I agree with you. I did not realize that this was tried back in the 1970s and people bitched about it due to kids be in danger in the darkness. The local high school is across the street from our subdivision and we already have multiple incidents through the winter months where kids are hit or almost hit by cars because there are no streetlights in the intersection whatsoever. Of course, the preferred solution is make DST permanent and build streetlights for the intersection.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/0...ople-hated-it/

My neighborhood has no streetlights, which is a bit insane given we pay north of 11K in property taxes, so I am really not a fan of my kids being at the bus stop in the pitch black.

I actually like daylight savings time.

I know this varies by an hour or more either way depending on where you live, and I certainly get the people up north hating it being dark by 4:30 (I've flown into NYC in November/December before 5pm and it's weird), but I don't think it's any more or less of an inconvenience than, say, those of us in Lexington KY having it stay dark within 5-10 minutes of 9am (!) in mid-late December and early January if you institute year-round DST.

Forget the kids at the bus stop - most of them will be through 1st period before the sun rises in January here.

What is the motivation this time? Even with DST, we just put our kids back to getting on the bus in the dark. Sunrise today was 7:49am. It was around 6:50am last week. Point is, regardless of which you choose, you're going to have periods of dark mornings.

I say we just ban winter.

I think that people like complaining about the time changes more than they dislike the time changes.

I think it's simpler.

I think the best option is instead of working toward a 4-day work week, we should just move to a 10am-4pm work day 5 days a week. That way everyone gets at least a little sunlight in the morning and afternoon.

Final numbers on the TX GOP's very successful voter suppression efforts.

So that is 6 hours x 5 = 30 hours a week? Maybe 5 hours x 5 = 25 if you take an hour off for lunch.

Think you would need to move somewhere in Italy or France for that.

I heard a rumor that Iraq has WMDs. We should go back in and take control of their oil fields just to make sure they are safe.

Thomas Massie is such a jackass and embarrassment. Such a preening pos.

Crazy, sometimes violent, AK Rep. Don Young has apparently died.

Didn't he hold a knife to Boehner's throat over an earmark?

Justice Thomas hospitalized with an infection and flu-like symptoms

:popcorn:

Not saying I want him to die, but it would solve a lot of problems...

I'm an asshole I and don't mind Biden picking a replacement*



*depending who it was

Further reporting says he will be released in a day or two

The fact that he doesn't receive more scrutiny for his wife's conduct is amazing.

Taking two pubic hairs should fix his health woes because Anita Hill to die on!

Better stock up on sponges. After Roe, the right's next target is Griswold.

Marsha Blackburn, in discussing SCOTUS nominee Jackson, says she wants to know her position on “constitutionally unsound” decisions like Griswold v. Conn (making birth control a protected right) that have “confused Tennesseans.” pic.twitter.com/Z9WEfJB0ro

— Ron Filipkowski ���� (@RonFilipkowski) March 21, 2022

The right's target was always Griswold. Being anti-abortion has just been a more palatable way to package it.

For good or ill, one thing Trump has done is show the Right that it does not need to hide behind euphemism anymore.

I hope Jackson realizes nothing she can say will ever sway the Senators on the right ad just tells them they are POS racists.

She'll do like every other modern nominee and just talk about fairness and balls and strikes.

Most GOP will quietly vote against here. A few like Cruz and Hawley will grandstand to show that they will fight the radical democrat fringe. A few safe senators and/or senators from more moderate states will vote for her so they can say "See, look how reasonable the GOP is compared to how the Democrat party treated Trump's nominees."

Considering how much else is going on in the world, I kind of wish they'd just take the vote now. Every Senator knows how they are going to vote. Let's cut out the dog and pony show.

dola: I forgot. You can keep the thing where Manchin sits in a room with a bunch of reporters who keep telling him that he is very important while he rambles on about whatever's on his mind that is only very loosely related to whatever he needs to be voting on.

That step seems un-skippable in contemporary politics.

