The courts are unreliable due to corruption, and we do not have a functioning justice system.

You know, everyone hates that guy, but he was the only reasonable person in that movie.

Ghosts aren’t real, and the Ghostbusters were reckless. Egon and Ray built an unstable containment apparatus without permits or inspections in an old firehouse with shoddy electrical wiring. They built back-pack carried laser weapons capable of annihilating a city block with an errant crossing of the streams.

Ray also manifested StayPuft Gozer.

Venkman was a charletain and a fraud, as well as a narcissistic sociopath.

Winston was just a guy they hired off the street.

Shutting down their nuclear “ghost containment” apparatus was the responsible thing to do. Walter Peck deserves a medal, or maybe a prosthetic device for his downstairs mixup.

I think it is too late for a Presidential endorsement to work. The conservatives, including those in the Democratic Party, will spin it as an attempted coronation, a la Hillary in 2016. Biden will choose a centrist to avoid pissing off the DNC mega donors, which will deflate any enthusiasm from progressives who see Biden stepping aside as a victory. Nobody will be particularly enthusiastic about voting for the annointed one, and if they win it will be because of the “not Trump” voters.

So what does that do for us? Those voters are already going to show up. Progressives are already unenthusiastic about another Biden term, but they are terrified of another Trump term. So most of them will show up, too. Biden supporters, we can count on both Jill and the other one to vote either way.

If you lived through the Trump presidency, and you are unsure you want another one, you’re either a closeted bigot who doesn’t want to admit you want Trump, or you’re a moron.

The problem is that it’s next to impossible for a party to replace an incumbent president on the ticket without a fight. And the Democrats don’t have time for a fight right now.

The logical choice would be the VP, but Harris is less popular than Biden with all his flaws. She gets tagged with all of his negatives plus the misogyny and racism pervasive among voters who would vote for Putin before they vote for a minority or a woman. If she had a more progressive record as a politician, maybe she could bring new, young voters to the table.

If the DNC and Biden wanted Harris to be the candidate, the time to step aside was two years ago. That would have given Harris the opportunity to establish herself as a leader worth following. The racists and the misogynists have less ammo if she’s already doing the job well. Of course, that assumes she would have done well.

And then we could have had a legitimate primary. If Harris was failing, it would have been easier to run against an incumbent who was not elected and had a low approval rating. The best candidate could have risen to the top, introduced themselves to American voters, and built a political machine capable of beating Trump in the general election.

Biden didn’t want to do that, so now he must win. There isn’t another option.

I always kind of hated that bit, because it seemed so unrealistic. And here we are.

Life imitates art.

It’s amazing to me that “he sounds feeble” is worse than “everything he said wasn’t true.”

Are we expecting these customers to knowthe difference? I’m over here formulating a business plan, so let me know please.

But how would they know the difference?

I mean, I get nosebleeds some times. Am I throwing away profits?

They don’t need to win the legal battles. Just getting to court is their victory.

So… we’re doomed?

Maybe, but there is a significant Jewish population in New York for whom no other issues matter. So you’d have to be an excellent politician to sell that line after you’ve already used the “Z” word. Bowman is not an excellent politician. He seems like a decent human being, in over his head and unprepared to defend his positions from all sides. I wish he was better, because we need more progressives in leadership positions, and the centrists will use this to continue to sell the line that progressives can’t win elections.

He doesn’t strike me as a particularly thoughtful or talented politician, but the situation in Gaza is particularly fraught. Nuance doesn’t fit into a campaign slogan, and you’d have to be better at this to thread the needle between Zionism and anti-Semitism. I’m certain he would have preferred to make the primary about domestic issues, but his opponent wanted to make it about Israel/Palestine.

He pulled it because he locked himself out of the room. He went the wrong way, and couldn’t get back in to the vote in time. The Republicans were trying to pull a fast one, and he did manage to delay it, but the ends don’t justify the means.

It was a stupid thing to do, but the real damage to his image was in trying to lie about it and coverit up. If he had said, from the beginning, “the Republicans were trying some bullshit and it was the only way I could stop them” then you could plausibly make that argument. I would still disagree, but I could respect that he did what he thought he had to do.

Ok, I’m as progressive as it gets, but Bowman was done after the fire alarm stunt. Voters in his district didn’t forget about that bullshit. Worse than that, he revealed that he was kind of an idiot in his attempts to explain his behavior.

Yes, all of the things about his opponent are troubling. The DNC is not on our side, and we need more progressives at every level of government. But we also need better politicians at every level of government. I’d rather have progressive morons than centrist who is competent, but either is better than a conservative, and the moron might not win a general election.

Let’s not even entertain the concept of “originalists.” Anyone who calls conservatives “originalists” should be laughed at to their faces.

Otherwise, I agree with you entirely.

Piece of shit perjured himself rather than admit he and his buddies like to squirt beer up each others’ asses. And he’s a Supreme Court Justice.

I do feel like we’ve been seeing a lot of headlines that follow a pattern of MAJOR NEWS SCOTUS SIDES WITH BIDEN on something super obvious and inconsequential.

There are a shit ton of laws built around the idea of marriage. Your spouse has rights to make medical decisions, inhabit and inherit property, share custody of children and property, sign certain documents, and stuff you probably never think about. Marriage equality is not an exercise in vanity, it really makes a difference when the government recognizes your special relationship and commitment. It also makes divorce so important, because the ability to sever that relationship is the only way to untangle all of those rights and responsibilities to each other.

It would be better to have a different concept of contractual family, one that permits for more granularity and possibilities. But that ain’t what we got. Requiring demonstrations of fault to grant a divorce is just another way for shitty people to abuse other people. Prior to no-fault divorce, it wasn’t uncommon for judges to say things like “that’s not really spousal abuse” or “that’s not really rape” and then deny the divorce.

Nah, fuck that noise. I don’t want to start a civil war, either, but I’ll be more than happy to end one. You’re conceding ground to effective terrorism.