I’d be down for the presentation being “we’re fucked, we can’t do anything liberal.”

It’s more how the show frames it as big wins for progressive ideas.

And Toby and Leo, it was when they were arguing about whether they could afford to be more progressive and they decide to be more aggressive (let Bartlett be Bartlett) and nothing comes of it.

Oh, I think you’re right. There was also something vague with the FEC, wasn’t there?

Look, all he has to do is keep driving approval down and eventually he’ll hit the universe’s underflow glitch.

He’s just the first politician to realize god stored approval ratings as an unsigned integer.

I’m wracking my brain for what else the Bartlett administration actually accomplishes and… the only other thing I can remember is negotiating a deal to raise the social security retirement age and reduce benefits.

For context, the legislation that the show frames as crazy liberal and a real moonshot is making college tuition tax deductible.

Like… imagine a time where “people who can pay for their kids’ tuition out of pocket save a few thousand in taxes” is depicted as hugely progressive.

Open Secrets is a right-wing psyop to convince people that the government can’t be trusted and every candidate is corrupt.

There’s no other way I can explain the insane decision to represent donations from an Amazon driver as donations “from Amazon”

As my wife pointed out, it wasn’t as hard for me because I would have defaulted to not going out anyway.

Call me crazy, but I think this pretty definitively disproves the risible claims that right-wing histrionics about the Supreme Court leak are about how dangerous the political environment is.

If I had to guess:

Anthropic would very much like to IPO before the bubble bursts and can’t very well submit an S-1 before it tightens usage to staunch the bleeding red ink.

At least cryptocurrencies started off with fantastical explanations of how it would wind up being a good thing.

“Men don’t gush about children”

“If a man cares about a child other than his own genetic lineage he’s a predator”

I think there might be a connection between these two beliefs.

“If I’m not allowed to say I want to bang a teenager why is this dude allowed to say he wants to bang his wife?”

- weird dude

That makes a lot of sense if you take the right-wing at their word and their supposed fearfulness as their true motives.

I’m not sure what about the past 50 years would compel you to take them at their word or assume they’re truthfully representing their motives.

It’s very consistent if you consider him a political actor rather than a jurist. “It causes irreparable harm to stop right-wing actions, and irreparable harm to allow left-wing ones”

Ah, that makes more sense. More a customer service thing than mandatory.

Would they do it cross-airline?

Let’s say I’m on the 2:41 American flight and miss check-in time. American doesn’t have any other times that get me there today. Would they put my ticket price towards the 4:05 United?

For being late to the airport we automatically wouldn’t have to pay full price for tickets on a new flight?

I’m fully willing to have this be that there’s something we failed to avail ourselves of. But I’ve never heard of that when it’s the consumer’s fault.

Last time my wife and I missed a flight it was from DIA to New York. Leaving at 8:00 arriving same day.

Without giving up a day of already-paid-for accommodations and vacation, what’s the cheapest flight you can find?

$300 each was the cheapest I found right now. And that’s on a Monday.

One of the most consistent features of chatbot boosters is how many people fall into the odd dissonance of “it fucks up really badly when I know enough to check its output, but when it’s about things I don’t know it sounds like a genius”

Ah, it’s been a while since we had a good ol’ “I said it wasn’t true therefore you knew it was false” gambit.

“Once you realize that missing a flight only costs hundreds of dollars (assuming you’re flying alone) it’s no big deal” should maybe give you pause.

I would, perhaps, reconsider framing other people not being able to painlessly absorb losing hundreds as being “neurotic”

But I was told that fully-automated and ambulatory human-shaped robots (which we want for no good reason) are on the cusp of being rolled out based on impressive, highly-scripted, stunts in a controlled environment.

It would really take a President so infirm that he couldn't hold a pen. Anything short of that and it's just impeachment with more steps and worse odds.

The idea that's the Raskin strategy is both distressingly stupid and depressingly believable

I'm not even particularly interested in whether the 25th Amendment *should* be used to remove a President against his will whose incapacity is "doing a shit job" rather than "coma", but it simply doesn't work for that purpose.

Also, also, even if they did it would make Vance the Acting President for no more than 21 days until Trump would resume office.

Unless 2/3rds of both the House and Senate voted to keep Trump out. But if there were 2/3rds in both houses who'd vote to have him out of office, they'd impeach already.

3. "The 25th Amendment is better than impeachment because it removes his whole cabinet"

No, it doesn't. Just... No part of it does that, and given the actual process it wouldn't make sense for it to do that.

15/15

2. "The 25th Amendment is a tool for Congress to remove a president if he can't do the job"

It's demonstrably a tool for the VP to exercise power when the President is unable to, not a way for Congress to do a quick and dirty impeachment-by-another-name removal.

14/

Note: I'm using "removal" here because that's how it's being phrased, but almost all of these would also include the "it's not removal, it's the VP being able to assume power as Acting President"

13/

Finally, a few stray misconceptions:

1. "The 25th amendment demands removal of a president who is incapable."

The 25th Amendment does not create an obligation on the VP to declare a President incapable, it provides the authority to take power as Acting President if he does.

12/