Looking at comments on the bird site, I am pleasantly surprised at the number of submersible experts who are also Kremlinologists.

This screams "white panic"

I somehow feel this will backfire spectacularly. Younger kids can be dumb like the rest of us, but there is one thing they are exceptionally smart about: spotting and mocking lame-ass adults.

There is already little tolerance among (a lot of) younger folk for climate denialism and general right wing jackassery. Adding a cut-rate Donald Duck screeching about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion or how windmills are dangerous is just gonna’ cement the lameness for them. Now, if we could just do something about the grown-up idiots on Facebook, we’d be cooking.

Amazed at how the same people who defend a business model that depends on price inelasticities to extract the last dime for lifesaving meds somehow react with horror at the idea that the biggest negotiator of pharmaceutical prices in the U.S. has the gall to negotiate lower prices. The government isn’t ‘dictating’ anything. It is using its market power to drive the price down.

That is the vaunted free market at work. Anything else is just corporate socialism.

Everything is projection with this guy.

Our distinguished House Speaker voted against expulsion.

OP, we have received reports about the source of this post. Reviewing it, there is a good bit of libertarian and what could be considered pro-Russian propaganda elsewhere on the site, to the point it could be fairly considered an opinion blog pushing an agenda. The headline also deviates from the original source reporting. Other mods may ultimately take this down, but in the meantime please consider substituting the original article upon which this (opinion) piece was based:

https://archive.li/QmPGT

And yet, senior citizens will vote in droves for any candidate who opposes this.

But anti-vax misinformation , which literally kills people, is perfectly fine.

This guy likes to portray himself as a rationalist and a free thinker, but he is nothing more than a scared man-child willing to pander to the dregs of society just for $8 and a dose of validation.

The sooner this festering boil of a social media site implodes, the better.

Add the Carroll verdict and we are North of $440 million in about 3 weeks.

Edit: Also need to calculate statutory interest on top of this. Appeal bond is going to be brutal.

The problem as I see it is not that they have been critical of Biden, but that they are not ringing the alarm bells loudly enough over some of the batshit garbage Trump has been spewing recently. “Dictator on day one”, cutting off funding for schools that require vaccinations, etc.

It is reminiscent of the “both sides” criticism moderates get — in an effort to provide even coverage, they are functionally giving the crazy and the corrupt a free pass.

I wonder if Congress can withhold SCOTUS operational funding until something is done? Sure, the justices can take expensive vacations funded by billionaires, but if that is the way it is gonna be, they can get used to hearing cases in a Publix parking lot.

Power of the purse belongs to Congress and this is all about respecting separation of powers, right?

The grim irony is that a lot of the pain will be felt in red Southern and Western states.* When the power grid goes down for good in Texas in 15 years or so, nursing homes filled with a lot of these climate skeptics are not going to be fun places.

*Yes, pour one out for SoCal.

Vaccines don't work. Global warming is a lie. The United States is not a democracy. Babies are too small to be seen with the naked eye and can be frozen and thawed out. Biden is corrupt because Vladimir Putin said so. Am I missing anything?

There is a rising GOP faction that wants a white ‘Christian’ authoritarian regime so badly that they will adopt one in Russia.

I’ll take four part-time admins trying their best over a corporate tool any day. Slick platforms have a way of turning into shitty platforms over time when money is involved and the whole business model is about luring in the masses to drive engagement metrics.

Your principles are sound. The rest will come.

Unions were never given power in this country. They have always had to fight for it and take it. Today is no different. And one of the first fights that has to be won, one upon which most of the others rest, is to crush once and for all the pernicious belief in this country that what is good for business owners is good for workers.

No, what is good for workers is good for workers.

They know exactly what they are doing.

The problem is that a vocal minority (edit: majority, these days) of GOP voters care deeply about culture war FUD and reliably show up at the ballot box. In the meantime, large swathes of the Democratic base are just not seeing anything in the candidates who claim to speak on their behalf that inspires them to get out and vote.

Add a demographic tilt toward older voters who are easy to scare and have time on their hands to turn out and run the gauntlet of election day inconvenience, and this is what you get.

Don’t know if the article picked this up, but in Georgia a pardon board, not the governor, makes the pardon determination and, I am told, requires that a portion of the criminal sentence be served before a pardon is considered. This is a tough case to prosecute, and these are uncharted waters, but it raises the specter of a candidate running for president from behind bars.

There are a lot of good responses to you here. @FatCrab raised mercenary use of U.S. forces - I am not familiar with that story but I believe Trump advisor Erik Prince did in fact offer mercenary support to the Wagner group.

Trump at one point mooted invading Venezuela. Members of the GOP (and reportedly Trump himself) are currently floating the idea of bombing Mexico. And let's not forget, Trump has famously threatened to use the military against American citizens.

So unless you want to leave the impression that you are just a right wing troll on a drive by, which would not be healthy for your long-term prospects here, perhaps you'd care to expound on the nuance of your argument?

The populist GOP is as intellectually bankrupt as it is morally bankrupt. Because it has no animating principle beyond fear and greed, its leaders will never stop with this bullshit. They will dip into endless oceans of manufactured outrage to fuel one attack after another on vulnerable out groups. Ad infinitum, for ever and ever.

We will have peace only after they are driven out of government utterly and completely, and their leadership is ripped root and branch from public life. The only real question is whether that is going to be possible while (hopefully) avoiding bloodshed.

I didn't really read it that way, but see what you mean.

