In a country of 350M

Under Volcker, unions were busted and wages flattened as a means of inducing austerity. That lemon’s been juiced.

There is no pool of retail consumers who can maintain spending at double-digit inflation rates for an appreciable length of time. You’d just see consumer spending plunge

Get ready for 4% inflation to be the New Normal.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to jerk off to.

Cuba in Ten Years

Amazing what a country can do when its continued existence depend on residents doing it.

Maybe if the Friekorps confined itself to shit posting on Facebook

I think there’s a real serious argument that “conservative” can mask “woman” or “minority” to counterweight nativist bigotry. And you might see this in politicians like Jodi Ernst or Sarah Palin or Dianne Feinstein or Kamala Harris even, where tacking to conservative rhetoric offsets the presumption that you’re a bunch of bra burning far left feminists.

But the idea that you can’t run as a conservative Democrat and win high office? Really requires you to just gouge out your eyes before glancing at any historical text. God forbid you lay eyes on a biography of Hillary Clinton.

He’s the one claiming the progressives unseating neoliberals in primaries are funded by Republicans.

It’s the same line they used again the Green Party in the '00s, various DSA candidates in the '10s, and the Sanders movement in the '20s.

Anyone who isn’t under the thumb of neoliberal leadership is some combination of Russia spy, Republican plant, and double-secret Communist infiltrator.

the first woman to win will be a conservative

Sort of like how Colin Powell was our first black president?

Always have been

No, she lost because she was black and a woman.

“Kamala Harris ran the perfect campaign, she was just stabbed in the back!”

There is absolutely nothing you can say about a hypothetic 2028 election in 2026.

Speculation on the 2028 presidential race began five minutes after the 2024 polls closed.

The Forever Campaign is much like the Forever War, in so far as it is a suffocating political miasma that strangles any other conversation.

They’re going to love having a fresh face to attract people to the party, donate lots of time and money, and stick around to get scolded with “Vote Blue No Matter Who” when progressives are rug pulled in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Some of the most “liberal” decisions were voted for by judges that “conservatives” put on the bench

Those judges were the product of a Senate that kept guys like Bork, Carswell, and Hayworth. The Warren and Burger Courts weren’t an accident. They came about through progressive Congressmen gatekeeping the bench against bigots and reactionaries.

Once neoliberals like Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein opened the door for Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito, the court was yanked rightward.

Has the public ever actually believed SCOTUS decisions were non-partisan?

He’s been coddled by cronies and yes-men for so long that he’s forgotten how to speak without expecting ot hear applause.

One Neat Trick

I don’t believe you.

Before there was AI slop there was auto-tuned slop.

And it ultimately flopped. The market became saturated with a product that people associated with flat, tinny, overly-electronic music. People scrambled to get away from it, and we got a mini-folk revival with lots of acoustics and more traditional instrumentals as a result.

In the same way, we’re seeing a scramble to get away from AI music saturation. I don’t think it’ll ever go away (any more than auto-tune did). But it creates a demand for something distinctively not-AI as a result.