Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

The revolution will be supervised.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Republicans do not trust women.

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Today in Creative Lawmaking

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It’s a holiday weekend, so here is something a bit on the lighter side. The Wisconsin state Supreme Court has ruled that Governor Tony Evers does, in fact, have the power to increase school funding for the next four hundred years. From the AP:

Evers’s partial veto in 2023 increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.

Evers told lawmakers at the time that his partial veto was intended to give school districts increases in funding “in perpetuity.”

The Legislature, along with the state’s largest business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, argued that the court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare it unconstitutional. They argued that the Evers veto was barred under a 1990 constitutional amendment adopted by voters that removed the ability to strike individual letters to make new words — known as the “Vanna White” veto, named the co-host of the game show Wheel of Fortune who flips letters to reveal word phrases.

Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, they argued.

But Evers countered that the “Vanna White” veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers. Evers said that he was simply using the longstanding partial veto process allowed under the law.

I’m sure Evers is at least partially using this situation as a way to draw attention to how ridiculous the WI governor’s veto powers are, but it’s nice to see this kind of weaponization of technicalities working on behalf of the side of good for once.

Open thread.

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    115Comments

    2. 2.

      trollhattan

      This has been one long-ass week. Happy/not happy Good Friday. Never knew what a proper greeting was for this particular day.

      Reply
    3. 3.

      Eolirin

      That is a very ridiculous power and I hope it’s made to go away eventually because no one should be able to do things like that, even if it’s being used for good here.

      A malicious actor could zero out funding to any law they wanted.

      Reply
    4. 4.

      Old Man Shadow

      Maybe he should run for President. He sounds like a Democrat who understands he’s in a war and will use some of the same legal tactics the GOP employs to fight back.

      Reply
    7. 7.

      Professor Bigfoot

      But Evers countered that the “Vanna White” veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers. Evers said that he was simply using the longstanding partial veto process allowed under the law.

      Ho ho ho ho!!! Bravo, Governor Evers, got-dam well played!! Bwahahahahaaaa!!

      Reply
    10. 10.

      rikyrah

      Rose,

       

      Any official response to the Orange Menace’s demands that the UK jettison their LGBTQIA+ protections in order to get a trade deal with the UK?

      Reply
    15. 15.

      rikyrah

      Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) posted at 7:34 PM on Thu, Apr 17, 2025:
      Goldman: “Think about whether any of us want to vote a certain way but bc we fear for our personal safety, we decide to vote differently. We are no longer representing our constituents. We are representing something else more like the bully threatening us. That is more like Vladimir Putin operates”

       https://t.co/Os7spzc3vL
      (https://x.com/atrupar/status/1913028291407090056?t=0Mv0z6eZsSw_V5oKT7DF1Q&s=03)

      Reply
    16. 16.

      Rose Judson

      @rikyrah: I’ll have to look, but, like, we are jettisoning our T protections just fine by ourselves over here.

      One thing to note: In general, it seems like the US press is saying we are close to a UK-US trade deal. That is not the story over here at all.

      Reply
    17. 17.

      Steve LaBonne

      Despite all the shit, 44% still approve of the orange criminal. Professor Bigfoot has been trying to explain this to (white) people.

      Reply
    18. 18.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Rose Judson: Is Starmer smart enough to understand that it’s impossible to make a deal with Trump, in the normal non-Mafia understanding of “deal”? “I have altered the terms of our agreement. Pray I do not alter them again.”

      Reply
    19. 19.

      Old School

      @Eolirin:

      That is a very ridiculous power and I hope it’s made to go away eventually because no one should be able to do things like that, even if it’s being used for good here.

      A malicious actor could zero out funding to any law they wanted.

      There’s this from over 50 years ago now:

      Gov. Patrick Lucey was the first to remove a single digit. In the 1973 biennial budget bill, he reduced a $25 million highway bonding authorization to $5 million by simply striking a “2.” He also struck the word “not” from a sentence and changed the floor on tourism spending to a cap — “the first time a Wisconsin governor used the partial veto to expressly reverse the intent of the Legislature,” according to the LRB paper.