But along those lines, I'm a "vote blue to keep the troglodytes out" type, and supported the ACA as an incremental step, but I'm also appreciative of the criticism coming from further left over current healthcare policy. If the ACA really was an incremental step, then we shouldn't be talking about backsliding -- the administration should be prioritizing a push in the other direction. We can debate what that entails, and may be about to today, but the discussion should be about getting more folks covered.

West is right in the quote above. Progressives have every right to advocate and agitate through the primaries and beyond. Arguments about electoral unity in the face of creeping fascism definitely have their place, but it is way too soon to be making them. (Edit: in other words, take a wider view and save that messaging for the general election).

Primary season is where the edges of a coalition have a chance to pull the party back from the center. West probably can’t win, but his voice and others like it are keeping the Overton window from drifting ever rightward. You don’t have to agree with everything he says to appreciate that he is out there.

So “Arbeit Macht Frei” basically.

I don’t know what is more disturbing, that they are incorporating actual fascist ideology into their curricula, or that these supposed ‘educators’ are so ignorant of history that they don’t realize they are doing so.

“We ought not promote, celebrate or support what scripture condemns,” said Dana Gonzalez, who was in favor of withdrawing, before quoting scriptures from the Bible she said condemned “what Emily has stated,” referring to the ALA president-elect.

I am sure that the American Libraries Association is shattered that they are losing the learned theological commentary of Dana Gonzalez and the rest of the Montana State Library Commission.

He wants to be able to direct the Justice Department to ignore his crimes and persecute his political enemies. <— Writing this, I realize it flows off the keyboard as the sort of breathless rage bait that you see on Twitter, but in this case it is literally true.

Y’all are doing yeopeople’s work! The transparency is much appreciated.

Given how compartmentalized secret military programs are supposed to be, there is a good chance that there is some secret squirrel program out there about which a rumor gets circulated by those in government but OUT of the know, and it gets wilder and wilder in the retelling until … aliens.

And yet, they will turn around and blame us for “incivility” if we call them out as stupid and superstitious. For banning books and firing librarians.

Death threats and actual harassment are serious business and are a matter for law enforcement, but a great strategy for dealing with the casual climate denier, anti-vaxxer, or Q idiot, is to just laugh at them. Not with, at. They cling to these ridiculous theories because at some level they want to feel in control and relevant in a scary world that they either won’t or can’t understand.

Treating them like kooks and refusing to get aggravated hits them the hardest because it tickles that suspicion that they really don’t get it. On the other hand, getting frustrated and trying to debate them about whether Hillary eats children just fuels the internal narrative that they are heroic truth warriors holding out in a hostile world.

Either way, kooks are gonna kook. You are not going to change their mind anyway, so why let it destroy your mental health.

I would certainly pay to see a Karlach/Barbie crossover.

This is frightening stuff. I feel like it should be at the top of every newscast, every conversation, but somehow we seem to be sleepwalking into the end of democracy. A “nah, can’t happen here” attitude, coupled with Trump fatigue, social media distractions, struggling to make ends meet, and good old fashioned apathy, are going to get people killed.

The truth is, the biggest pharmaceutical companies aren’t really drug development companies at all: they’re marketing, lobbying, and litigation firms with patent portfolios. While Big Pharma holds vast portfolios of existing patents for prescription drugs, the innovation pipeline for new drugs actually has very little to do with Big Pharma. In reality, public sources — especially the NIH — fund the basic research that makes scientific breakthroughs. Then small, boutique biotech and pharmaceutical firms take that publicly generated knowledge and do the final stages of research, like running clinical trials, that get the drugs to market. The share of small companies in the supply of new drugs is huge, and it’s still growing. Fully two-thirds of new drugs now come from these small companies, up from one-third twenty years ago. It is not the research labs of Pfizer that are developing new drugs.

This is completely true. The majority of research, at least for life saving drugs and not baldness cures, takes place at universities and small research firms, much of it funded by the NIH. If the investigators are successful, they spin off a company or license the IP.

Big drug companies then step in, long after the initial “drug discovery” is done. They have captured the regulatory system and, yes, can fund and run Phase 3 trials with their deep pockets and armies of bureaucrats, but at that point they are acting more like record labels, extracting rent (loosely defined) from a convoluted regulatory and distribution system that they themselves had a hand in creating.

Fuck ‘em.

With Russian leadership rattling the nuclear saber, the PRC eying Taiwan, and the Middle East a mess of low grade conflict, it is astounding that one Senator is allowed to hold the entire military leadership structure hostage.

It is almost as if he and his apologists view uppity women who demand bodily autonomy as the greater threat to the nation.

We have all heard the “never wrestle a pig” adage. This is the pig picking a fight. It is a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters and politicize the concept of justice. The proper response - both rhetorically and ethically, is to say “show me the evidence under penalty of perjury in a court of law and we will be the first to hold Biden, or anyone else, accountable.”

I thought we settled this shit in 1865.

That was a dig directed at those that shout “socialism “ at things that are clearly not socialism (like negotiating prescription drug prices), but you are of course correct. Thank you for correcting my rhetorical excess, internet friend!

This one was always going to be a long shot. The real story here (or one real story, I guess) is why nobody had the guts to ask Thomas to recuse himself.

The Right: Political violence committed in the name of Islam is “terrorism” and all Muslims bear collective responsibility for stopping it.

Also the Right: Political violence committed in the name of white supremacy can only be attributed to mental illness. Don’t you dare hurt the feelings of white folks by suggesting their grievance-based political movements are to blame.