GeorgiaDon

Happy birthday! Don

One of the things I really like about the parliamentary system is that they have something called "question period", where the prime minister has to appear in Parliament and take questions. Can you imagine Trump having to respond to questions from opposition members in front of the whole Congress? Years ago I used to imagine Bush (the shrub Bush) in that predicament, contrasted to Clinton or Obama or even a younger Biden.

I don't recall feeling afraid to voice an opinion in public after George Floyd was killed. I do feel that way now.

Social media is a tool, it can be used for good or bad purposes. Like some other tools (firearms come to mind), it can change us by making some actions easier, more efficient, or even possible at all. Parachutes don't force us to skydive, but they make skydiving (at least more than once, as they say) possible if you choose to do that, and that can change your life as we all know. Some tools have more risk than others, but none are a cancer unless we allow them to have that effect.

Attributing this action to "a fit if rage" understates the risk to us all at play here. The types of contraceptives destroyed (birth control pills, IUDs) are regularly labeled "abortifacents" by the "pro-life" movement, which is shifting from just anti-abortion to more of an anti-contraception stance. I believe these types of contraceptives are suggested to be banned in Project 2025. Destroying this stockpile of contraceptives was not an act of rage, it was part of a plan that leads to eliminating them in the US as well.

So if I understand this correctly, the best way to reduce the number of people getting killed is by killing more people? Sounds about...not right. State sanctioned killing is still killing.

They left out acute lead poisoning.

I've seen articles that describe them as "prepubescent". Super creepy!!!

He'd better stay away from any windows!

It seems to me that a problem with the argument that soldiers take an oath to not obey unlawful orders is that it requires everybody to be able to discern an unlawful order. If several soldiers are ordered to execute a group of unarmed prisoners, and 19 soldiers refuse the order but 1 obeys the unarmed prisoners will still end up dead. You need 100% compliance. An order as extreme as "shoot all the prisoners" may be obviously illegal if it comes from some sergeant, but something less extreme may not be so obvious even if a court were to eventually rule that the act was illegal, and even an extreme act may be of uncertain legality if it comes from the president. This Supreme Court seems to be taking the position that the President can do anything, even if it violates the plain language of the constitution, and they are immune from prosecution. In the case of birthright citizenship , for example, their ruling was that people have to comply for now, and maybe eventually they will get around to deciding if the executive order was lawful. If your career depends on following lawful orders, and the "lawful" part is ambiguous, there will always be people (lots of people) who will choose to follow the order.

Anyone can "nominate" somebody for any of the Nobel prizes. That means nothing. The Nobel committees select the winner, and it doesn't matter how many "nominations" someone may have. We had a chemistry professor here who was quite enamored of himself, and he would get his friends to "nominate" him every year. He even had on his website "Nominated for the Chemistry Nobel Prize 10 years in a row!!". All bullshit. He never won of course. Also it's considered to be quite gauche to lobby for a Nobel Prize. Of course "gauche" is Trump's middle name (or one of them).

Clearly gratuitous cruelty is the point. Why is MAGA so consumed with hatred? I don't want to even think about how low these monsters will go.

I see Rubio as the personification of people's willingness to debase themselves to Trump for the sake of power. Perhaps I missed the memo, but at one time I thought he had a decent amount of integrity, even if I disagreed with many of his policy ideas. However he has completely capitulated to the MAGA world, to the point of taking a leading role in condemning millions of people to death from AIDS, malaria, starvation, etc to enhance his own power. I suppose it's the same with every would-be dictator, they are only powerful because there are so many people willing to jump on the train to benefit themselves, even at the expense of any shred of integrity or decency. Sometimes I regret that I don't believe in hell, because I can't even enjoy the delusion that they will get their "just desserts" in the afterlife.

You'll never see Trump on a horse. He's too scared. Also too heavy. Not to mention no self-respecting horse would be seen with a 400 pound lump of lard jiggling on its back.

Southern Ontario has seen a sharp increase in numbers of tornadoes in recent years. I really dislike those maps that cut off at the US border. It's not like the weather (or climate) stop at the border.