I'm going to assume you excerpted the exact part I need to have a complete understanding of the article.
I keep seeing a map that shows annualized GPD change by state for Q1 of 2025 and it shows Nebraska as having had a 6.1% drop. I'm willing to bet that the drop is concentrated in Not-Omaha.
Of course, when a man is tired of Omaha, he is tired of life.
Or it's like July, August, January, February, or a month adjacent to one of those.
my flight is boarding so I'm stuck for getting out my computer and fixing the actual OP.
On the plus side, I didn't have to take off my shoes in security. Thanks Kristi Noem, but why do the worst people occasionally do the easiest low-hanging thing? why can't democrats eliminate the shoe security thing?
For the same reason only Nixon could go to China.
Also why don't they visually post which group is boarding somewhere?
(I must attribute this observation to E. Messily, but it plagues me with its obvious merit.)
And why do they list all contingencies for how you could break the smoke detector in the restroom?
Anyway, white people are broken and America is going to keep sticking its metaphorical dick in the bear trap until something changes.
Miller is going around telling people that paying for the healthcare for immigrants is why healthcare in the United States costs so much. Realistically, there's no way to stop that message from reaching more people than the truth.
"My dad doesn't understand, or won't admit, that Republican lawmakers in his state screwed us out of a fortune, by presiding over a broken healthcare system designed to exploit people like us."
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/sectors
Health $200,022,037(D) $118,237,736(R)
~50/50 donation splits are normal for almost all special interests.
Perhaps the author of 13 would care to articulate an argument? When Obama got 45 milion people insurance (more if the Supreme Court hadn't let Republican states refuse & those states hadn't obliged) and Trump just signed taking it away from at least 15 million, it's pretty clear who's the bad guys and who's just not quite doing enough.
I wondered why her father and brother don't vote.
"They don't vote out of conscience" -- this is kind of a messed-up sentence, given that they don't vote at all. She says it's out of indifference, but her dad seems to have strong opinions on politics.
Honestly, maybe there should just be a policy of not engaging with unsigned comments until someone claims them. There have been more drive-by anonymous comments lately, and their authors don't seem to come back and respond much.
Also why don't they visually post which group is boarding somewhere?
Alaska does this and it's quite nice.
17: I was thinking precisely the same thing.
17: yes, it's kind of insulting, like it's too much effort to come up with a pseud. Trolly Troll is available.
I'm still perplexed by all the people who were holding money out of the stock market while Biden was in office, hoping for Trump to come back and "save" the economy. I mean, I guess you could make an argument that Trumpian chaos creates a lot of buying opportunities, but it's a commonplace to show that you almost always lose money by trying to time the market like that.
It's not even a question of people voting against their own economic interests, it's that they barely understand what an economic interest even is. Like the memes about paying $3,000 more in taxes to avoid spending $10,000 on insurance -- that's already way too complicated for a significant plurality of the electorate. Anything more complex than "taxes bad" is over their heads.
That reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw today. "Everything looks like a conspiracy if you don't understand anything. "
Heebie,
I mean this in a good way, so please don't take this as any sort of pushback.
Wow, that substack is triggering. I mean wow, I'm flashing back to my childhood in Texas. Oh wow. And yeah, I am consumed with anger at those people. Just -consumed-. The taxes I pay to the Feds are taxes I pay so that these fuckers can oppress me and my family, my friends, my fellow Californians. It's enraging.
Oof, this is a tough read. My story would be similar. What terrifies me is that the equivalent of 1995 me doesn't have a dad listening to Limbaugh but a dad mainlining InfoWars, and its so much worse. Would I have been allowed to go to college? I have an uncle who hasn't spoken to me since 1997 when I went to college, which is honestly just as well, because there's nothing to say.
Anyhow, I moved 2000 miles away, and since the liberals made it impossible to chain-smoke on airplanes, there has been exactly one visit to us in fourteen years. The last time we flew out to visit, we stayed with my sister and dad showed up for about two hours and then left. My daughter keeps forgetting I have a dad. I feel like I should fix this but if he doesn't care to know his grandkids I am kind of out of cards.
23: nah, I know. But I still want to argue. (Roughly that every state has its horrible parts and its good parts, and it's just the ratios that determine the state government and gets momentum going for good and evil.) But yes. I also have a lot of anger at Texas and Texans.
