Back when I worked in an office I would put up badass president pics Fourth of July. Too lazy to find them, but stuff like Kennedy riding a robot unicorn on the moon, FDR in wheelchair themed power armor, Roosevelt gunning down big foot in a forest fire, etc.

At home, the only significant decorating I do is for Christmas. There’s enough misery out there, and I choose to embrace the joy and the appeal to the better side of our nature. So we have lights, fake candles, and so on, and we put up a tree that gets a new ornament or two every year which fills it with memories. And as a finishing touch we hang a banner declaring “All creatures will make merry under pain of death”

Also a big red flag that he wanted them to identify the owner or a manager, because that’s not fucking ominous when a cop is abusing his power and no longer wants to settle for a refund.

Meanwhile Russia’s spraying the country with a firehose of lies, and illegally funneling money in to influence the election. IIRC Johnson got a hefty campaign donation from Russia, which he had to return when it was noticed.

But no, this is clearly the real outrage. Just because he didn’t endorse any politician or party and didn’t appear with any presidential candidate doesn’t mean that this wasn’t obviously election interference. Just look what he’s doing, reminding people that Ukraine exists and shaking hands with American workers who build the shells that are helping to save his country. What could be more sinister?

For real though, the pro-Putin wing is desperate to spin this story because it clearly shows how full of shit they are when they bitch about spending money on Ukraine instead of keeping it in the US. Supporting Ukraine isn’t just good for upholding the international order, safeguarding allies, and degrading Russia’s capabilities for remarkably little cost, but it’s also supporting domestic manufacturing jobs.

At this point, I’m not sure if he’d lose even 1% in the polls if a recording came out showing him with Epstein, explicitly stating he’ll take the 12 year old girl, then dropping his pants. Most of his supporters would claim it was fake, some would claim it was out of context because they didn’t release any footage of actual sex, and at least a few would argue that there’s nothing wrong with sex with 12 year olds.

Hawaii

And for something similar in its insanity, there’s also Santa Claus, a product of Mexico that I can only assume was fueled by product from Columbia.

“I wonder if there’s beer on the sun”

The Canada Song lives rent free in my head.

“We put our faith in BLAST HARDCHEESE.”

Final Sacrifice.

I think the most reasonable interpretation is that the law doesn’t currently recognize the undead as being people, let alone being the same person they were in life. It would need to be shown to be a reliable source of evidence, similar to any new technology that claims to offer insight into a case. A random judge might allow it, but it would be easy grounds for an appeal if it can’t be shown to do exactly what it claims to do.

DNA evidence was new once, but so was the polygraph. Only one of these is admissible, and for good reason.

“Comedy is dead. Tragedy? Now that’s funny”

- Bender Bending Rodriguez

France on Sunday took a step closer to delivering what was once seen as an unthinkable nightmare: a far-right government taking power in Paris for the first time.

Well… the first time in a while. And just as the last time was exiting living memory.

The undecideds are people who aren’t paying attention. It’s easy to not be sure who you’ll vote for when your opinion is based on whatever stray bits of politics pop up around you despite your best efforts to remain ignorant. And those people are just as likely to run into lies and propaganda, but won’t have the knowledge required to spot the inaccuracies.

* proven rapist.

He was found to be liable in civil court for a sexual assault that would be considered rape under the definition used by the federal government. It is now a legally established fact that he is a rapist, but he was not actually convicted of a crime.

“If you actually look at so many of the court cases against Donald Trump, George, this is not about prosecuting Trump for something that he did. It’s about throwing him off the ballot because Democrats feel that they can’t beat him at the ballot box.”

Note how he isn’t asserting Trump’s innocence, nor does his guilt or innocence even matter. Trump can be an insurrectionist who compromised our national security. That’s fine, and so is a long history of fraud. Not even being a rapist matters. The only thing that matters to this shit stain is that Trump is his party’s presidential candidate. And he’s arguing that it should be all that matters to the courts as well.

Alternate headline: Senator argues politicians should be above the law, can rape with impunity.

Counties are too big and uneven. Districts must be contiguous and follow existing civic boundaries according to the state constitution, which is already an issue because those boundaries aren’t always contiguous.* But add to that the fact most of the population lives in a handful of countries all clustered together and it becomes impossible to distribute the congressional districts evenly. Not to mention that many cities are split across county lines, creating even more complexities.

But even ignoring that, the bigger issue is actually the state legislature. There’s tons of districts to distribute there, we can’t just use counties for all of them. And that’s the real issue anyway. Wisconsin is a 50.1/49.9 purple state that has managed to go blue consistently in statewide elections in recent years, but also somehow has a supermajority Republican state legislature. I’d make a sarcastic comment about how that was a mystery, but why should I bother when the Republicans won’t even pretend they’re being fair. They’ve admitted they gerrymandered for political gain, and defended that by saying it isn’t illegal.

In short, it’s complicated and full of grey areas, contradictions and judgment calls, which means the only way we’ll get a fair map is if the people drawing the lines actually want a fair map.

* Some of those places have more of a Jackson Pollock look, and cities have been known to annex individual properties without bothering to grab the land to connect them. And with this stuff going on for the better part of two centuries, the whole map is a clusterfuck.

Win, and not just settle for a check and a press release that will never be seen by people who actually watch those networks.

I’ve worked with a lot of IT contractors who were based in India, as well as other Asian and eastern European countries. You’d think the government would want the people doing those jobs to be here, where they would be paying US taxes, and recirculating their pay into our economy. If anything, you’d expect them to make it harder to outsource and easier to immigrate.

Interest and inflation have a lot more room to fall.