There’s a huge difference between pulling out after two decades of boots on the ground, suffering casualties and spending trillions vs two years of sending your hand-me-down equipment to an ally who will do all the fighting, at a cost of 0.1% of your budget.

That’s some excellent analysis, thorough and compelling.

It’s just mind-blowing that we could be on the verge of handing over a victory to Putin. We’d be sacrificing our credibility on the world stage, demonstrating to everyone that America is unreliable and can be beaten by anyone with patience. The world would become more dangerous, more conflicts will flare up, and we’ll have far less control over our own fate.

And for what? So a few politicians can go back to their gerrymandered safe districts and say that they stuck it to Biden?

I can’t see trump taking a plea deal while he’s still running for president. He’s going to try to delay as long as he can, get elected, and then use his position as president to weasel out of any charges, even if it means pardoning himself. And since he’s that number 1 target, the one that they want bad enough to give lenient plea deals to others in exchange for testimony, I find it hard to believe that he’d be offered a plea that doesn’t send him to prison. So why admit to being guilty when he can keep telling his followers that it’s a witch hunt and generate more support?

A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Alina Habba, praised the appellate court after the Thursday hearing and quickly took advantage of the development.

Ms. Greenfield “is in the judge’s ear time and time again,” Ms. Habba said. “If she had a real threat, she should get off the bench.”

“We have never encouraged death threats against the individuals we scream about online, while sharing their names, pictures and even addresses. But if those people have gotten death threats at some point after our unrelated personal attacks, then clearly they should give in to the demands of the people threatening them. Demands which just so happen to align with our interests.”

I can only hope that this shithead ends up facing legal problems like so many other Trump lawyers. Or that she ends up getting doxed and harassed so severely that she becomes a recluse, though I’m not sure what she’d have to do to get anyone to give enough of a shit to put in the effort.

If we televise it, we’ll increase the chaos it causes, make it harder to get a conviction, and do nothing to convince his followers of anything. Remember Tucker Carlson getting the January 6 footage? The pro-Trump media outlets will do the same thing, selectively editing and showing only the parts that they want audiences to see.

Why? Because they are immature and emotionally stunted jackasses that care more about their own petty bullshit than they do about living in a civilized society and being decent human beings. And because they are spoiled shits who assume they will get away with it (which is unfortunately true).

This guy is full of shit though. We aren’t seeing violence because Republicans are fractured and trying to keep their party in line. Mullin was picking a fight with the head of the teamsters over tweets. And this isn’t even the first time Mccarthy has been accused of nonchalantly hitting someone while passing through the halls.

We’re seeing violence because all the mechanisms of power at work in the Republican party have been pushing out those who value ethics, cooperation, or civility, and raising up bullies who value aggression, hostility, and the unrestrained use of power.

At this point Conan the Barbarian could run on a platform of crushing his enemies, seeing them driven before him, and hearing the lamentations of their women, and he’d still come across as reasonable compared to some of these asshats. Hell, that would actually be less threatening than many of Trump’s speeches.

They’ve already said they won’t. And now that Santos has announced that he won’t seek reelection, they can criticize him and be as outraged as they want, since it won’t hurt their chances (however slim) of holding onto his seat. So they’ll act shocked and condemn his alleged misconduct, and try to give the appearance that they’ve done something so that they can distance themselves from him. And then they’ll continue to work with him and rely on him to vote alongside the rest of the party.

Politicians and ethics have always gone together like vampires and holy water. But at this point I think it’s pretty clear that there is no ethical violation so serious that the remaining Republicans would be willing to give up even the slightest political advantage to see it properly dealt with.

OK, so this isn’t an insanity defense, it’s them arguing that the specific charges don’t apply. The charges require an intent to target officials specifically for their role in government, and they argue he was targeting them because he believed they were involved in a conspiracy. So it’s not the equivalent of an insanity plea, it’s the equivalent of arguing that you shouldn’t be charged with murder because you didn’t intend to kill someone, which would mean you should be charged with manslaughter instead.

It’s still bullshit because the “conspiracy” would be one involving actions taken as a government official.

That’s how insanity pleas are supposed to work. You don’t go free, you just get locked up in a different place, and without a date set for your release.

This motherfucker is lamenting that people aren’t cool with political violence, and specifically references the type inflicted by pro-slavery legislators in the lead up to the civil war.

I know we are already living in the twilight zone, and the leading candidate for president is spewing nazi rhetoric and promising to put people in camps and imprison his political rivals. But can we just acknowledge that this piece of shit is going out of his way to embrace the kind of senseless violence committed by people who would go on to secede and wage war on the United States over their right to own people like cattle.

In a sane world, this asshat would have just ended his career. Here in the darkest timeline, he probably just secured his reelection.

Not only is there a lower margin, but the fact that EVs are lower maintenance means they will get less money from a customer coming into their service department. Not that it even needs to get to anything as farsighted as that when a sales guy gets a larger commission for an ICE vehicle. They aren’t going to spend time learning about a product that gets them paid less, they are going to say whatever it takes to steer a customer towards whatever gets them the biggest payday.