      Reply
    28. 28.

      Old School

      @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

      For those who don’t click through for “Cillizza’s parody of Cillizza”.  It’s:

      OPINION | Trump’s treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is wrong, but that won’t stop it from becoming a monumental trap for Democrats making an issue of it.

      Reply
    30. 30.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Old School: Sure Chris, that’s why Trump is slightly underwater on immigration in general and substantially underwater on the way deportations are being conducted.

      Reply
    31. 31.

      trollhattan

      From Good to Freaky Friday. “Drown gummint in a bathtub” guy is having a hissy over this very notion. (Not that I even believe it, but am still having a Schadenfreude.)

      Russell Berman: “Republicans are considering a tax hike on the wealthy, and Grover Norquist is beside himself.”

      Said Norquist: “It’s an incredibly destructive idea economically, and very foolish politically.”

      “The concept was once unthinkable in the GOP, yet many Republicans are signaling that the party might just break the first commandment of conservative politics.”

      Reply
    33. 33.

      cain

      @rikyrah:

      Yes, so now the U.S. is holding iowa farmers hostage to the world’s LBGTQ+ laws, eh?

      These are all meant to try to use trade deals for shake down.

      Only a fool would accept that deal because if they do that, Trump has other stuff he will want you to do. This will work with the Republican party but not with anyone else.

      Reply
    34. 34.

      cain

      @Steve LaBonne:

      They approve now, but it’s going to be real bad. They don’t understand the ramifications of any of these acts. They’ve probably checked out from all the bad news but their wallet is going to be screaming at them. Hard to ignore that.

      Reply
    35. 35.

      Eolirin

      @cain: A very sizable chunk of that 44% will blame us.

      They’ve spent their whole lives blaming other people for their own failings, it’s not a hard thing to do.

      Reply
    36. 36.

      RaflW

      @Old Man Shadow: Tony Evers is a very good governor from what I see. But he has the charisma of a high school science teacher (he was in fact a teacher, then principal and rose to Superintendent of WI Schools).

      Which worked to win him Wisconsin’s governor race. Twice! But I don’t see his particular personality catching on nationally. But then, I have a poor track record on picking winning horses.

      Reply
    39. 39.

      Bupalos

      @ArchTeryx: Bad bet. About 8 in 10 Trump voters were white. About 6 in 10 Kamala voters were white. Trump commanded the largest share of non-white voters for Republicans since before the turn of the century, and it’s what accounts for the marginal difference between 2020 and 2024.

      The recent 10% drop in Trump’s approval was centered in Republicans, and appears from other questions to be about the tariffs. Basically it’s probably centered in finance types.

      Reply
    41. 41.

      Chief Oshkosh

      @Eolirin:

      @cain: A very sizable chunk of that 44% will blame us.
      They’ve spent their whole lives blaming other people for their own failings, it’s not a hard thing to do.

      This is 1000% true. I see it every goddammned day. No matter what happens with the economy, no matter what, it will never, ever be because Trump shit the bed. Never. It’ll be “well, the Fed wouldn’t raise (or lower) rates, or do some magic Fed thing…” or “well, the Democrats wouldn’t really let Trump do what he really wanted to do…” or “well, if the damned liberals had just gotten on board…”

      They will have ZERO problems blaming the Usual Suspects and finding new ones.

      Reply
    42. 42.

      Bupalos

      @Steve LaBonne: He isn’t underwater on immigration generally. This does point up a political danger here, but treating this as a binary is typical of this empty vessel. Democrats need to turn an “immigration” issue into a “rule of law” and “general chaos” issue and make it connect to everything else, especially economic chaos.

      Reply
    48. 48.

      Melancholy Jaques

      @Bupalos:

      We Democrats have been hurt by the fact that we Democrats do not have a clear policy on immigration. It’s all be reactive bullshit. No one is saying this is what we need to do & why. Related to my refrain question of who are the Democrats & what do they stand for?