Can't lose elections if the other party's votes don't count.

19 Democrats in the senate are more than 70 years old. Just vote. A majority is not guaranteed forever.

Cue McConnell saying that "The nominee isn't qualified..." in 3...2...1...

Saw a great proposal. For all Senate hearings, opening statements will just be written and entered into the record without being read.

CRT just means black at this point.

https://t.co/wYFmFNUepU pic.twitter.com/NGa6SgTxdY

— GOP (@GOP) March 22, 2022

That is unbelievable. Even by their standards

It's kind of one of the last plays they have left in the playbook. Her judicial record is pretty moderate.

These people aren’t even embarrassed by how racist they are.

CRT = Bad

LGB = Good

Land of the hypocrites
Mother outraged by video of teacher leading preschoolers in anti-Biden chant

The apologies for these things are always the same, too.

"We are sorry that people saw conservatism for what it actually is. We have a policy of pretending it is something different in public, and the release of this unedited footage of us saying what we actually think goes against that policy."

dola:

On an unrelated note, I was wrong about the GOP using the KBJ hearings to model bipartisanship and civility to appeal to moderate voters.

I think that they, rightly, figure that the only people obsessed enough with politics to actually watch the actual hearings are GOP Base/Q voters, and so this has become a performance for them.

See, I wonder about types like Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol though. They act like they really didn't know. Which...did you change? Did others hide it really well? Or did you just bury your head in the sand?

edit: Hmm. I guess I picked a couple of Jewish examples, which wasn't really my intent. But, I do now wonder if the religious aspect of the current conservatism is getting a bit too uncomfortable to ignore.

Rubin has always, from what I can tell, been pro-Israel/Judaism first and became a conservative as the natural response to that.

So when the GOP began catering to the "Jews will not replace us!" base, she didn't follow them.

I don't know about Rubin, but most of those old conservatives worked under or took cues from guys like Atwater. They're just mad that people are saying the quiet part out loud.

It partly works. There were a ton of people praising the Lincoln Project folks who had completely forgotten about the despicable things they were doing a decade ago.

After watching clips of the confirmation hearings I'm 100% convinced they should just release transcripts of these proceedings and stop putting these morons on TV.

ABC reporter asks Biden if he was too quick to rule out world war 3 pic.twitter.com/OEjl9ijWhu

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 24, 2022

If you take WWIII off the table right at the start, it is like you are negotiating against yourself.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...Qda?li=BBnb7Kz

Yeah, this guy thinks Judge Jackson is too radical for the SCOTUS:

I don't know which thread to throw it in, but this seems to suffice:

Conservative Disney employees fear reprisals in ‘Don’t Say Gay’ debate, petition says



I'm not sure if this is a "lol - how do they not see the irony" or a "man, they're a bunch of dicks for being so ballsy about the whole 'claim the 'other side' is doing exactly what you're doing'".

What? You're worried there are policies that seem to make other people invisible? Or want them not to exist?

And I love that if you go to the doc, it asks "I support Disney employees in their fight for a politically neutral Disney!" and the only answer you can select is "Yes".

SI

The only guy whose opinion matters has spoken on the Jackson's confirmation:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/25/polit...ote/index.html

Honestly, if that's Manchin's stance, they should just wrap this up, vote, and move on. Anything else is just theater at this point.

Yeah, we should've just let Manchin and Sinema interview her since everyone else's mind have been made up already.

Speaking of, from the great chameleon himself.


She give an almost identical answer to Barrett on this question, and in terms of experience, Barrett brought virtually nothing outside of her time on the circuit court, so you simply flip the experience of ACB outside of that, with Jackson's, which is extensive, plus an Ivy League law degree and you really have no argument against her. This guy is such a fucking Ghoul, no soul, no substance, no shame.

McConnell's announcement is just a calculated political ploy. He knew Manchin was going to vote for her, that his vote wouldn't matter, and that it made far more sense to play to the base versus cast a yes vote that doesn't matter. This has nothing to do with consistency, or what he truly believes about her, or anything other than a pure political calculation. And TBF, it's how he's gotten where he is today.

