mtutiger

Watching that video, that level of force on an unarmed food delivery driver is completely outrageous. Doesn't matter whether they are here illegally or not, that interaction did not need to happen that way and the fact that it did is 100% the responsibility of the agents involved and of this administration. They deserve every bit of criticism they are getting for it.

I will only push back a little bit and say that The Bulwark has done a really good job of hiring actual reporters (ie. Sam Stein, Jonathan Cohn on the health care issues, Adrian Carrasquillo on Latino issues, etc.) that do actual journalism as well as (if not better) than mainstream publications. It's not all just "resist lib takes" The rest of it is a mixed bag to me. Tim Miller doesn't bother me and is at least self-aware about his reach, but some of the other folks (particularly Jonathan V. Last) are kinda worthless to me. They don't accomplish anything and, if anything, their doomerism about everything is perhaps counterproductive even.

As much as people talk about COVID, but one thing that impacted the 2020 election (and perhaps a reason he lost) was that he spend SO much time trashing mail voting. And suppressing GOP votes. And the GOP, understanding that they were the ones that invented the practice and until recent years tended to put elections on ice utilizing it, managed to get him to shut his pie hole about it in 2024 (an election he managed to win) Also, the "states as an agent of the Feds" line is rich.... I don't ever want to hear about "small government conservatism" ever again from anyone representing this movement.

Reminds me of the episode of Coach when they were playing on the road and Dauber left the playbook behind at a restaurant lol

This administration is awful, it is deadly serious. But the absolute best way to combat them is to mock the ever loving **** out of them. And I don't understand why we don't see it more.... Newsom does it, maybe Pritzker to a degree, but largely non-existent beyond that.

My perspective on this is influenced a little bit by the fact that we purchased a house that had panels put on them by the previous owner (so we avoided a lot of the upfront costs, currently reaping the benefits), but it's been a bit shocking how much the arrangement has benefited us relative to paying market rates for energy. Bigger picture, I understand that solar and wind can't be done to scale at this point, I am a realist, but I just don't understand hostility towards the idea of generating more electricity when there are more and more demands on the system with every passing day. It's insane.

Costs in general are going to be a big piece of this upcoming election, but with energy in particular, the hostility that this administration has toward renewable forms of energy (in light of the AI boom / data centers, how much energy they suck up) is so illogical.

The dude has always been a narcissist.... if you have one in your life, you know it even if you aren't qualified to clinically diagnose. But now? He's a narcissist who is senile. Every single day you see him going forward will be him at his best.... what a scary ****ing thought.

Sure Grandpa, let's get you to bed, m'kay?

If anything, I wish he'd spend 100% of his time hosting UFC fights... and not, you know, things like cutting Medicaid.

It was only a matter of time...

Judge Boxowine is the ace in the hole lolol

I don't think Trump cares all that much about his supporters and just expects them to go along with whatever he ends up doing

Regarding the Book, I'd be curious to know what it is to keep my first grader away from it. But to your first sentence, I don't think the majority of the public loves him for it. It's way too big a number that does, and it speaks poorly that character didn't matter at all when evaluating the decision who to vote for (or whether to vote at all), but his character issues weren't the specific reason why he won the election. He won it on the economy and on the perception that he would make life more affordable for people. Obviously he campaigned on doing he opposite of doing all of those things just on policy, but whether it was not paying attention or just flat out lying to themselves that he wouldn't do all of the things he was going to do, that was enough. Anecdotally, it's been shocking how many people in my own life (even people who voted for Harris) have admitted to thinking he wouldn't do various things he campaigned on. I push back hard here because at a time when his popularity has dropped considerably on the back of policy and his own character (ie. Epstein, corruption, etc), just writing off the public and just saying "they all of love this" is inaccurate and counterproductive

Some of the differences are policy related between states, but whenever you see such hard cutoffs between states, some of that has to be differences in data collection / lack of normalization. I'm not convinced that Walworth County, Wisconsin is orders of magnitude more drunk than McHenry County, Illinois, despite the two sharing a pretty decent amount of border with one another.

Putin needles U.S. by giving Trump envoy an award meant for CIA official whose son died fighting for Russia So not only are we letting that war criminal come onto US soil to embarrass us, this happened apparently....

Every so often when I hear his name in the headlines, I think about how he wrote the book as one version of JD Vance and, when faced with his political ambition and the need to pivot, conveniently uninstalled that version from his hard-drive and installed a version 2.0. Just one of the phoniest human beings alive.... no core convictions, no beliefs, no personality.

He's come a long way from the 'Holler, that one lol

The byproduct of all of this is that he's made us all cynical. These guys just all suck, they're all corrupt, there's no truth so might as well just put on my foam finger and root for my guy. It's pure unadultered nihilism. I remember saying something to this effect to Melody (on the last iteration of the board), but all the cynicism and all the defenses that hinge on saying "they're all like that" is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you expect nothing from your government, nothing is all you are ever going to get. I don't know what to do about that.... I truly believe that most Americans, on an individual level, are better than our current government. Not enough, but a majority anyway. And while I understand all the political science reasons for why he won in 2024, he's governing how he campaigned, and anyone who was really listening to the campaign should have ****ing known better.

A real test for the Ds here.... make him go ahead with it.

In a more sane world, he'd be 25th'd out of there... just seems like he's decomposing in real time

The thing is that, politically, so much of how people view the economy runs off of vibes anyway... and like Biden before him (who never could outrun 9% inflation in 2022 despite many good jobs reports), his vibes are in the toilet. Also similar to COVID as well.... people built an impression of him, and he never did outrun it (even with Operation Warp Speed and some other successes).

There's, very correctly, a ton of concern coming out of this about Trump cooking and / or juking the numbers to make things look good for his political concerns (I'll leave those for the other thread), but the reality is that businesses need reliable data in order to make decisions that are in their strategic/fiduciary best interests. Trump, by doing this, is basically undermining the basis of the data going forward. Just adds yet another level of uncertainty to an environment that he's already injected a bunch of uncertainty into.

Sounds about right.... it's been over 10 years since I've been in San Diego, but it's about as safe and desirable a major city as there is in this country.