      If voters cared about “rule of law” they wouldn’t have elected that asshole. And as long as the chaos doesn’t interfere with the personal lives, they like it. It’s entertaining. It looks like Trump is “shaking things up” and that’s one of the reasons they like him: people they hate are upset by him.

      Reply
    53. 53.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Baud: When I bought this ridiculous thing to piss off the libs, I never thought the libs would be pissed off at me personally!

      Reply
    54. 54.

      oldgold

      @Baud: And, the President of the US Soybean Association, who has voted for the Terror of Tariffs 3 times is crying.

      In an urgent plea to President Trump, a US soybean farmer — who voted for him in the last three elections — called for an immediate trade deal with China to safeguard the future of American agriculture. The appeal came in a letter published by The Free Press on April 10.

      Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association and a farmer from Magnolia, Kentucky, wrote the letter on behalf of the 500,000 soybean farmers. He expressed deep concern over the devastating effects the ongoing trade war could have on their livelihoods.

      “My family has been farmers for nine generations,” Ragland wrote. “But now, because of the trade war with China, I’m worried we could be out of business by 2027. All that history, heritage, blood, sweat and toil could vanish with the stroke of a pen”

      Reply
    58. 58.

      Steve LaBonne

      @Kelly: Gotta love wingnut “logic”. Suppose (very much counterfactually, to be clear) COVID had actually been a Chinese bioweapon- that’s supposed to imply that we should just have let it run rampant without defending ourselves with masks, distancing, and vaccines??

      Reply
    59. 59.

      brantl

      @Baud:  Despite being told by many economic experts that the buyer pays the tarriff! Go figure!

      I wonder if these people stood in the rain, would they do it with their mouths open, and they’d drown, as is supposed to happen to domesticated turkeys?

      Reply
    60. 60.

      Enhanced Voting Techniques

      @Kelly: does the White House suggest one goes to  Li Hongzhi  to get the blessing to cure Covid or is Trump claiming the power now?

      Following the Western tradition touching the hem of Trump’s jacket should be the cure for Covid.

      Reply
    62. 62.

      gvg

      @Baud: HOW can anyone have believed the other country pays the tariff?

      1400 cows is not a small farmer, its a corperation. My uncle ran a herd of around a 120 for decades with some help from time to time and family. This guy in the story probably inherited a big operation and has managers. Otherwise I don’t see how he could be that ignorant. Real farmers pay attention or go out of business.

      Granted, they tend to not know that if funds for buyers such as food stamps or WICK or international aid are cut, it will drop demand for their product and contracts won’t be renewed, but they do know about tariffs. They may have thought they would get subsidies again. I don’t think any of them realized how massive this trade war II was going to be. There can’t be enough subsidies to cover it and I see no sign any are going to hapen this time. I wonder why too. There is a kind of Nihlism this time. Like it doesn’t matter or isn’t going to happen this time. At some point the blowback is going to be spectacular.

      Reply
    63. 63.

      Old School

      @Baud:

      Target’s CEO plans to meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton

      They met yesterday.

      Sharpton’s statement:

      “This morning, I had a very constructive and candid meeting with Brian Cornell that included NAN National Board Chair Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson and NAN Senior Advisor Carra Wallace. I am going to inform our allies, including Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant, of our discussion, what my feelings are, and we will go from there.”

      Reply
    65. 65.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @RaflW: Which worked to win him Wisconsin’s governor race. Twice! But I don’t see his particular personality catching on nationally. But then, I have a poor track record on picking winning horses.

      If Biden wasn’t good enough on TV, Evers isn’t either. Unfortunately, it seems like that’s the only thing that matters now.

      I’m predicting Newsom because he’s white, has excellent fundraising bona fides, and is the person discussed for 2028 who I dislike the most. Such a person is basically guaranteed to be at or near the top of the primaries.

      Reply
    66. 66.