Based on the little I have read about what is going on this week, all of it was just theater. That also seems to be the case for at least the last two SC confirmation hearings. It would probably be a good idea and be more of an efficient use of time to just vote on the nominee 30 days after the President has announced the nomination. Unless it is the theater is what we actually value.

The confirmation hearing is a manufactured thing. The early part of the country they would just have a quick up-down vote on the nominee, usually the same day.

It changed when Brandeis was nominated because he was anti-monopoly and Jewish. A ton of money was behind smearing Brandeis. Kind of where we are at today.

I should add that KBJ has been pretty pro-busines as a Judge. Probably why you aren't seeing the kind of money being thrown in and accusations against her on that. Most of the opposition is based on her race.

Oh for sure, hence my moniker for him. Say what you want, but he plays the game as good as anyone, even though it is extremely transparent to anyone with a shred of critical thinking skills.

Glad the Prime Minister agrees.

God, just reading Brandeis's wikipedia page...


Also, this is why you notice none of these justices from either side of the aisle are anti-big business. And they all went to Harvard or Yale. Having someone like that on the courts now would be a minor miracle and they would never have enough power to actually exact change.

SI

Watching his speech right now, I'm wondering what are the odds that he's going to plagiarize part of an old Winston Churchill speech? Something like "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that Ukraine lasts for a thousand years men will still say, 'this was their finest hour'."

Thought it was a pretty good speech

Yes it was unless he isn’t your team like usual in this “country”.

I’m at a bar having a couple beers while my daughter is in art class. Guy next to me has gone through the gamete with his buddy. Started by complaining about the saint peters players and coaches wearing BLM shirts. The complaining about the Mexicans working for his landscaping company having to be paid too much now he is, lord help me, saying what an awesome interview kid rock was on Fox and he loves him because he tells it like it is. Not enough beer.

We need to somehow change the "tells it like it is" thing to "tells it like it was."

I was talking to another parent yesterday at the playground who is black and is a scanning tech at a hospital in Houston. She was telling me a patient came in the other day and told her "we're going to take back over and when we do, you're going to have to decide what side you're on". Apparently dude also told that to her Asian coworker but not the white one who also saw him. She said she's heard worse and just took it in stride.

I ask her how she processes this crazy stuff in real time with him right there. It sounds to me like he basically wakes up every morning, waiting for the Revolution to arrive. He even goes around, unprompted at his doctor's office, and is spreading tales of it like crazy. Either it's basically a veiled threat like "if you don't side with us, we're going to kill you" and he gets off on that power trip. Or he actually thinks he's doing them a solid, like "hey, they did me right here at the doctor's office so the neighborly thing to do is to warn them about this thing they don't know about and save them because they're one of the 'good ones'".

SI

Was it like this before 2016? Obviously these people always had these thoughts, but did Trump make it OK to say them out loud?

Trump, social media, parts of the mainstream media, education, societal imbalance… Trump is a reflection of a large proportion of society IMHO, not the cause of it

That's my take. Obviously there's a variety of factors, as AlexB points out, but Trump was the catalyst. Finally, a politician who says the stuff out loud that all these folks want to say out loud. And that's why they love him.

Wait...what kind of bar was this again?

Did anyone else need to look up the definition of "gamete"?

The movie US by Jordan Peele is the perfect explanation of the trumpets… that was misspelled but I’m leaving it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I figured it was a talk-to-text error with "gamete" being used instead of "gamut". Or some spermutation of that.

Yeah. I was typing at a bar on my phone with my sausage fingers.

The numbers I am seeing for the mid-terms look bad bad bad.

Yup. Midterms will be a bloodbath. Which is kind of crazy. The Ukraine situation is going better than could have been hoped and that's without any commitment of American troops. Economy is growing at fastest pace since the 80s. Unemployment is at rock bottom. Wages are going up. COVID cases at lowest levels in a long time.

