Mirshe

So, interesting points. However, consider that just in the last few years:

• A Trump ally bought Dominion, the largest producer of electronic ballot boxes and the ones used by a LOT of states. Several studies have shown that via a hardware-side injection, it would be quite easy for anyone with physical access to the...power strip, I think, could manipulate the ballot recording without leaving a significant trace.
• DHS has asked for voter rolls from all states, and ICE/CBP have conducted raids on prominent voter activism groups.
• The FBI has also normalized raiding election offices and has seized ballots from at least the 2020 election, and at least one sheriff's offices has also attempted to do the same in very similar fashion in California, with very similar warrants, looking for very similar "fraud", and have also attempted to seize ballots.

The big problem with fucking with a midterm isn't ease, it's just scale. When you have cops, the federal and a lot of state and even local DOJs, the President's personal goon squad (which has now been significantly inflated and equipped), and the FBI willing to harass, intimidate, or arrest voters, steal ballots, and challenge every single race, everywhere, all the time, all backed by think tanks and funding orgs that are backed by some of the richest people in the entire world, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to stop up the gears of democratic elections.

Sure, your locals can challenge the results. They can make noise. But at the end of the day, "move fast and break things" works surprisingly well as a governance tactic if your desired end result is maintaining power, because by the time people have untangled the knots you've woven, you're already ten steps ahead and "well it'd be REALLY HARD AND EXPENSIVE to run a special election (if your locality even has a legal way to do that - most don't).

We effectively had our Hannibal moment getting locked into a stalemate with Iran.

I was about to say, you nod along with Ted until he starts into the racist bits.

Nah, aside from the WH UFC fight, the "Michelle Obama is trans" bullshit has been floating around since 08 when Obama was running the first time.

If you wanna watch a movie about Monopoly, go watch The Big Short.

Not if they're hit with a missile or another satellite. Debris could pretty easily be rocketed up into a higher orbit from a military strike.

Or they're doing what my company does, and holding offerings open to harvest resumes, either to sell the data or to have people they can throw on a list for their recruitment staff. Also just pumping numbers for board meetings - "we had 9k applicants for these 3 positions" sounds impressive and not dystopian to a certain type of investor.

If an insurance company refused to carry a cop, they'd be sued out of existence by every police union and booster org in the nation.

As someone who's anti death penalty for any case, I'd prefer we waste money on incarcerating people if we must, rather than risk killing the wrong person. People have made entire careers out of justifying why an (usually) innocent person has to die, using a lot of junk science (bite mark, hair, thread analysis, a lot of CSI stuff is absolute bullshit or at least no better than 50/50).

The crime is usually better known as "being black in public". More specifically "being a black authority figure".

Especially with the recent East Wing argument, the lesson is "if you do it fast enough and ignore other people getting angry about it, you can do whatever you want."

"I found an island paradise that's also full of old Soviet bunkers and we're pretty sure that's gonna be nice to have when the next American civil/world war kicks off, we just need to make it palatable for our billionaire friends who can't stand looking at nature".