a massive flaw in our system: if we have a dysfunctional or cowed Congress, Trump v. USA has guaranteed monarchy unless our electeds do their jobs.

There's no indication the far right SCOTUS majority will do anything but prop up Emperor Orange.

We don't so much have a failed democracy in the US as a nation that has failed at doing democracy. We haven't taught our citizens to function in one; we haven't supported lives with the time and energy it takes to self-govern.

This is by design. The oligarchs fear our collective power most of all.