I mean, she no longer holds the title of House Speaker, but the idea that Jeffries is the leader is a joke. After Harris lost, NYT was interviewing Pelosi, not Jeffries. She didn’t let Jeffries take over because she was abdicating power; she was deflecting criticism.

Oh man, I missed that one. I considered mentioning the time she hugged Lindsey Graham at the Amy Coney Barrett hearing because she apparently thought Barrett was a Democrat, or the time she left the Senate for 3 months because of shingles and, when a reporter questioned her on it, claimed she’d never left. In the end, I just picked the simplest example in the interest of brevity. Also, Jerry Nadler is only just now being forced out of the Judiciary Committee, and he shit himself on live TV a few years ago.

Yes. There were stream powered bikes since the mid-19th century, the earliest motorcycles were basically bikes with combustion engines attached, and there were even battery-powered electric bikes available at the turn of the 20th century. Here’s an electric bike from 1935:

I guess so, but it seems like the bike would have already fit that niche in 1944.

OK, but this appears to carry a maximum of two people and doesn’t look like it has a trunk, so…how would this be better than public transit? Realistically, anyone who bought this would still need a full sized car to support a family of more than two, so this thing would only work for single people or childless couples. It’s cool, and certainly better than everyone owning their own sedan, but not exactly a practical solution to car culture.

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I mean, I’m sure they will, but I doubt it will make a difference. Trump almost got it twice this summer. He’s only alive because he was incredibly lucky the first time, and the second time, the shooter was incompetent. Meanwhile, in the last 25 years, schools have added metal detectors, more police, active shooter drills, and bullet-proof walls, but it’s only amounted to security theater. I’m sure there will never be another assassin who escapes and leads police on a 5-day manhunt, but there are too many guns in America to prevent a guy with a death wish from gunning down a CEO or billionaire.

Fucking good. This attitude of waiting your turn and rewarding loyalty over ability is how we wound up with an incompetent gerontocracy. Imagine if the party hadn’t tried to anoint Hillary Clinton, didn’t coordinate around Biden in 2020, forced Biden to face a real primary in 2024…and that’s just the Presidential races. Remember when Dianne Feinstein was so confused that someone had to tell her how to vote during an Appropriations Committee Meeting? We can’t keep giving Democrats power because it’s, “their turn.”

Well, A) the point isn’t that, “fan service,” created this change. It’s that people’s willingness to side with outlaws over institutions is a good barometer of public anger, and based on the United Healthcare killing, people are fucking pissed. B) FDR passed banking reform and social welfare programs that created decades of economic stability and only lost their efficacy after half a century of conservative attacks chipped away at them. I’m not sure why you think a historical example of the sort of fundamental, radical change in talking about doesn’t count just because the Baby Boomers fucked it all up.

Yes. A decade after it was repealed, we had the largest financial collapse since it was enacted, and now we’re dealing with higher income inequality than we had during the Gilded Age. What part of this is meant to invalidate my point?

I actually don’t expect CEOs and billionaires to make any concessions. Honestly, this is how I imagine the next few years going:

Right now, billionaires are waking up to the fact that the majority of Americans want them dead. CEOs will start beefing up security while politicians and pundits try to spin this, and they’ll all hope this was a one-off. It won’t be. Sure, there probably won’t be another assassin who escapes and leads police on a five day manhunt, but there will surely be a guy with an AR-15 who takes out billionaire or CEO before getting gunned down himself by cops or private security.

Billionaires will start lobbying for protections from Congress, probably through special treatment from federal law enforcement and a push for gun control. This will only further enrage the public, who have faced mass shootings in schools and churches without any response. On top of that, the Trump administration is gearing up for an era of naked corruption, which is going to make the billionaire class even less popular

All in all, I think we’re heading towards a period of political instability and violence. Maybe it will end with public rage being channeled into a series of reforms like FDR managed with the New Deal. Maybe we’ll devolve even further into oligarchy and authoritarianism as American society collapses. Either way, I think there will be radical change.

Anyway, that’s my theory. Maybe I’m wrong, and this will be a blip, but I don’t think so. This feels like a very different, very significant moment.

More like how FDR used the banks’ need for government assistance to force regulation on them through the 1933 Banking Act and the Glass-Steagall Act.

During the Great Depression, people were so angry at banks that they rooted for bank robbers. Things are so bad now that we’re just straight up rooting for cold-blooded executions. Censoring people’s online activities won’t make this anger go away. The genies out of the bottle now, and if billionaires don’t want any more dead CEOs, there will need to be fundamental, radical changes to our society.

There’s a lot of really good episodes. Every season, at least 2-3 episodes are really standout.

OK, but out of a 22 to 23 episodes a season, that means at best…what, around 9 to 13% of episodes are really good? I think I’d rather just watch Bob’s Burgers than watch the Simpsons and hope every 7th or 8th episode approaches its former glory.

A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Mr. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.

In speeches to employees, Mr. Thompson spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided, the employee said.

The speeches:

LOL, here I was trying to figure out the significance of the rest of it.

Holy shit, I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this. Thanks!

Oh, Jesus, I didn’t know that. I knew a bunch of them got vocal about being less supportive of trans folks after the election, but I didn’t realize they were campaigning on. Do you have any names or a source? I don’t doubt you, I just want to know more.

Wait, they, “used Republican hatred,” as in they used clips of Republicans being hateful, or they adopted Republicans hateful positions? Just trying to clarify what you mean.

The worst part to me is that Tim Walz already demonstrated how to handle trans issues, which to make the Republicans fixation on them the issue. Don’t get bogged down in all their shitty arguments, just say, “Why are you so obsessed with where people go to bathroom? Mind your own business, weirdo.”

This is exactly what I think. I really want to be positive, but the more time passes, the more I’m convinced that the message they’ll take from this isn’t, “we need to return to our New Deal roots,” but, “we got too into, ‘identity politics,’ let’s not talk about trans issues anymore.”

I think the final test as to whether there is any hope left for the party is if they select Rahm Emanuel for the DNC chair. If they do, then progressives just need to move on; this party has nothing left to offer, even as a method of countering fascism. We’d be better off trying our luck with third parties than these perennial losers.