@Simplicator No one runs for anything other than getting rid of or at least utterly cabining these bastards. Imaging state-level democracy can be business-as-usual while the nation and the world burn is delusional.
@Phil I know that's your view. But it's wrong.
On privacy violations alone, I think all of Musk's billions would be gone. And there is so much more.
I am looking forward to it.
I continue to oppose the death penalty. One must stick to ones principles even in difficult times.
Suppose the President and Vice President and Speaker of the House were impeached and removed.
Under a somber President Chuck Grassley, there comes a change of leadership at DOJ, eager to restore rule of law, and to vigorously hold to account people who violated the law from positions of trust. 1/
With an assertive DOJ looking at violations in labor law, classified material handling, privacy law, etc, how many years of prison, how many dollars of fines would Elon Musk + his young minions, former cabinet secretaries + their deputies, other advisors and political appointees be liable for? /fin
impeach, convict, remove, rinse, repeat.
impeach, convict, remove, rinse, repeat.
impeach, convict, remove, rinse, repeat.
impeach, convict, remove, rinse, repeat.
impeach, convict, remove, rinse, repeat.
i find it a bit weird how little we hear from Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Biden is old, i guess. but Harris could be at the rhetorical ramparts.
i think it would help. the quiet of the people we supposed our leaders is devastating.
thank you aoc, pritzker, bernie. more, more, more.
not long 'til blue states start making an official holiday of the ides of march.
why do voters mistrust Democrats? despite all the talk about bread and butter issues, why do many working class people feel like Democratic electeds just don't get them, might sell them out without even knowing it? why do they find it hard to get excited and turn out?
Screenshot of tweet from Variety. "Former Vice President Kamala Harris has signed with CAA for representation in all areas, with a focus on speaking engagements and publishing."
look. before i made the promise you advised me not to make the promise. so why are you acting like i'm doing something wrong if now i break the promise?
Fukuyama's end of history was kind of the magazine cover curse, but for a centuries-long historical cycle rather than years-long business cycle. It marked a top. I hope we don't have to wait centuries for the bottom.
@BenRossTransit @Alon @adamkotsko what you are calling the right wing has controlled the party, from an external perspective. the Harris campaign, for example, fell into this trap. describing the world accurately has to take that into account.
it’s an important project to try to reform the Democratic Party into something that could command a, well, moral majority (or else to build something else that could). but i think that’s a step beyond this analysis.
@BenRossTransit @adamkotsko i think he’s not drawing distinctions within the Democratic Party, but suggesting (accurately) that, in recent years, overall the party has defined the normative by past practice and legalistic intent, and sought to protect those “norms” from flamboyant and dangerous violations on the right. but sapped of their own calling out to deeper forms of legitimacy, its an ouroboros that eventually deprives itself of moral oxygen.
@BenRossTransit @adamkotsko i think you are right this was not true of New Deal and Warren Court Democrats. but i think he is right that, overall, “liberals” as defined by the Democratic Party have backed away from this kind on courage in insisting on the preeminence of a normative beyond legalism.
sometimes i wonder about the inner life of Lindsay Graham.
“Law always points beyond itself, toward the principle of justice, and that principle means that law can always be called into question. When law claims to be fully self-sufficient, it betrays itself and becomes a tool of injustice”
Excellent and true by @adamkotsko https://itself.blog/2025/02/18/law-and-justice/
a polity that periodically elects a king is no democracy, even if the elections are competitive. it’s not a state in a meaningful sense. either it devolves to “competitive authoritarianism” (one king always wins), or it falls to waste due to vertiginous schizophrenic reversals.
cf https://bsky.app/profile/abeardedpanda.bsky.social/post/3liinbgpozs23
@light @Canevecchio @johnstonphilip i’d say analogies of people to insects and pests are dehumanizing and to be avoided. our Trump of course is fine using that language about immigrants. i am far from fine with it. we now have people deported to Guantanamo and deported to Panama, where apparently they’ll be housed at a camp in the jungles of the Darien Gap. i hope conditions will be exquisite in both facilities. springs eternal.
free speech.
pro life.
from Hannah Arendt, via #EliasIsquith, via @resnikoff https://grattoncourses.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/responsibility-under-a-dictatorship-arendt.pdf
![Text (abridged to fit):
The only domain where the word [obey] could possibly apply to adults who are not slaves is the domain of religion, in which people say that they obey the word or the command of God because the relationship between God and man can rightly be seen in terms similar to the relation between adult and child.
Hence the question addressed to those who participated and obeyed orders should never be,](media_attachments/files/114/027/638/530/275/827/original/f2f60b290cd2f4c8.jpeg)
Text (abridged to fit): The only domain where the word [obey] could possibly apply to adults who are not slaves is the domain of religion, in which people say that they obey the word or the command of God because the relationship between God and man can rightly be seen in terms similar to the relation between adult and child. Hence the question addressed to those who participated and obeyed orders should never be, "Why did you obey?" but "Why did you support?" This change of words is no semantic irrelevancy for those who know the strange and powerful influence mere "words" have over the minds of men who, first of all, are speaking animals. Much would be gained if we could eliminate this pernicious word "obedience" from our vocabulary of moral and political thought. If we think these matters through, we might regain some measure of self-confidence and even pride, that is, regain what former times called the dignity or the honor of man: not perhaps of mankind but of the status of being human.
“The dismantling of Delaware’s corporate code in service of billionaires took a great leap forward today when state senate Democrats unveiled proposed legislation that will dramatically alter corporate governance with national implications.” #JordanHowell https://delawarecall.com/2025/02/17/deldems-roll-over-for-musk/
they found a man starving and pulled out a machete to remove the tumor.
now we only clap if the plane does tricks when it lands.
“the penalty for not complying is simply that you are ordered to comply.” #MattBruenig https://www.nlrbedge.com/p/the-futility-of-the-nlrb