The system changes you; you don’t change the system within.

And yet the magats did–they completely transformed the republican party–by getting their candidates “within” it. They started with the TEA party which didn’t try to get elected running as a 3rd party, which is impossible, but ran as tea party republicans. They made sure there were tea party candidates in every repub primary they could, running to the right of the “mainstream” R candidate. They won many of those primaries simply because it’s the activists who turn out for the primaries while most ignore them. Then in the general they won because republicans vote for whoever has the R by their name without thinking about it too much. This moved the R party to the right and drove out R moderates. Yes there were some losses because of the R being too far to the right for the general, but overall it brought the R party to what we see today.

Democrats have always been adamantly opposed to privatizing Medicare, Social Security, etc.

I’ll check and see if I can do that with this one!

I should have thought of that. Thanks! Ironically, I have a very old lead-acid UPS in the basement that I’ve been kind of afraid to plug in again after all this time.

Why removing the battery? I was thinking that could be one good thing about using a laptop is that in a way it has its own UPS.

Is that you, Hakeem?

Hey Dem politicians, it’s very clear. You do what the repubs always do when they’re in the minority. You vote against every. single. thing. they try to pass. You make speeches against every single thing they want to do on the floor of Congress, in every committee meeting, every town hall, every interview and every tweet. You also make sure to point out that repubs have the trifecta and everything bad that happens is their fault.

There is no moral ambiguity here, nothing to debate about, nothing to agonize over. “ooh we shouldn’t let the govt be shut down should we?” stop that! It’s already being shut down, you idiots–it’s being dismantled right before your eyes. If the question “should I go along with them on this one thing?” pops into your mind, the answer is NO. If you hear another Dem suggest going along with them on something, you slap that Dem in the face and tell them the next time they say that, it’ll be a punch them in the nose. Now replace Hakeem “wimp living in the past” Jeffries with Jasmine Crockett as Leader and get to it!

Very good documentary, but very depressing.

Sadly that’s what power does to people. It’s more addictive than crack, they can’t let go.

Wow, so history is already being rewritten to change it into Obama fucking around and not bothering to nominate a Justice (the fondest dream of every president), instead of knowing that McConnell who was Senate majority leader (repubs controlled the Senate), blocke it and refused to allow a vote on Obama’s nominee (Merrick Garland). JFC, it wasn’t even that long ago and people have already forgotten, or never bothered to pay attention in the first place, or believed some propaganda they came across. We’re so doomed.

call me when people start starving, power utilities stop producing power, and people no longer have water in their taps.

OK, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get a signal at that point.

Where’s the unpasteurized milk?

https://generalstrikeus.com/

That looks like a lot more practical approach.

The video on that page is pretty interesting.

Many years ago, I offered a girl in my dorm to get high with me and to my surprise she got very freaked out and scared, which I had never seen happen to anyone before. And what we smoked back in those days was much tamer than what they have today. I had to sit with her and keep her calm for what seemed like forever. Really harshed my mellow (from my language in this post, you can guess my age 😄 ).

Point is though, yes–some people can have a negative reaction to it. Was it mj-induced psychosis in this case? I dunno, I don’t know the definition. I don’t think she actually hallucinated or anything, it was more like a major anxiety attack.

To answer the original question, it’s because the earth is very large and retains the heat from warmer times preceding the solstice in the water bodies and the ground, like a buffer, so there is a lag time for things to lose that heat and get to the coldest air temps. As an analogy, if you heat up some rocks in the oven, then turn off the oven, the rocks will still stay hot for a long time and gradually cool off.

I thought the same thing. They have more video footage and we are seeing only 2 stills from it, but the coats are definitely different. But the hostel footage was from when he was checking in days earlier than the day of the shooting.

If he did it to instill fear in health insurance executives as a deterrent, then that means it was an act of terror. As an act of terror, that means the murdered CEO’s life insurance company does not have to pay out. Claim denied.

Jury selection question to weed out biased jurors: “Have you ever had a claim that was unfairly denied?”

Weeks later: “We have been unable to find enough jurors to try the case.”

It’s not like you have to give your SSN to a carrier to get a phone

Actually it is like that, if you are getting any kind of deal where you’re paying off the phone with your service plan and/or commit to a term contract. They use it to run a credit check on you. Most companies where you’re committing to a length of service do this. It happened to me when I was going to get some kind of cable or internet service one time, where you got x number of months free if you promised to keep the plan for two years. They asked for my SSN and I refused, so they wouldn’t complete the transaction. That’s how I found out about why they want your SSN.