One of my favorite examples of ignorant dealers saying stupid shit was a dealer telling a would be customer that they weren’t able to bring EVs into their service dept because they have to be kept in a bomb proof shelter in case the battery explodes. This wasn’t even a sales guy, it was a manager in a service dept, at a dealer that (supposedly) sells and services EVs.

The automatic diverting of money to the copyright troll is the part that gets me. That really ought to open YouTube up for liability just as much if not more so than hosting copyright violating material. Copyright trolls should be facing fraud charges and systems that reward them should be under intense legal scrutiny.

Sadly, that’s not how it works and even if there was enough interest to organize and lobby for a positive change, there’d still be zero chance of congress anything useful in the foreseeable future.

While they could, that is also a different situation. YouTube copyright claims are generally done through YouTube’s own system, not through the actual DMCA process. That system is designed first and foremost to prevent YouTube from getting sued. It’s rigged in favor of the people claiming copyright because those are the ones doing the suing. Any attempt to fix it increases the chances of a lawsuit.

These trolls messing with Google are making actual DMCA claims, which is a formal legal process and opens the claimant up to potential liability. False claims are perjury. And by affecting Google search results on a large enough scale, they are hurting Google’s business. Those sites getting taken down abelong to current or potenti customers.

They are leaving ahead of the elections next year. I can think of quite a few reasons why they might do that.

• Staying means being forced to either defend the indefensible or facing backlash and challenges from the right, either of which could damage any future political ambitions they may have.
• Getting out now leaves room for others to get elected, which keeps them from being held responsible for their party losing a seat.
• They know how nasty things are going to get and they want out before leaving becomes too dangerous. It wouldn’t be the first time that Republicans in congress were afraid that pissing of Trump’s base could put them in harm’s way. That was not helped by Jim Jordan supporters agitating their followers and stirring up death threats against their colleagues just to get their way during the fight to become speaker.
• Because they are getting pushed out behind the scenes and are choosing not to fight. I’m skeptical of this but I can’t say for sure that it isn’t happening.
• Because they expect the next election to be a disaster and they don’t want to get caught up in it.

Basically, most reasons come down to either just wanting out, or wanting to make sure they don’t ruin their future political career choices.

If they stayed and voted with democrats, went independent or switched parties, or tried to start a new party, most likely they would end up just as unemployed but with fewer friends and no followers. Going directly against the party would lead to the party itself attacking them, along with the right wing media that many of their supporters get all their info from. Most districts lean to one side or the other, and while a few politicians have made careers on being independent or moderate, the ones that had been on the Republican side of the aisle are all gone, as are those who had the courage to take a stand against Trump when it mattered.

Honestly, at this point they may actually be able to get more done by quietly coordinating with others who have left or been forced out and organizing support for whoever emerges as a viable Trump alternative in the Republican primary. That keeps them out of the cross hairs and at least increases the chances that Trump will lose either in the primaries or the general election if they can at least drag out the fight for the nomination.

If Trump loses badly, political winds could shift in the party. Or if another politician gets the nomination and goes on to win the election, they’ll be in a position to push Trump’s people out. That’s how his people took control in the first place.

They were denying him basic living conditions common to large zoo animals. If you are so profoundly mentally ill that you can’t be allowed to spend time in a slightly larger enclosure, it seems highly unlikely that you are mentally competent enough to be convicted in the first place.

The justification for this is also pathetically flimsy and should be easily rejected with just a moments thought.

Exercise has been deemed a necessity which cannot be denied to prisoners. He was kept in solitary without being allowed out for 3 years, but it’s OK because it was many small punishments served back to back without relief, not one big punishment. So, if we can deny necessities for extended periods of time, that means we can also withhold food or water for years at a time, as long we’re doing it by stacking punishments and not just starving someone to death over a single incident.

Google results have gotten less useful, but one reason for that is that there is an ever growing sea of AI generated articles out there trying to hijack searches. In a way, Bing is just cutting out the middle man.

I enjoy playing with ChatGPT as much as the next guy, but it isn’t a search engine. Hooking Bing up to an LLM just means that I now have to verify that the results it spits out aren’t hallucinations, assuming it understood what I was asking in the first place.

While I’m sure that’s the case, I don’t think that makes much of a difference. The whole government shuts down two weeks later, so doesn’t really separate the issues. It just make it easier for them to go over the cliff, since they won’t care about the harm being done, and won’t have to answer questions about voting against things their supporters care about while they’re trying to play hardball.

In other words, this doesn’t accomplish anything meaningful on its own, it just tries to put them in a better bargaining position so they can make stronger demands next year.

I can see two possible explanations for why they want this stupid “ladder” structure.

1. They know a shut down will do them more harm than good politically, but can’t just give up after demanding so many things that were never going to work out. Therefore, they put in this stupid gimmick that doesn’t really affect anything, but which allows them to claim some kind of victory.

2. They want to stagger the spending cut offs so they can threaten a partial shut down next time, which they can more easily defend while still inflicting pain.

“I just don’t think that Americans care that much,” Bishop added.

Smartest thing any of them have said in a while.