      Old Man Shadow

      @Bupalos: Many white Americans hate non-white folks, but want to pretend they’re still good people by arresting them and sending them back to their home countries to be raped and murdered by gangs and cartels, but we do it nicely with the proper paperwork

      And we don’t send Carlos, their landscaper back because they’d have to pay more, or the employees they pay under the table or they’d lose their small business/farm.

      Reply
    67. 67.

      Kelly

      @Enhanced Voting Techniques: They don’t mention specific alt treatments just “Most egregiously,  the federal government demonized alternative treatments”. No mention of worming medicine. I wonder what Trump would charge to touch his hem?

      Reply
    68. 68.

      JML

      Tony Evers is a good governor. WI desperately needed him after the insanity of Scott Walker, and him holding the line has been massive until they can start evening out the legislature after years of massive gerrymandering. But I doubt he has any national ambitions. It took a fair bit to get him to run for governor as I recall. Hopefully he’s planning for his succession so they get 4 more years of good governance after his current term is up; I suspect he’s not running again.

      WI politics are complicated AF.

      Reply
    69. 69.

      rikyrah

      You Should’ve Said Nicer Things About Joe Biden
      @What46HasDone
      It can’t be overstated how important it was that Chris Van Hollen got to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Before that, nobody had been able to even confirm he was alive, let alone be in contact with him. Before that meeting, he had every reason to believe that he was stuck to live out the rest of his life in that prison, with no hope. Now he knows that he has an army behind him fighting to free him. And he brings that hope back with him not only for himself, but for the others there who have been kidnapped and wrongly imprisoned by our government.
      11:24 PM · Apr 17, 2025
      https://x.com/What46HasDone/status/1913086142024470848

      Reply
    70. 70.

      WaterGirl

      @Baud:

      “Sorry, we didn’t mean to throw all of you under the bus.”

      no, not quite right.

      “Sorry, we thought we could get away with throwing all of you under the bus.”

      This is like my cocker spaniel who was never for even one split second sorry about getting into the garbage.  She was always just sorry she was being punished for it.

      But that didn’t stop her from getting into the garbage at every opportunity.

      Reply
    72. 72.

      WTFGhost

      @trollhattan: For tech support, it’s often a quiet day.

      No one is going to bring a new app online on a day best known for crucifixions.

      (Alas, as more Asia-Pacific folks join, that implicit threat will get watered down.)

      Reply
    73. 73.

      Peale

      @Kelly: An administration that goes from “well, we messed up and there’s nothing we can do. Sucks to be him” to “He’s the leader of a gang. A terrorist involved in drug running and human trafficking” in 3 days needs to shut its fucking piehole about “demonizing” quacks.

      Those alternative treatments were shit. Their “doctors” were shit. And it should be noted that many people were saved in emergency rooms by doctors and nurses with access to scientific medicine and equipment, not by quacks chanting mantras and rubbing essential oils on feet with IVs full of codliver oil. And the “traditional” “wholistic” tuning fork cranks came up with nothing as effective as the vaccine.

      Reply
    74. 74.

      Old Man Shadow

      On this day where we Christians and our brothers from all around the world sit and contemplate the story of the Savior, the Son of God, who was brown, being arrested by a tyrannical state and a group of toxic religious fundamentalists and grifters, falsely accused, given a sham trial, beaten for resisting, and ultimately killed, let us all ponder how his many followers in America celebrate that legacy today by worshipping a government that wrongfully arrests brown people, falsely accuses some of them, gives them no trial, and sends them away to be beaten.

      Surely, the Lord is proud of us and looks down with grace upon America and his church.

      Amen.

      Reply
    77. 77.

      Another Scott

      Good for Evers.

      Meanwhile, …

      https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]/114358899335966867

      BrianKrebs
      @[email protected]

      Tired: Teachers using tools to find students cheating with AI.

      Wired: Teachers using tools to figure out how many of their new students are bots who are just there to submit enough AI-completed assignments that they can claim financial aid in someone else’s name.

