** Church organ music intensifies…

 "I do renounce him." 

Priest: and all his works?

 "I do renounce them." 

Let’s add to the list, almost four years of operatives infiltrating their way into the election certification process. Not to get too tinfoil hatty, but the addiction denial strategy almost worked last time, and while the same team that orchestrated it no longer occupied the White house, state officials open to the scheme likely won’t make the same mistakes this time.

It’s a different election now with Harris taking the Dem nomination, but 2020 was decided by about 40k votes spread across a few key states. The same polarization that makes polling almost impossible to do accurately also means people’s opinions are equally hard to change. Don’t try. Instead, focus your efforts on mobilizing voters to turn out. Organize and make a plan to get yourself to the polls and to bring a friend. Check vote.gov and make sure you’re still registered and make sure the reasonable people in your life have too! Uncle ivermectin isn’t changing his mind about the trans panic, but there’s going to be a significant portion of the population that just doesn’t have time to vote between working the jobs to stay afloat. Get them a mail in ballot!

I’ve checked my registration about 25 times this month after learning I had mysteriously dropped from the rolls in a swing state. Don’t let some jackass take your opportunity to vote away. It may be our last change to finally stop hearing about every single stupid thing that comes out of the mouths of the worst people in government. Winning is the only way to fix what’s broken in our system.

Spoken like someone who’s never lived in a Soviet apartment. f’ing lol.

There’s just nothing quite as bleak as that same falling apart brutalist concrete block after block after block after block.

From first hand experience I can tell you all the romance of communal living goes right out the window when they shut down the centrally heated water for the summer for “maintenance” because if you shut it down in the winter, you’re f’ed.

All that “to every man as he needs” fantasy isn’t real life. All my fire escapes had rusted off from the 3rd floor up to the 10th. So good luck with that in an emergency lol (major Russian City center on the Volga in 2009). Two things can be bad at the same time. Just because the US has a massive social safety net dysfunction, doesn’t mean the CCCP was kind to its citizens.

People can suck everywhere.

Another worshipper at the altar of Ukrainian IKEA.

“I don’t want them to advertise,” Musk said. “If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising or money go f*** yourself. Go. F***. Yourself,” he said. “Is that clear? Hey Bob [Iger, CEO of Disney], if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel."

• the guy who bought the website for 40+ billion dollars.

Yeah…

Life’s fulfillment is in many ways measured in the quality of your relationships. Frankly, if you want to make meaningful relationships, you need to be the kind of fellow you or a regular person would want to be around.

You can’t really be a different person and you shouldn’t try. Instead you need to be the best version of yourself you can be. The one who listens well, or does nice things for others without expecting a reward. You have some positive instincts in there somewhere, but if you indulge selfishness, it will drowned out any of the positive aspects immediately.

Don’t do this attention seeking bs. If you want help, get help. The world is full of others seeking connections and you’ll break the hearts of family if you take the way way out. Maybe that’s what you want? Have an impact just by inflicting harm? I hope not, that’s what bad people do.

Get into bird watching or any other hobby. There’s tons of poor, interesting, people with deeply filling lives out there. You’re not uniquely suffering I’m afraid. Just pittying yourself.

No you’re right. It’s like Mitch Hedberg used to say about drinking though… Still does, but he used to too.

They are, but Wells Fargo too.

Obligatory crooked timber post:

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

It’s pretty nakedly just a cult of personality with no other policy platforms that I recognize. For 50 years quality of life for Americans had meaningfully stagnated or declined. It’s brutal paying so much for groceries and gasoline when rent has been commodified. Answering that with mythical “I alone can fix it” is a very attractive and easily understood pitch. A lecture about the nuances of globalization and market efficiency is not. As important as bathroom access and preferred pronouns are, they too are not a sufficient political answer for a minimum wage that hasn’t matched productivity for decades.

It’s a leadership issue but any sane person would never subject themselves or their families to running for office in a news environment like America’s. That leaves us with a government composed primarily by clinical narcissists and grifters.

Feels bad.

My favorite part of this AEI op-ed (look up the fellows of this august think tank institution if you have a minute) is that the author lists no notes, references, or citations for a single claim in the piece. Now that’s how you do it! Start a Hudson Institute it Heritage Foundation and once you’ve got the banner to put behind a panel of prestigious sounding fellows, bam! You’ve got the patina of credibility! Back it with a couple hundred million in tax-cheat lobbying endowments and you’ve got a stew going baby!

If you ask a Marine they’ll confirm that they’re a department of the Navy, but then qualify it as “the men’s department” before devolving into a yut-fest

CIS had an interesting chat with John Mearscheimer about Israel that’s unsurprising, but worth the listen. The host commented with a running joke that, "having been strongly supportive of Netanyahu after October 7, Joe Biden is seriously invested in the two-state solution—Michigan and Pennsylvania (@1:17:38)

Tough sell. Sure it’s obvious who will make the situation measurably worse in nearly every way, but it’s really hard to motivate and mobilize a voting block on harm reduction, when the incumbent elicits strongly emotional revulsion right now.

Recency bias, negativity bias, etc. are so hard to overcome. It’s like trying to logic your way out of an argument someone has emotion’d themselves into. You may know the answer conceptually, but actually feeling ok about it enough to act isn’t a logic proposition. It’s one of the most emotionally charged decisions we make.

Not a demographic I’d be counting on showing up in large numbers if I we’re a campaign strategist. Sadly, Trump is retaining well over 90% of his voting coalition from 2020, whereas Biden is only retaining a fraction of his (very diverse) block. Since the election will come down to a very small number of votes, he’s going to need all of his 2020 coalition to show up. 4 years of reality make that a hard bargain for Arab Americans and Republicans who held their noses after Jan 6 and voted blue though. Ugh.

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/kAfIYtpcBxo

Piped bot, assemble!

Absolutely one of the worst takes I’ve seen.

These aren’t settlers and they weren’t running a Canadian Indian school burying children out back either. Kids trying to share their beliefs (misguided as they may be) aren’t colonizers and if they aren’t welcome, execution is not the right answer you troglodyte.

It’s not rocket science to expect a society to condemn extrajudicial violence. Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad about it.

Have you been to East Oregon or Idaho? They’re way ahead of you. Looking for an extremist compound and lax gun laws? Look no further. Good potatoes though…

Hey! Nobody post anything TrickDacy’s seen online before! WT actual F guys!? Don’t you know he’s seen this already!? FFS!

Man is it refreshing to hear a Taiwanese perspective in the mix. Every post, every comment is a bunch of armchair “experts” talking about an issue they clearly haven’t the slightest personal experience or context for. Not to come off as a jerk but it sure would be nice to hear what the actual people involved think instead of rank speculation. Reminds me of all the infectious disease experts during covid and military strategists in Feb 2022.

Initial capability of 90x truckloads of aid per day, scaling up to planned 150x loads capacity. 500x needed a day to meet the requirement and vastly more inefficient than simply driving it in. JLOTS is not a replacement or even a fraction of the need for simply opening the Rafah gate—where aid trucks are already staged to drive aid through without needing to add dock operations to the equation.

I wonder where it got it’s name from?

Today in “win stupid prizes” news…

I knew he got drafted but I didn’t know Silverstein made it to Colonel!

CPT Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

COL Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?

CPT Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.

I’d just love to see something non-formulaic this year. With the writer’s strikes, and state of the film industry, I’ll take anything at this point.

(Don’t interpret this as criticism of the writer’s guild. The people who make the art should absolutely be able to support themselves while executive split blockbuster profits)