It is amazing how much gas prices seem to be what motivates people.

Likely, but every time the GOP gets in front of cameras and reminds people they're really only the party of rich, old white men it hurts them. KJB was the 2nd most popular Supreme Court nominee in recent memory and a non-critical nominee for majority yet they still tried to tear her down. The GOP would have really scored points with voters if they had showed a Supreme Court nominee could get bipartisan support. This one was set on a tee for them and they had to double down on nonsense. All they had to do was soft toss her a couple CRT questions and other popular GOP issues and move on with confirmation.

With that said, inflation and gas prices are killing Biden right now with voters.

Wages may be going up, but slower than prices. Most people have less spending power.

Gas prices, inflation and shortages. Those are things people can really feel every day.

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Child tax credit got pulled from a lot of people. An increase in wages is completely offset by inflation. Green deal bombed. The campaign promise of student loan help was abandoned. Voting rights are being stripped without any fight. And no one seems to be bothered enough to go after people who brazenly commit crimes.

At some point you actually have to do something to make people care about voting for you. Especially when Trump isn't on the ballot.

The GOP taking Madison Cawthorn's coke and orgies comments and making them even worse is hilarious & absurd.

GOP leader McCarthy says Madison Cawthorn ‘lost my trust’ over ‘orgies’ and ‘cocaine’ claims

"After questioning, the GOP leader said that Mr Cawthorn now admits that “he thinks he saw maybe a staffer in a parking garage maybe 100 yards away,” adding that the congressman told him “he doesn’t know what cocaine is”."

I thought Cawthorne was just lying but the way McCarthy made a big stink about the whole thing actually leaves me more suspicious. Like why on Earth does he care?

I was curious and looked at Marjorie Taylor Greene's legislative history and she hasn't so much as cosponsored a bill that's passed house vote. She's also been a no vote on bills with less than 5 no votes three times. Yet she's raised 4 times the amount of the average House member for '22.

I just saw that someone named "Peters" predicted that the Dems would hold the Senate. And, thinking that he was some sort of political science type, let my hopes get a little up.

Nope. Turns out that it is Democratic Senator Peters, who is leading the party's attempt to keep control.

Might be time to log off.

PredictIt gives Dems a 25% chance to hold the Senate, 18% to hold the House.

18% seems high. I would lay -500 easily the right takes it back.

I'm trying to think of a scenario that could turn things around, but I am at a loss. It would take a major Republican scandal (but there have already been so many nobody cares anymore) or huge drops in consumer pricing. Even then, I don't know if there is a way to salvage the huge negatives that this extended bout of inflation has caused.

I agree. With Trump, all things are possible for good or ill, which adds some inherent uncertainty to any prediction. And there is always the chance that there won't be one national mood change but a couple of independent implosions of GOP candidates in swing races for unrelated reasons.

But that is really really grasping at straws. I'd say that the House is 95%+ likely to go GOP and the Senate is ~90%.

Sigh.

Bad things happen to D's they don't fight the narrative that it's their fault....when bad things happen to R's they blame on everything under the sun, with no explanations for how or why it's not their fault, it's just someone else's doing.

It's all in the perspective. D personalities love to explain why you're wrong 'help' you understand why it is this way....R's generally don't care if you know or not, they want to you know whose fault it 'truly' is.

Agree. Can't think of anything Biden can do that will be enough.

I do think Biden has done okay domestically and pretty well internationally (other than for some specific quips) with what he was dealt with. I'm okay with a GOP congress and Biden probably will be also (to help manage expectations of the extremists).

The real question in my mind is will true Trump loyalists overwhelm Congress or will there be more "traditional" GOP.

Politicians and ultra rich donors (corporate and personal; private lobbyists) have ruined our government.

The fact that the Dems are running ads bragging about a tax cut they just let expire is probably a bad sign for what they can run on this year.