      This story from the Voice of San Diego is worth a read:

      “When the spring semester began, Southwestern College professor Elizabeth Smith felt good. Two of her online classes were completely full, boasting 32 students each. Even the classes’ waitlists, which fit 20 students, were maxed out. That had never happened before. ”

      “By the end of the first two weeks of the semester, Smith had whittled down the 104 students enrolled in her classes, including those on the waitlist, to just 15. The rest, she’d concluded, were fake students, often referred to as bots.”

      “The bots’ goal is to bilk state and federal financial aid money by enrolling in classes, and remaining enrolled in them, long enough for aid disbursements to go out. They often accomplish this by submitting AI-generated work. And because community colleges accept all applicants, they’ve been almost exclusively impacted by the fraud.”

      “That has put teachers on the front lines of an ever-evolving war on fraud, muddied the teaching experience and thrown up significant barriers to students’ ability to access courses. What has made the situation at Southwestern all the more difficult, some teachers say, is the feeling that administrators haven’t done enough to curb the crisis.”

      https://voiceofsandiego.org/2025/04/14/as-bot-students-continue-to-flood-in-community-colleges-struggle-to-respond/

      Voice of San Diego · 4d
      As ‘Bot’ Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond
      By Jakob McWhinney
      Apr 18, 2025, 08:12 AM

      [image]

      It feels like we’re getting close to Peak AI Scamming with things like this, but that’s probably just my imagination being too small in this instance…

      Grr…

      Best wishes,
      Scott.
      (via mastodon.social/explore)

      Reply
    79. 79.

      rikyrah

      @Baud:

      I honestly have to admit that I was surprised by Target.

      That they didn’t know who actually shopped at their stores.

      That they didn’t recognize that there was an entire cadre of people who deliberately drove past Walmart to go and spend more in Target.

      That we chose consciously to go and spend on higher priced items at Target.

      They ruined it for themselves. I have a Costco Membership and am actively seeking out local spots.

      No, I’m not going back.

      Reply
    81. 81.

      Marc

      @Steve LaBonne: Suppose (very much counterfactually, to be clear) COVID had actually been a Chinese bioweapon- that’s supposed to imply that we should just have let it run rampant without defending ourselves with masks, distancing, and vaccines??

      According to my understanding of “wingnut logic”, instead of wasting time finding a vaccine we should have nuked Beijing in retaliation, at which point we’d have a lot more important things to do than deal with some super-flu.

      Reply
    83. 83.

      Soprano2

      @Chief Oshkosh: As always, this is true for the MAGA’s, but probably not for the “normies”, who will blame FFOTUS especially if Democrats keep telling them what he did and what it caused.

      Reply
    84. 84.

      p.a.

      @different-church-lady: It’s going to take the biggest cult-deprogramming effort in history to break it.

       

      Really don’t want to cause, then lose, a World War.  I’d settle for just enough of a recession to get the normie vote and keep the pig people home on election day.  BUT, once they’ve tasted power…

      Reply
    85. 85.

      Marc

      @The Audacity of Krope: I’m predicting Newsom because he’s white, has excellent fundraising bona fides, and is the person discussed for 2028 who I dislike the most. Such a person is basically guaranteed to be at or near the top of the primaries.

      Uh no, at this point our beloved Governor Good Hair won’t win a CA Senate seat, much less the Democratic nomination.  He now carries far too much old money baggage that can’t be outweighed by the one smart liberal move he made in his entire career.

      Reply
    86. 86.

      Soprano2

      @Melancholy Jaques:  If voters cared about “rule of law” they wouldn’t have elected that asshole. And as long as the chaos doesn’t interfere with the personal lives, they like it. It’s entertaining. It looks like Trump is “shaking things up” and that’s one of the reasons they like him: people they hate are upset by him.

      I don’t think this applies to “normies”, because I think more than anything they want prices to go down. They don’t generally like a lot of chaos.

      Reply
    87. 87.

      WTFGhost

      @Rose Judson: The administration is entirely unconcerned with truth, only with what plays well in the press.

