"Unlike resources, will can grow from exertion and atrophy from rest. And while it can endure beyond material loss, it can also evaporate long before resources are exhausted." Yes, this is about us.
this one is funny because i guess "working class" people don't live in richmond or norfolk or suffolk or albemarle or manassas? bsky.app/profile/coll...
baseball crank's problem isn't that the process is bad, it is that he doesn't like the result
it is very funny how these people are so accustomed to essentially bullying democratic politicians that they meltdown when met with appropriate pushback.
in any case, the process to amend the virginia constitution has multiple stages where, at any point, an amendment can be defeated.
if there is a path to either national nonpartisan redistricting or proportional representation, it is going to go through one party or another. but the first step toward it actually happening is for that party to win power, and you go to war with the system you have, not the one you want.
A screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the account "Politics & Poll Tracker 📡" (@PollTracker2024). The post text reads: AP-NORC poll | 4/16-4/20 President Trump approval ❌ Disapprove 67% (+7) ✅ Approve 33% (-5) (Change from 3/19-3/23) — President Trump’s handling of the issues ❌ Cost of living: -53 ❌ The economy: -40 ❌ Iran: -35 ❌ Immigration: -19
Trump is entering Bush second term territory with his approval ratings.
Devastating numbers for Trump.
So much false equivalence in media on gerrymandering in Texas vs California & Virginia. California and Virginia maps approved by the voters. That's a huge difference not enough people pointing out
I decided to write about at each & every one of the 32 states with supreme court elections this year.
Why? On abortion, redistricting, death penalty, & more, these institutions & their elections remain so critical.
So here's everything you need to know. NEW from me:
“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
- Harry Truman
As Trump proves often, the reverse of this is also true.
It’s amazing how much you can fuck things up when the only thing you care about is getting the credit.
Dictator Perpetuo That understanding did not originate in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. It goes all the way back to Rome. Like America, Rome was a people consciously rooted in having overthrown a monarchy. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar had his portrait placed on the coinage of the Republic. It was a shocking statement. Roman coins had never before carried a living man’s portrait at the Rome mint. Much less one bearing his newly claimed, unprecedented title: dictator perpetuo, the dictator for life. To put your face on the money was to claim a status above that of a citizen, to assert that you were not first among equals but something closer to a sovereign. It was emblematic of his concentration of power, consolidating his rule into an open autocracy. Within weeks of issuing the “CAESAR DICT PERPETVO” coin, he was assassinated. Though the Roman Republic fell, the ideal survived. Public institutions exist apart from the men who lead them, and conflating the two is the hallmark of tyranny. That ideal profoundly shaped the generation that designed the American constitutional order. The Founders created a Senate, placed it on a “Capitol Hill,” and embraced neoclassical architecture. They modeled their concept of civic virtue on Cincinnatus, the farmer-general who, having defeated a foreign invader, relinquished his dictatorial powers after just 15 days and went home. The Federalist Papers were published under the pseudonym “Publius,” while others posed as “Cato” or “Brutus.” Washington’s voluntary departure from the presidency after two terms, and his earlier resignation of his military commission, were modeled on that Roman example.
When Congress debated the Coinage Act of 1792, an initial version of the bill called for the president’s portrait to appear on U.S. coins. Washington rejected the idea, and James Madison successfully had it removed, arguing that stamping the president’s head on the money was un-republican.
This also links in with this crackpot Technate idea, aka Technocracy Inc.
Elon Musk’s Canadian grandfather helped devise it in the 1940s.
The “Technate of America” includes Greenland, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico, Panama etc and looks like the map Trump posted himself displaying to European leaders.
A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.
A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.
For the kind of work I do, verification that applies the same standards to allies and adversaries, that scrutinises power on whichever side it sits, this worldview is structurally hostile. Symmetric verification becomes part of the cultural pathology the document wants reined in.
It's also worth being clear about who's doing the arguing. Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating.
This is what verification looks like once national identity sits above method. Rigorous when it's pointed at adversaries, conveniently absent when it's pointed at us. Symmetric, evidence-led investigation of allied conduct, exactly what Bellingcat does, becomes the thing the worldview can't tolerate
Meet Calvin Duncan. In Louisiana, they are trying to strip him of the post he was legally elected to in Orleans Parish. This man was jailed for a crime, exonerated, ran for office, and won. Now, the state is attempting to take that office away from him.
It’s almost like a bizarre political science experiment: Just how many unpopular policies can one president pursue? From starting a war with Iran to threatening Greenland to building a new White House ballroom, President Donald…
Can’t tell you how many high level DC insiders have said to me in past two days they don’t believe anything WH says unless it is confirmed by Iran. And the smart ones want confirmation by Iranian actions not just words. Trump credibility even among GOPers is zero. Less than that.
Among a mountain of bad-faith factual claims and frivolous constitutional arguments, Eastman's ultimate plan was for VP Pence (or Sen. Grassley) to *knowingly violate the Electoral Count Act* and let SCOTUS block any subsequent lawsuits on political question grounds. Just shit from start to finish.
A small cohort of ("prominent"?) law professors are trying to portray John Eastman as some kind of innocent victim of viewpoint discrimination, and his disbarment as some kind of assault on the First Amendment.
That's complete and utter bollocks. As usual, @gabrielmalor.bsky.social brings receipts:
Someday, someone is going to make a movie about the tech-bros who recklessly dismantled the professional US administrative state and it’s going to be devastating.
Gripping excerpt from “Into the Wood Chipper,” Nicholas Enrich. h/t @marisakabas.bsky.social
www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...
“‘It would be catastrophic’: A Supreme Court decision could upend Alaska’s crucial Senate race” electionlawblog.org?p=155411
Hillary Clinton: "I think our allies believe we've lost our minds because they wake up in the morning like we do and see the rants from the president making no sense half the time"
There's an emerging ideological divide over whether unexplained #SCOTUS rulings must be given precedential effect. Today's "One First" argues that there's nothing "conservative" about saying "yes"; it's just cover for bad behavior that has nothing to do with ideology—and everything to do with power:
Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.
Reporters should ask Trump to describe the pope's job.
Lockheed Martin built most of the Orion spaceship that just did the lunar flyby
Alex Ovechkin poses for legendary photo with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang before potential final game against Penguins
For folks in the U.S. who may think that voting doesn't matter because of Republican voter suppression and gerrymanders, just look at this map. The far right was practically wiped off it tonight, despite 16 years of Fidesz state capture.
