Glad to see that Pres. Biden isn’t (yet) forcing the workers back on the job this time. Perhaps he should mitigate the effects on the economy by temporarily nationalizing the ports for the 80-day negotiation period, and hiring the longshoremen to work them?

In-progress vs. potential? I dunno, seems pretty self-evident to me.

Well, now that you put it that way…

I’m not familiar with other states’ laws. They could also be fucked up, too.

More directly relevant, many members of Netanyahu’s government have also called for the extermination of all Palestinians, and they have the U.S. government providing political cover while they do it.

Thanks! I knew what kind of replies I’d get, and did. Essentially, doubling-down on the electoral calculus argument, and not considering that other people have different motivations.

For what it’s worth, I’m comparing what’s actually happening (genocide and the Middle East spiraling into war) with Democrats in office (tsk-tsking but providing material support to Netanyahu) to what history shows would likely happen with the other guy in office (hot air and bombast, but almost certainly not any greater material support).

Let’s break down this bullshit: A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Jill Stein. The election clerks count ballots marked for Stein and report the vote totals that Stein received. A vote for Jill Stein is literally a vote for Jill Stein.

The statement that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump is, of course, metaphorical. It’s asserting that a vote for Stein is morally equivalent to a vote for Trump by the speaker’s moral reckoning. It’s a rhetorical shortcut. This shortcut rests on the notion that either the voter would have voted for Harris, or that it is a moral imperative to stop Trump above all else.

That’s a moral judgement call. Other people may judge differently. Flatly stating that a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump so vehemently and absolutely elides any possibility of discourse and clearly tells the Stein voter that the speaker will not listen to or consider any of their views, or reasons to vote for Stein.

Fine, you believe that, but when has telling people more or less directly that you do not have any intention of considering their political beliefs won them over to your side? How is that a good tactic? If it worked, then why not employ it on Trump supporters? Go ahead, tell them that the party you support will ignore what they think and want, and demand they vote for your candidate.

If it doesn’t work on them, why should it work on Stein voters?

Which is which? Like, seriously. Put the recent headlines about Israel’s actions against the other guy’s vague, contradictory statements and demonstrated lack of deep interest in foreign affairs. It’s not clear at all.

This is how Wisconsin’s law is so fucked up: The three men he shot were not working together, were not coordinated, did not know each other. So, on the one hand, Rittenhouse may have subjectively felt under coordinated attack, he was not, but the subjective feeling is what matters for the law.

From Huber:s POV, he was trying to disarm a murderer. Maybe he felt threatened, too? But the law is so fucked, his POV doesn’t matter because he’s dead. In Grosskreutz’s POV, he was approaching an active shooter who’d just killed two men and trying to defuse the situation. When Rittenhouse pointed his gun, Grosskreutz would have been justified under the same law in blowing him away.

In short, the law incentivizes shooting first.

Okay, but I’m not on board yet. We start with the biggest crooks of all, the wage thieves, right?

People talk about black ice in near-mystical terms, like some sort of malevolent spirit that waits to ambush its prey. But, really, while it is every bit as slippery as they say, it’s also not hard to avoid. I’ve had great results by simply treating any pavement that looks “wet” as slippery black ice. It’s not hard to see; the pavement color changes. It’s not always black ice, but it’s the same principle at treating every gun as if it is loaded.

To jump in here with a clarification: Wisconsin does indeed have a bar exam. However, the Wisconsin courts offer diploma privilege to graduates of the Marquette and University of Wisconsin law schools. You do not need to sit for the bar exam if you graduate from those schools, but everybody else must pass the exam to gain admission.

Good news, though: Milwaukee and Madison are very blue cities.

He’ll be a martyr in prison, too. He needs to have a massive, disabling stroke so his followers can see him look irredeemably weak.

Proposed reform measure: Just like teachers have to buy classroom supplies out-of-pocket, have police officers buy their own ammo.

Seriously. Saying “we’re fucking morons” for being surprised by the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center might be hyperbole, except the same group tried the same thing in 1993! They were just bad at it. Instead of being a KIND OF A REALLY BIG HINT, that incident just kind of disappeared down the memory hole.

Yes, that’s what I see, that’s clearly what he’s doing. The difference is that in 2016, he was able to retain in long-term memory what didn’t work, and had the mental flexibility to try out new bits to find things that did. Now, he keeps going back to the same dry well over and over again, in every speech, which is evidence that he’s losing it. (As further evidence, I’d point out that this is consistent with the amount of time it took him to grasp that he wasn’t running against Biden anymore.)

There was a Republican chode here in Wisconsin who voted twice to prove that people could vote twice. (The clerks caught his double vote, and he got prosecuted.)

Indeed. Notice, too, that the concerns about Biden’s cognitive abilities have instantly stopped? He’s still the President, and still in charge of the nukes. But no more news stories.

Meanwhile, the other guy has recently developed a habit of swearing at rallies, and there are a few articles about his wife asking him to knock it off, but nothing pointing out that a sudden increase in swearing is a symptom of dementia. At a town hall in La Crosse, WI the other day, he didn’t know why he was there at first. Still radio silence from the news media.

Funny, isn’t it?

Our society really needs to lower the barrier to entry for this stuff, but I have no idea how you’d go about that.

I know. At least in the US. It sounds wonky, but think it through: Cars and zoning law. Between the two of those things, there are fewer and fewer third places. There’s nowhere to go to just be around other people. First (home) and second (edit: work) are incredibly isolated, too. You get in the car and pull out of the garage, and interact with nobody until you pull in to the lot at work. At best, you interact briefly with fast food workers for a few seconds at the drive-thru window. There’s no “local,” no stores, no restaurants, no cafés in the neighborhood; you drive to those. They draw from a large area, so you never see the same people twice there.

Proximity has always been the best builder of community in human history, and we’ve done away with it.