Biden is no different from Trump.

I appreciate identifying yourself upfront and saving me trouble of having to read anything else you wrote.

I always recount the story of the Hovercraft Christmas.

There was one toy I wanted for Christmas. We were firmly middle class growing up, so it wasn’t like I had all the toys, but I was old enough to know that my parents were footing the bill and getting an RC hovercraft was going to mean I only get one present that year.

Iirc it was called the Typhoon, or maybe the Typhoon II.

The commecials showed it zipping across land and water, jumping off ramps, bouncing off a lake, etc. It was the coolest fucking thing ever. I begged my parents for it, and would not shut up for months about getting an RC hovercraft.

Christmas comes, and wonderous joy, I got the hovercraft! Life is good, but the battery needs to charge. Shit, OK, we plug it in and let it charge all day while we go do the normal Christmas family visits. Everyone I talked to that day got a lesson in how hovercrafts work, and how it can travel on a pocket of air to move across land AND water.

We got home late that night. It was probably after 10pm, way past everyone’s bedtime, including my parents who had been up all night making the Christmas magic happen for my younger siblings who still believed. But I put my fucking foot down. I had waited for months to get my hovercraft. I had waited all day for the battery to charge. I would not wait another god damned minute to go zipping around the backyard. So, my dad and I put coats on over our pajamas, went out to the driveway, and fired that bad boy up.

I can still perfectly remember the sound of the fans turning on, and the little rubber skirt inflating. Sure enough, the hovercraft was floating on a pocket of air! But the driveway was on a mild incline, so the hovercraft started to drift sideways. Then I hit the throttle and… nothing. Just the sound of the fans spinning, but no motion.

Bzzzzz. BZZZZZZ. Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz. The fans spun impotently against the inertia of the hovercraft. It wouldn’t move at all, except to sadly drift towards the gutter. My dad gave it a little nudge with his foot, and it got stuck on a tiny stone chip.

I learned a lot about physics from that one night, but I learned even more about advertising.

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

Just to add, they pay someone to make the board report or PowerPoint presentation for them.

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.

How many holes do you have?

No worries about coming off as defensive, I completely understand how you would read my comment as an attack. It wasn’t how I meant it, but I recognize that I was fired up about it.

The superintendent is absolutely posturing, and I don’t think he believes he will win in court. But I believe there is a chance he wins in court, especially given the number of activist conservative justices we have on the bench.

I don’t have any doubt about what he meant by “teaching the Bible,” and I am certain it had nothing to do with providing a rounded and thorough depiction of various religious and cultural practices of a pluralistic multicultural society. The guy is a christo-fascist and a bigot. He belongs in prison for trying to abuse his position in government to subjugate his constituents.

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.

Oh I completely agree with you, and I don’t begrudge anyone who’s willing to do what they have to do to keep their jobs. My point is just that fascists don’t play fair. They won’t put their hands on their hips and smirk disapprovingly at malicious compliance. They will keep stepping on your neck until you do exactly what they want without question. You know that when they say the Bible, they of course mean their interpretation of their version of a Bible of their choosing. They aren’t going to permit debate on the topic.

Malicious compliance is still compliance. If you concede this hill, the next one will be a requirement to teach the Bible as historical truth. And then it will be to prevent teaching actual science.

Agreed. But it still encourages strategic voting and discourages third-party spoilers. It’s fptp with extra steps, and it gets worse the more candidates you have. If you don’t pick a frontrunner first or second, there’s a chance your vote isn’t counted at all.

Unfortunately, RCV doesn’t end the two party system. It’s better than what we have, but only marginally. My hope is that when voters complain about it, the next step is not to repeal RCV but to evolve into Star voting.

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.

Do vultures do something other than what other birds do? Because most birds regurgitate food for the chicks to eat.

Yeah, we probably won’t even notice, even if we hadn’t been extinct for millions of years.

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.”

It actually doesn’t have to be a nightmare for anyone. The rich can have perfectly pleasant lives while everyone is provided for. It’s just not the most profitable situation for the rich. To have their best life, everyone else must be miserable.

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