The courts are unreliable due to corruption, and we do not have a functioning justice system.

You know, everyone hates that guy, but he was the only reasonable person in that movie.

Ghosts aren’t real, and the Ghostbusters were reckless. Egon and Ray built an unstable containment apparatus without permits or inspections in an old firehouse with shoddy electrical wiring. They built back-pack carried laser weapons capable of annihilating a city block with an errant crossing of the streams.

Ray also manifested StayPuft Gozer.

Venkman was a charletain and a fraud, as well as a narcissistic sociopath.

Winston was just a guy they hired off the street.

Shutting down their nuclear “ghost containment” apparatus was the responsible thing to do. Walter Peck deserves a medal, or maybe a prosthetic device for his downstairs mixup.

Everyone knew a shady guy who promised to mod your PlayStation to play burned games, but few wanted to risk turning their console into a brick.

No worries about coming off as defensive, I completely understand how you would read my comment as an attack. It wasn’t how I meant it, but I recognize that I was fired up about it.

The superintendent is absolutely posturing, and I don’t think he believes he will win in court. But I believe there is a chance he wins in court, especially given the number of activist conservative justices we have on the bench.

I don’t have any doubt about what he meant by “teaching the Bible,” and I am certain it had nothing to do with providing a rounded and thorough depiction of various religious and cultural practices of a pluralistic multicultural society. The guy is a christo-fascist and a bigot. He belongs in prison for trying to abuse his position in government to subjugate his constituents.

I think it is too late for a Presidential endorsement to work. The conservatives, including those in the Democratic Party, will spin it as an attempted coronation, a la Hillary in 2016. Biden will choose a centrist to avoid pissing off the DNC mega donors, which will deflate any enthusiasm from progressives who see Biden stepping aside as a victory. Nobody will be particularly enthusiastic about voting for the annointed one, and if they win it will be because of the “not Trump” voters.

So what does that do for us? Those voters are already going to show up. Progressives are already unenthusiastic about another Biden term, but they are terrified of another Trump term. So most of them will show up, too. Biden supporters, we can count on both Jill and the other one to vote either way.

Oh I completely agree with you, and I don’t begrudge anyone who’s willing to do what they have to do to keep their jobs. My point is just that fascists don’t play fair. They won’t put their hands on their hips and smirk disapprovingly at malicious compliance. They will keep stepping on your neck until you do exactly what they want without question. You know that when they say the Bible, they of course mean their interpretation of their version of a Bible of their choosing. They aren’t going to permit debate on the topic.

Malicious compliance is still compliance. If you concede this hill, the next one will be a requirement to teach the Bible as historical truth. And then it will be to prevent teaching actual science.

Agreed. But it still encourages strategic voting and discourages third-party spoilers. It’s fptp with extra steps, and it gets worse the more candidates you have. If you don’t pick a frontrunner first or second, there’s a chance your vote isn’t counted at all.

Unfortunately, RCV doesn’t end the two party system. It’s better than what we have, but only marginally. My hope is that when voters complain about it, the next step is not to repeal RCV but to evolve into Star voting.

If you lived through the Trump presidency, and you are unsure you want another one, you’re either a closeted bigot who doesn’t want to admit you want Trump, or you’re a moron.

The problem is that it’s next to impossible for a party to replace an incumbent president on the ticket without a fight. And the Democrats don’t have time for a fight right now.

The logical choice would be the VP, but Harris is less popular than Biden with all his flaws. She gets tagged with all of his negatives plus the misogyny and racism pervasive among voters who would vote for Putin before they vote for a minority or a woman. If she had a more progressive record as a politician, maybe she could bring new, young voters to the table.

If the DNC and Biden wanted Harris to be the candidate, the time to step aside was two years ago. That would have given Harris the opportunity to establish herself as a leader worth following. The racists and the misogynists have less ammo if she’s already doing the job well. Of course, that assumes she would have done well.

And then we could have had a legitimate primary. If Harris was failing, it would have been easier to run against an incumbent who was not elected and had a low approval rating. The best candidate could have risen to the top, introduced themselves to American voters, and built a political machine capable of beating Trump in the general election.

Biden didn’t want to do that, so now he must win. There isn’t another option.

Do vultures do something other than what other birds do? Because most birds regurgitate food for the chicks to eat.

I always kind of hated that bit, because it seemed so unrealistic. And here we are.

Life imitates art.

It’s amazing to me that “he sounds feeble” is worse than “everything he said wasn’t true.”

There’s the NPVIC which would cut the electoral college out of the process entirely.

One guy is slightly hoarse.

The other is a delusional fascist.

So basically both sides the same.

Sure, but you’re equivocating two things that aren’t the same. Until you’ve written infinity 9s, you haven’t written the number yet. Once you do, the number you will have written will be exactly the number 1, because they are exactly the same. The difference between all the nines you could write in one thousand lifetimes and 0.999… is like the difference between a cup of sand and all of spacetime.

Or think of it another way. Forget infinity for a moment. Think of 0.999… as all the nines. All of them contained in the number 1. There’s always one more, right? No, there isn’t, because 1 contains all of them. There are no more nines not included in the number 1. That’s why they are identical.

They don’t need to win the legal battles. Just getting to court is their victory.

So… we’re doomed?

Maybe, but there is a significant Jewish population in New York for whom no other issues matter. So you’d have to be an excellent politician to sell that line after you’ve already used the “Z” word. Bowman is not an excellent politician. He seems like a decent human being, in over his head and unprepared to defend his positions from all sides. I wish he was better, because we need more progressives in leadership positions, and the centrists will use this to continue to sell the line that progressives can’t win elections.