Iuz the Evil

Let's not forget they helped engineer the 10/7 attack:
 
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-israel-hamas-strike-planning-bbe07b25
 
Israel may have hit them first in this round of Poke the Bear, but I don't think Iran deserves any praise for restraint. 

JUST dropped into my inbox...US believes a branch of ISIS, based in Afghanistan and a frequent critic of Putin, is responsible for the Moscow attack that...last I saw...claimed 40 lives.

And, yeah...fearmongering is likely sufficient explanation too.  And certainly, BOTH can be true.

The Republican Study Committee, comprising more than 170 GOP House Republicans, released a budget proposal for 2025 on Wednesday. Among its "high points" are: raising the retirement age; enshrining "life begins at conception" as national law; lowering social security benefits; making Medicare compete with private insurance plans; and general reduction in "entitlements" spending. You can read the text of the proposal here.
 
It should be noted that Republican lawmakers in electorally vulnerable states are already disavowing the proposal. But it's reasonable to assume that this is what the GOP would do if they regain power.
 
Democrats have already started heatedly denouncing it. If they make that a significant part of their campaigning, the Republicans may have handed the Dems the key to a majority in Congress.

The University of Memphis is public institution, and as such counts as a government entity. 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/europe/sweden-join-nato-official-intl/index.html
 
Sweden ends a 200 year policy of nonalignment going back to the Napoleonic wars to join NATO. This is absolutely devastating to Putin’s dreams of empire reconstruction, and in my opinion a huge success for the safety and stability of Europe in the face of Russian expansionism. It’s also a repudiation for military adventurism as a political tool. 
 
Good news in my book. Sweden is no joke, Finland either, when it comes to their military contribution to the alliance. As a deterrent force, NATO just got stronger.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/europe/sweden-join-nato-official-intl/index.html
 
Sweden ends a 200 year policy of nonalignment going back to the Napoleonic wars to join NATO. This is absolutely devastating to Putin’s dreams of empire reconstruction, and in my opinion a huge success for the safety and stability of Europe in the face of Russian expansionism. It’s also a repudiation for military adventurism as a political tool. 
 
Good news in my book. Sweden is no joke, Finland either, when it comes to their military contribution to the alliance. As a deterrent force, NATO just got stronger.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/europe/sweden-join-nato-official-intl/index.html
 
Sweden ends a 200 year policy of nonalignment going back to the Napoleonic wars to join NATO. This is absolutely devastating to Putin’s dreams of empire reconstruction, and in my opinion a huge success for the safety and stability of Europe in the face of Russian expansionism. It’s also a repudiation for military adventurism as a political tool. 
 
Good news in my book. Sweden is no joke, Finland either, when it comes to their military contribution to the alliance. As a deterrent force, NATO just got stronger.

"Infinite accumulation of wealth" is not a problem unique to capitalism. As Acemoglu and Robinson note in How Nations Fail, there's evidence that from the moment human societies began generating surpluses, there've been ruling classes to expropriate that surplus and use it to entrench their position. Brutal extraction of wealth from the many for the benefit of a few has been the rule across ages and continents. The only exceptions are hunter/gatherer societies so small and/or poor as to have no significant division of labor.
 
A contrary process is possible: Enough of the population has enough wealth (and therefore power) to resist the rulers' desire to extract ever-larger shares of the society's total wealth and power, and indeed share out more wealth and power more broadly, is possible. It's happened in modern centuries. At every step, though, the ruling class resists -- and sometimes succeeds in reversing the outward division of wealth and power, and restores the vicious cycle of wealth concentration, leading to greater concentration of power, which is used to extract and concentrate wealth still further.
 
I'll argue that capitalism is in many ways a social and moral improvement on what came before, in that it requires a large population of customers. The ruling class of the super-rich need to grant the masses at least enough wealth to buy the products of their own labor, or the money machine stops spinning. It's possible that the super-rich decide they don't care, and they'd rather get bigger shares of a smaller pie, which is why the rest of us have to keep pushing for a more distributive, less extractive, ecponomy and political system.
 
It may be that some other system can be devised that generates even more wealth than capitalism and spreads it more equitably. We don't have it yet.
 
Dean Shomshak

Mission accomplished

Voted, civic duty accomplished

Voted, civic duty accomplished

Voted, civic duty accomplished

Voted, civic duty accomplished

Voted, civic duty accomplished

I've made it a policy not to stress myself over things I can do nothing about. As America's great humorist Will Rogers said, "Worry is like paying interest on a debt you may never owe."
 
We in the rest of the world can do little to influence American politics. You in America who understand what's happening, know what you can do and have to do, and hopefully are motivated to do it. All that remains is to do it, and await the result. Everything else is waste.

The solution is to not give in to despair.
 
If Trump loses -- and I have great hope that he will -- it could get quite bad. Will it be worse than a decade of civil rights conflicts? Or a decade of great depression? Or four years of civil war?
 
I have faith that America will eventually find its way out of whatever it faces, because it has proven itself resilient time after time.
 
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

That was '08, and Obama didn't start out as the front runner.  Heck, I didn't think he could win, because there would be too much racial backlash.  By the time Obama had that position, I suspect it would've been too late to try to invoke the birther argument.
 
Plus, the lines of political behavior shifted greatly.  They didn't have (or at least, feel they have) the clout to make reprisal threats work.  They DARN sure do now.  
 
Last, it's plausible they would never try to kick Biden off the ballot.....until the move to kick Trump off.  That opened the Pandora's Box, so they can posture about it...even though the grounds for removing Trump are notable, while the grounds they invoke are fatuous.
 
Besides, they don't need to win these sideshows.  They think they'll win the general, so as long as there's no major disruption (a serious criminal conviction)...delay is on their side.

I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about the cognitive facilities of any individual running for President who is of an age to be required to show up in person to renew a license and is subject to family requests for license review. The Donald exceeds that by a healthy margin in California (70), as does his opponent.
 
 It would be nice to have candidates with a little less tread worn off their tires, but it is what it is. I could see either of them not having their full cognitive facilities, and likely both.

I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about the cognitive facilities of any individual running for President who is of an age to be required to show up in person to renew a license and is subject to family requests for license review. The Donald exceeds that by a healthy margin in California (70), as does his opponent.
 
 It would be nice to have candidates with a little less tread worn off their tires, but it is what it is. I could see either of them not having their full cognitive facilities, and likely both.

”ChatGPT, find me a girlfriend. A real one this time.”
 
Tinder Owner Signs ChatGPT Deal. Enjoy the AI Dating Tidal Wave
 

Labor is a large chunk of cost for the food industry, between 25-35% typically. Just FYI, a quick Google will confirm this. It’s a service industry, labor is a significant cost factor.

Indeed, I like Captain Carter. I do not understand why the Watcher cares about her more than the billions of humans (trillions?) who die in the course of the incidents he’s observing. 

Do Floridians really not recognize how big a joke their state is to the rest of America already?