The Jungle is what radicalized me when I read it during high school.

I know the takeaway for so many people is that food back then was tampered with and that was horrifying. At least, that seems to be all anyone ever talks about.
The story of the family hit me so hard, though. The food impurities thing seemed horrible, but sort of remote. We have laws about it now, and at that age, I didn’t realize that food handling is still pretty bad, but the risk of eating human fingers or sawdust in ground meat is probably not a certainty.
What rocked my world was watching that family get used up. They came in search of opportunity. Capitalism and a cruel and uncaring society ate them piece by piece, until they turn to addiction and begging/prostitution to cope/survive.
It’s a soul-crushing novel. Would recommend.

Just the poison in our food and environment, lack of safety controls in our jobs, complete lack of liability from corporations, and no social support when we’re inevitably ground into the dirt.

*golf claps* Well played.

Sir. You seem to have forgotten about inconsolable hopelessness.

I had a whole exchange yesterday with folks about it, and they + the research I did along the way really made me question of it was as impossible as it’s being made out to be.

Link to thread

My takeaways from that whole thread are basically that the only states it may prove legally problematic in (at this point, today), are Georgia and Nevada.
(Georgia because while he can still drop, the deadline to add candidates has passed. And Nevada because other sources say it will be a problem, but I can’t figure out the actual rules!)

But, for Biden to drop, he has to be willing to drop. And he has to do it before he’s declared the nominee by the Democratic Party. And (regardless of their merit) the lawsuits and any injunctions that happen due to those lawsuits must be cleared before the states run out of time to print ballots. Time is rapidly ticking away for that option, if it’s even possible.

As far as both actual candidates go, they’re both different flavors of Zaphod Beeblebrox.
They could just roofie me for 4 years and assign me to the party that wins, and it’ll be the same outcome. The real leadership comes from their donors, the cabinet (and their donors), the political party (and their donors), and their advisors (and the donors for the think tanks they represent).
Shit, maybe that’s why the parties keep running neurologically impaired old men.

It’s always struck me that people in jobs that treat them like chattel don’t get time off to vote, or even enough time off in general - those folks have a higher barrier to voting.
Another hidden thumb on the scale to skew poll results toward retirees and the folks who are more well off.

In a strange quirk, it was actually every city in the U.S. named Arlington at the same time.

_{Disclaimer: I am lying.}

Well, someone pointed out that the Nevada statute quoted was for their electoral college candidates, not the president. (I had noted the word elector, but figured it was goofy legal terminology.)
I couldn’t then figure out what the actual Nevada statute for presidential nominees are (it seems they’re different depending on whether the nominee is part of a major political party).

Nevada may still pose an issue but I can’t argue they are with as much confidence. I just can’t figure out the actual laws around it with my own eyes and brain.

I think you’re right on that front, which makes it doubly frustrating – because then you got multiple websites parroting bad information. And in turn, I may have parroted bad information.

I spent a few hours trying to find the relevant statutes to understand what was “right”, and not one made sense to me. It seems like they have different rules for major parties vs independent candidates, but fuck if I could figure out the rules for major parties.

That’s the problem with the patchwork of laws.

Ohio has a law that says the candidates must be declared by August 9th, but the DNC isn’t until after that. (But Ohio cleared the way for that, as you noted.)

Nevada, however, requires that the political parties submit their candidates when the state convention is held by a given party, and does not seem to have an actual cut-off date.

Each major political party shall, at the state convention of the major political party held in that year, select from the qualified electors who are legally registered members of the major political party: (a) A nominee to the position of presidential elector; and (b) An alternate to the nominee for presidential elector.

I’m actually somewhat confused on this one - the Democratic Nevada convention was May 18th, but the article I posted above says their cut-off was June 28th. Both dates have passed, mind you. But I wonder where the June 28th date came from.

The deadline for Georgia was July 9th - yesterday.

My information for both Nevada and Georgia came from Ballotpedia. The page also notes that many states have their filing deadlines before the DNC, but it’s my understanding that the Democratic Party plans to deal with this by nominating him via conference call in advance of these deadlines - so I think the clock is about a month shorter than people may consider, when looking at the date of the DNC.

I don’t know why the first article I posted mentions Wisconsin. I think you’re right - if Biden withdraws and releases his delegates before the nomination deadlines/conference call to make it official, many states (such as Wisconsin) won’t be an issue. I’m unclear if democrats can submit an alternative candidate in Georgia, and I think they can only offer up the alternative candidate they would have specified during their convention for Nevada.

Nevada is fairly reliably democrat-leaning, and Georgia has been changing a lot lately, with expectations to swing democrat again. Even if democrats did lose Georgia, the state would still be a battleground, which saps resources from the republican presidential effort. (Side note: If that played out and democrats couldn’t field a candidate. I would expect third party or write-in candidates to get an outsized proportion of the vote. That could be a great opportunity for third parties to perhaps get legal recognition and benefits that comes with that.)

It does seem like slightly less of an issue now that I’ve dug a bit deeper into it. However who knows how things will go in states without defined laws - that could be a boondoggle if injunctions get filed.
But there are legal issues already, and those will continue to grow as time goes on.

I don’t know, man.

Honestly, I hate the situation, but I haven’t heard any compelling arguments for alternatives.

