In general, preventing abuse via static rules is really difficult. People who want to abuse the system are innovative. Most systems really depend on having people who respond to the abuse by stopping it more than having specific written rules to block the kinds of abuse that have happened in the past.

Four states don't use first-past-the-post for legislative elections. In particular:

• Alaska - uses a top-4 primary + ranked choice general
• Maine - uses ranked choice voting
• California & Washington - use top-two primaries (note: CA can be top-3 if there is a tie for 2nd place)

If a third party wanted to succeed, they would put significant resources into winning legislative and congressional seats in those places. I don't see any of them actually doing that though.

They wanted to redact witness names before releasing it.

While I've known that for a while, a lot of the press was in utter denial months after he gave this money, as with this NYT article dated December 10, 2022

Mostly because the progressives didn't control them in the early 1900s, so they don't have legislature-bypassing initiatives, and even in states where you do have that, it's expensive to get one through.

Political change tends to be like that — nothing at all for a long period when you don't have the power to act, and sudden rapid change when you do.

An archived copy shows

J.D. Vance Freaks Out Over the Slightest Pushback in V.P. Debate

Because the old folks who own stuff grew up during a period of ever-rising crime rates as cases of mild lead poisoning from gasoline caused a huge increase in violent crime. They don't get that it's somewhere around as safe as it was during the 1950s.

Pretty much.

There's a contagion effect, where news of school shootings inspires others to attempt the same.

The thing that's amazing is that Walz did these things in the 1990s, when it was still reasonably common to fire teachers for any kind of hint they might be gay. That takes real courage.

The current position of the NYPD is that some random black guy wandering past a crime scene after the cops shot up a crowd decided to steal the knife that the cops considered to be key evidence. This is, to put it mildly, somewhat less credible than the claim that a crow tried to steal a murder weapon.

Yes. For context, Texas gladly executed a guy for arson in a situation where scientific developments since his trial made it very clear that the evidence didn't really show that arson had happened in the first place

Right now, it's looking like the Supreme Court is going to say "that's not allowed" but do it in a way that prevents Trump from being tried before the election. This lets them say "we're good and ethical" while protecting Trump from the consequences of his criminality:

The Supreme Court appeared poised to reject Donald Trump’s sweeping claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges of trying to subvert the 2020 election, but in a way that is likely to significantly delay his stalled election-interference trial in D.C.

People are trying. Not clear that it will actually work.

Also not clear if military recruiters can enlist ones that have been frozen for 18 years.

It should, but high-quality fakes trick a large chunk of the population. As such, they ought to be treated in the same way as other non-consensual content

Yep.

If he had something like a normal healthy interest in sex, even with a bit of a kink, nobody would care.

Announcing that you're a Nazi and pro-slavery is the problem here.

He's trying to deal with his own previous statement, which implied that Blacks can only aspire to holding some kinds of jobs.

He didn't run in the Democratic primary because while Democrats can be weird, Democratic voters, including the rest of the Kennedy family, tend to reject this kind of weird.

Just a reminder of who he is:

Sadly, this one involves burning the testicles of actual living monkeys, and not merely engaging in private pleasures

The article explicitly talks about lifting that cap:

Raising the cap that way — taxing affluent people more and everyone else less — would reduce the 3.5-point tax increase needed to fully fund Social Security to as little as 2.45 points, the Social Security system estimated.

Tell the world how much of a tool she is, and create an environment where she experiences social pressure.

Key difference: a major failure at the nuclear reactor is can kill people across a large area.

Taking out refineries is going to raise the cost of gas, and lower the value of oil, resulting in both a cut to drilling and to burning, which is a net benefit for people.

You can't be clear enough when it comes to language when dealing with somebody interested in willful misinterpretation. That's the problem here.

A bit snarky, but it's over his insurrection:

“He tried to overturn an election,” she said. “The very first time I ever ran, I didn’t win. I didn’t go out and try to change the election. I said, ‘Whoops, work harder next time, lady.’”

It's confabulation, which is what people do when they can't actually say something meaningful but feel an urge to speak. It's really common for people with mild to moderate cognitive impairment.

Companies have been allowed to treat pay as a business expense. Executive pay is pay, so they treat it as a cost of doing business.

The NYT repeats the lie in the headline, but buries the truth down in the article. The result is that people see the lie, and not the truth.

Very few people encountering an article on social media actually read it; something like 2% do so much as click through.

This pattern basically guarantees that a huge numbers of people will have a false belief.

It kind of makes the point that this is what they're doing even more explicit. The stuff they claim to care about? Not so much. Helping Putin? Definitely.

He didn't even go to a competent doctor for the Botox:

“[T]his expense was not reported to the FEC and was noted as ‘Botox’ in expense spreadsheets” turned over to investigators, it continues. The session took place at Mirza Aesthetics, a Manhattan medspa run by a doctor whose license was suspended in 2021 over breast and penile enhancements gone wrong.

Per the article:

There's evidence some Proud Boys are decamping to neo-Nazi groups. I'd argue that the Proud Boys are impacted by the same forces that are causing Moms for Liberty to falter. Republicans bet big into 2022 on far-right groups, but instead, the GOP underperformed in the 2022 and 2023 elections. The backfire effect is reducing enthusiasm for this new breed of culture warriors.

They're only making it quiet; the part that is going to place tens of thousands of people invested in the project into government if Trump is elected is still happening:

Another arm of the project, a personnel database of more than 20,000 applicants for potential political appointments should Trump be reelected, will remain in operation, people familiar with the matter said.

You can do more than that:

• Check your registration. Do it now. Do it few more times between now and November.
• Volunteer. There is nothing quite like talking to people.
• Donate. Campaigns run on money, and Trump has been raising more than Biden.

It's also worth paying attention to races further down the ballot; There are lists of close house and close senate races as well as a ton of competitive seats in state legislatures.

I don't believe any specific policy change which benefitted a broad swath of the public could have survived the current courts.

"Soros" is mostly a way of saying "Jew" with plausible deniability. There are plenty of other ways to do that

It's not happening by choice; it's happening because voters elected a state Supreme Court which forced it

No, because Jan 6 happened under the jurisdiction of the DC circuit, not the 5th circuit.

The state constitution has this in it:

The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.

This makes it possible to use state courts to force some level of environmental protection.

Because people see other peoples' abortions as evil. People don't view IVF or contraceptives or sex for fun in the same way, even if the anti-abortion movement does.