Welp, I’ve just called in sick to work: the stage is yours for the next four hours.

Is that how it worked? I seem to remember Iran having to be the adult in the room last year and ending the back-and-forth rocket attacks.

Appeasement does not work. Didn’t in the '30s, and will not now. The Likud and other war-hawk fascist sorts will continue to push and consolidate power if their platform shows results (we are untouchable). Maybe Biden’s Chamberlain strategy delayed war, but it did not and cannot prevent it so long as it insulates Israel from the consequences of its actions.

Do any of the tracks share a gauge?

Lower Decks. A Star Trek animated series.

Don’t ask me more- I haven’t seen it and have no current plans to. I hear it’s good, though.

No? They’re just bird-people?

Bah! Use a particular state if you know it. Otherwise American serves as well as European.

But why Katakana? Those are some reasonably basic kanji- certainly not beyond bird anyway.

Are those event buttondowns or does NASA have a burgundy uniform?

Aha! This locket is the first clue that will lead us to great treasure! Now we must hunt down this ‘Fiancee’. What a weird name- must be Italian.

Amazing. Assuming this is true, and he actually gets any, he can hit his son with “I came in your mom last night.”

It may lead to billions in therapy bills, but thet kid is getting the closest thing to the 2006 public Halo game experience.

As opposed to the secret stroke beam that gets you a meeting with HR.

Weren’t they the ones touting their ‘largest warchest ever’ sometime around Harris taking up the mantle last year?

Trump Always Chickens Out

Hugh Jass.

…and people who want to hide in the shadows, there’s no reason to do that when you’re buying a vacuum off me and want to come to my home to pick it up.

As a buyer of random trash, I really don’t want anyone to know more than they have to. The only identifying details about me should be “paid $13.65 for a set of glittery plastic tableware.” In whatever ledger you keep for those sort of things.

I got a promotional text message from a store I bought a single repair component from once in a state I never visited. It made me irrationally upset. I would not accuse you of such, but every action to verify someone’s “personhood” means that marketing types have that much more access to try to sell me junk.

Which two fish do Nevadanites get?

Yes? You made my point more clearly than I did, but they were the same point.

No of course not. Things are what they are.

The Democrats’ long-term planning skills are not in question here, but they must recognize that they cannot enact those long-term plans without access to the levers of power- and that short term concessions must be made to that end.

As for voters: we all wish they thought more and weren’t constantly led around by the nose, but both facts and feelings are part of their individual calculus for support. Obama was carried in on feelings of hope which vibed with the zeitgeist. Trump came in on a presentation of a strong figure (that we know to be false) that complements the uncertainty about the future that Obama left behind when hope kinda petered out over his term.

The feelings in this case are critical because we know politicos cannot possibly keep all their (sometimes contradictory) campaign promises and they cannot voice their position on every issue. So it falls to the voters to suss out what priorities and allegiances the politician has and how they will respond to any given event.

How involved does one need to be to be complicit?

We can probably agree that the local embassy security staff didn’t have a hand in these atrocities, but do the intelligence officers staffed there? The schmoozers working to ensure unwavering US support? The ambassador himself?

Keeping in mind everyone’s interpretation of complicity is different, I agree this probably wasn’t the best move available, but I won’t criticize it further than that.

Inflation has largely been controlled during that period, but real wages have stagnated since at least the housing crisis of '08. It doesn’t make a lick of difference how well inflation is managed to the poors when buying power is lost.

Pandemic (and even prior) economic malaise is not the fault nor legacy of the Democrats necessarily, but political cynicism bites both ways, and is a lot harder to overcome when the party tells you economic factors are looking up and asks you to wait it out for an uncertain boom in the future.

Yes, Republican (esp. MAGA) policies and mentalities make that promised economic future dicier, but they deliver a feeling of doing something.