Stay Spicy, kids ♾️

Yeah. "No moral compass" fits the rest of the evidence, like everywhere.
He's the guy that doesn't pay contractors and uses the courts to exhaust them of resources
He's the guy that will lie about anything if it gets him some advantage
His compass points wherever he wants something badly enough

Now I'm curious to know what sort of surety we have for this promise- so instead they'll raise rents but avoid being seen algorithmically doing it?
I suspect the devil will be squarely in the details

It's as if the way to get people to support fascism is to make them feel poor and blame the immigrants

A thought on the nature of resistance

Signing petitions and holding signs are nice and all, but we're to the point that non-compliance or malicious compliance are becoming necessary.
We're past the point where appealing to failing institutions to do their job is in order; it's time to build anew

TBH I think the only way we will ever see this court rule against gerrymandering is if looking the other way no longer gives the GOP an advantage.
If blue states play the same game the red states have been playing for years, somebody's going to have to blink

pinky and the brain are dancing together and pinky has a cowboy hat on Alt: pinky and the brain are dancing together and pinky has a cowboy hat on

These two were a classic

Yeah, if "natural immunity" means you get sick with the live virus and if you survive your immune system will recognize that particular strain in the future

Also, they were billionaires when we used to tax them at 70+% right here in the USA.

If you're familiar with the Master/Slave dialectic, it's the so-called master class that's fundamentally insecure; dependent on the other not just for their identity, but also for their skill and labor.

TBH, I think the answer to the question- (why are they making them powerless?) is plain insecurity.
Sure, the power might be a means to something else, but fundamentally it's the keystone- wealth only gets you security to the extent that it buys you power. Or maybe I've been reading too much Hegel

I think it's more than greed, to be honest. Taking away the plebes' ability to hold them accountable (or to bring facts to public attention) is more about making the public generally powerless, I think.
That, or it's going to be replaced with a private/for-profit substitute poor people can't use

At best, it's a thought-terminating cliche to dress up dishonest reasoning as somehow having legitimacy

Understanding and accommodation isn't just a favor you do for the autistic people in your life; it's a way to avoid the experiences that arise when neurotypical folks get the feeling that autistic folk are "off"- that response is unpleasant for everyone involved in ways that can't be understated

On remote gravel, I am the latter. On road and with cell service, I carry a tube and a pump and some plugs

Well that would explain the years of "we need money to fight back" but no fighting back whatsoever unless it's to punch left

🤣🫀Oh I'm old enough to have felt that

LOL he's not 6'3" and he isn't a biscuit under 285

Yeah you know they're going to try to define 'fitness' to mean anything but physical fitness or health- they'll turn it into a measure of whether the racists like him or not

Imagine a tax policy where high poverty rates drove high taxes on the wealthiest

I mean really, is there poverty?
Not sorry, you lot that have extracted the most from a poverty-creating economy get tax increases, big ones, until you spend your lobbying money on poverty eradication and it works

Today-me has opinions about younger-me's judgment

I don't think we talk about 'enforcement discretion' enough when it comes to the kinds of vague/expansive laws our authoritarian folks seem to like. They know these laws won't be applied to them, only to folks in today's targeted out-group.
The 'order' in law and order means hierarchy

It's the rise of unironic political correctness

Whatever he's going through, I hope it's uncomfortable

I've found that if I'm using a free plan (which limits the number of endpoints) over a vpn no small number of sites will subject me to a captcha or the like. I take this to mean the bad actors are using the free plans and those endpoints get the third degree

I'm not a fan of gerrymandering but at this point, aggressive gerrymanders from blue states might force the court to realize that their 'it's okay if it's political' stance only benefits the right if the left doesn't do it right back

I like this one better

Pete is right, focusing on what voters want is a winning strategy.
But, you know what isn't?
Picking fights with people you need in your coalition to win.
Sure, that goes both ways but if you think you can win this, think again- infighting amongst ourselves is only a lose-lose proposition

Agree, using it to shame people isn't constructive- doing that just makes you into an unhelpful tormentor.
But, we do have to be able to say that education is important for citizenship- and unfortunately, education has been politicized when it should never have been.

Johnson, leader of co-equal branch of government, doesn't have the body language of a leader of anything co-equal

Shameful how he bows and scrapes

Also, means-testing to decide who should get free lunches is expensive and invariably turns into an exercise in shaming recipients. Better to just feed everyone and not turn doing that into an expense that just makes everything worse