Knights fighting snails goes back even further.

“Don’t worry about blank. Let me worry about blank!”

Would it even get that far? Gathering that many people in one spot, at the same time, with a coherent plan would take… a lot of communication. And we know for a fact that the spooks are listening in.

But, hell, @veniasilente@lemm.ee, start organizing people. I’m interested in seeing how far it gets.

I love how people seem to think that “the economy” or “politics” is the same type of thing as sports— a recreational activity with no actual bearing on anything that other people pay attention to as a diversion. It explains so much about how we ended up here.

What’s insane is expecting every individual to be person to know enough about financial asset classes to know how to balance risks in their portfolio, when we used to have pension plans with subject-matter experts whose job it was to do that. Getting rid of them was like throwing everybody overboard from the cruise ship (pension), but giving them a life jacket (401k).

I mean, it makes sense when you know that the decision was made by the sharks.

Where is the left complaining about shrinking 401k accounts? Do you mean Democrats? They’re a center-right party.

No, that’s exactly what I don’t want in a President. Sitting there, doing their job and not trying to get onto the TV news every day is perfect for, say, an EPA grant administrator. But the drafters of the Constitution fucked up by making the President both the head of government, and the head of state. The former should be an administrator, and the latter needs to be a leader. It’s not the framers’ fault, the world just didn’t have a lot of experience with huge democracies back then. The trouble is that “huge” is too much for the human mind, and abstract thinking doesn’t come naturally to us. A worrying proportion of the population can’t do it at all. Instead, we conceptualize our nation through a parasocial relationship with the leader. In that role, the President should be on TV, and in the news every day, influencing the citizens.

The UK has its own problems, but at least their system splits the job. They have a head of state, King Charles, whom everybody can relate to as the embodiment of the nation, more or less aside from political disagreements. (This role was far more effective when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, to be sure.) They also have a head of government, the Prime Minister, who attends to making things run. Each can focus on their particular role. But we don’t have that luxury in the US, and Obama needed to continue the energy of the campaign even after taking office.

Maybe. There’s clearly hidden power behind the throne. The orange face at the Resolute Desk has never been this disciplined about following an agenda in his life, and that change is not one of the known side-effects of dementia. Those people in the shadows might be able to replace him with a different useful idiot like, say, Joe Rogan.

Which was always the plan. They were pretty open about it in the Hebrew press.

No, how do we stop the deportations, and get the people back from the prison in El Salvador? What can I do, today, to make it stop? Hell, what can I tell Sen. Cory Booker’s staff to have him do to make it stop?

I’m sick of this condescending shitting on anybody who does anything to resist that isn’t either striking the exact, right spot to fix everything in a single blow, or the leftist liturgy of mutual aid. There is no simple fix. It’s going to be a long slog, and take the accumulated efforts, big and small, of people everywhere. Symbolic efforts, even, because those can raise awareness, rally, and encourage people. Organizing against ICE is singularly ineffective where I am in a place that ICE isn’t active, and one, lone voice like mine can’t even get people off of corporate social media. Americans have such a herd mentality that they’re scared of anything that doesn’t have a logo and a brand name on it, so if their leaders act like nothing’s amiss, they’re not going to step out of line to challenge things. That’s what makes a Senator pulling a stunt like this so valuable. Tens of millions of people watched yesterday. Finally, a leader giving voice to the anger and unease so many of us have been feeling. Maybe it’ll catalyze more action.

Or, maybe not. But, Jesus Christ, take the ‘W’.

It was always pretty damn clear that this was Israel’s endgame no matter who was in the White House.

Including Wisconsin. It’s been the law for over a decade. This just put it in the *constitution, for some damn fool reason.

ETA: Interesting story. We had a whistleblower testify in court that the legislators who created the law intended for it to suppress voter turnout.

That’s not what I asked.

I’m assuming you know something effective to do about it? Let’s go do it! Right now!

Just a couple more minutes to beat Storm Thurmond’s record!

If you can’t explain it, then it’s not all that simple. Maybe don’t denigrate millions of men as “too afraid of rejection,” eh?

So which is it? Pay attention to social cues, or ignore them and take a shot anyway?

This doesn’t make any sense. So we should ignore the cues that they’re not interested and take our shot anyway, even though men ignoring signs of disinterest is annoying, and they love getting attention from men who pay heed to their boundaries when the boundary is not wanting our attention? Or should we take no for an answer and handle rejection gracefully by not hitting on them when they’re not interested, because that’s the proper way to hit on women?

Or is it because we’ve been told that women are sick of being hit on all the time?

Right, that’s exactly the problem I have with most people who call themselves libertarian. In a nutshell, they truly believe that we all should get to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn’t affect others. Except, everything we do affects other people. Some of the ways are profound, and some are trivial. The libertarian-type people are so selfish, or solipsistic, they think that only their own judgement applies whether the effect infringes freedom it not.

We see that with vaccines: The government shouldn’t mandate what they put in their bodies. That’s infringes freedom. But they’re more than happy to spread virus into other people’s bodies, and if immuno-compromised people think that it’s hurting them, too bad. Or the libertarian types think that they should be allowed to drive the biggest brodozer available, because it doesn’t affect anybody else, and the freedom of other people who get hit and crushed under the wheels, the other drivers blinded by eye-level headlights, or the taxpayers who have to subsidize more free parking space and street maintenance, doesn’t matter.

It’s always the same pattern: Anything that stops me from doing what I want is an unreasonable infringement of freedom, and any effects I have on other people are just the reality of living in society and they should suck it up.