      @Rose Judson: Same as with rational nations that don’t need the US, but only found them convenient.

      @Steve LaBonne: Frankly, I felt that by forbidding masks, governors were promoting anti-US bioweaponry. I know there are people who scream bloody murder that “policy shouldn’t be criminalized” but I say “once it deliberately, and by design, kills people, it should be criminal.” Hell, I’m such an asshole, I want the people who poisoned Flint to rot in jail for the rest of their lives.
      “Did you know lead was in the water?”
      “Did you try to disseminate this knowledge?”
      “Were you in a position of public trust?”

      If the answer is “yes, no, yes,” I’m down with them rotting, even though it was a *policy* decision to poison lots and lots of people, including bunches of defenseless children.

      Reply
    88. 88.

      The Audacity of Krope

      @Marc: Old money may look like baggage to the activist set, they aren’t the only ones voting and won’t have the media megaphone behind them.

      Reply
    89. 89.

      Soprano2

      @oldgold: Gee, could have voted for Harris and things to be normal, but you got what you voted for. Here’s the world’s smallest violin playing “my heart bleeds for you”. Fuck these people.

      Reply
    90. 90.

      Enhanced Voting Techniques

      @Peale: The “bioweapon” is the PRC is Communists! And Commie leads to illness because it weakness the spirt with socialism!  So moar capitalism under Supreme Leader Trump is the cure.

      (as Trump’s hammer states “think of the stupidest explanation, and that’s what Trump and his followers are up to”)

      Reply
    91. 91.

      Baud

      @oldgold:

      My family has been farmers for nine generations

       
      I’m sure they’ll be proud you threw away their legacy for a sleazy real estate developer from New York

      Reply
    92. 92.

      Another Scott

      @different-church-lady: I guess the bots sign up, turn in assignments and claim to take the course long enough to get the financial aid, and vanish before any in-person showing-up is required?  If any?

      Dunno.

      Of course, it’s going to make it harder for real people who are trying to learn remotely if these things aren’t stopped.  As usual, the scammers make things worse for everyone else.

      And I can see the gears turning for more Scamming Business Opportunities for warm bodies pretending to be an AI bot to get $20 to show up for required in-person class who still disappear once the financial aid is disbursed.

      Grr…

      Best wishes,
      Scott.

      Reply
    93. 93.

      Melancholy Jaques

      @The Audacity of Krope:

      I’m predicting Newsom because he’s white, has excellent fundraising bona fides, and is the person discussed for 2028 who I dislike the most. Such a person is basically guaranteed to be at or near the top of the primaries.

      He is from California and even worse from San Francisco. Most of the rest of the country will hate him just for that alone.

       

      Reply
    94. 94.

      Melancholy Jaques

      @Soprano2:

      As always, this is true for the MAGA’s, but probably not for the “normies”, who will blame FFOTUS especially if Democrats keep telling them what he did and what it caused.

      It’s that last part that we never seem to get right.

      Reply
    95. 95.

      Enhanced Voting Techniques

      @Another Scott: Speaking AI- last night I was using ChatGPT to generate fake news stories for my sci-fi role playing game, and it spat out this thing about a Countess who swans around in the living dresses made from the bioengineered clones of her former lovers, and are notorious for screaming time to time at parties. So, that’s the AI’s vision of the future.

      Reply
    98. 98.

      Ruckus

      @Baud:

      Having seen one of those things in person is – hell I don’t know what to call it. They look like some 7 yr old drew a sketch in class and called it a motor vehicle. One drove past me yesterday on my walk and I’ve seen them up close and they look like – I have no words other than completely weird. I wouldn’t buy one even if it was pocket change for me. And that’s not counting that elon owns the company. So at least 2 negatives.

      Reply
    100. 100.

      JML

      @Another Scott: it’s a real issue with online college courses. how to sort out the “ghost students” is a growing issue and not just for community colleges (though they are absolutely the biggest target).

