Left: “We should have socialized healthcare, education, and housing.”

I mean, there’s The Left[Hakeem Jefferies/Gavin Newsom] and The Left[Bernie Sanders/JD Pritsker/Jeremy Corbyn] and then The Left[the DSA kids distributing food and fresh clothing to my nearby homeless encampment]. These are three very different flavors of Left.

You: “Both sides are the same.”

A big part of the problem with liberal democratic politics is how deeply co-opted all these parties have become. At the end of the day, John Thune and Chuck Schumer, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer, Mark Carney and Pierre Poilievre all bend the knee to Jamie Diamon and Jeff Bezos and Muhammad bin Salmon.

Wish it weren’t so, but that’s the world we live in.

Don’t forget the $1.4T/year they took out of the economy to squander on elaborate, invasive, predatory mass surveillance, serial racialized harassment, and overseas mass murder, in the name of peace and security.

Would be nice if we had blue state agencies and universities willing to step up and absorb some of the shock by hiring these professionals and issuing grants to continue their projects. Instead, we’ve got institutions wasting time and resources on elaborate surveillance programs aimed at Palestine protesters

It’s hardly a one-time thing. Kehoe came up through a rich Catholic School, owned an auto dealership, became a bagman within the State Senate, and eventually climbed up to the governor’s mansion by iteratively taking bribes and doing favors over the last 30 years.

Where do you think he raised the $13M war chest to run for governor in the first place? He’ll never stop supporting these reactionaries because he never wants them to stop shoveling money into his pockets. And if he wants to continue climbing? (And every governor secretly has an eye on the White House) He’s going to need those millions to become billions. That means he’s got to prove his loyalty. Go above and beyond. Really stand out as the kind of guy who will shove a few thousand babies into a wood chipper if his bosses demand it of him.

…made in 2018 by a Russian team. Way before the whole Ukraine war thing, you understand

Flipping through a history book on Russian/Ukrainian relations in the 21st century

Closing the book, putting it back on the shelf, whistling, and walking away

More seriously, I’ll never understand folks who hear “So-and-so is from Nationality X, so now I must/must not purchase products from them because of their bloodline.”

I am a professional encoder and I always put all my codes in a single big file marked EXE for faster execution.

A cunt who is getting crazy kickbacks from the Chamber of Commerce.

Business groups lobbied heavily to overturn the measure passed by 58% of voters, arguing it would cost jobs. The bill also repeals annual inflation adjustments for the minimum wage, in effect since 2006.

The action followed a pattern established over the past 15 years where conservative Republicans have used their majorities in the legislature to roll back or repeal measures that became law through initiatives pushed to the ballot by progressive groups.

…

In a news release Thursday, Kara Corches, president and CEO of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called the mandated paid sick leave a “job killer.”

“Missouri employers value their employees and recognize the importance of offering competitive wages and benefits, but one-size-fits-all mandates threaten growth,” Corches said in the release.

…

The action on sick leave is similar to a bill in 2011 weakening provisions of a ballot measure from 2010 called the “Puppy Mill Cruelty and Prevention Act,” that specified appropriate living conditions for breeding operations and including action this year to overturn the abortion rights amendment approved in November.

Incidentally, Missouri’s abysmal animal rights laws had, up until that ballot measure passed, made it the national leader in breeding (and killing of surplus) designer puppies.

Unfortunately, Cheng Kai-Shek wants Conservative Catholicism and coal fired power plants. Meanwhile, Tojo wants chattle slavery and genocide.

So, you’re going to need some help.

White People: “Why can’t we use the N-word just because we’re white?”

Also White People: “Black people aren’t allowed to say Genocide.”

If FDR were alive today, Richie Torries would make it his life’s goal to tip him out of his wheelchair.

Have a friend who was a sort-of perpetual grad student - bouncing from Sweden to Italy to Australia - over about ten years, pursuing a degree in marine biology. Along the way, she contributed thousands of hours of labor to various research teams. Eventually, she got burned out, married a neurologist, and moved to a small house in Queensland. Now she mostly just gardens and raises bunnies, which she is extraordinarily good at thanks to her education.

Was this money wasted or did the universities get exactly what they paid her for? Idk. But it seems a far better way to employ people than what we’ve done with The Pentagon or ICE.

“I graduated high school, got a good job at the Mill, married my high school sweetheart, had five kids, bought a second house with a boat, retired at 60, went insane reading Facebook memes and watching FOX News, then decided to shoot up the Harvest Music Festival in 2017. Why can’t you young people do that?”

My wife graduated law school in 2010, Summa Cum Laude, and just barely got a job at a low rent firm.

Five years later, she’s earning twice the money at a much nicer place for not much more work, because the glut of students from '08-'10 caused grads in '11-'14 to look elsewhere. Suddenly there was a huge supply gap and you could write your own ticket.

Moral of the Story: Get good at something and stick with it. Markets go up, markets go down, but skills pay the bills in the end.

Reminds me of the movie “A Serious Man”

Larry Gopnik: A divorce-what have I done! I haven’t done anything- What have I done!

Judith Gopnik: Larry, don’t be a child. You haven’t “done” anything. I haven’t “done” anything.

Larry Gopnik: Yes! Yes! We haven’t done anything! And I-I’m probably about to get tenure.

Judith Gopnik: Nevertheless, there have been problems. As you know.

So, there’s an element of truth to this. Capitalist expansion and ecological neglect has been horrible for the planet and resulted in numerous health and environmental debacles.

But the track record of the Communists isn’t great on this front either. Blame Deng, blame Khruschev, blame Marx himself, but they all need to go through periods of industrial expansion - often at a rapid pace - which means dumping externalities out of expediency rather than calculating out the cost of development over much longer time horizons.

The policies are still coming from humans, working through enormous bureaucracies with imperfect information and selfish incentives. The need to improve the perceived quality of life in the moment can often exert pressure beyond that of long-term socio-economic consequences of a given policy.

Socialists and Communists can be more responsive than their Capitalist peers. But they aren’t required to be. You still need leaders willing to operate on generational and inter-generational timelines, when they likely won’t be alive to enjoy the bounty they’ve been asked to create.

6’3" Dutch-Irishman with crystal blue eyes and perfectly manicured cuticles.

he was ACTUALLY born on American soil from the Birthing Matrix.

Reader: “How is he not an immigrant alien?”

90s DC Retconners: Slaps the side of a weird techno-widget “Space Wizards did it.”

He can’t even claim Birthright Citizenship

Canonically, I believe he was still technically gestating in the pod before he arrived. So he’s more of an Anchor Baby.

Red Son is the only correct version of Superman.

Everything else is bourgeois revisionism.

It doesn’t even pay that well.

$34/hr to fuck around all day pretending to do law enforcement is a pretty sweet deal. With overtime, you can get into the low six-figure salary, just crushing candy on your phone until your shift ends.