“total victory” sure sounds like they’ve given some thought to their objectives and it’s no accident they’re killing lots of civilians

I can remember when being conservative meant you believed we had a calling to be stewards of creation

LOL good times

I’ve been watching the tech to make actual meat from cell lines emerge with some optimism- it promises to make it possible for us to have meat in our diets without all the greenhouse gases and feedlots and the like- but it also threatens to consolidate the protein industry into even fewer corporate hands if it’s not well-regulated.

The meat industry is honestly pretty awful (environmentally, politically, ethically, etc.) and I find myself rooting for the plucky young frankenmonsters that might come along and knock them down even though I’m pretty sure they’ll be worse if they’re not well regulated from the start.

This is where windfall taxes come back into basic utility. Also it becomes the basis for antitrust action on price collusion if all the sellers coordinate

I AM GOD’S MESSENGER

…and what is God’s message?

GIVE GOD’S MESSENGER MONEY!

…you really do need to be specific. Otherwise, it sounds like you’re claiming that “the production processes” (of what, everything? all products in the entire economy?) require PFOAs- and that’s plain bullshit.

Yes, there are some products for which there aren’t equivalent inputs, and you don’t need to be vague and generalize over all of productive everything in the economy in order to make that point- but given the opportunity to be specific, you specified “production of base chemicals that are used in various other follow-up products” and that’s not a straight or specific answer to a direct question.

there is no other material known to withstand the temperatures and pressures needed in the production processes?

Production of what, exactly?

I think the biggest problem isn’t the tax rate, but the fact that the billionaire class can circumvent the tax system entirely

That’s only possible because they’re allowed to buy influence in the system to make it allow for that. In reality, the other threats (they’ll take their wealth to other countries and leave us poor) are bluffing; most of their wealth isn’t portable. Also in reality, most of the policies they demand (and get) aren’t democratically popular, they’re only viable because they spend so much collective money on propaganda and think tanks to get people thinking the money will trickle down or that without them as ‘job creators’ all will be spoiled or lost.

It’s bullshit, and it only works because we let it work. Apparently we need to move in hundred-year cycles between letting the titans of industry squeeze everyone dry before we remember to assert public power to prevent that

it is literally just Poland between Germany and russia

Poland has one of the most powerful militaries in Europe. If you think Russia’s been struggling in Ukraine, you haven’t seen anything yet. Since Poland joined the EU (and later, NATO) it’s become much more prosperous than it was under Soviet/Russian influence:

It’s been using that prosperity to spend on military. It’s not the pushover from days of yore any more, and it’s in NATO

I usually use the name of the drug when there are multiple brands with trade names for it, or when there are trade-name drugs that use multiple formulations with different ingredients.

For example, famotodine is the active agent in Pepcid and Zantac. Omeprazole is sold as Prilosec and Losec. Acetaminophen is in Tylenol, Tempra, and Panadol When I want Pseudoephedrine and not phenylephrine, they’re both branded under the trade name ‘Sudafed’ but only one of them really works for sinus pressure. When I want Dextromethorphan or Guaifenesin (active ingredients in Robitussin) there are lots of other brands (Nyquil, dayquil, etc) that deliver them and knowing which drug is which and what part they do means I can pick which one to use if I don’t want the other one’s shitty side effects.

My optimistic side thinks this will be monitored, at least some of the names he gets will be wrong in ways that will identify him as the leaker when their names become public or they are harassed by MAGA types. My pessimistic side thinks this is the way our justice system works- with rules that don’t apply to wealthy or powerful people and even though he’s repeatedly set his flying monkeys after his enemies or those he wants to ‘go through some things’, they’ll let him because he’s innocent until proven guilty again

Yes, the downsides of at-large reps would surely be that if no one rep is responsible for particular local issue(s), it’s possible that none would take it up and that would leave some constituencies unrepresented. My thought about that is that when district maps are drawn to purposely divide particular constituencies (I mean, look at all those pack-and-crack maps that split minority groups into districts that mostly elect people that don’t represent them), an at-large system might allow those constituencies to unify around particular at-large reps?
I don’t know, I’m spit-balling here. But thank you for taking up the question constructively!

Ranked Choice Voting? 100% approve.

Get rid of the EC entirely. The popular vote would work quite a bit better as a means of ensuring power is exercised with the consent of the governed.

Scotus and congress both desperately need oversight that is different from ‘we oversee ourselves and find we did nothing wrong’ when obvs. that doesn’t work too well

Tax prep companies… I wish them a prompt and thorough viking funeral.

Fun fact about corporate power at the time of the framers: the colonists felt first-hand the abuse of being effectively governed by crown corporations and shortly after the founding of the USA, corporations were drastically limited in what they could do- for example, they could not engage in politics, they could not own other corporations, could not engage in activities not strictly related to their charters, had charters of finite span, and their charters could be revoked for any violations. If corporations are going to be people today, it’s about damned time we started charging them with crimes when they commit crimes- and yank their charters if they re-offend.

One thing worth questioning: do we really need representative districts? Why not have at-large representatives on a per-state basis, with seats allocated to states/apportioned via census? It would be pretty hard to gerrymander an at-large system, I think

It’s like the Supreme Court thinks it can supersede the constitution because it thinks the amendment was poorly worded

That, or they had an outcome they wanted and found a way to get it

Older, usually 55+. People here bike into old age

LOL I’m in my 50s and still racing

the rest of jumbo kinda let him go for it

Kind of, but that stuff didn’t happen in a vacuum. Sepp was able to get into the breakaway in the early stages mostly because the favorites were looking at Roglic and Vingegaard, thinking they were jumbo’s plan and at most he’d be set up as a satellite rider to support them in a later attack. It was probably not expected that he’d end up with 2 minutes on GC, and when he did, that put the team under a lot of pressure to not be seen as attacking their own guy.

In the end jumbo did a pretty good job of supporting him (as opposed to tasking him with riding for Roglic or Vingegaard) but he still had to do the winning himself. He’s super-strong and I thought it was hilarious to hear the commentators expressing surprise that he could time trial as well as he can- I guess they’d decided he was just a climber. (but really, in his role as superdomestique it doesn’t make sense to go hard in time trial days, and as GC leader it absolutely made sense for him to do that)

While they’re at it, why not cap processing fees as junk fees? It for sure doesn’t cost 2.9% of your grocery bill to facilitate the payment- it’s all automated and there’s little to no labor involved in the actual processing, it’s just collecting economic rent

During his impeachment trials, the GOP argued that impeachments are not a criminal proceeding, they are a political one- so they acquitted on politics saying that this is for the courts to decide. Now that the matter is in the courts, they argue it’s for congress only, not the courts.

With a justice system like this one, who needs torches and pitchforks? /s

It’s so wild that the ‘but the people have democratic rights to choose among candidates’ crowd invoke that argument to make the candidate that’s promised to end democracy and rights one of the options they can vote for

You know, because democracy

there are a lot of birthrights which are increasingly only available if you have money

This is the logical consequence of the anti-new-deal/anti-desegregation/anti-civil-rights jurisprudence that turns on capital supremacy and property rights trumping the notion that the state has an interest in protecting any other sort of right; it’s something the capital supremacy folks have always wanted but which the desegregation crowd finally joined in on when they thought they could get segregation back by backing capital’s ability to smuggle discrimination under the skirts of its property interests.

When you look at the White Flight phenomenon and correlate it to the widespread disappearance of public 3rd places, When you notice that state colleges and universities lost funding and started hiking tuition shortly after desegregation meant black and brown people could attend them, it sure looks like Americans were faced with the decision to have desegregated public wealth or no public wealth, they chose the latter