Whatever he needs to do to get elected to avoid Republican control of the Senate. Yeah it’ll suck if he is one of the saviors of the filibuster. But it’ll suck more if Republicans are in charge of the Senate.

https://www.childstats.gov/AMERICASCHILDREN/tables/pop1.asp

70-something million children. Let’s make them eligible to vote, and let parents vote on their behalf if they’re too young. As another poster said, the parents who abuse that on “both sides” would more or less come out in the wash. The parents who took it seriously would probably adjust both their vote and their child’s vote to benefit the child.

(One interesting thing is that would mean citizen children of non-citizen immigrants would get to vote.)

Privatizing anything will lead to higher prices.

The claim (which I think we should be comfortable calling a “lie” at this point) is that services provided by the government are almost inherently wasteful. Conservatives (it’s always conservatives) believe that civil servants (our neighbors) are overpaid and lazy. They believe that top level bureaucrats don’t have incentives for innovation and cost/waste minimization, and that top level executives in a for profit corporation do.

And the additional claim (“lie”) is that commercial profit incentives de facto lead to improved customer (citizen) outcomes.

However, I’ve never seen any long term data that supports ANY transition from public to private leading to either better innovation OR internal performance OR customer outcomes. I’ve also never seen data supporting the reverse (converse? inverse?) contention that nationalizing something corporate leads to worse innovation, performance, or outcomes.

Just for clarity I’m not looking for “data” from kleptocracies, oligarchies, military juntas, or other non free, non democratic, arguably non market based countries.

So basically only NATO, maybe EU, North America, Australia, Japan, South Korea… And I bet such data doesn’t exist (or exposes the lie).

Hasn’t every modern Attorney General been a Republican anyway?

One thing that has started bugging me this election cycle is the term “middle class.” I feel stupid for not realizing it sooner, but your point about a single earner supporting a whole family with a house and 2.5 kids and usually 2 cars is incredibly important.

Is there a meaningfully large middle class in America any more, at least in those terms? I know people who manage to fund a whole household on their salary alone but those are low-ish 6-figure salaries (~$170k). Even then, a few curveballs come in and suddenly they’re screwed.

We need to recouple the productivity of the American worker with their income. We need more and stronger unions. We need to abolish so called “right to work” laws. We need to override Citizens United. We need to break up these huge monopolies & oligopolies.

We can do some of that if we elect Harris/Walz.

If (hopefully when) Trump loses he now has the perfect scapegoat though: Just Dance Vance

Xemu: Not Too Much Lead

https://youtu.be/MKTN2OiR2R8

Yes he could lose Florida! Meatball Ron won his first term like 50.5% to 49.5%. Florida is a swing state, but Democrats are so dysfunctional statewide that they can’t organize a two person picnic.

I think that’s changing with the March For Our Lives kids coming of age.

The Harris campaign needs to take all this money they’re getting and invest it in states Biden got 45% or higher in 2020. They can get those states.

Oh noooooo

Is the implication here that adult women snuggle/wrestle with their friends? Outside of porn videos?

If this is a transition from how I live now to never needing to work again, I’m guessing the first 6 months to a year would just be disbelief and slacking. Video games, TV/YouTube, etc.

I’d probably do more of the things I do with my limited off time: gardening, taking care of family & pets, taekwondo.

Honestly have no idea what I’d do once I became accustomed to it. Maybe travel? Participate in local politics more? Volunteer? I would definitely have a sense that I needed to do something to make my life “worth it” that I currently get from working to provide for my family.

It’s definitely a result of conditioning, not some fundamental truth of the universe. But nearly 50 years of that conditioning is hard to break overnight.

Lemmy for good content and discussion. Reddit still has niche fan communities that will probably never migrate over here, but I can always hope.

I think he’s probably just acting

I’ll take the 34/34 but I have indeed seen a lot of “this just proves it was rigged from the start” etc etc already.

If Trump had allowed his lawyers to mount the best defense they could, he’d probably have a decent chance at complete acquittal or a hung jury.

Instead he forced them to perform a “defense” aimed at his base and maybe some people with “soft” dislike of him and most importantly aimed at hurting his “enemies” and puffing up his ego.

I did hear a persuasive argument that he might be acquitted on the charges related to checks he didn’t personally sign (his sons signed instead) but get convicted on the checks he did sign. From what was reported that means it’s possible the first 10 verdicts will be “not guilty” and the last 20+ will be “guilty.”

I actually sort of hope that’s what happens because 1) it will prove the jury wasn’t out to get him and 2) he’ll be feeling really good for those first verdicts then get gut punched for the last ones.

There was a part of me that held out hope that she would at a minimum just not endorse Trump. Seems like she’s decided to try to be his VP pick. Probably since Noem the dog slayer became unrealistic.

Indeed with Haley endorsing Trump now I think all the Trump cosplay idiots who’ve been showing up to court in Manhattan can hang it up.

We need to go back to a 90% or higher tax rate on income over some threshold, and fix the loopholes that let wealthy people have income that doesn’t count as income. Especially the “take a loan and pay that back and all the activity there doesn’t count as income for tax purposes” bullshit.

And tax corporate profits more, and make a corporate tax system that rewards real R&D (while auditing to prevent fake tax shelter R&D), rewards higher employee salaries and better benefits (instead of taxing those), and rewards infrastructure investments like new factories but also investments in efficiency, water use reduction, etc.

It’s possible to build nice apartments that have a good amount of space to live in. But that’s not as profitable per sq ft for the property management companies that have been buying up all the land.

There’s also some minor regulatory reforms that are probably needed to allow a little more flexibility in building design, specifically around the required number/type/location of stairwells. But we have to be careful about that one because we don’t want to make death traps.

Have to be careful on this one as you don’t want to cause more harm than good. Make sure it’s all focused on disabling pumps and valves while not increasing the likelihood of releases.

Some idiots would go around blowing things up causing massive environmental damage when what we really want to do is just leave the stuff in the tanks it’s already in, or in the ground it’s already in.

I guess on balance it’s more important to me that the Democrats reject Greene than reject Johnson. It’s clear to everyone that Johnson is “weak” (in MAGA support) and dependent completely on Democrats to get anything done.

Now that that’s out in the open and he’s slightly a MAGA pariah, he’ll probably get back to more old fashioned Republican projects like destroying the environment, fucking over workers, giving billions to billionaires, and a blank check to the military.

I mean … Freedom.