      Reply
    103. 103.

      different-church-lady

      @Ruckus:

      They look like some 7 yr old drew a sketch in class and called it a motor vehicle.

      I’m pretty sure that’s what happened, except the 7 year old is in his 50s.

      Reply
    104. 104.

      WTFGhost

      @Enhanced Voting Techniques: So is it the countess (who sounds like the kind who devoured a twin in utero), the dresses themselves, the clones, or the former lovers, who scream at parties?

      It’s too important a detail to leave to the imagination!

      Reply
    105. 105.

      Marc

      @Melancholy Jaques: We Democrats have been hurt by the fact that we Democrats do not have a clear policy on immigration. It’s all be reactive bullshit. No one is saying this is what we need to do & why.

      The problem is that the Democrats do not have a clear policy on much of anything.  Garcia does not have an immigration issue, he has a rule of law issue.  There is no ambiguity in the 5th amendment, whether or not the SC manages to make something up.  If they can deport Garcia without due process, than they can deport you without due process.  It’s a simple message, why the Democrats can’t get that is an exercise left to the reader.

      Reply
    107. 107.

      WTFGhost

      @different-church-lady: No, no, no.

      It was an electric razor.
      The front grill, that was the normal, foil, electric shaver. The short portion, that’s your “manscaping” trimmer. The long portion, that’s the floating rotary heads if you give yourself a baldie.

      And the wheels are so you can go ROOOOM ROOOOM pretending you’re a grown up, while pretending that you’re shaving. Dad’s gonna freak out when he realizes that, while it looks like a child’s toy, it took off a lot of hair, so the “pretend you’re shaving” didn’t work quite right for the kid….

      (I’m sorry – I set all of my mental prowess on finding some way of making that… that *shape* into a useful tool of some form, and that was the best I could do.)

      Reply
    109. 109.

      Melancholy Jaques

      @Marc:

      It’s a simple message, why the Democrats can’t get that is an exercise left to the reader.

      It’s simple, but it’s not going to be believed. Ignore what people say they feel about things & focus on how they vote. If voters cared about things like rights, especially the rights of people other than themselves, we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we? As one very big example, remember how Dobbs was going to change everything? It meant nothing in the presidential election.

      Reply
    110. 110.

      Enhanced Voting Techniques

      @WTFGhost: So is it the countess (who sounds like the kind who devoured a twin in utero), the dresses themselves, the clones, or the former lovers, who scream at parties?

      It’s too important a detail to leave to the imagination!

      The dress is a living bio-engineered  creature that is based on the DNA of the countesses ex-lover, and is prone to screaming.

      I keep on picturing the countess at some kind of Hollywood style red carpet with the flesh dress on and them my stomach demands i just stop it.

      I have to say, one doesn’t need psychedelic drugs with AI.

      Reply
    112. 112.

      WTFGhost

      @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Well, it sounds like my being on mild psychedelics helped me process in a more anime style, to ask a weird question. (I did assume it was the dress, screaming from the experiences of one of the past lovers who is finding it awfully… you know, I better remember that I’ve been using those Perfectly Legal Herbal Remedies, and this might be a good time to shut up.)

      At one point, I posted an essay, and someone complimented me with “there are people who take expensive pharmaceuticals in hopes of getting their brain into that state,” though I didn’t quite realize it was complimentary until I started doing weird stuff.

      Reply
    114. 114.

      chemiclord

      @Melancholy Jaques: ​
       The big problem is that any position the Dems could take on immigration that would be meaningfully distinct from Republicans would be resoundingly unpopular.

      Even a lot of the people complaining aren’t upset about deportations. They just don’t like how the Trump Administration handled it.

      Reply
    115. 115.

      Miss Bianca

      @oldgold:

      “My family has been farmers for nine generations,” Ragland wrote. “But now, because of the trade war with China, I’m worried we could be out of business by 2027. All that history, heritage, blood, sweat and toil could vanish with the stroke of a pen”

      Feature, not bug, dude.

      Reply

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