PumpkinSkink

It's a little more complex than that. He, like, was buying shares, blew past the 5% ownership disclosure point, failed to disclose, was forced to disclose his stake. He was then offered a seat on the board, didn't like the lack of control, and made a meme offer on the remaining stake to take the company private, tried to pull out, and was forced to buy the company he didn't want to buy by the board of directors who didn't want him to buy it.

He's the recent Adam Conover interview with the details: https://youtu.be/sxG2Y3E0uEY?si=r0VMY7s3iZ9uaP39

I think I used to play Halo 3 with that guy

Well 71 million Trump voters over 244 million eligible voters is 29%.

This is spectacular to hear. I have to wonder if the shift in control will exacerbate the issues that prevented the passing of a budget, however. I haven't thought it through fully yet, but whatever the make up of the senate and house are, passing a budget is priority #1, and how that shakes out is going to be one of, if not the most significant short term effect on the economic situation of regular people.

As much as I hate to admit it, Newsom has the right plan here. Democrats in power need to erect as many institutional barriers to Trump implementing his own policy, and doing it at the State level disrupts their route of attack significantly. The danger is that shielding blue state Republicans from the worst effects of Trump's economic policy might erode their potential support base, but they have to either take the risk, or carve out exceptions to their own policy that disproportionatly allow blue state Republicans to feel the sting (maybe, for instance, avoiding protections for small businesses). I doubt Democrats have the stomach for the latter option, so Newsom is making the correct play, and others should follow suit.

I was kind of Lukewarm on Walz initially, but he was super endearing. He was cooking there for a minute and then the DNC muzzled him. I remember the moment he got shut up about the electoral college I thought to myself "annnnd now all of his appeal is gone and he's just another boring politician". It was really startling to see how little he actually had to do to get the leash tugged.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I think people, especially very politically-minded people tend to imagine their fellow citizens as has much more inflexible political views than they really do.

Most Americans are pretty ignorant of politics in general, and we get fed what is essential political theater in place of political news. I think those of us sitting online vigorously discussing politics tend to overestimate the political convictions of the average voter.

Most American voters, outside of those who are extremely entrenched in their parties, seem to me, to be pretty protean and contridictory in their views. I think it's not unlikely that a self-described "conservative" would in fact support a lot of progressive policies as long as they were presented in a way that Tucker Carlson hasn't pre-provided a talking point for.

Don't forget that Trump was *against the discriminatory trans bathroom bills" in 2015, and all the same people who are now ready to organize pogroms against trans teenagers voted for him either way.

It's also important to note than depending on how we define "income", many of the richest have no "income" or a misleading small income (Zukerburg has, like, a 1$ salary or something) because they don't their money from a wage... they get it from returns on investment. This is also why income tax is a misguided policy goal a lot of the time. We need to tax the investment income of the rich, not their salary.

Cheney almost certainly is concerned about Trump mismanaging US foreign policy, not his fashiness.

George Bush Jr. has the most impressive ability to sound like the dumbest motherfucker in the room always. He should also be tried as a war criminal.

Because it's slightly tricky to replace the post master general: https://www.federaltimes.com/federal-oversight/2022/08/24/can-biden-fire-us-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy/

Just to clarify, this "fourth power" rule is reasonable because that is approximately how road damage scales with per axle weight (last I checked it's not an exact integer exponent but it is about 4)