Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

If they're administered intravenously, there can be some pretty quick effect, but it still takes awhile.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Yes, agreed. My mind boggles at the people who are intentionally passing this sort of crap, and at the people who want so badly to believe that a lot of Covid-19 is just Legionnaire's that can be cured with two days of antibiotics.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

But you can "feel better" after 2 days. My crazy person didn't say "off meds in 2 days." Only PI lawyer Icky made that leap.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Why do you still let him walk your dog?

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Dude, that was always rolling dice. Stakes just higher.

Mi. has a slight uptick, which seems expected given relaxing things. But the Gov keeps complaining about it. My partner with 5 kids in late teens to mid-20s says it is all young people. They are done with lock down and no hook ups. (he is Catholic and has mostly daughters so he didn't say "hook-ups." I'm reading in)

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

“Sorry. No kissing. Roll over.”

Hot🔥🔥🔥

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Excellent question, but if you re-read the sentence carefully you will see that I meant *the park* was walking my dog.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Hi everyone!!! “How to tell it's fake: Thousands allowed in a church for John Lewis funeral. None allowed at your church.”

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Kavanaugh was correct in his dissent in the Nevada church case.

Hating the Bros
 

So I'm shooting the shit with this lawyer last Thursday. Guy's super-progressive. Huge BLM guy. And we get to talking about justice reform and then Bernie comes up. Dude goes on a rant about how Bernie is basically as bad as Trump. The guy detests Bernie.

I've heard this before. I know enough not ask follow ups, so I just politely listen and say, "Well, Bernie is unrealistic." Milquetoast reply, intended to defuse.

This Bernie hatred, which is very common, is confusing to me. Look, I get that he's a curmudgeon, and he's naive and unrealistic about his policies. But how does a progressive find such hatred for a guy who's done so much to push forward progressive causes. If not for Bernie, the Democratic Party would be dominated by triangulating Clintonite centrists (effectively, in terms of impact, Moderate Republicans of old).

It's hard for me not say the following:

"Look, if you hate Bernie it's because he's raising some really tough questions. Economic questions. The moderates have no answer for inequality. Sure, they say they do, but it's just redistribution at the margins, some crap about retaining that'll never work, or MOAR EDUCATION! It's bullshit. The Republicans and Centrist Democrats don't have any plan to really help the downtrodden to become economically independent. They're just arguing over how much money to throw at them.

If you want proof of this, look at 'woke capitalism' all around you. Consider that it's your affluent progressive friends who are all fixated on wokeness. That corporations are in an orgy of virtue signalling. All this while the poor of all backgrounds are just trying to survive.

Why? Part of it is well intentioned. People with time on their hands and a few bucks can engage in protests and they love anything that smells of 'raising awareness.' But a bigger part of it is because it's easy and it lets them off the hook. To say one is woke, to support protests, attend them perhaps, costs an affluent white person nothing. Nada. Zip. And to say our problems are entirely race based allows affluent white folks, and corporations, to avoid the economics of inequality. It allows those doing alright in a neoliberal economy to dodge a conversation about how 20% of us are running away with all of the spoils while the other 80% - of all colors and backgrounds - are languishing.

That's the conversation Bernie wanted to have. He was interested in European reforms, like putting workers' representatives on corporate boards, raising the minimum wage significantly, single payer. He would've taxed financial transactions and rentier activities.

You can't really hate Bernie and call yourself a progressive. What you can and should call yourself is a selfish centrist who's protecting his book."

Re: Hating the Bros
 

The reasons are at least four fold:

(1) He and his people love to demonize other people; it's a cult, and if you don't worship St. Bernie you're not a progressive. We've all been called names by Bros along the way, and we've all had them question our integrity.
(2) He undermines good candidates, whether it is past races in Vermont, local races he decides to get into, or Hillary Clinton. He is particularly nasty to minority and women candidates; watching the Bernie Bros feed on Elizabeth Warren when she didn't do as she was told by them was one of the recent stomach turning escapades. One side effect of this is he has no long term alliances - try to think of another elected official who has worked closely with bernie for years - there are none, if you work with him too long, there will be a knife in your back.
(3) He's really shallow - everything is a bumper sticker, there is always an easy solution. I'm sure you like this about him. This makes having an argument with the Bernie Bros as frustrating as having an argument with Trumpsters (example: I have asked innumerable Bros how M4A would impact the development of innovative drugs - there are good answers to this question by the way - and have never gotten anything but a man, you must be a neoliberal shill to question M4A, what is wrong with you)
(4) He's gotten shit done. Other than staging big rallies and basking in adulation, he's accomplished next to nothing.

Compare the above to, say, the squad. They operate in a completely different way. Really, one thing you don't want is Bernie to be too firmly in your camp.

As to this "you can't hate Bernie and call yourself a progressive" crap - fuck you, that's Bro-speak. As I've noted before, I was in Burlington with Bernie the night he was first elected Mayor, I was campaign manager for a progressive Member of Congress in an adjacent district, I was a member of DSA back when he first joined. I know whereof I speak.

Re: Hating the Bros
 

Good one.

Re: Hating the Bros
 

1. I agree. Bernie people can be cultish and they are incredibly naive. But they are also kind of pure in this regard. They seem to really believe we need massive, systemic change. Their thinking is somewhat akin to Adder's assertion that one is either racist or antiracist. Or to cite Kesey, on the bus or off the bus. This may be pitiable, but a basis for hatred?
2. Hillary was not a good candidate. The most exercised voters in 2016 wanted to blow up the system, not incrementally modify it in a way that keeps you and me and all of our richer friends happy while people looking for work are left holding their dicks in their hands. Bernie understood this. Trump understood this. Hillary was clueless.

More generally, however, I do agree that Bernie kneecaps more moderate candidates, just like the Tea Party kneecaps moderate Rs. But again, these insurgents are doing it because they believe people like us - moderates, neoliberals - won't give them the radical change they desire. I hate that the Tea Party has turned the GOP primaries into crowning ceremonies for right wing lunatics. But I don't hate them for doing so.

I think "hand grenade" candidates like Bernie, the Tea Party, AOC, and Trump open up necessary debates we'd otherwise avoid. They question incrementalism. Maybe that's needed?
3. He's shallow by design. He wants to kick down the barriers of debate by simply repeating extreme positions until they become part of the mainstream conversation. It's marketing genius. And it serves the interests of true progressivism, as opposed to Clintonite faux progressivism, quite well.
4. I could not disagree more. Bernie and Trump have completely upended modern politics. They've gelded the forces on the right and left which kept policy debates within tight little bands, so no true radical change could occur. Bernie shoved open the door for the progressive movement to acquire a very large seat at table of the Democrat leadership. Where they could once be ignored as fringe players to at most be placated, now they're a serious power bloc. And a growing one as well. Biden and Harris might be a resurgence of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, but it's a last dance for their kind. If Biden tries to run the place as a triangulator, he's going to feel the wrath of both the Bernie and Trump factions in the midterms, and beyond.

Re: Hating the Bros
 

Discovery? Not much. Mostly government-funded already.

Approval? With a changed incentive structure, we can likely streamline the approval process (some of which we should be doing anyway).