By compelling, I don’t mean appealing. I’d love for any number of other candidates to just swap in. But because the U.S. got “Weekend at Bernie’d”, and primaries were held (with no realistic opposition candidates), or cancelled in the case of Florida and Delaware, and the dates for holding a primary have passed in every state, I just… don’t see how another candidate can be swapped in.*

And I know that John Stewart specifically called out other nations who were able to call entire elections within a few months, but the U.S. electoral system just doesn’t ‘do’ that. The focus on states rights means that every state has its own laws that are fairly rigid and cannot be overridden by the federal government. And even if the states could be overridden - well, I guess I don’t know if it’s possible for the federal government to do that.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that suggestion as being even a remote possibility. I’m left with the belief that it is not legally permissible.

In fact - the Heritage Foundation said they would mount legal challenges to prevent this from occurring - but only in certain states. It’s very likely those challenges could not be resolved before the election, which would lead to at least two Democratic Party candidates, and certain defeat for both of them. The only way that Biden could drop out is if the states that have laws prohibiting candidate changes repeal or modify them, and that itself might be the subject of lawsuits.

*The only way I see for Biden to drop out and not ensure certain defeat is to die. That’s the only path I can think of that’s workable.

If I truly believe that Trump will end democracy and I must do everything I can to prevent his election - even if it compromises my better judgment and morals, and I know that Biden will not use the powers he was just granted to ensure that Trump is brought to justice before he can assume dictatorial powers, then… well, what’s the option but to be a shill? That’s not a rhetorical question. I legitimately feel trapped and hopeless by this shitty system, and I cannot see a way out.
I feel like I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.

Ah, thank you. That was the missing piece.

This might sound either self-adulating or naive (probably both), but I just don’t think like that. I view religions and nations as distinct - even nations that embrace a single religion. It’s just - Administrative systems for governance and the decisions that arise from those aren’t the same as religious belief systems.

My innate reaction to those who choose not to recognize a difference between hostility toward Judaism and hostility toward Zionism or Israel’s policies Is to think they’re an unserious person. (That’s a polite way of saying I think those people are complete morons.)
Note: Even though you’re discussing blurring those lines, I know you’re doing it for illustrative purposes. My sentiments above do not apply to you.

It’s probably a good thing I’m not in politics or a publicly visible position, because I don’t have to tie my livelihood to the perceptions of folks whose judgment I find questionable. It would suck making those sorts of moral concessions.

I’m even more confused.

I’ve read a lot of your comments and I generally agree with them/believe you have well-reasoned positions, so there’s probably more a foundational misunderstanding than a disagreement of opinion.

I’m understanding what you’re saying to mean that you believe zionists want Israel to be associated with antisemitism, but I don’t get how that association benefits them. I suppose I could see it as reinforcing a victim complex, that then can be used to justify their actions.

As a person who staunchly supports Palestine and believes Israel is not just currently committing a genocide, but has been since the inception of the state - I was horrified about that vandalism.
How would apathy benefit zionists?

I also feel like the my assumption about the first statement doesn’t align with your statement of the second. The first is an increased sensitivity/awareness of antisemitism to justify genocidal actions for the sake of “safety” (or whatever), but the second is an apathy to antisemitism, which undermines the first.

I’m just… not getting it.

I’m not sure I follow. Can you elaborate?

I get that zionists probably want anyone who supports Palestine to be considered an antisemite.
But I don’t follow how those who accuse others of antisemitism would benefit from a belief that they (the accuser) are pro-genocide.

I’m so disappointed this didn’t go to trial.

Trial would have meant discovery, and public disclosure of findings, along with potentially more discovery and/or charges if the trial process reveals anything more to look into.

I wonder what secret they have that’s worth a quarter of a billion dollars.
(High confidence they will try to appeal in one of the Trump judge districts. The verdict might get lowered to $1 or something dumb.)

Bear in mind that the drone strikes are less attributed to Trump because he revoked or ignored accountability rules and authorized the CIA and defense department to conduct drone strikes without seeking authorization from the White House.

It’s easy to assume that Trump was ‘better’, but nope. He was much, much worse. He just hid the evidence and delegated the crime to others.

Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama’s numbers – Chicago Sun-Times

Anyone else think this was the “taking a selfie using a silly object” meme at first?

I’m cynically viewing this as not a positive. I assume this is so they can make pages 2, 3 and so on as spammy as page 1.

Not at first, obviously. You don’t boil that frog on high heat.
You throw out a second page with a cute little text ad off to the side, then 1 or 2 at the top, then a mid-page ad. Maybe some suggested content.

Instead of having to scroll through a page’s worth of ads to get to semi-relevant results with a gem hidden in them, it’ll be a pages worth of ads for your semi-relevant results per page, and maybe what you were looking for 4 or 5 pages in.

Google used to be good. They ‘know’ what people are looking for. So they’ll probably hire someone familiar with gambling to figure out a minimum dispersion of relevant results on the pages, to keep people using the service and scrolling past ads. … I used to remember this. Variable-ratio reward schedule?

Oh.

_Shit.

That’s also highly valid, and not something I factor heavily into my thoughts about the future of U.S. support.

Shit. Huh. I gotta rethink that.