The Dems who, since the shock of the Reagan revolution, swore off having a political project beyond “don’t make it worse” but accidentally foreclosed on making things better in the process. More recently, they’ve been heard saying things like “nothing will fundamentally change” in the face of a political situation that is very different from 40 years earlier.

Basically all the powerful Dems since Bill Clinton. Groups like the Democratic Leadership Council. They’ll poo poo ideas that regularly poll at 80% support across all parties, then spend all their political capital barely carrying a compromise position with 48% support across the finish line.

I really hope that we’re reaching a tipping point where people who believe in a better world and pursue policies to bring it about can have sustained political success

I’ll gladly accept a reactionary centrist spoiler party into the mix. Especially if it coincides with the Clinton wing of the DNC losing its ability to maintain its grip on power.

What does he care about a tax break? He already doesn’t pay his taxes. Is he just gonna not pay less?

The natural gas power plant would be producing the electricity that would go beyond the regular demand. And no, there aren’t any reactors there. There’s only about 50 nuclear plants in the country and Danville, VA didn’t get one.

Natural gas makes the plurality of electricity produced in the US, and to get there, it murdered coal, not nuclear or renewables, so bad as it is, it does represent an improvement in the American energy mix.

Do we need to do Trianon again?

…to avoid fascists calling you a commie.

Which they will still do.

Were the LA protests not something? Was the Portland protest that breached a holding facility not something?

People are taking action against the Trump administration. Not enough people, and not enough action, but three weeks ago, immigration was his strongest polling policy issue, and now he’s underwater in polling on it.

People who recognized the threat when the Trump Campaign handed out their ‘Mass Deportations Now’ signs at the RNC have forced the mushy middle to understand (in their bones, not just intellectually) what that meant all along.

He wants all holidays to be treated like National Cheesecake Day. Something that the radio DJ announces as the peons drive to work.

From bosses and business owners (i.e., the only kinds of people he talks to or recognizes as people)

How incomprehensibly long is this backlog of unaddressed matters going to be?

If we protest he’ll send in the troops so that he can have his goons grab people off the streets.

If we don’t protest, he’ll have his goons grab people off the streets.

Seems like protesting puts an obstacle and the goons grabbing.

Jon Stewart and getting fascists to change their neckwear. Is there a more iconic duo?

On one hand, it’s useless performative bullshit. On the other hand, Trump seems to be exactly the kind of guy to get really upset about that sort of thing.

Unfortunately, back in the Bush years, a little while before the second gulf war, they passed a bill to invade the Hague if Americans got tried there. Folks will have to seek justice through other channels.

I think I must’ve missed that Verge article. I guess that dashes my “this is a creative writing exercise by somebody in Joburg” theory.

But we know that lizards have self preservation instincts (which for the purpose of this conversation I’ll say is interchangable with sentience (it’s probably a good enough proxy at any rate). But we know this because we have lots of people who have observed lizard behavior, not because The Lizard Farm, Inc has hyped up how alive and ensouled their lizards arev in a bid to get ever more VC funding.

Maybe I’m too pessimistic about this tech and my obsolete meat sack will get tossed to the time-traveling torture robot. But I think it’s more likely that we have a money grabbing hype train in the tradition of the Mechanical Turk or Theranos than it is that we have created a new lifeform by feeding every extant piece of writing that isn’t nailed down (and some that are) to the sand we’ve forced to do math.

In a banana republic, what’s a president but a local representative of the company?

Well, the only claim of this self preservation (that I’ve seen) is this article, which is on a website I’m unfamiliar with (which I often interpret as ‘more likely to be a creative writing exercise than the average news site’) and its only citation is a company that has a vested interest in making us believe the tech is better than it may actually be.

It’s a per curiam decision, we don’t get to know.

We do get to know that Coney Barrett recused herself, which is what allowed an even split (and by extension the upholding of the lower court’s decision).

If David Brooks and William Kristol can bring themselves to say “Abolish ICE” then it’s time for the centrist Dems to take that stance and the left end of the party to debate in favor of RICOing that entity.

Once Kennedy was in at HHS, the lobotomies were sure to follow.