I do think there will be a lot of establishment Dems who will breathe a sigh of relief after they lose. Can go back to complaining and raising money without any expectations.

Those odds are probably as high as they are because there's still a long time till November. There isn't much most presidents can do even in good times to prevent losses in mid-terms, so I think too much is being made of this unless it turns into a total landslide (possible).

There have certainly been things that have gone very badly for Biden and the Democrats, but even if that hadn't happened, even if we didn't have inflation issues, they would *still* probably lose Congress. That could have been predicted at the latest when Biden's term *began*. 2024 is where the real question is. I think that will be the defining election of possibly the rest of my adulthood. Partly because it's a very open question how much the vote will even matter, how much abuse of power happens at the state level with elector certification, does the republic even continue to function, do we have a 'nuclear option' situation where both major party nominees show up to the inauguration expecting to be inaugurated, etc. We'll either take a step back from the brink at that point, or fall off the cliff.

From what I've read, redistricting has been kind to the Democrats and they have been able to gerrymander away some seats. So that might play a role in it as well.

I think it has reached a point that no matter who wins in 2024, the majority of the people on the other team will firmly believe that the election was stolen.

That's not a statement that I think it will be stolen, just a statement about how deeply divided we are as a country and how different the narrative is depending on who you believe are the sources of not-fake news.

Pretty good rundown of the Hunter Biden laptop. Washington Post hired two skilled computer experts to go through it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/techn...data-examined/

Seems the biggest issue is that so many people went through and tried to fuck around on the hard drive that it makes it really hard to verify what is real. They do seem to have a pretty good sense that the e-mails are authentic. Although it doesn't seem like there was much salacious stuff in them.

And that's a huge win for the post-truth far-right. I can show where voter suppression is helping the GOP, just look at the data coming out of the TX primary, but there's literally no evidence of wide-spread fraud. To just write it off as both sides... gives the GOP what they are after.

Hard to predict the impact of ending Roe and a flood of abortion bans will do for November, but it's going to play a big role.

The trend will continue that the party with the least amount of votes will continue to rig the process to keep control. I mean, we've gotten to a point where dems need to win +6% or so to stay in power thanks to redistricting.

I don't think we have a good reason to think Democrats would do that. Republicans, yes. But the Virginia governor's race just as one example, they accepted the outcome. I think if Trump were to run again and beat Biden (or whatever), they'd be very, very angry. The #NotMyPresident protests would be a pleasant memory. But there's just no major movement on that side of the electorate to not accept the results of elections.

I think we need to know more about your sources.

The difference is that Democrats are complaining about voter suppression, for which there is plenty of evidence, while Republicans are complaining about voter fraud, for which there is almost no evidence (and, LOL, many if not most of the cases involve fraud committed by Republicans).

For someone who successfully applies an objective and data-driven approach to football, which I appreciate, I have always been mystified by why you can't do the same for political topics.

Many Democrats complained that election was stolen in 2000(Bush v Gore),2004, and to a lesser extent in 2016.

Yes, there was some noise in 2016 among House Dems but they couldn't get enough support from Senate Dems to make anything of it. And the vast majority of Democrat leadership acknowledged Trump's victory within hours/days of the election.

I think if Trump won again (fairly, without state election interference/help), there would certainly be anger but I think most of it (at least, the rational part) would be focused on the voter suppression laws and fears about what he will do as President. That said, when you have someone who so clearly attempted to illegally take the presidency 4 years earlier, I can't think of a better scenario for assuming fraud/illegality was the reason for his win, even if you can't find the evidence. So, I'm a little mixed on how loudly the Dems would proclaim that this must be fraud just based on past bad acts. It will certainly put them in a catch 22 to do so, without any evidence.

Just another reason why I hope Trump doesn't (or can't) run for president.

Eurozone inflation soars to record 7.5 percent in March – POLITICO

Americans' takeaway: Biden is such a bad president that he's making inflation go up EVERYWHERE :rolleyes:

Gas prices, too!

SI