25: "every state has its horrible parts and its good parts, and it's just the ratios ..."
We might go further and argue that the same is true of California (and all the Blue states). Heck, I look around and I see a state that is in the process of complying with the New Model Nazis. So in a way, I sort of agree with you.
More flooding-related but still MAGA, someone combined Kerr Commissioner's Court video snippets with the flooding. (h/t Barry)
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Coda will have much of interest to, especially, Barry, especially if his exhibitor, unlike mine, actually provides subtitles LIKE THEY PROMISED THEY WOULD.
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25, 26: Right, California has more Republicans than any other state in the country and Texas has the second most Democrats of any state.
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Tokyo Melody is interesting, but kind of choppy and directionless. It is nonetheless extremely worth watching just to see Sakamoto and Yano playing Tong Poo four handed, which is joyous.
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28 oh interesting, have you seen this? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryuichi_Sakamoto:_Opus
It's on Criterion
It's on the big screen, tomorrow. Seeing it for the third time.
https://bsky.app/profile/kjhealy.co/post/3lts2zrwy6c22
It's absolutely insane that the Epstein Trump stuff has been out there for years and it's finally gaining traction among the MAGA types
32: our local tiny art house theater has an ongoing anti-fascist film series, and my sister and I are going to see "Raiders of the Lost Ark" tomorrow afternoon.
Trump is going to release the pee tape to distract from the Epstein list.
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https://cepi.net/new-vaccine-set-human-trials-nipah-outbreak-hotspot
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35: maybe I need an anonymous Bluesky acct with my pseud here. I've got one with my first name and last initial now, spo I don't mix my Bluesky and blog comments. Are there rules about having more than one, like on Facebook?
Thanks for 40. It's great to know that CEPI exists and what they do, and that they have $100 million to put into nipa vaccine development and all the rest. There are things billionaires can do with their money that are good. Though from what I could glean CEPI has diverse public and private and philanthropic funding sources and no idea what the breakdown is. But I'm glad CEPI exists.
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There's this tweet from Mamdani's bluesky account where he's taking photos with random people on the street. Some guy runs up, so excited, and cries out, "I voted for somebody that won!!" I just rewatched it like five times. It made me cry. I wish I knew what that felt like!
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I was driving home today when My Sharona by the Knack came on. When Winona Ryder danced to it in Reality Bites, it seemed like a song from a different era. But it was actually only 15 years old in 1994. It would be like if a movie came out now and reacquainted the youth with a golden oldie like Bruno Mars' Grenade or Lady Gaga's Telephone. Guys, this is very distressing.
If it makes you feel better, someone pissed me off by sampling, in this case taking a whole melody, "Somebody that you used to know" for a whole new song. They should have waited longer.
There was a bigger gab between the 80s and 90s than between most decades.
47 is now distressing me as well; I feel old.
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and we are forgotten
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like an ancient and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends sample my records and then change the lyrics
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing there was always something good to come
Bought Obama's arc of history
Sold me demographic destiny
You thought that they would let it go
But now you've got me hung up in a country that I used to know
While there is a growing consensus that aggressive criminal sentencing does not tend to reduce crime in the U.S., a popular view is that the country is "underpoliced." Although police officers per capita are above the median among OECD countries, the U.S. is an outlier in having few police per homicide. We argue that the U.S.'s low police-per-homicide rate is explained not by police staffing levels but by high levels of bureaucratic shirking, characterized by inefficient allocation, low effort, and the avoidance of bodily harm.
Working paper via https://bsky.app/profile/jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
Actual paper (PDF)
https://go.bsky.app/redirect?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dropbox.com%2Fscl%2Ffi%2F35o94xz5ejnghtylybgr3%2Fgrumbach_mickey_ziblatt_policing.pdf%3Frlkey%3D41e5ybal7aj6n8rgp1f6rmhiz%26st%3Dyvcxp3vq%26raw%3D1
Ah yes, I should probably have remembered to include the link. In my defence, I am still recovering from whatever it was I inhaled as I crossed that field of solidified lava the other day that made everyone go a bit swimmy in the head.
Also the formatting in 56 is making my phone freak out.